[incision]

The piece is 5800+ words, exactly one of which is DARPA.

It's entirely possible that Assange is a nut, but nothing he says presents quite as nutty as extrapolating that single mention into a tale of innocent students being seeded with delusions of CIA double agents and elite shadow cabals by a scheming madman.

[TheMagicHorsey]

The DARPA point wasn't the only point of insanity. I just don't have the patience to sit and list out why his other points are equally silly for anyone versed in the space. The DARPA point was the easiest to explain and the most accessible for the Hacker News audience.

[mturmon]

Here's another one:

"In 2012, Google arrived on the list of top-spending Washington, D.C., lobbyists—a list typically stalked exclusively by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, military contractors, and the petro-carbon leviathans. Google entered the rankings above military aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, with a total of $18.2 million spent in 2012 to Lockheed’s $15.3 million. Boeing, the military contractor that absorbed McDonnell Douglas in 1997, also came below Google, at $15.6 million spent, as did Northrop Grumman at $17.5 million."

If you follow the supplied link to the lobbyist spending database, you find that the fiendish "National Association of Realtors" spent way more than Google and LockMart put together. The nefarious "American Hospital Association" also outspent Google.

Are we to assume that they are even more cryptomilitaryindistrial than Google?

No. I'd assume they have legislation in front of Congress. Far simpler.

There is a critique of centralization of information within internet corporations and government agencies, but this isn't it.

[bduerst]

From a business perspective, you want to look at these as rates against revenue, not just bulk sums for reasons you pointed out.

Normalized for dollar spend per $1000 in revenue (2012), the % spend on lobbying is:

HP 232%

Facebook 75.6%

Northrop G 69.4%

Yahoo 55.1%

Google 36.3%

Lockheed Martin 32.4%

Boeing 19.1%

Oracle 18.1%

Microsoft 10.9%

IBM 4.6%

Ideally you would want to normalize by revenue from government contracts (like in HP's case), but there isn't really a story to follow here because different companies spend different percentages of their revenue on lobbying.

[dragonwriter]

> Ideally you would want to normalize by revenue from government contracts

I'm not sure that makes sense; normalizing by revenue tells the tale of how much of what the company brings in is devoted to swaying public policy, but I'm not sure what normalizing by revenue from government contracts get you -- presumably, any profit maximizing corporation trying to sway policy is trying to do so for its own benefit, whether the way in which it hopes to receive that benefit is by direct government contracts, or by government policy encouraging (and perhaps even subsidizing) others to purchase the service it sells, or by some other shift in policy that helps the firms business.

[bduerst]

It makes sense because some companies see lobbying as an investment in future sales, either indirectly through policy or directly.

HP is a prime example of this, as many government computers and services involve HP, hence HP has such a high "investment" rate with lobbying.

[eevilspock]

The National Association of Realtors is evil in the ways it maintains its monopoly on home sale transactions. Its enormous amount of lobbying is all about guaranteeing that monopoly by buying lawmaker votes.

[rdtsc]

> Are we to assume that they are even more cryptomilitaryindistrial than Google?

No. But those others haven't managed to convince too many that hey are "not Evil" or some like that bullshit.

Once they made that proclamation they get a nice PR boost, but when they are perceived to not abide by it, they should accept the corresponding criticism.

[hawkice]

> But those others haven't managed to convince too many that hey are "not Evil" or some like that bullshit.

The "American Hospital Association" probably has very few people who think it is evil.

[wfjackson]

I guess you haven't read the HN threads on hospital costs in the US. Here's a sample https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6838269

[lisper]

> I just don't have the patience to sit and list out why his other points are equally silly for anyone versed in the space.

In other words, your argument is: if it isn't self-evident to you that I'm right and Assange is wrong then that can only be because you are so profoundly ignorant that it is not even worth making the effort to educate you, or even to point you to a reference.

You'll have to pardon me if I don't find that convincing.

[AnimalMuppet]

No, his argument is that Assange is clearly wrong on one point, so don't buy his (Assange's) spiel hook, line, and sinker.

Think. Look into things. Do some research.

[serf]

But.. he wasn't wrong. He claimed that DARPA supported early goog, and they did.

Your post's parent just doesn't happen to believe that that's cause for alarm.

He didn't buy into 'Assange's spiel' not because it was factually wrong, but because it differed from his opinion on the weight of significance regarding DARPA grants.

If his argument is "Assange is clearly wrong.", he's clearly wrong.

[AnimalMuppet]

Assange gives a fact, and gives it an implication. The fact is correct DARPA did give a grant that lead to Google. The implication is "therefore Google is a government spy". I believe the great-grandparent post was arguing with Assange's implication, not his facts, when stating that Assange is clearly wrong. The GGP poster cited DARPA's history of giving grants to anything and everything. That's not a refutation of Assange's facts, but it is a refutation of his implication.

[trevelyan]

When your entire job is managing other people's information, the terms on which you let potentially hostile third parties access that data is a huge deal.

So what exactly is your problem with the DARPA point? It is perfectly legitimate to complain that the same political institutions advocating the dismantlement of civic privacy are funding consumer-focused tech in California. Or that Schmidt might harbor political/social aspirations that are leading him at best into a sort of passive acquiescence in activities Assange sees as socially destructive.

All you seem to be saying is that you consider these sorts of connections "normal" and thus not subject to reasonable critique.

[lovemenot]

>> ... Think of the audacity it takes to write this gibberish with such confidence.

Thanks for your heads-up.