I suspect it could be worse than that. It feels like certain countries' tech sectors are being partly taken over by IT workers from foreign intelligence agencies or from foreign entities with ulterior motives. Especially when you consider countries with small populations and few natives in the tech sector.
For example, in Australia, it seems like at least 8/10 software engineers are foreign-born. Most of those are probably genuine (not from intelligence agencies) but Australia has such a tiny native population of engineers compared to that of most foreign countries in its vicinity that it wouldn't be difficult for a country like China or India to overwhelm our tech industry with a few highly-placed workers in order to gain political leverage. I was thinking that there might be more software engineers working for Indian and Chinese intelligence agencies in the world than there are native-born software engineers in Australia (of all kinds). It's a numbers' game.
North Korea seems like the tip of the iceberg there though it is an easy example to talk about because everyone understands how the North Korean government operates and everyone agrees about the threat they pose compared to more subtle threats from other countries which aren't seen as opponents (at least not to the same extent).
But also, consider a company like Facebook which hires maybe 20K or so software devs. A country like India which has a large number of software developers, if it wanted, could easily put together a task force to infiltrate and take over Facebook in a focused decade-long effort if that was its intent. They almost certainly do have some people inside every major tech company right now.
If a group can have a few highly placed people inside a target company, they could then recruit more of their group into the company and start promoting their own until they have full control over the critical systems. It's a weakness of our current highly centralized tech sector.
Something else that could happen is a foreign intelligence agency could wait for people to get promoted naturally and then reach out to dual-nationals which they have leverage over (e.g. because of family members or assets owned in the foreign country) and then use that to demand favors. Then they could help coordinate the engineers to recruit more of their own to achieve even more control. Different groups would form factions within the target company and every normal employee would be unwittingly pushed out because anyone trying to 'improve or simplify things' would be seen as a threat to various nefarious agendas which rely on complexity to hide backdoors or algorithm exploits.
Imagine how valuable it would be if you could hijack's Google's search algorithm or Facebook's recommendation engines to prioritize your group's businesses and/or agendas.
>If a group can have a few highly placed people inside a target company, they could then recruit more of their group into the company and start promoting their own until they have full control over the critical systems. It's a weakness of our current highly centralized tech sector.
Isnt the critique of Indian managers that they favor indian ppl?
For example, in Australia, it seems like at least 8/10 software engineers are foreign-born. Most of those are probably genuine (not from intelligence agencies) but Australia has such a tiny native population of engineers compared to that of most foreign countries in its vicinity that it wouldn't be difficult for a country like China or India to overwhelm our tech industry with a few highly-placed workers in order to gain political leverage. I was thinking that there might be more software engineers working for Indian and Chinese intelligence agencies in the world than there are native-born software engineers in Australia (of all kinds). It's a numbers' game.
North Korea seems like the tip of the iceberg there though it is an easy example to talk about because everyone understands how the North Korean government operates and everyone agrees about the threat they pose compared to more subtle threats from other countries which aren't seen as opponents (at least not to the same extent).
But also, consider a company like Facebook which hires maybe 20K or so software devs. A country like India which has a large number of software developers, if it wanted, could easily put together a task force to infiltrate and take over Facebook in a focused decade-long effort if that was its intent. They almost certainly do have some people inside every major tech company right now.
If a group can have a few highly placed people inside a target company, they could then recruit more of their group into the company and start promoting their own until they have full control over the critical systems. It's a weakness of our current highly centralized tech sector.
Something else that could happen is a foreign intelligence agency could wait for people to get promoted naturally and then reach out to dual-nationals which they have leverage over (e.g. because of family members or assets owned in the foreign country) and then use that to demand favors. Then they could help coordinate the engineers to recruit more of their own to achieve even more control. Different groups would form factions within the target company and every normal employee would be unwittingly pushed out because anyone trying to 'improve or simplify things' would be seen as a threat to various nefarious agendas which rely on complexity to hide backdoors or algorithm exploits.
Imagine how valuable it would be if you could hijack's Google's search algorithm or Facebook's recommendation engines to prioritize your group's businesses and/or agendas.