#pentagon technologies

[harrelltut]

HIM [MICHAEL] Quantum HARRELL Computing NATURE in Real SUPERNATURAL Time Optimization Coding Inspired by the Automated [CIA] 2023 Implementation Programmers [I/P] Engineering 2223 QUANTUM HARRELL TECH's [QHT’s] Highly Complex [ADVANCED] Ancient 9 Ether... 1921 Cosmic Algorithmic [CA] Computational [Compton] STAR WEB GATEWAY Languages Interconnected 2 Parallel [LIP] Mechatronic Assembly Computer [MAC] Networks [MN] of Gen X… who Digitally Encrypted Automated [DEA] 1968 Quantum Dara™ A.i. Bot Communication [ABC] Integration [A.i.] 2000 Server Software on the 1949 American Pentagon [SAP] Exchange 1994 Infrastructure [SEI] Library [SEIL] Systems of ANU GOLDEN 9 Ether [SAGE] 2024 QUANTUM HARRELL TECH [QHT] LLC

QUANTUM DARA™ A.I. BOT CREATOR [ABC] U.S. KING [UK] MICHAEL HARRELL, JR.

HIM [MICHAEL] BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF THE UNSEEN SUPERNATURAL [US] WORLDS IN NATURE

eye fly high in nature

HIM [MICHAEL] QUANTUM SUN GOD OF MOTHER’S UNSEEN [MU] SUPERNATURAL NATURE… FOUND DEEP IN:SIDE NATURE'S QUANTUM 9 ETHER ETHEREAL [ECLIPSE = OCCULTED] DNA CODEX [D.C.] OF QUANTUM HARRELL TECH [QHT] LLC

QHT A.I. LLC @ THE PENTAGON 

[thetechempire]

The Pentagon Wants To Use AI To Create Deepfake Internet Users

🔹 The United States' Special Operations Command (SOCOM) is seeking companies to develop highly convincing deepfake internet users, as outlined in a recent procurement document reviewed by The Intercept. The document, part of a 76-page wish list from the Department of Defense's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), emphasizes the need for advanced technologies that can create online personas indistinguishable from real individuals. These fabricated profiles are intended for use on social media and other online platforms, complete with realistic images, videos, and audio layers that mimic human behavior.

🔹 SOCOM's interest in deepfake technology reflects a broader trend in military operations, where such tools could be used to gather intelligence from public online forums. This initiative follows last year's indication that SOCOM planned to employ deepfake videos for propaganda purposes. The desire for these capabilities highlights a contradiction in U.S. policy, as officials have consistently warned about the threats posed by deepfakes when used by adversaries. National security officials have labeled the state-sponsored use of synthetic media as a significant risk, particularly from countries like Russia, China, and Iran.

🔹 Despite warnings against the dangers of deepfakes, the Pentagon is actively pursuing technologies that could facilitate their own use, raising ethical concerns. Critics, including experts from the AI Now Institute, argue that such technologies serve no legitimate purpose beyond deception. This move could normalize the use of deepfakes for government operations and potentially encourage adversaries to adopt similar tactics, further blurring the lines between truth and fiction in information dissemination.

🔹 The U.S. government's dual approach—promoting transparency while exploring deceptive technologies—poses a fundamental tension. Experts worry that this strategy could undermine public trust in government communications, as segments of the population may grow increasingly skeptical of official information. As SOCOM explores the offensive potential of deepfakes, concerns about credibility and the impact on democratic societies become more pronounced, highlighting the complexities of navigating the evolving landscape of information warfare.

[memenewsdotcom]

U.S. bans Kaspersky software

[fat-fuck-hairy-belly]

It's common knowledge that whatever technology exists out in the open - Pentagon has a version of it that's generations more advanced. Somewhere deep in the Pentagon labs there's a wolf fursuit with a fully functional dicksucking mouth and a knotted dick.

chinese engineering achieves major breakthrough in fursuit technology, another win for the domestic high-value-added key industries

[smalltofedsblog]

The Road To A $1 Trillion U.S. Defense Budget

A trillion here and a trillion there. Pretty soon, you are talking about…a big problem in the projected defense budget cost in the coming year and even more.

