[liberationtech] A New Era in Tech Nationalism?

[Yosem Companys]

It is now undeniable that Microsoft is part of the US war machine. Late
last month, the tech company won a ten-year, $10 billion contract
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/25/technology/dod-jedi-contract.html%20h>
from the Defense Department — giving it the chance to completely remake the
US military’s digital infrastructure, from providing basic storage to using
artificial intelligence to “increase the [military’s] lethality.
<https://medium.com/s/story/an-open-letter-to-microsoft-dont-bid-on-the-us-military-s-project-jedi-7279338b7132>
”
<https://medium.com/s/story/an-open-letter-to-microsoft-dont-bid-on-the-us-military-s-project-jedi-7279338b7132>

Microsoft wasn’t the only company bidding on the project, known as the Joint
Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI). Amazon, IBM, and Oracle all threw
their hats in the ring, too. But Microsoft stole the prize at the final
hour from Amazon, which had been seen as the front-runner. Only Google
dropped its bid, claiming the contract “didn’t align with their AI
principles.” The decision was likely a tactical one — knowing that its
cloud platform lacked the required government certifications to win (and
facing internal pressure from employees), Google opted to cash out on the
good press instead.

At eleven figures, JEDI is by far the largest-ever Pentagon cloud contract
and marks the dawn of a new age of AI-embedded technological militarism.
But unlike the Jedi who fought to restore freedom and justice in the
galaxy, this contract feels closer to the oppressive agenda of the bad guys
in the cinematic Star Wars saga — the *Imperial* Forces.

Beyond the horrors of American warfare, the JEDI contract marks a new era
in tech nationalism, and reveals how nationalist rhetoric is used to
advance corporate interests and the US imperial project.

In an attempt to maintain global technological hegemony, the United States
has done what it can to delegitimize China as an international actor and
prevent its economic ascent. Part of this effort involves maintaining the
illusion of the free global market. Under the reigning international
system, multinationals must appear neutral when operating in foreign
countries; private and state capital must appear completely separate.

Once this fiction is established, the Chinese can be pilloried for breaking
the rules. Because many Chinese tech firms receive government funding, the
United States claims that they can’t be trusted to operate fairly within
the rules of the free market. In addition to launching a broader trade war,
the United States has banned the Chinese phone manufacturer Huawei from
selling phones in the United States and harshly criticized
<https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/us-senators-call-tiktok-investigation-chinese-spying-concerns-1249955>
TikTok, the viral Chinese video-based social media platform that has been
eating into Snapchat’s global market share. State Department officials have
labeled tech companies Alibaba and Tencent tools of the Chinese government.

Yet these attacks on Chinese tech reek of hypocrisy given the countless
partnerships between the US government and Silicon Valley. The tech
industry’s collaboration with the Department of Defense is part of a long
tradition of intermingling between the government and the private tech
sector. The existence of the internet itself, which was developed as a
military technology, is now the lifeblood of Google, Facebook, and some of
the highest-valued companies in the world. Just like China, the United
States funds American businesses to operate globally in the interest of the
American ruling class.

JEDI is the latest example. The partnership doesn’t just foster military
expansion, but also operates as a major subsidy to Microsoft to entrench
its global dominance in the cloud market. If the US government truly played
by its own rules, it would’ve allowed foreign companies to bid on the
contract. (Alibaba Cloud — Alibaba’s cloud computing platform, only second
<https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/29/cloud_wars_top_providers_gartner/>
in maturity to Microsoft’s and Amazon’s clouds — would’ve made a strong
contender.)

Beyond JEDI and other military contracts, the US government also directly
subsidizes America’s private tech firms in the form of tax incentives. In
2017, Microsoft avoided
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/10/how-microsoft-avoided-billions-in-taxes-and-what-the-gop-says-theyll-do-about-it/>
billions in taxes by parking its money in Puerto Rico. This year, Amazon paid
$0
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/02/16/amazon-paid-no-federal-taxes-billion-profits-last-year/>
in federal taxes on $11.2 billion worth of profit.

Similar measures are common at the municipal level — as when New York City
and Arlington, Virginia offered Amazon $2 billion
<https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/leticiamiranda/amazon-hq2-finalist-cities-incentives-airport-lounge&sa=D&ust=1572209347420000&usg=AFQjCNE4QbJnRnO4lw4Kd5BpnqzFQ0oVNA>
in subsidies for their new headquarters and when Facebook and Google
<https://www.deseret.com/2018/6/6/20646398/why-give-tax-breaks-to-super-rich-companies-like-facebook>
pit cities against each other, goading them to offer higher tax incentives
for the chance to host the companies’ data centers.

In other words, the US government, not unlike that of the Chinese, is very
much in the business of subsidizing tech companies’ continual expansion
into all corners of the planet.

