That never happened. The NSA tapped Google's fiber without Google's knowledge, but there's no evidence that Google ever willingly participated. As soon as Google found out about the taps, it accelerated a program to get the data on all those fibers encrypted, to lock the NSA out.

Google trades the right to target ads to you in exchange for services, and enables you to opt out of the trade if you want, even providing the necessary tools for you to do it. Google has never given the NSA an "unaccountable back door". See David Drummond's numerous public statements on this issue. From my personal perspective as a Google security engineer, I think it would be virtually impossible for such a back door to exist in Google's systems without my having noticed some trace of it. Take that as you will.

You're coming to this question with a whole bunch of inaccurate assumptions, which are seriously skewing your perspective. You should take a breath, look into what really happened (as much as is public information anyway) vis a vis the NSA, PRISM, etc., and then re-evaluate.

Or not, that's your choice. I'll merely point out that time will prove me right with respect to any purported military-focused work by Google X and leave it there.

A bit of careful thought would make clear why neither concept as mentioned work all that well in the application you implied, their inherent design fails that particular application. Quick knee jerk thinking make it seems like they might work but careful consideration of the problems inherent in them should make it clear why those solutions fail.

That's the service they pay for, not having to "learn computers". IT is the data janitors. Most actual janitors don't despise the people they clean for, you know (of course, most actual janitors don't get hassled constantly either).

You have to remember those kind of brain chemical driven decisions are not the decisions of today but the decisions crafted since birth. Those brain chemicals taught you and guided your actions with a simple reward punishment system and you learned associative behaviour accordingly. Now you don't even think about those kind of decisions, why you make them, you just do it.

It's more like "is there anything else we can try to save Detroit from the evil non-Detroit manufacturers". Sadly, there's no saving Detroit.

A nomadic tribe comes across a hot spring and bathes in it's waters, the whole tribe shares in this experience, now that's a luxury for the whole tribe. The same with any other special treats upon their nomadic routes, shared treats, not psychopathically exclusive treats.

So how creative was the witch doctor shaman, creative enough to encompass the psychology of placebo treatments to promote recovery in conjunction with herbal remedies. Now how early did that occur in the social evolution of humanity?

Yet the Republicans always rabbit on about how Socialists are a threat to freedom and independence?

"Classified" is a vague term, but computers holding "confidential" materials were affected (secret and above is a whole different world of computing). The machines were rootkitted by a foreign-owned company, and that rootkit phoned home. The DoJ was not amused.

Now that's a good problem to occupy the attention of Google's "UI designers", who clearly have nothing useful to do with their time!

If they brick many US government computers, and it was deliberate they're in deep. The DoJ isn't so vigorous for consumer protection, but screw with government computers, especially those holding confidential information, and they get quite upset.

Bad analogy. If this was deliberate, which seems likely, there's no legal loophole which lets you destroy someone else stuff. With a court order you can go after unsold inventory with a vengeance, but not consumer gear.

None of which will matter if they end up bricking government PCs, no matter what their excuse is.

Sony was slapped with a fine so large the shareholders winced. The CEO resigned. The DoJ said they got the benefit of the doubt that the effect on government computers was unintended, but if Sony didn't learn the DoJ would simply ... end ... Sony America.

The NSA disagrees: all email ever sent is stored now, in their datacenters, next to the recordings of every voice call for the past decade. Your tax dollars at work..