{"id":3170,"date":"2014-06-09T11:32:07","date_gmt":"2014-06-09T17:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=3170"},"modified":"2014-06-09T11:32:07","modified_gmt":"2014-06-09T17:32:07","slug":"the-revolving-door-between-google-and-the-department-of-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/the-revolving-door-between-google-and-the-department-of-defense\/","title":{"rendered":"The revolving door between Google and the Department of Defense"},"content":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Yasha Levine<\/a>, Pando Daily
\nclick here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n

So, Google continues to try to distance itself from the military-industrial complex.<\/p>\n

Last month, the company made a big stink about refusing a tiny bit of DARPA funding for two robotics companies it purchased, hoping that people already\u00a0forgot\u00a0that the companies had been\u00a0financed by the Department of Defense. And a few weeks ago, Google\u2019s PR team insisted the company\u00a0had nothing to do<\/a>\u00a0with the U.S. Air Force\u00a0testing out Google Glass for battlefield use:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Glass Explorer program includes people from all walks of life, including doctors, firefighters, and parents. Anyone can apply to become a Glass Explorer, provided he or she is a U.S. resident and over the age of 18.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Right. While this generic statement might be be\u00a0reassuring to\u00a0some,\u00a0Google\u2019s supposed hands-off approach to the\u00a0intensely\u00a0lucrative military and intel market\u00a0is a bit hard to believe.<\/p>\n

As I\u00a0continue<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0poke around<\/a>\u00a0under the hood of Google Federal \u2014 as the company\u2019s DC operation is called \u2014 I\u2019m surprised by the number of former spooks, high-level intelligence officials and revolving door military contractors running Google\u2019s public sector division.<\/p>\n

Many of Google Federal\u2019s top managers come from the biggest and baddest military and intel outfits: US Army, Air Force Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Director of National Intelligence, USAID, SAIC, Lockheed\u2026 the list keeps going on and on.<\/p>\n

Take Michele R. Weslander\u00a0Quaid, Google\u2019s\u00a0Chief Technology Officer of Public Sector<\/a>\u00a0and \u201cInnovation Evangelist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chances are you\u2019ve never heard of her. Neither had I. But\u00a0Weslander\u00a0Quaid\u00a0took the top spot in Entrepreneur Magazine\u2019s\u00a0list of<\/a>\u00a0the seven most powerful women to watch in 2014.<\/p>\n

The reason?<\/p>\n

She helped bring the Google mindset to federal intelligence agencies.<\/p>\n

After 9\/11, Weslander\u00a0Quaid\u00a0felt a\u00a0patriotic duty to help fight the War on Terror. So she quit her private sector job\u00a0at a\u00a0CIA contractor<\/a>\u00a0called Scitor Corporation and\u00a0joined the official world of US government intelligence.\u00a0She quickly rose through the ranks, serving in executive positions at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (sister agency to the NSA), National Reconnaissance Office and at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. She\u00a0toured combat zones<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0both Iraq and Afghanistan\u00a0in order to see the tech needs of the military first-hand. All throughout her intel career, she\u00a0championed a \u201cstartup\u201d mentality and the benefits of cloud-based services.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how Entrepreneur Magazine\u00a0described her mission<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The U.S. government isn\u2019t exactly known for its efficiency or speed. But during her nine years at various national security agencies, including working with the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense, Michele Weslander Quaid acted like an entrepreneur. She shook things up by dropping archaic software and hardware and convincing teams to collaborate via web tools. Basically, she treated each agency like a startup to transform the sclerotic federal agencies for which she worked.<\/p>\n

\u2026<\/p>\n

It could have been easy for Weslander Quaid simply to accept that federal agencies don\u2019t share information or collaborate on decisions, but she wouldn\u2019t. She started by convincing higher-ups at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which provides maps and pictures for military intelligence, as well as execs at the National Security Agency, which collects audio feeds, to collaborate on combined reports so that military decision-makers could better understand the data. Her efforts paid off, and she became one of the youngest people appointed a senior government executive. \u201cI call it a wartime promotion,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

In her later roles, Weslander Quaid pushed for an early version of cloud-based software that people could access from outside their D.C. offices. She standardized platforms across agencies and streamlined a technology-testing and procurement process that reduced time and costs\u2013all cutting-edge ideas among the closed fiefdoms of Washington.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Getting intel agencies to go\u00a0cloud? That\u2019s the kind of government innovation that Sergey Brin and Larry Page can appreciate!<\/p>\n

The US government spends somewhere around\u00a0$80 billion<\/a>\u00a0a year on info technology. No wonder they made Weslander\u00a0Quaid\u00a0a Google \u201cevangelist\u201d on par with Internet inventor Vint Cerf.<\/p>\n

Weslander\u00a0Quaid told\u00a0Entrepreneur\u00a0Mag that a\u00a0big part of her job at Google entails meeting with intelligence agency directors to discuss technology they want and\/or need. She also spends quite a bit of time teaching rank-and-file Google employees on how to hard-sell government clients. \u201cI act as a bridge between the two cultures.\u201d<\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve written before, Google has\u00a0aggressively intensified<\/a>\u00a0its campaign to carve out a bigger slice of the lucrative military-intelligence contracting market. It\u2019s been targeting big federal agencies, and pushing its intel technology onto\u00a0local and state government structures as well.\u00a0In some cases, Google sells\u00a0its wares to government intel agencies directly \u2014\u00a0like it did with the NSA and NGA. It\u2019s also been taking the role of subcontractor: selling its tech by partnering with established military contractors and privatized surveillance firms like SAIC, Lockheed and smaller boutique outfits\u00a0like the Blackwater-connected merc outfit called Blackbird.<\/p>\n

