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by hackuser 3505 days ago
IBM allegedly helped the US government run the camps where citizens of Japanese descent were imprisoned during WWII (and allegedly provided technology to the Nazis that was used for the Holocaust).

What will IBM do if the U.S. government tries to lock up masses of Latinos or Muslims? What will your company do?
1 comments
arcticfox 3505 days ago
Come off it, there have been four generations of workers and leadership since then. If IBM isn't a responsible corporation, bring up modern examples.

Or maybe we should boycott Ford, Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes, GM, Coke, Puma, Adidas, Bayer, Siemens, Zeiss...

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tptacek 3505 days ago
What is it that you theorize immunizes modern workers from the forces that led IBM's employees to participate in the Holocaust? Do you think IBM's 1930s employees didn't realize that genocide and mass relocation was wrong?

Further: tech giants have for the last several decades been arming the world's most repressive regimes with information technology. What do you think the Great Firewall of China was originally made up of? Whose databases do you think track activists in Iran and Egypt? What evidence do we have that modern tech companies will do anything different than IBM did, faced with the same "opportunities"?

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hackuser 3505 days ago
I don't mean to suggest that IBM is more prone to such things than other companies; I'm using them as an example of what has happened in the past. Currently many companies, and I don't know if IBM is included, help dicatorships oppress their own citizens by building the systems and assisting in surveillance.

Rometty doesn't address issues of liberty or diversity in her letter. Offering to work with a man who has openly promoted prejudice and who has given an ally of white nationalists a high-level position in the White House, but not mentioning these issues, I believe is a failure of hers and IBM's obligations as leaders in society. The message they send is: It's ok to overlook these things and continue business as usual.

Imagine if Rometty had said: 'IBM remains committed to diversity and to the freedom of all Americans in our great country.'

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