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re In an Open Letter, Microsoft Employees Urge the Company To Not Bid on the US Military's Project JEDI

From: "Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>
Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2018 17:00:49 +0900



Begin forwarded message:


From: shannonm () gmail com
Date: October 15, 2018 at 4:56:02 PM GMT+9
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] re In an Open Letter, Microsoft Employees Urge the Company To Not Bid on the US Military's Project 
JEDI

For IP and Sid if appropriate. 
I know wonderful friends in and retired in the military. 
However as Eisenhower warned “beware the military industrial complex” our military is involved in seven wars plus 
military operations in 133 countries - plus the Pentagon budget has never been balanced and they cannot account for 
$21 TRILLION dollars 
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/kotlikoff/2017/12/08/has-our-government-spent-21-trillion-of-our-money-without-telling-us/amp/
the budget is out of control. like any organization there are different divisions and managers. The US military 
really is a killing machine - but not everyone in the military is a killer. 

This article  explains JEDI  
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/11/war-jedi-algorithmic-warfare-us-military  Plus note the 
thousands of civilians who are randomly killed:
“.. But the deeper problem with the humanitarian argument for algorithmic warfare is the assumption that the US 
military is an essentially benevolent force. Many millions of people around the world would disagree. In 2017 alone, 
the US and allied strikes in Iraq and Syria killed as many as 6,000 civilians. Numbers like these don’t suggest a few 
honest mistakes here and there, but a systemic indifference to “collateral damage”. Indeed, the US government has 
repeatedly bombedcivilian gatherings such as weddings in the hopes of killing a high-value target.

Further, the line between civilian and combatant is highly porous in the era of the forever war. A report from the 
Intercept suggests that the US military labels anyone it kills in “targeted” strikes as “enemy killed in action”, 
even if they weren’t one of the targets. The so-called “signature strikes” conducted by the US military and the CIA 
play similar tricks with the concept of the combatant. These are drone attacks on individuals whose identities are 
unknown, but who are suspected of being militants based on displaying certain “signatures” – which can be as vague as 
being a military-aged male in a particular area.

The problem isn’t the quality of the tools, in other words, but the institution wielding them. And AI will only make 
that institution more brutal. The forever war demands that the US sees enemies everywhere. AI promises to find those 
enemies faster – even if all it takes to be considered an enemy is exhibiting a pattern of behavior that a 
(classified) machine-learning model associates with hostile activity. Call it death by big data ...”


Sent on the fly from my phone

On Oct 14, 2018, at 21:11, Dave Farber <farber () gmail com> wrote:




Begin forwarded message:


From: Sidney Karin <skarin () ucsd edu>
Date: October 15, 2018 12:29:18 JST
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Re: [IP] In an Open Letter, Microsoft Employees Urge the Company To Not Bid on the US Military's Project 
JEDI

Dave,  (For IP if you choose.)

The U.S. Military is not a murder machine.  Lauren’s comment is highly
insulting to a very large number of people and is way out of line.  Of course
Lauren is on the sidelines.  The Microsoft employees are in the game, their
position is at least equally insulting, to the military and to the nation.


…….Sid



P.S.  I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the U.S. (or any other)
military, however I have consulted to some units of the U.S. military.



On Oct 14, 2018, at 5:45 PM, Dave Farber <farber () gmail com> wrote:



Begin forwarded message:

From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
Subject: [ NNSquad ] In an Open Letter, Microsoft Employees Urge the Company To Not Bid on the US Military's 
Project JEDI
Date: October 15, 2018 0:57:14 JST
To: nnsquad () nnsquad org


In an Open Letter, Microsoft Employees Urge the Company To Not Bid on
the US Military's Project JEDI

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/18/10/14/1359239/in-an-open-letter-microsoft-employees-urge-the-company-to-not-bid-on-the-us-militarys-project-jedi

On Tuesday, Microsoft expressed its intent to bid on the Joint
Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract -- a
contract that represents a $10 billion project to build cloud
services for the Department of Defense. The contract is
massive in scope and shrouded in secrecy, which makes it
nearly impossible to know what technologies Microsoft would be
building for the Department of Defense. At an industry day for
JEDI, DoD Chief Management Officer John H. Gibson II explained
the program's impact, saying, "We need to be very clear. This
program is truly about increasing the lethality of our
department."

- - - 

When you've been urging your employees to be ethical, it can be tricky
to get them working on murder machines.





++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
     Sidney Karin Ph.D., P.E.
     skarin () ucsd edu
     858-534-5075

     Professor Emeritus,
     Department of Computer Science and Engineering
     Director Emeritus,
     San Diego Supercomputer Center
     University of California, San Diego 
     9500 Gilman Drive  
     La Jolla,  CA  92093-0505



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