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posted by martyb on Thursday July 11 2019, @05:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the nicknamed-the-screening-eagle? dept.

Google denies working on touchscreen tech for Chinese fighter jets

Google denied that it helped China's military build a new touchscreen tool for its J-20 fighter jets.

The tech giant said that it had no role in the military aspect of touchscreen research that could potentially give an advantage to Chinese fighter jets in both air-to-air and air-to-ground combat, according to a report by the South China Morning Post.

A research paper seen by the Morning Post suggested that a lead scientist from Google actively participated in Beijing's program on the new touchscreen tools. Shumin Zai, a member of Google's A.I. team, worked on a research paper that could be used for touchscreen applications ranging from military uses to education and medicine.

"This paper addresses a very general research question in user experience design of how people interact with moving items on a touchscreen," a Google spokesperson told the Morning Post on Thursday. "This paper is simply not about military applications."

Also at Wccftech.


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  • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday July 11 2019, @08:49AM (7 children)

    by RamiK (1813) on Thursday July 11 2019, @08:49AM (#865744)

    Shumin Zai's made some random contribution to this or that open source graphics or AI library and the marketing guy from the Chinese military contractor figured it's a good selling point.

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by driverless on Thursday July 11 2019, @11:52AM (6 children)

    by driverless (4770) on Thursday July 11 2019, @11:52AM (#865773)

    It's not just Google that's directly helping the Chinese military, lots of US companies are doing it as well. For example McDonalds directly helped in the J-20 development by making a Big Mac with Red Bean Bubble Tea for Weifeng Lo, an engineer working on the J-20. Starbucks supported the J-20 by selling Jushin Lao a coffee before she went to work as a cleaner at the development facility. Burger King blatantly supported the J-20 by providing an Italian Stacker burger to Zhang Wei... the list goes on and on, all traiterous US collaborators on the J-20 development, just like Google.

    • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday July 11 2019, @01:46PM (5 children)

      by RamiK (1813) on Thursday July 11 2019, @01:46PM (#865798)

      The sad part is that if people actually looked across the J-xx planes, they'd realize the Chinese are literally trying every single American and Russian design to see what works and end up putting the crap that doesn't on the export market like with the J-31 so it will at least eat away at F-35 sales.

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      • (Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday July 11 2019, @01:56PM (4 children)

        by driverless (4770) on Thursday July 11 2019, @01:56PM (#865799)

        Interesting that you should mention that one, the J-31 is kinda the Aliexpress version of the F-35...

        Good strategy too, churn out bucketloads of the workhorse J-31 and leave the J-20 as a distraction for the US military.

        • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday July 11 2019, @04:45PM (3 children)

          by RamiK (1813) on Thursday July 11 2019, @04:45PM (#865852)

          The thing is, I think the Chinese never really bought into the whole multi-role jets religion and the whole J-XX theory is just Lockheed's sales team trying to push more crap down the pipeline. That is, the Chinese are developing different planes for different roles and are even eyeing exports doing it but they don't actually intend for any one plane to be a "workhorse" per-say. If anything, they might regard the j-31 as an iPhone knockoff.

          When I look at the J-20, I see a defensive jet meant to take down carriers sieging China's harbors by launching from the mainland and intercepting: It's too big to launch off a carrier. It's too light and small to be a long range bomber. It has a lot of anti-air and maneuverability. Its stealth is only good for small radars and when flying towards the target. And it has enough capacity for a few good air-to-ground drops.

          For proper fighting they have other models. For proper bombing as well. For carriers they can mix and much stuff like some J-31 derivative, their j-15s and even the older j-10s... Overall it's just them filling in a lot of niches, some of which might be market niches or "reduced/enhanced" models. They don't mind taking some technical cues from the Russian MIGs or the different American planes when they workout. But they're not going to follow the Americans and Russians beyond countering radars and the likes.

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          • (Score: 2) by driverless on Friday July 12 2019, @12:31AM (1 child)

            by driverless (4770) on Friday July 12 2019, @12:31AM (#866042)

            I see it slightly differently. China tends to take a (very) long-term strategic role rather than the "gimme the latest, shiniest toys whatever the cost, as long as it's better than what $other_service has" that the US military takes. I see the J-series as a thousand-to-one economic force multiplier. China builds a handful of each type for a few hundred million and sits back and watches as the US puts a trillion dollars it can't really afford to spend into just the F-35 alone, and even more into other programs. In the meantime China is busy taking over large chunks of Asia and Africa via financial means like debt traps, all without a shot being fired.

            • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday July 12 2019, @01:16PM

              by RamiK (1813) on Friday July 12 2019, @01:16PM (#866220)

              It's too aggressive. China and India have a lot of good growth and can look forward to a few more decades too so as long as their upper-classes can't get tax cuts that would leave them with spare capital for foreign investments beyond tech transfers, I doubt they'll bother aiming at their neighbors.

              Japan and South Korea are better candidates for those sorts of polices. Unemployment, inequality and lack of growth... Those are the usual "lets export our problems" triggers.

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          • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday July 12 2019, @05:08PM

            by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday July 12 2019, @05:08PM (#866314) Journal

            F-302 or bust.

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