Quick notes: Helping PLA | Kaveri Engine...

• Don't be evil: Google is helping China's People's Liberation Army, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has told Congress on Thursday.  "The work that Google is doing in China is indirectly benefitting the Chinese military. Frankly, 'indirect' may be not be a full characterization of the way it really is. It's more of a direct benefit to the Chinese military". Google announced last year that it will  cease working with the Pentagon on a project  to have artificial intelligence analyze footage from drones, yet it has opened an artificial intelligence center in Beijing.  "I have a hard time with companies that are working very hard to engage in the market inside of China, and engaging in projects where intellectual property is shared with the Chinese, which is synonymous with sharing it with the Chinese military, and then don't want to work for the U.S. military".
  
  $5 trillion of the Chinese economy comes from state-owned business, which share their technology with the PLA.  "The fusion of commercial business with military is significant. The technology that is developed in the civil world transfers to the military world – it's a direct pipeline. Not only is there a transfer, there is also systemic theft of U.S. technology that facilitates even faster development of emerging technology."  In June 2018, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said his company is "not developing AI for use in weapons."  Yet China expert Patrick Cronin said the U.S. govt is only beginning to understand China's military-industrial complex and how the PLA accesses information.  "Technological mastery is a core element of the CCP's indirect and largely unrestricted warfare campaign to challenge the US. Stealing know-how, accumulating big data, aiding national champion corporations, coopting foreign friends in high places, identifying vulnerabilities in U.S. telecommunications, and perpetuating the mythological narrative of 'peaceful rise' are among the specific goals of Beijing." 



• DRDO shelving the Kaveri turbo-jet engine project? Until India can design and produce its own aero-engines, the performance and capabilities of any indigenously designed/built aircraft will be seriously limited by the technology that we are permitted to import. 



• Indians clinging to their daily newpaper: India might be known around the world as a centre of the high-tech industry, but it's also a country where the print media is booming.  Annual newspaper and magazine sales have soared from 40 million in 2006 to nearly 63 million in 2016. The main reason India is bucking the global trend is that although access to the internet via smartphones, laptops and tablets is widespread, many Indians still prefer to have their news delivered to their homes every morning in the form of a daily newspaper.