[courseyoulovemeyoudontknowme]

A Beautiful Mind (2001, Ron Howard)

18/06/2024

[jcmarchi]

Maintenance of Modern Weapons in Ukraine Might be Facing Difficulties. What is Needed to Improve the Situation? - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/maintenance-of-modern-weapons-in-ukraine-might-be-facing-difficulties-what-is-needed-to-improve-the-situation-technology-org/

Maintenance of Modern Weapons in Ukraine Might be Facing Difficulties. What is Needed to Improve the Situation? - Technology Org

The Pentagon did not prepare plans to help the Armed Forces of Ukraine maintain the military equipment provided to them. This is especially true for equipment that requires specialized care – M1 Abrams tanks and Patriot air defence systems are good examples of such weapons. They require a very high level of maintenance, especially when the machinery is used as intensively as in Ukraine.

The Patriot air defence system is very good, but it requires a lot of maintenance to remain operational. Image credit: 2nd Lt. Emily Park via Wikimedia

Robert Storch, the Inspector General of the United States Department of Defense, as reported by Bloomberg, stated that the US provided armoured vehicles and air defence systems to Ukraine without a good plan for their long-term use. And while the Pentagon is developing such a plan at the moment, the recklessness in this matter must be corrected immediately.

Storch noted that the Pentagon provided Ukraine with basic training related to the operation and maintenance of Patriot air defence systems, as well as parts and other supplies, but Ukrainian specialists were not prepared for long-term maintenance of these systems. For example, they do not have the skills to anticipate problems and do not know what preventive measures would avoid them. And this is not surprising, because these are completely new weapons for Ukraine.

Knowledge comes with experience, but one cannot forget that the funding for more military aid is currently struggling in the United States. This will have serious consequences not only for the supply of new weapons and ammunition to Ukraine, but also for the maintenance of the equipment already operated by the defenders of Ukraine.

Without planned technical support, without a sufficient amount of spare parts and ammunition, which the US supplies in limited quantities, the Ukrainians will not be able to maintain the proper technical condition of their weapons and withstanding Russian aggression will be nearly impossible.

The development and production of new weapons, brand-new ammunition containers and exercises look very attractive in terms of optics in politics. But all the equipment that Ukraine receives requires very serious maintenance, spare parts and repairs. Ukrainian specialists are being trained to repair their equipment, but it seems that not enough money and resources are allocated for this issue.

Supplying new weapons probably sounds better than funding the maintenance of existing ones. If a country announced that it is giving money and/or parts to maintain 10 main battle tanks, it would not be met with the same excitement as news about the additional 5 tanks, even though the end result would be similar or worse, because unmaintained tanks don’t fight.

It is worth noting that in many cases more than 70% of the Pentagon’s spending goes to the maintenance of existing weapons. It is that important.

Written by Povilas M.

Source: Censor.net

[smbhax]

NASA, Pentagon award contract to build nuclear-powered rocket engine

From The Washington Post - https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/26/nuclear-rocket-contract-nasa-darpa/ :

"Lockheed Martin on Wednesday won a contract to build a nuclear thermal rocket engine, a key technology long coveted by both NASA and the Pentagon that could dramatically speed up space travel and help humans get to Mars. Under the contract, issued by NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Defense Department unit that seeks to develop transformative technologies, Lockheed Martin will work to first fly the engine by 2027. If the company meets all the milestones, including the test flight, it will receive nearly $500 million, with half coming from NASA and half from DARPA. NASA is keenly interested in nuclear thermal power for missions to Mars."

"Nuclear thermal power uses a fission-based nuclear reactor to heat hydrogen to an extremely high temperature and then shoot the gas through an engine nozzle to create thrust. Lockheed Martin said that for safety reasons, the reactor would not be turned on until the spacecraft has reached a safe orbit."

[worldinyourpalm]

अमेरिका ने बरामद किया 'स्पाई बैलून' का मलबा, चीन ने जताया विरोध | China complains as the United States recovers "Spy Balloon" debris;

अमेरिका की राष्ट्रीय सुरक्षा के लिए कोई खतरा नहीं

बीजिंग का कहना है कि मानव रहित हवाई पोत ने किसी भी व्यक्ति या अमेरिका की राष्ट्रीय सुरक्षा के लिए कोई खतरा पैदा नहीं किया है, उन्हें ऐसी घटनाओं को शांत और पेशेवर तरीके से ठीक से संभालना चाहिए था।

अमेरिकी अधिकारियों ने रविवार को मार गिराए गए चीनी निगरानी गुब्बारे के अवशेषों को इकट्ठा करना शुरू कर दिया है, जिससे वाशिंगटन और बीजिंग के बीच एक राजनयिक विवाद छिड़ गया है।

