It shouldn’t be a surprise that companies – and for our field, technology companies specifically – working with the defense industry tends to raise eyebrows. With things like the genocide in Gaza, the threats of genocide and war crimes against Iran, the mass murder in Lebanon, it’s no surprise that western companies working with the militaries and defense companies involved in these atrocities are receiving some serious backlash.
With that in mind, it seems Red Hat, owned by IBM, is desperately trying to scrub a certain white paper from the internet. Titled “Compress the kill cycle with Red Hat Device Edge”, the 2024 white paper details how Red Hat’s products and technologies can make it easier and faster to, well, kill people. Links to the white paper throw up 404s now, but it can still easily be found on the Wayback Machine and other places.
It’s got some disturbingly euphemistic content.
The find, fix, track, target, engage, assess (F2T2EA) process requires ubiquitous access to data at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. Red Hat Device Edge embeds captured, analyzed, and federated data sets in a manner that positions the warfighter to use artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) to increase the accuracy of airborne targeting and mission-guidance systems.
[…]
Delivering near real-time data from sensor pods directly to airmen, accelerating the sensor-to-shooter cycle.
[…]
Sharing near real-time sensor fusion data with joint and multinational forces to increase awareness, survivability, and lethality.
[…]
The new software enabled the Stalker to deploy updated, AI-based automated target recognition capabilities.
[…]
If the target is an adversary tracked vehicle on the far side of a ridge, a UAS carrying a server running Red Hat Device Edge could transmit video and metadata directly to shooters.
↫ Red Hat white paper titled “Compress the kill cycle with Red Hat Device Edge”
I don’t think there’s something inherently wrong with working together with your nation’s military or defense companies, but that all hinges on what, exactly, said military is doing and how those defense companies’ products are being used. The focus should be on national defense, aid during disasters, and responding to the legitimate requests of sovereign, democratic nations to come to their defense (e.g. helping Ukraine fight off the Russian invasion).
There’s always going to be difficult grey areas, but any military or defense company supporting the genocide in Gaza or supplying weapons to kill women and children in Iran is unequivocally wrong, morally reprehensible, and downright illegal on both an international and national level. It clearly seems someone at Red Hat feels the same way, as the company has been trying really hard to memory-hole this particular white paper, and considering its word choices and the state of the world today, it’s easy to see why.
Of course, the internet never forgets, and I certainly don’t intend to let something like this slide. We all know companies like Microsoft, Oracle, and Google have no qualms about making a few bucks from a genocide or two, but it always feels a bit more traitorous to the cause when it’s an open source company doing the profiting. It feels like Red Hat is trying to have its cake and eat it too, by, as an IBM subsidiary, trying to both profit from the vast sums of money sloshing around in the US military industrial complex as well as maintain its image as a scrappy open source business success story shitting bunnies and rainbows.
It’s a long time ago now that Red Hat felt like a genuine part of the open source community. Most of us – both outside and inside of Red Hat, I’m sure – have been well aware for a long time now that those days are well behind us, and I guess Red Hat doesn’t like seeing its kill cycle this compressed.
There is no defending this.
Even is someone was entirely pragmatist and would say “yes, of course we should be more efficient in war, if we don’t the other side will”…. still they would at least want such content not be public.
In any case, it is disturbing to see. And it is also disturbing to think about the implications.
(We are literally giving training information to “SkyNet”
The world is a dangerous place and it doesn’t care if you find that disturbing or not.
djitanium,
Sorry, did I say it wasn’t? Or did you only read the first sentence?
I’ve been campaigning for a few years now to ditch Red Hat at work and slowly work to replace it with something like Rocky, Alma or even SuSE. This just adds fuel to the fire.
Red Hat have become increasingly commercial under IBMs helm to the point where you have to ask, “where’s the added value?” Over the past 6 or 7 years, everytime we raise a support request with them (which is reasonably rare), it goes into the black hole of “it’s now with engineering” and we get an update once every 1 to 3 months along the lines of “the engineers are still working on this issue & we’ll update you if there’s anything further to report”. They reference internal ticket numbers that you dont have acccess to, so there’s no way to know if the issue is being actively worked on. These tickets literally stay open for years and often never get resolved. It makes me wonder whether “engineering” has become a euphemism for the upstream, unpaid developers.
