Monthly Archives: August 2017

Bullies

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Recall how Google, last week, outed a Conservative employee and his critique of Google personnel practices, then bullied him with public opprobrium, then fired him.

Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai was going to have an all-hands town hall this week to address the matter, but then, after employees expressed concerns

about their safety and worried they may be “outed” publicly for asking a question in the Town Hall[,]

he cancelled the whole affair.  The company put the original teapot tempest into the public’s eye, but when allegedly faced with the same outcome for themselves, they skittered back into their baseboard holes in the walls.

Aside from the breathtaking hypocrisy of this sorry charade, this illustrates an old maxim: bullies are cowards, and Google management and Google’s Precious Ones employees are just the same.

Yucca Mountain

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The Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted 2-1 Tuesday to restart and resurrect the licensing process for the controversial Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site project.

The decision gives the go ahead for the “information gathering” stage that will eventually allow the Department of Energy to secure the license to build a nuclear waste facility more than 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Finally.  We need a repository for our accumulating nuclear waste, and the bottom of a salt mine is one of the best places extant: given the easy solubility of salt, the existence of this much salt in one place strongly implies a geologically stable area that’s also stable over geologically long time periods.

Hopefully, two things will occur.  One is that we’ll finally get a large, long-lived place in which to sequester all the nuclear waste that has accumulated at our nuclear power plants and other facilities.

The other is that the Yucca Mountain facility will be named the Harry Mason Reid Memorial Nuclear Waste Repository at Yucca Mountain.

A Disingenuous Protest

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The PRC is upset over a US Navy ship sailing innocently in international waters.

The USS John S. McCain sailed within six nautical miles of Mischief Reef in the disputed Spratly Islands on Thursday as part of a “freedom of navigation operation,” US officials told news agencies.

Geng Shuang, the PRC’s Foreign Ministry Deputy Director General (Department of Information, Ministry of Foreign Affairs) claimed that the McCain’s passage

severely undermines China’s sovereignty and security.

This is disingenuous: the PRC has no sovereignty or security concerns involving the Spratlys (or any other part of the South China Sea, come to that).  Any sovereignty question involves only Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam, the claimants to the group.

Foolishness

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German Chancellor Angel Merkel is fully engaged.

Germany will very intensively take part in the options for resolution that are not military….

Her alternative?

I see the need for enduring work at the UN Security Council…as well as tight cooperation between the countries involved, especially the US and China.

Because that’s worked so well in the past.  The UN resolutions have stopped northern Korea from building nuclear weapons and developing the means to deliver them?  Nope.  Not over the decades they’ve been tried.  The PRC has worked so closely with us to curb the PRC’s dog?  Nope.  The PRC is one of the biggest violators of UN sanctions, and even now they’re doing nothing material.

At best, Merkel is breathtakingly naïve.  Unfortunately, to closely paraphrase then-French President Jacques Chirac from a surprisingly related venue:

It is not really responsible behavior. It is not well brought-up behavior. [She] missed a good opportunity to keep quiet.

Technology Theft

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In a piece on American CEOs’ (and Apple’s in particular) cowardice in their dealings with the People’s Republic of China’s government—censor your stuff or you can’t operate in the PRC, give up your technology to or you can’t operate in the PRC, and these worthies meekly comply—comes this reminder on the latter bit:

Just about everybody in the US capital is complaining about how China forces foreign companies to give up technology in return for market access.

In truth, the PRC isn’t alone in this: willing participants are those American CEOs who acquiesce in the name of short-term profit rather than long-term gain.

This collusion (is that a word?  Can I use it?) is especially irritating in the Apple case given CEO Tim Cook’s willingness to stand up to the US government over decrypting an Apple smartphone used by the San Bernardino terrorists.  Cook is willing to collude with the PRC, but he’s not willing to collaborate with our own government.  He was right in the terrorist case, too….

It’s time to inject some backbone into these CEOs.  The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which is used to pass on or to block acquisition of American companies by foreign investors if the resulting technology transfer would harm our national security.  CFIUS needs to be broadened with the authority similarly to pass on American companies doing business in foreign jurisdictions if the resulting technology transfer would harm our national security.

Worried about other nations’ companies getting in in place of American ones?  We’re proud of our technology lead over the rest of the world, and justifiably so.  Even were those other nations’ companies actually able to fill the vacuum of the absence of ours, that would just leave the PRC to extort access to second best.