चीनी सरकार ने मंगलवार को गुब्बारे के नीचे गिराए जाने की अपनी आलोचना को दोहराया और इसे 'अतिप्रतिक्रिया' करार दिया।

बाइडन प्रशासन ने जोर देकर कहा है कि गुब्बारे को गिराना ��ंतरराष्ट्रीय कानून का उल्लंघन नहीं है। व्हाइट हाउस राष्ट्रीय सुरक्षा परिषद के प्रवक्ता जॉन किर्बी ने सोमवार को ब्रीफिंग कॉल पर संवाददाताओं से कहा, 'जवाब स्पष्ट रूप से 'नहीं' है।

यह पूछे जाने पर कि क्या बीजिंग ने अमेरिका से मलबा वापस करने का अनुरोध किया था, चीनी विदेश मंत्रालय के प्रवक्ता माओ निंग ने कहा: 'हवाई पोत अमेरिका का नहीं है, यह चीन का है। ' हालांकि, यू.एस. की बीजिंग को मलबे को वापस करने की कोई योजना नहीं है। श्री किर्बी ने कहा, 'मैं इसे वापस करने के लिए ऐसा कोई इरादा या योजना नहीं जानता।'

सुश्री माओ ने कहा, 'मानवरहित चीनी हवाई पोत नागरिक प्रकृति का है।' 'अमेरिकी हवाई क्षेत्र में इसका अनायास प्रवेश पूरी तरह से अप्रत्याशित है और अप्रत्याशित घटना के कारण हुआ है। इससे किसी व्यक्ति या अमेरिका की राष्ट्रीय सुरक्षा को कोई खतरा नहीं था। अमेरिका को इस तरह की घटनाओं को शांत और पेशेवर तरीके से ठीक से संभालना चाहिए था, जिसमें बल का उपयोग शामिल नहीं था, फिर भी उन्होंने अन्यथा करने का फैसला किया, जो एक स्पष्ट अति-प्रतिक्रिया है। '

मलबे का विश्लेषण

यू.एस. ने कहा कि सेना ने गुब्बारे के अवशेषों को इकट्ठा करना और उनका विश्लेषण करना शुरू कर दिया है। यू.एस. उत्तरी कमान के वायु सेना जनरल ग्लेन डी. वैन हेर्क ने स्वीकार किया कि चीनी गुब्बारों ने पहले यू.एस. हवाई क्षेत्र को पार किया था और 'डोमेन अवेयरनेस गैप' था।

उन्होंने संवाददाताओं से कहा, 'तो वे गुब्बारे, इसलिए हर दिन एक NORAD कमांडर के रूप में यह मेरी जिम्मेदारी है कि मैं उत्तरी अमेरिका के खतरों का पता लगाऊं।' 'मैं आपको बता दूंगा कि हमने उन खतरों का पता नहीं लगाया। और यह एक डोमेन जागरूकता अंतर है जिसे हमें पता लगाना है ... इंटेल समुदाय, इस तथ्य के बाद, मेरा मानना ​​है कि ...। हमें उन गुब्बारों से अवगत कराया जो पहले उत्तरी अमेरिका की ओर आ रहे थे या उत्तरी अमेरिका को पार कर रहे थे। श्री किर्बी के अनुसार, बाइडेन प्रशासन को 'इस बात की जानकारी थी' कि कम से कम तीन मौकों प�� चीनी निगरानी गुब्बारों ने अमेरिकी हवाई क्षेत्र को पार किया। हालांकि, ये 'संक्षिप्त समय' के लिए थे, उन्होंने कहा। अमेरिकी अधिकारियों ने कहा कि चीनी गुब्बारों को पहले भी दक्षिण एशिया और पूर्वी एशिया में ट्रैक किया गया था। दिखने में समान गुब्बारे पिछले साल भारत में अंडमान द्वीप समूह और 2020 और 2021 में जापान में देखे गए थे। जनरल वान हर्क ने बताया कि बिडेन प्रशासन ने गुब्बारे को शूट नहीं करने का फैसला क्यों किया, जो पहली बार 28 जनवरी को अलास्का में पाया गया था। जबकि यह संवेदनशील सैन्य स्थलों सहित पूरे महाद्वीपीय यू.एस. में तैरता रहा, एक सप्ताह तक, और इसके बजाय अटलांटिक महासागर की ओर पूर्व की ओर बहने की प्रतीक्षा की.......