Aside from that, every new release documents a greater number of products they offer no support for (products they package in baseos and appstream).
So you really have to ask; what added value are you getting?
@dexterous
I really like Alma these days. That seems like a great option. And SuSE seems to have found some new energy though I am always cautious about moving towards a company that is currently being sold. The choice of US or European based may sway your choice given current global trends.
Rocky Linux just bugs me. They hide behind a “community” banner but they literally cannot contribute anything by definition as they have to be a bug-for-bug clone of Red Hat. Talk about not adding any value.
Red Hat has been “altering” Internet captured history for a very very very long time. IYKYK. While I have “captured” some of it over the years, people are so brainwashed that they won’t accept my personal testimony nor my “proof”. We are sheep.
I don’t think they are alone btw in this. But the idea of “proof” being Googled-sources, or even Wayback Machine, these things aren’t “good enough”… or …. maybe “truth” has been redefined?
Stories to tell. But since Google, Wayback and now, AI, are “the truth”… nobody listens, and nobody cares.
chriscox,
Hasn’t this always been the case? “History written by victors” or some variant of it.
Of course they will do what every good “department of truth” will do, and retroactively fix “untruths”
Apparently IBM really loves to make killing more efficient.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
I don’t get it; the quotes are described as “disturbingly euphemistic” but they seem rather straightforward; his problem seems to be rather a lack of euphemisms.
I’m willing to wager that most of the people on here clutching their pearls has never served in the military or seen warfare firsthand. You’ve lived your lives segmented from the harsh, cold reality that the world is a dangerous place and that there are people who want to destroy Western civilization. Get a grip on reality and go touch grass.
I am a staunch supporter of Israel and I have not forgotten how hamas slaughtered more than 1000 civilians while the “innocent woman and children” cheered and danced on the roads. Neither have I forgotten, how Iran slaughtered thousands of their own people.
But man, sometimes it is better to stay quiet: the images of Gaza are not to justify by anything. And this war against Iran is the work of a baboon at helm. You can be very much right wing and still call out savages as what they are. Two wrongs never make one right.
And you know their worst crime: those baboons make any lunatic African dictator looking like a great leader. Nigeria starts to look like a safe haven those days!
It’s just Europeans freaking out because they’re realizing how outclassed they are and how little defense they have besides the goodwill they have been eroding. The PDF contained no objectionable parts.
European countries are now funding (beyond Ukraine itself of course) most Ukraine’s defensive war, ever since Trump decided to reduce US support by 99%.
Congress writes the budgets here. If they had wanted to they could have passed aid over a Trump veto. They chose not to try, especially after Zelensky’s chimp-out at the White House. Even notorious warhawk Senators cooled on Ukraine at that point. Don’t try to blame Ukraine’s fuckup on one man, even if he is the President.
Heresy! We all know that he is the chosen one, better than Jesus Christ himself — how dare you calling him a mortal man (peace noble price or not). Follow your Truth Social more carefully please or get purged!
The whitewashing of Red Hat’s image in the open source community is one of
the most frustrating things I’ve seen since I joined back in 1999.
It’s not like this is new. They’ve been pulling shady moves for decades!! Forking and rewriting community projects just to grab commit access,
relicensing stuff, and signing sketchy government contracts. Their ties to
the US military aren’t exactly a secret to anyone who’s been around long enough.
But back when everyone was busy dunking on Canonical, Red Hat quietly took
over one critical piece of Linux infrastructure after another, and nobody
seemed to care.
I’d also bet they’ve been throwing serious money at marketing firms and
astroturfing operations inside the community for years, and probably still are.
What disturbing is how in your sick mind killing Hezbollah terrorists bombing Northen Israel is mass murder.
How killing Hamas terrorists after their genocidal attack on Israel, killing more than 800 civilians, including children and women, including attacking the Nova party, raping young women, killing and torturing whole families hiding in their safe room – how in your eyes this is Genocide.
How attacking the murderous regime in Iran, killing 30,000 of its own citizens, publicly threatening to nuke Israel – that’s a war crime.
You sir, are just a common example of how Anti-semitism and Jew hate never left Europe.