In this escalating game of technological military advancement, both states
have used nationalism to justify militarism and quash dissent. Like Chinese
technology companies, Microsoft takes its support for the military as a
patriotic duty. Brad Smith
<https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-brad-smith-us-military-2018-12>,
Microsoft’s chief legal officer, jingoistically offered to never shy away
from providing AI-powered weapons to the US military: “We at Microsoft have
their back.”

Last year, in response to employee uproar over a different
multi-million contract with the Defense Department, Microsoft CEO Satya
Nadella
<https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-ceo-defends-army-contract-augmented-reality/>
said that he would not “withhold technology from institutions that we have
elected in democracies to protect the freedoms we enjoy.” Baiting his
employees into a nationalistic response, his statement was reminiscent of
Cold War–era rhetoric: under the pretense of democracy and freedom, any US
agenda is just.

Some Microsoft employees share the same nationalist viewpoint. In a
Facebook group for new employees, many expressed excitement that their
company had beaten out Amazon for the $10 billion contract. Those
expressing anti-JEDI opinions were met with jingoistic fervor: “It is a
free country with a free market. Sell your shares, and move companies. This
is America, this is what freedom looks like.”

Another side of this nationalist rhetoric is anti-Chinese animus, which has
been used to persuade liberal employees — the majority at most tech firms —
to support military partnerships. Earlier this year, a group of Microsoft
workers demanded that their company cancel its “augmented reality” contract
with the US Army. But they were met with resistance from other employees
who, despite being wary of building weapons technology, insisted that the
defense contract continue in order to keep China’s military in check.

With China and the United States neck in neck in various cutting-edge
technology, anti-Chinese sentiment in Silicon Valley has only escalated. In
the past, American firms attacked China for its lack of innovation and
“stealing technology.” But today, tech CEOs are blatantly fanning the
flames of nationalism in order to break the rules and keep Chinese tech at
bay. Recently, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg insisted that lawmakers stop
trying to regulate Facebook or else China will “win.”
<https://slate.com/technology/2019/10/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-libra-cryptocurrency-china-free-speech.html>
Even
some left-leaning politicians have joined in: Senator Elizabeth Warren
released
<https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/08/elizabeth-warren-could-be-even-tougher-than-trump-on-china-says-analyst.html&sa=D&ust=1572209347634000&usg=AFQjCNHJRHM-LXdeyUImLJmPXwRVu_1LKg%20h>
a plan earlier this year touting “economic patriotism” and identifying
China as an economic enemy that must be met with harsher measures.

The tech industry clearly has a nationalism problem. Intent on boosting
their profits and global market share, tech leaders are using jingoism to
justify ethically dubious decisions, while politicians
<https://www.businessinsider.com/4-republicans-trump-jedi-cloud-delay-could-hurt-us-security-2019-7>
use it to rationalize a closer partnership between the tech industry and
the military. Worst still, the kind of techno-militaristic nationalism seen
in the JEDI project could eventually set off a catastrophic AI-arms race.

Our response must be to start building an internationalist politics that
connects Chinese and US tech workers and rejects the nationalism that
pushes us to think we have more in common with our bosses than with other
workers.

Earlier this year, a group of Microsoft employees showed how this can be
done. Repudiating the nationalist logic of us-versus-them, they wrote a
letter to show solidarity
<https://jacobinmag.com/2019/05/tech-workers-chinese-solidarity-microsoft-github>
with Chinese tech workers fighting against the brutal working hours of “996”
(9 AM to 9 PM, six days a week). Because the anti-996 campaign was hosted
on the Microsoft code-sharing platform, GitHub, it was difficult for
Chinese tech companies to censor it without blocking GitHub entirely. The
best way to remove the campaign was to directly ask Microsoft to pull the
project. Anticipating this, Microsoft employees demanded that GitHub be
kept uncensored and accessible for 996 protesters. In their letter, they
wrote: “We, the workers of Microsoft and GitHub, support the 996.ICU
movement and stand in solidarity with tech workers in China,” adding,
“multinational companies will pit workers against each other in a race to
the bottom as they outsource jobs and take advantage of weak labor
standards in the pursuit of profit.”

The JEDI contract has now been sealed, but it’s not too late for tech
workers to fight back. Like these Microsoft employees, we need to develop
connections across borders and build lasting transnational solidarity. Tech
workers need to keep organizing
<https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/11/tech-worker-organizing-google-union-walkout%20h>
to reject the rising militarism and Chinese fear mongering in Silicon Valley.
Only then can our vision for tech be one with the Jedi — a *force* that
fights for freedom and justice.

https://jacobinmag.com/2019/11/microsoft-defense-department-jedi-contract-china
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