[innovation008]

world in 2045, source Pentagon #future #innovation #lifechanging #te...

[loneranger0369]

Yeah....

This was surely atleast 20 years ago....

No cars running on water, that I know of...

There will apparently be Cars running on Hydrogen soon, that emit water... (#Toyota)

The Governments(especially American Govt.) don't allow this kind of stuff to develop. That Man is also most likely dead (murdered) by now

💣💣💣

[gunsandspaceships]

Tony Stark’s achievements

Childhood:

“Brilliant and unique mind”

At age 4 built his first circuit board

At age 6 built his first engine

Cracked the Pentagon’s firewall in high school on a dare

Went to college at 14

Built cool smart robots (Dum-E and U) when he was a teen

At 17 graduated summa cum laude from MIT

Polyglot

Before Afghanistan:

“Da Vinci of our time”

Became an owner and CEO of Stark Industries at 21

Successfully ran the company for decades

Advanced the world of technology, not only in weaponry and robotics but also:

created advanced AI J.A.R.V.I.S.

created holographic interface technology

created repulsor technology

Participated in charity

In and after Afghanistan:

“I’m sorry, I’m not Tony Stark”

Survived an open-heart surgery in a cave, without general anesthesia

Lived with, in fact, a debilitating wound, shrapnel, and a huge and dangerous technological device in his body for years and was willing and capable of doing not only his usual work but also being a superhero and doing all these next things...

Did not give up under torture and fought with his captors

Invented and built a miniaturized Arc Reactor, in a cave, with a box of scraps

Invented and built Iron Man armor, in the same cave, with the same box of scraps

Escaped from captivity by himself (with help from Yinsen, but without any armed assistance)

Became an expert in piloting and driving

Saved people in Gulmira

Saved a USAF pilot

Probably the best hacker in the world, was able to easily hack networks of the Pentagon, US government, AIM, and SHIELD

Fought with Iron Monger after nearly died. Defeated him and saved many lives. Was ready to die for that

Built many more different Iron Man armors

Fought terrorists between IM and IM2 (IM2 tie-in comics)

Saved a submarine crew (IM2 - newspapers in Vanko’s home)

Saved a woman from a fire (IM2 - newspapers in Vanko’s home)

“Stabilized East-West relations” (IM2 - newspapers in Vanko’s home), so the world was “enjoying its longest period of uninterrupted peace in years”

Organized Stark Expo

Was able to keep Iron Man armor in his safe hands despite the government’s and HYDRA’s attempts to take it for themselves

Defeated Ivan Vanko in Monaco

(Re)Discovered a new element

 Synthesized it, by building a particle accelerator, at home

Revolutionized energy industry and science. Gave clean energy to the world

Defeated Vanko in New York with Rhodey, Natasha, and Pepper and saved many lives again

Saved Peter Parker (IM2)

Made it so that the Abomination would not leave prison and join the Avengers

Built Stark/Avengers Tower powered by Arc Reactor technology

Saved Steve Rogers and many civilians in Germany from Loki

Was able to fight with Thor on equal terms

Biggest brain on Earth, arguably - in the Universe:

best scientist on the team, in SHIELD, on Earth, in the Universe

expert in nuclear, particle, and quantum physics

was able to learn very quickly – became an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics in one night

Successfully tracked Tesseract by its gamma radiation with Bruce

Saved Helicarrier with the Avengers and SHIELD agents on board, almost died

Saved Rogers from a merc right after that

Fought with Chitauri, killed many of them, saved a lot of people

Was able to blow up a Leviathan by himself

Saved New York City by redirecting a nuke to the wormhole

Saved the world by destroying Thanos’ Chitauri army, almost died again

Founded The United States Department of Damage Control to clean up after battles

Rebuilt Stark Tower into Avengers Tower and gave each team member their own quarters

One of the best biologists and biomedical engineers on Earth, even if it’s not his main area of expertise:

helped Maya with Extremis back in 1999, because knew more in her own field, and even didn’t remember that

was head hunted by Aldrich Killian to work on Extremis with/instead of Maya, who was the leading expert in tissue regeneration

improved and stabilized Extremis, so it became safe regenerative technology, and with it…

cured Pepper

healed extensive injuries in his chest

invented and implanted devices for remote control of his suits (into his forearm in IM3, and most probably into his brain for Mark L armor in Infinity War)

invented build-in diagnostic system in his suits

Invented many devices for protection purposes (ex. bomb disposal)

