Give an inch, take a mile: Now, employees are understandably emboldened. “I refuse to build technology that empowers genocide,” one Googler shouted last month during a tech conference keynote speech given by Barak Regev, head of Google Israel. The employee was promptly fired for “interfering with an official company-sponsored event.”
Employees who apply to work for Google should probably be aware that the company has a long history of military contracts, both American and foreign. “The Federal Procurement Data System shows the Coast Guard bought licenses to Google Earth in 2005; the Army did the same in 2007,” reported Wired. Not to mention: “The Pentagon had a sympathetic ear at the top. In 2016, Eric Schmidt, formerly Google’s CEO and then Alphabet’s executive chair, became chair of the department’s Defense Innovation Advisory Board, which promoted tech industry collaboration with the agency.”
“This is a huge escalation and a change in how Google has responded to worker criticisms,” said one employee who protested yesterday. But the actual types of contracts Google goes after has not changed; it’s merely that the company pivoted from soft on activism to much tougher, as it seemingly realized inmates cannot—and should not—run the asylum. Or, in this case, occupy the offices of Google Cloud’s CEO during the workday.
Seating the jury: In Manhattan, former President Donald Trump’s trial is proceeding more quickly and smoothly than expected, with seven out of 12 total jurors already picked.
The case against Trump concerns the falsifying of business records related to hush money payments he doled out following a sexual tryst with porn star Stormy Daniels. He’s being brought up on 34 felony counts and could face a total of four years in prison if convicted. Given what a polarizing figure Trump is, there were concerns about how jury selection would go, but it appears to be proceeding rather smoothly.
The jurors so far include “a man originally from Ireland who will serve as foreman, an oncology nurse, a grandfather originally from Puerto Rico, a middle-school teacher from Harlem, two lawyers and a software engineer for Disney,” reported The New York Times. Picking a truly fair and impartial jury, that’s representative of New York as a whole, is a near-impossible task; it remains to be seen whether anyone will pull the wool over the eyes of those selecting them or become improperly enchanted by the media spotlight. (More detail on those who were not picked, and more on the questions jurors have been asked.)