[nonrandomstring]

National security is the sum total of the individual earned securities of each citizen, including economic, political, social, health, cultural, military and all sorts of security that pertain to the identity we call a nation.

What these guys are talking about is something else. They are talking about the security of the security services, their own self interests and the status quo of enmeshed relations between three letter agencies and a few captured tech giants.

On the contrary, the exact opposite is true. National security is best served by a diverse, pluralistic, open, heterogeneous tech industry. There is no reason intelligence needs cannot function properly with such an ecosystem, but it would have to do so through the Rule of Law, and systems of warrants that the incumbents have sought to bypass this last 20 years.

[sangnoir]

Splitting Apple/Google/Facebook/Amazon into 40 smaller tech companies would result in larger tech companies from elsewhere - mostly China - eating American tech industry's lunch on the world stage.

Large companies have massive resources which are a competitive advantage. Having these titanic companies headquartered in the US, beholden to American laws, employing Americans, being a symbol of American prowess abroad and listed on American stock exchanges is in American interests on multiple tangible & intangible levels; including allowing American engineers to command ridiculous salaries and granting the government a lot of soft-power.

The recent sanctions on Russia (and previously Huawei/ZTE) shows howuch that soft-power is worth

[nonrandomstring]

You are talking about power. I am talking about security. They are related, but different.

[sangnoir]

There will be security implications when Americans are hypothetically mostly using Chinese tech (Weibo, Didi, Baidu), should it leapfrog a kneecapped US tech industry - unless the US also bans Chinese tech - which would isolate the US and make it less competitive while ceding tech leadership in the rest of the world.

Also, all the botnet-, APT-, ransomware and CSAM investigation & disruption ops would be hampered when the #1 desktop operating system, #1 & #2 phone OS authors, #1 network equipment manufacturer,#1 social network and top 3 cloud providers are no longer under your legal jurisdiction

[paulryanrogers]

Can't the US just cap market share of any company foreign or domestic?

[sangnoir]

How might that be implemented?

[paulryanrogers]

Biggest players in significant industries get measured periodically. Those who cross some threshold of those markets get warned. Then if they exceed some higher threshold must be broken up or reduce their share.

[antifa]

Sounds like we're about to create The Freedom Firewall to protect us from global competition.

[throwaway_1928]

In that case, perhaps it is best to merge the top 5-10 tech companies into a single tech behemoth, with no potential domestic competition, making it even more formidable on the world stage.

[colpabar]

I have to ask - by "diverse", do you mean "different people from different backgrounds who have different viewpoints"? Or do you mean "people who all think the same way but have different skin colors"?

[nonrandomstring]

> I have to ask - by "diverse", do you mean "different people from different backgrounds who have different viewpoints"?

Yes, people and institutions, and technologies.

What gives security is something like "hybrid vigour" obtained by the whole system because it has evolutionary resilience (it's survivable, at least in part, to the greatest range of possible threats)

Parts of a resilient system can even be in moderate tension as they keep a check on each other.

For examples; it would be stronger to have both centralised and distributed philosophies represented; it would be good to have a mixture of public and private funding models in operation; small and large entities capable of agile innovation, and reliable scale.

That makes it hard for a malevolent or erroneous force to infiltrate and take out the whole barrel of apples.

Of course, diversity of gender, religion, race, age, political leaning and wealth tend to make a more interesting and vibrant workplace, but that's not primarily what I am saying.

[netizen-936824]

Greater variation in a population makes it more robust to adverse events

[edgyquant]

Diverse means the people come from different backgrounds.

[anamax]

Different backgrounds does not imply different viewpoints.

Different viewpoints does not imply different backgrounds.

[throwaway_1928]

The national security argument is a red herring. It is in the interest of monopolies to keep their monopolies going. And they have all the money and lobbyists in the world to make it happen.

[nonrandomstring]

> they have all the money and lobbyists in the world to make it happen

But not the wisdom.