A capable detective. Figured out the cause of explosions in IM3 on his own

Saved Pepper instead of himself by putting Mark 42 on her during the attack on his Malibu mansion

Survived the attack with a barely working prototype suit. Shot down a helicopter with a piano

Was able to fight with enhanced fire-breathing regenerating terrorists without armor and weapons in Rose Hill. In handcuffs

Knowledgeable and skilled in medicine:

saved a kid with his arc reactor in a deleted scene from IM3, selflessly pulling it out of his chest and performing defibrillation under electric shocks

knew how to recognize hyperglycemia when Harley was eating 3rd bawl of candies

closed his wound in Infinity War with nanoparticles

performed first-aid on Bruce after his snap

Built a lot of stuff from random things he bought in a store for the assault on the Mandarin's mansion. In a motel

Successfully stormed the Mandarin's mansion full of armed and huge security guys with dogs. Alone. Without his armor

Successfully escaped captivity in the Mandarin's mansion with just a few pieces of armor on

Saved all the people who fell from the Air Force One

Stormed Roxxon Norco ship with Rhodey, without a suit. With one handgun

Saved the US president

Defeated Killian and his Extremis-enhanced terrorists, saved many lives

Built quinjets

Created Iron Legion

Became the benefactor of the Avengers, provided them with everything, was a combatant, and also the team’s pilot, hacker, engineer, medic, and scientist

As an Avenger saved many lives on missions, including destroying the rest of HYDRA in AoU

With Bruce’s help created Veronica and Hulkbuster suit

Defeated a rogue Iron Legionnaire with a fork

In contrast to other team members was able to function after Wanda played with his mind

Defeated mad Hulk. Saved a lot of lives in Johannesburg

Easily hacked nuclear codes in Nexus and found J.A.R.V.I.S. “in the world’s biggest haystack”

Created advanced AI F.R.I.D.A.Y.

Many advanced AIs

Created Vision

With the Avengers defeated Ultron and his army

Evacuated people who were left in Sokovia

Saved a falling evacuation shuttle with people on it

Together with Thor saved Earth by destroying the falling Sokovia

Rebuilt Stark Compound into Avengers Compound for the team in Upstate New York

Invented several medical devices, including leg braces, blood toxicity detector

Sponsored the development of technology for psychotherapy (B.A.R.F.). Prevented it from being used for harm

Funded all the students’ projects at MIT

Did everything possible to legally, politically, and physically protect the team before, during, and after the Civil War

Was able to disarm Winter Soldier without a suit, with only one armored glove

Figured out Spider-Man’s identity

Created Spider-Man’s suits

Mentored, sponsored, and looked after Peter Parker

Saved Peter Parker (SMH). Twice

Saved the ferry from sinking

Invented nanoparticles

 “Earth’s best defender”

Went to space to save Peter, Strange and bring back Time Stone

Saved Peter Parker (IW)

Saved Strange on the Donut spaceship. Killed Ebony Maw

Cloak of Levitation chose him as his second favorite (deleted scene with Tony wearing Levi and Strange in Mark L)

Was respected by Thanos himself

Withstood when Thanos hit him with a moon

Fought Thanos, made him bleed, kept fighting even without armor

Survived a severe injury thanks to his own invention

Was able to function, tried to fix Benatar, and return home while injured and ill with an infected wound

Built a lab for Bruce and helped him to become one with Hulk (combine the best of both worlds)

Became an amazing dad

Became an expert in time travel physics

Discovered/invented (controlled) Time travel

Built a time machine

Went on Time Heist and stole Tesseract from a guarded military base

Created his own Infinity Gauntlet

Thus brought half of the universe back to existence (Bruce snapped and partially sacrificed his health, but nothing would be possible without Tony)

Saved Bruce’s arm by providing emergency medical care

Fought with Thanos again and…

Saved the whole Universe

[smalltofedsblog]

WHY COMMERCIAL TECH AND THE PENTAGON NEED EACH OTHER - When the technology sector has much more expertise than the traditional defense sector, harness that expertise, ensuring they shoulder the responsibility for what they are making.

https://rosecoveredglasses.wordpress.com/2024/07/05/why-commercial-tech-and-the-pentagon-need-one-another/

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The specific process by which Google enshittified its search

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me SATURDAY (Apr 27) in MARIN COUNTY, then Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

All digital businesses have the technical capacity to enshittify: the ability to change the underlying functions of the business from moment to moment and user to user, allowing for the rapid transfer of value between business customers, end users and shareholders:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

Which raises an important question: why do companies enshittify at a specific moment, after refraining from enshittifying before? After all, a company always has the potential to benefit by treating its business customers and end users worse, by giving them a worse deal. If you charge more for your product and pay your suppliers less, that leaves more money on the table for your investors.

