Google and USG are joined at the hip. If you haven't seen this article, give it a read and check out those charts:

https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close...

Completely off topic sidenote: even when completely muted, my MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) makes a sound when hovering over the names in the first chart, and a different (deeper and quieter) sound when hovering over the second one. The sound appears to come from below the F2/F3/2/3 keys. I tried to record it, but its too quiet and there's too much background noise here to hear it on the video.

Anyone have an idea what this would be? I presume it's the CPU/GPU underneath, but I've never heard this before. Does this happen to anyone else?

With my Fall 2011 MBP, it's the wall wart that produces a wide variety of sounds depending on the CPU load.

Desktop motherboards are known for high-frequency sounds in response to varying load - the source are the low-voltage regulators for the different CPU domains.

That's interesting. Stick an old fashioned AM radio near it and see if you can amplify the sound.

In the old days, we needed "separation of church and state", but now it seems we need to add "separation of corp and state"..

Schmidt is sitting on an advisory board, not taking a position within DoD. You can ask about the propriety of a corporate executive sitting on a board advising the civilian defense component on new and emerging technologies -- especially since Google until recently was a speculative-tech defense contractor through BosDyn -- but it's not uncommon and certainly nothing unusual to Google.

As for the OP, well, consider me skeptical of the idea that "digital government" can have a significant effect on governance itself. The problems within government agencies lie in a mix of politics, policies, processes and people, with a healthy dose of iron-triangle confusion of interests where applicable. Better digital can improve an agency's operations, but can't address whether those operations are fundamentally misguided.

While they were technically a defense contractor through Boston Dynamics, yes, they claimed they didn't want to be, and would end the relationship as soon as Boston Dynamics fulfilled it's existing obligations at acquisition time.

Which shows some hesitation, apparently, to work with the DoD. Except for all the Googlers working with the DoD.

He did work for the DoD before, though, so it's not exactly a "new" connection.

seems the whole world is falling into a state capitalism shit hole.