In short: Google\u2019s showing itself\u00a0willing to do just about anything it can to more effectively hitch itself to America\u2019s military-intelligence-industrial complex. So it\u2019s not surprising that its top brass installed someone like Weslander Quaid as a company evangelist.<\/p>\n

What is slightly surprising \u2014 and a bit disturbing \u2014 is that Weslander Quaid, Google\u2019s liaison with the military, is now using Google\u2019s big data knowhow\u00a0to help the Republican Party win\u00a0elections<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Politico reports:<\/p>\n

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt may have helped Barack Obama build a political technology juggernaut, but now another top Google executive is trying to help Republicans catch up.<\/p>\n

Michele Weslander Quaid, who serves as the company\u2019s \u201cInnovation Evangelist\u201d and chief technology officer for its public-sector division, is joining the board of directors of Voter Gravity, a campaign technology company that serves GOP candidates and conservative groups.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a bit of a political coming-out for Weslander Quaid, who joined Google in 2011 and had not previously been active in partisan politics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Voter Gravity isn\u2019t just some neutral campaign tech company. It was set up by Ned Ryun, a rightwing Christian and an anti-union activist. In 2011, he came to Wisconsin to\u00a0support<\/a>\u00a0Governor Scott Walker\u2019s\u00a0jihad on public sector workers:<\/p>\n

\u201cI applaud what Scott Walker is doing in Wisconsin, but I actually feel he didn\u2019t go far enough . . . at the end of the day, the public sector unions are not collectively bargaining for a greater share of earnings, as do the private sector unions. They are bargaining to get a bigger slice of the pie of tax dollars, which the government has taken from the American taxpayer.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As much as Ryun cares\u00a0about protecting the taxpaying public from greedy\u00a0government workers, I have a feeling that he doesn\u2019t mind that his partner\u00a0Weslander Quaid\u2019s main job function at Google is to siphon as many taxpayer tech contract dollars\u00a0for the benefit of her\u00a0company\u2019s\u00a0shareholder and executive class\u2026<\/p>\n

* * * *<\/p>\n

And Weslander Quaid is not the only military-surveillance insider at Google Federal. Let\u2019s take a look at two other senior executives\u2026<\/p>\n

First up:\u00a0Shannon Sullivan<\/a>, \u201cHead of Defense & Intelligence, Google Enterprise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sullivan graduated from the\u00a0US Air Force Air University\u2019s School of Advanced Air and Space Studies \u2014\u00a0which produces<\/a>\u00a0\u201cwarrior-scholars.\u201d He then served in various signals intelligence capacities in the US Air Force: as a \u201cSenior Military Advisor\u201d and in an\u00a0unspecified role inside USAF\u2019s \u201cC4ISR Acquisition and Test; Space Operations, Foreign Military Sales\u201d unit. What is C4ISR? Apparently it stands for\u2026 \u201cCommand, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sullivan then took the revolving door, getting a job as a \u201cdefense director\u201d at BEA Systems.\u00a0He then\u00a0moved to Oracle, where he was the company\u2019s \u201cCOCOMs<\/a>\u00a0Director\u201d for the Army and Air Force. He is now involved in rolling out Google services for the DoD. His last project:\u00a0setting up a Google Apps \u201ctransformational\u201d test program<\/a>\u00a0to supply 50,000 soldiers in the US Army and DoD with a customized Google App Universe.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s Jim Young, Google\u2019s DoD Sales Manager.<\/p>\n

His\u00a0job at Google<\/a>\u00a0is all about \u201c[t]ransforming organizations by empowering their employees with the best cloud computing platforms in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Young used to\u00a0work as a CIA analyst<\/a>\u00a0at the Directorate of Science and Technology, a CIA R&D outfit that used to be called the Office of Scientific Intelligence. And as all CIA buffs know, OSI\/DST is responsible for churning out Cold War-era spook technology, as well as some of the weirdest and darkest CIA schemes\u00a0we know of: spy satellites, MKULTRA\/ARTICHOKE Manchurian candidate mind\u00a0control programs, remote viewing, surgically modified spy cats and a bunch of scarier things we\u2019ll only find out about in 100 years. OSI\/DST also funded In-Q-Tel\u2026 Come to\u00a0think of it, In-Q-Tel helped fund Google Earth \u2014 which is a big part of Google\u2019s military offering.<\/p>\n

There are plenty of other people with similar backgrounds working for Google Federal \u2014\u00a0account managers, sales and marketing people, heads of engineering \u2014 but listing them and their intel\/DoD work experience would only turn our brains to alphabet soup.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

The Washington Post\u00a0recently exposed<\/a>\u00a0Google\u2019s increasing role in DC\u2019s influence-peddling machine \u2014 from\u00a0partnering with Koch thinktanks to beefing up its rightwing lobby power. Staffing Google\u2019s\u00a0public-sector division\u00a0with connected intel and military insiders is just another component of the this\u00a0larger effort\u00a0to grab\u00a0the levers of\u00a0power. How else can you expect Google to\u00a0stave off\u00a0anti-trust investigations and avoid paying for its massive privacy\u00a0violations\u00a0\u2014 all while expanding its business into\u00a0the bottomless pit of federal government contracting?<\/p>\n

Pando contacted Google for comment on this article [12+ hours before publication] but we have not yet had a response. We will update this story if the company responds.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by\u00a0Yasha Levine, Pando Daily click here for original article So, Google continues to try to distance itself from the military-industrial complex. Last month, the company made a big stink about refusing a tiny bit of DARPA funding for two robotics companies it purchased, hoping that people already\u00a0forgot\u00a0that the companies had been\u00a0financed by the Department of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3171,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/google-in-bed-w-mercenaries-n-military-e1395865855795.jpg?fit=236%2C452&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3170"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3185,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3170\/revisions\/3185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}