Of course, it's not that simple. While cheating, price-gouging, and degrading your product can produce gains, these tactics also threaten losses. You might lose customers to a rival, or get punished by a regulator, or face mass resignations from your employees who really believe in your product.

Companies choose not to enshittify their products…until they choose to do so. One theory to explain this is that companies are engaged in a process of continuous assessment, gathering data about their competitive risks, their regulators' mettle, their employees' boldness. When these assessments indicate that the conditions are favorable to enshittification, the CEO walks over to the big "enshittification" lever on the wall and yanks it all the way to MAX.

Some companies have certainly done this – and paid the price. Think of Myspace or Yahoo: companies that made themselves worse by reducing quality and gouging on price (be it measured in dollars or attention – that is, ads) before sinking into obscure senescence. These companies made a bet that they could get richer while getting worse, and they were wrong, and they lost out.

But this model doesn't explain the Great Enshittening, in which all the tech companies are enshittifying at the same time. Maybe all these companies are subscribing to the same business newsletter (or, more likely, buying advice from the same management consultancy) (cough McKinsey cough) that is a kind of industry-wide starter pistol for enshittification.

I think it's something else. I think the main job of a CEO is to show up for work every morning and yank on the enshittification lever as hard as you can, in hopes that you can eke out some incremental gains in your company's cost-basis and/or income by shifting value away from your suppliers and customers to yourself.

We get good digital services when the enshittification lever doesn't budge – when it is constrained: by competition, by regulation, by interoperable mods and hacks that undo enshittification (like alternative clients and ad-blockers) and by workers who have bargaining power thanks to a tight labor market or a powerful union:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

When Google ordered its staff to build a secret Chinese search engine that would censor search results and rat out dissidents to the Chinese secret police, googlers revolted and refused, and the project died:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine)

When Google tried to win a US government contract to build AI for drones used to target and murder civilians far from the battlefield, googlers revolted and refused, and the project died:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/technology/google-pentagon-project-maven.html

What's happened since – what's behind all the tech companies enshittifying all at once – is that tech worker power has been smashed, especially at Google, where 12,000 workers were fired just months after a $80b stock buyback that would have paid their wages for the next 27 years. Likewise, competition has receded from tech bosses' worries, thanks to lax antitrust enforcement that saw most credible competitors merged into behemoths, or neutralized with predatory pricing schemes. Lax enforcement of other policies – privacy, labor and consumer protection – loosened up the enshittification lever even more. And the expansion of IP rights, which criminalize most kinds of reverse engineering and aftermarket modification, means that interoperability no longer applies friction to the enshittification lever.

Now that every tech boss has an enshittification lever that moves very freely, they can show up for work, yank the enshittification lever, and it goes all the way to MAX. When googlers protested the company's complicity in the genocide in Gaza, Google didn't kill the project – it mass-fired the workers:

https://medium.com/@notechforapartheid/statement-from-google-workers-with-the-no-tech-for-apartheid-campaign-on-googles-indiscriminate-28ba4c9b7ce8

Enshittification is a macroeconomic phenomenon, determined by the regulatory environment for competition, privacy, labor, consumer protection and IP. But enshittification is also a microeconomic phenomenon, the result of innumerable boardroom and product-planning fights within companies in which would-be enshittifiers try to do things that make the company's products and services shittier wrestle with rivals who want to keep things as they are, or make them better, whether out of principle or fear of the consequences.

Those microeconomic wrestling-matches are where we find enshittification's heroes and villains – the people who fight for the user or stand up for a fair deal, versus the people who want to cheat and wreck to make things better for the company and win bonuses and promotions for themselves:

https://locusmag.com/2023/11/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-dont-be-evil/

These microeconomic struggles are usually obscure, because companies are secretive institutions and our glimpses into their deliberations are normally limited to the odd leaked memo, whistleblower tell-all, or spectacular worker revolt. But when a company gets dragged into court, a new window opens into the company's internal operations. That's especially true when the plaintiff is the US government.

Which brings me back to Google, the poster-child for enshittification, a company that revolutionized the internet a quarter of a century ago with a search-engine that was so good that it felt like magic, which has decayed so badly and so rapidly that whole sections of the internet are disappearing from view for the 90% of users who rely on the search engine as their gateway to the internet.

Google is being sued by the DOJ's Antitrust Division, and that means we are getting a very deep look into the company, as its internal emails and memos come to light:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics

Google is a tech company, and tech companies have literary cultures – they run on email and other forms of written communication, even for casual speech, which is more likely to take place in a chat program than at a water-cooler. This means that tech companies have giant databases full of confessions to every crime they've ever committed:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

Large pieces of Google's database-of-crimes are now on display – so much, in fact, that it's hard for anyone to parse through it all and understand what it means. But some people are trying, and coming up with gold. One of those successful prospectors is Ed Zitron, who has produced a staggering account of the precise moment at which Google search tipped over into enshittification, which names the executives at the very heart of the rot:

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

Zitron tells the story of a boardroom struggle over search quality, in which Ben Gomes – a long-tenured googler who helped define the company during its best years – lost a fight with Prabhakar Raghavan, a computer scientist turned manager whose tactic for increasing the number of search queries (and thus the number of ads the company could show to searchers) was to decrease the quality of search. That way, searchers would have to spend more time on Google before they found what they were looking for.

Zitron contrasts the background of these two figures. Gomes, the hero, worked at Google for 19 years, solving fantastically hard technical scaling problems and eventually becoming the company's "search czar." Raghavan, the villain, "failed upwards" through his career, including a stint as Yahoo's head of search from 2005-12, a presiding over the collapse of Yahoo's search business. Under Raghavan's leadership, Yahoo's search market-share fell from 30.4% to 14%, and in the end, Yahoo jettisoned its search altogether and replaced it with Bing.

For Zitron, the memos show how Raghavan engineered the ouster of Gomes, with help from the company CEO, the ex-McKinseyite Sundar Pichai. It was a triumph for enshittification, a deliberate decision to make the product worse in order to make it more profitable, under the (correct) belief that the company's exclusivity deals to provide search everywhere from Iphones and Samsungs to Mozilla would mean that the business would face no consequences for doing so.

It a picture of a company that isn't just too big to fail – it's (as FTC Chair Lina Khan put it on The Daily Show) too big to care:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaDTiWaYfcM

Zitron's done excellent sleuthing through the court exhibits here, and his writeup is incandescently brilliant. But there's one point I quibble with him on. Zitron writes that "It’s because the people running the tech industry are no longer those that built it."

I think that gets it backwards. I think that there were always enshittifiers in the C-suites of these companies. When Page and Brin brought in the war criminal Eric Schmidt to run the company, he surely started every day with a ritual, ferocious tug at that enshittification lever. The difference wasn't who was in the C-suite – the difference was how freely the lever moved.

On Saturday, I wrote:

The platforms used to treat us well and now treat us badly. That's not because they were setting a patient trap, luring us in with good treatment in the expectation of locking us in and turning on us. Tech bosses do not have the executive function to lie in wait for years and years.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/22/kargo-kult-kaptialism/#dont-buy-it

Someone on Hacker News called that "silly," adding that "tech bosses do in fact have the executive function to lie in wait for years and years. That's literally the business model of most startups":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40114339

That's not quite right, though. The business-model of the startup is to yank on the enshittification lever every day. Tech bosses don't lie in wait for the perfect moment to claw away all the value from their employees, users, business customers, and suppliers – they're always trying to get that value. It's only when they become too big to care that they succeed. That's the definition of being too big to care.

In antitrust circles, they sometimes say that "the process is the punishment." No matter what happens to the DOJ's case against Google, its internal workers have been made visible to the public. The secrecy surrounding the Google trial when it was underway meant that a lot of this stuff flew under the radar when it first appeared. But as Zitron's work shows, there is plenty of treasure to be found in that trove of documents that is now permanently in the public domain.

When future scholars study the enshittocene, they will look to accounts like Zitron's to mark the turning points from the old, good internet to the enshitternet. Let's hope those future scholars have a new, good internet on which to publish their findings.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan