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In early February 2016, the safety gate at a U.S. navy base close to Washington, D.C., swung open to confess a Navy physician accompanying a pair of unusual guests: two synthetic intelligence scientists from Google.
In a cavernous, temperature-controlled warehouse on the Joint Pathology Heart, they stood amid stacks holding the crown jewels of the middle’s assortment: tens of tens of millions of pathology slides containing slivers of pores and skin, tumor biopsies and slices of organs from armed service members and veterans.
Standing with their Navy sponsor behind them, the Google scientists posed for {a photograph}, beaming.
Principally unknown to the general public, the trove and the employees who examine it have lengthy been regarded in pathology circles as very important nationwide sources: Scientists used a useless soldier’s specimen that was archived right here to carry out the primary genetic sequencing of the 1918 Flu.
Google had a confidential plan to show the gathering of slides into an immense archive that — with the assistance of the corporate’s burgeoning, and doubtlessly worthwhile, AI enterprise — may assist create instruments to assist the analysis and therapy of most cancers and different illnesses. And it could search first, unique dibs to take action.
“The chief concern,” Google’s liaison within the navy warned the leaders of the repository, “is preserving this out of the press.”
Greater than six years later, Google remains to be laboring to show this huge assortment of human specimens into digital gold.
Not less than a dozen Protection Division employees members have raised moral or authorized considerations about Google’s quest for service members’ medical information and in regards to the conduct of its navy supporters, information reviewed by ProPublica present. Underlying their complaints are considerations about privateness, favoritism and the non-public use of a delicate authorities useful resource in a time when AI in well being care reveals each nice promise and threat. And a few of them frightened that Google was upending the middle’s personal pilot undertaking to digitize its assortment for future AI use.
Pathology specialists conversant in the gathering say the middle’s leaders have good purpose to be cautious about partnerships with AI firms. “Nicely designed, accurately validated and ethically applied [health algorithms] may very well be game-changing issues,” mentioned Dr. Monica E de Baca, chair of the Faculty of American Pathologists’ Council on Informatics and Pathology Innovation. “However till we work out how to do this nicely, I’m frightened that –knowingly or unknowingly –there will likely be an terrible lot of snake oil offered.”
When it wasn’t chosen to participate in JPC’s pilot undertaking, Google pulled levers within the higher reaches of the Pentagon and in Congress. This 12 months, after lobbying by Google, employees on the Home Armed Providers Committee quietly inserted language right into a report accompanying the Protection Authorization Act that raises doubts in regards to the pathology middle’s modernization efforts whereas offering a path for the tech big to land future AI work with the middle.
Pathology specialists name the JPC assortment a nationwide treasure, distinctive in its age, dimension and breadth. The archive holds greater than 31 million blocks of human tissue and 55 million slides. Newer specimens are linked with detailed affected person info, together with pathologist annotations and case histories. And the repository holds many examples of “edge circumstances” — illnesses so vanishingly uncommon that many pathologists by no means see them.
Google sought to assemble so many figuring out particulars in regards to the specimens and sufferers that the repository’s leaders feared it could compromise sufferers’ anonymity. Discussions turned so contentious in 2017 that the leaders of the JPC broke them off.
In an interview with ProPublica, retired Col. Clayton Simon, the previous director of the JPC, mentioned Google needed greater than the pathology middle felt it may present. “In the end, even via negotiations, we have been unable to discover a pathway that we legally may do and ethically ought to do,” Simon mentioned. “And the partnership dissolved.”
However Google didn’t quit. Final 12 months, the middle’s present director, Col. Joel Moncur, in response to questions from DOD legal professionals, warned that the actions of Google’s chief analysis companion within the navy “may trigger a breach of affected person privateness and will result in a scandal that adversely impacts the navy.”
Google has instructed the navy that the JPC assortment holds the “uncooked supplies” for essentially the most important biotechnology breakthroughs of this decade — “on par with the Human Genome Venture in its potential for strategic, scientific, and financial impression.”
All of that made the cache an alluring goal for any firm hoping to develop well being care algorithms. Monumental portions of medical information are wanted to design algorithmic fashions that may establish patterns a pathologist would possibly miss — and Google and different firms are in a race to assemble them. Solely a handful of tech firms have the dimensions to scan, retailer and analyze a group of this magnitude on their very own. Firms which have submitted plans to compete for facets of the middle’s modernization undertaking embody Amazon Net Providers, Cerner Corp. and a number of small AI firms.
However no firm has been as aggressive as Google, whose father or mother firm, Alphabet, has beforehand drawn hearth for its efforts to assemble and crunch medical information. In the UK, regulators reprimanded a hospital in 2017 for offering information on greater than 1.6 million sufferers, with out their understanding, to Alphabet’s AI unit, DeepMind. In 2019, The Wall Road Journal reported that Google had a secret deal, dubbed “Venture Nightingale,” with a Catholic well being care system that gave it entry to information on tens of millions of sufferers in 21 states, additionally with out the information of sufferers or docs. Google responded to the Journal story in a weblog publish that said that affected person information “can’t and won’t be mixed with any Google client information.”
In a press release, Ted Ladd, a Google spokesperson, attributed the ethics complaints related to its efforts to work with the repository to an “inter-agency challenge” and a “personnel dispute.”
“We had hoped to allow the JPC to digitize its information and, with its permission, develop laptop fashions that may allow researchers and clinicians to enhance analysis for cancers and different sicknesses,” Ladd mentioned, noting that every one of Google’s well being care partnerships contain “the strictest controls” over information. “Our clients personal and handle their information, and we can’t — and don’t — use it for any goal apart from explicitly agreed upon by the client,” Ladd mentioned.
In response to questions from ProPublica, the JPC mentioned none of its de-identified information can be shared throughout its modernization course of except it met the moral, regulatory, and authorized approvals wanted to make sure it was finished in the fitting approach.
“The very best precedence of the JPC’s digital transformation is to make sure that any de-identified digital slides are used ethically and in a way that protects affected person privateness and navy safety,” the JPC mentioned.
However some concern that even these safeguards won’t be sufficient. Steven French, a DOD cloud computing engineer assigned to the undertaking, mentioned he was dismayed by the relentlessness of Google’s advocates within the division. Misplaced in all their discussions in regards to the pace, scale and cost-saving advantages related to working with Google gave the impression to be considerations for the pursuits of the service members whose tissue was the topic of all this maneuvering, French instructed ProPublica.
“It felt actually unhealthy to me,” French mentioned. “Like a gradual crush in direction of the inevitability of some massive tech firm monetizing it.”
The JPC definitely does need assistance from tech firms. Underfunded by Congress and lengthy uncared for by the Pentagon, it’s weak to gives from well-funded rescuers. Despite its leaders’ pleas, funding for a full-scale modernization undertaking has by no means materialized. The pathology middle’s growing old warehouses have been stricken with water leaks and unwelcome intruders: a marauding household of raccoons.
The story of the pathology middle’s lengthy, contentious battle with Google has by no means been instructed earlier than. ProPublica’s account relies on inner emails, shows and memos, in addition to interviews with present and former DOD officers, a few of whom requested to not be recognized as a result of they weren’t licensed to debate the matter or for concern of retribution.
Google’s Personal Tour
In December 2015, Google started its courtship of the JPC with a daring, unsolicited proposal. The messenger was a junior naval officer, Lt. Cmdr. Niels Olson.
“I’m working with Google on a undertaking to use machine studying to medical imaging,” Olson wrote to the leaders of the repository. “And it looks like we’re on the stage the place we have to determine precisely what JPC has.”
A United States Naval Academy physics main and Tulane medical college graduate, Olson labored as a scientific and anatomical pathology resident on the Naval Medical Heart in San Diego.
With digitized specimen slides holding huge quantities of information, pathology appeared ripe for the approaching AI revolution in medication, he believed. Olson’s personal urgency was heightened in 2014 when his father was recognized with prostate most cancers.
That 12 months, Olson teamed up with scientists at Google to coach software program to acknowledge suspected most cancers cells. Google provided experience together with AI scientists and high-speed, high-resolution scanners. The endeavor had cleared all privateness and assessment board hurdles. They have been scanning Navy sufferers’ pathology slides at a livid clip, however they wanted a bigger information set to validate their findings.
Enter the JPC’s archive. Olson realized in regards to the middle in medical college. In his electronic mail to its leaders in December 2015, Olson connected Google’s eight-page proposal.
Google provided to begin the operation by coaching algorithms with already digitized information within the repository. And it could do that early work “with no change of funds.” A lot of these partnerships free the non-public events from having to bear a aggressive bidding course of.
Google promised to do the work in a way that balanced “privateness and moral issues.” The federal government, underneath the proposal, would personal and management the slides and information.
Olson typed a warning: “That is underneath a non-disclosure settlement with Google, so I have to ask you, do please deal with this info appropriately. The chief concern is preserving this out of the press.”
Senior navy and civilian employees on the pathology middle reacted with alarm. Dr. Francisco Rentas, the pinnacle of the archive’s tissue operations, pushed again in opposition to the notion of sharing the info with Google.
“As you understand, we’ve got the biggest pathology repository on this planet and loads of entities will like to get their arms on it, together with Google rivals. How will we overcome that?” Rentas requested in an electronic mail.
Different leaders had related reactions. “My considerations are raised after I’m suggested to not disclose what appears to be a contractual relationship to the press,” one of many prime managers on the pathology middle, Col. Edward Stevens, instructed Olson. Stevens instructed Olson that giving Google entry to this info with no aggressive bid may end in litigation from the corporate’s rivals. Stevens requested: “Does this have to undergo an open-source bid?”
However even with these considerations, Simon, the pathology middle’s director, was intrigued sufficient to proceed discussions. He invited Olson and Google to examine the power.
The warehouse Olson and the Google scientists entered may have served as a set for the ultimate scene of “Raiders of Misplaced Ark.”
Pathology slides have been stacked in aisle canyons, some towering two tales. The slides have been organized in steel trays and cardboard bins. To entry tissue samples, the repository used a retrieval system just like these present in dry cleaners. The pathology middle had only a handful of working scanners. On the tempo they have been going, it could take centuries to digitize the whole assortment.
One individual conversant in the repository likened it to the Library of Alexandria, which held the biggest archive of information within the historical world. Fable held that the library was destroyed in a cataclysmic hearth lit by Roman invaders, however historians consider the true killer was gradual decay and neglect over centuries.
The navy’s tissue library had already performed an essential function within the development of medical information. Its beginning in 1862 because the Army Medical Museum was grisly. In a blandly written order within the midst of the Civil Warfare, the Army surgeon common instructed surgeons “diligently to gather and protect” all specimens of “morbid anatomy, surgical or medical, which can be considered helpful.”
Quickly the museum’s curator was digging via battlefield trenches to seek out “many a putrid heap” of arms, toes and different physique elements ravaged by illness and struggle. He and different docs shipped the stays to Washington in whiskey-filled casks.
Over the following 160 years, the tissue assortment outgrew a number of headquarters, together with Washington’s Ford Theater and a nuclear-bomb-proof constructing close to the White Home. However the principle mission — figuring out, finding out and lowering the calamitous impression of sicknesses and accidents afflicting service members — has remained unchanged in instances of struggle and peace. Every time a navy or veterans’ hospital pathologist despatched a tissue pattern to the pathology middle for a second opinion, it was filed away within the repository.
Because the archive expanded, the repository’s status grew. Its scientists spurred advances in microscopy, most cancers and tropical illness analysis. An institute pathologist named Walter Reed proved that mosquitoes transmit yellow fever, an essential discovery within the historical past of medication.
For a lot of its trendy historical past, along with serving navy and veterans hospitals, the middle additionally supplied civilian consultations. The work with elite educating hospitals gave the middle a luster that helped it entice and retain prime pathologists.
Congress and DOD leaders questioned why the navy ought to fund civilian work that may very well be finished elsewhere. In 2005, underneath the congressionally mandated base closure act, the Pentagon ordered the group working the repository to close down. The group reopened with a distinct overseer, tasked with a narrower, military-focused mission. Uncertainty in regards to the group’s future brought about many prime pathologists to go away.
In its first pitch to the repository’s leaders, Google pointedly talked about a book-length Institute of Drugs report on the repository that said that “extensive entry” to the archive’s supplies would promote the “public good.” The biorepository wasn’t residing as much as its potential, Google mentioned, noting that “no main efforts have been underway to repair the issue.”
Following the tour, a Google scientist ready a listing of scientific, demographic and affected person info it sought from the repository. The checklist included “prerequisites” — case diagnoses; pathology and radiology photos; info on gender and ethnicity; and beginning and dying dates — in addition to “high-value” affected person info, together with comorbidities, subsequent hospitalizations and reason for dying.
This troubled the JPC’s director. “We felt very, very involved about giving an excessive amount of information to them,” Simon instructed ProPublica, “as a result of an excessive amount of information may establish the affected person.”
There have been different facets about Google’s provide that made it “very unfavorable to the federal authorities,” Simon later instructed his successor, based on an electronic mail reviewed by ProPublica.
In change for scanning and digitizing the slide assortment at its personal expense, Google sought “unique entry” to the info for a minimum of 4 years.
The opposite deal-breaker was Google’s requirement that it be capable to cost the federal government to retailer and entry the digitized info, an enormous monetary dedication. Simon didn’t have the authority to commit the federal government to future funds to an organization with out authorization from Congress.
Right now, Ladd, the Google spokesperson, disputes the declare that its proposal would have been unfavorable to the federal government. “Our aim was to assist the federal government digitize the info earlier than it bodily deteriorates.”
Ladd mentioned Google sought unique entry to the info in the course of the early levels of the undertaking, in order that it may scan the de-identified samples and carry out quality-control measures on the info previous to handing it again to the JPC.
Niels Olson, who spearheaded the undertaking for the Navy in 2016, declined requests for interviews with ProPublica. However Jackson Stephens, a buddy and lawyer who’s representing Olson, mentioned Olson had all the time adopted the Institutional Evaluate Board course of and labored to anonymize affected person medical information earlier than it was utilized in analysis or shared with a 3rd get together.
“Niels takes his oath to the Structure and his Hippocratic oath very severely,” Stephens mentioned. “He loves science, however his first responsibility of care is to his sufferers.”
Google’s relentlessness in 2017, too, spooked the repository’s leaders, based on an electronic mail reviewed by ProPublica. Google’s lawyer put “strain” on the pinnacle of tissue operations to signal the settlement, which he declined to do. Leaders of the middle turned “uncomfortable” and discontinued discussions, based on the DOD electronic mail.
Although he banged on doorways within the Pentagon and Congress, Simon was not in a position persuade the Obama administration to incorporate the JPC in then-Vice President Joe Biden’s Most cancers Moonshot. Simon left the JPC in 2018, his hopes for a modernization of the library dashed. However then a Pentagon advisory board obtained wind of the JPC assortment, and every part modified.
“The Smartest Individuals on Earth”
In March of 2020, the Protection Innovation Board introduced a collection of suggestions to digitize the JPC assortment. The board referred to as for a pilot undertaking to scan a big preliminary batch of slides — a minimum of 1 million within the first 12 months — as a prelude to the huge enterprise of digitizing all 55 million slides.
“My worldview was that this must be one of many highest priorities of the Protection Division,” William Bushman, then appearing deputy undersecretary of personnel and readiness, instructed ProPublica. “It has the potential to avoid wasting extra lives than the rest being finished within the division.”
Because the pathology middle ready to launch its pilot, the employees talked a few scandal that occurred simply 40 miles north.
Henrietta Lacks was a Black lady who died of most cancers in 1951 whereas being handled at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins Hospital. With out her or her household’s information or consent, and with out compensation, her cells have been replicated and commercialized, resulting in groundbreaking advances in medication but additionally federal reforms on the usage of affected person cells for analysis.
Like Lacks’ most cancers cells, each specimen within the archive, the JPC workforce knew, represented its personal story of human mortality and vulnerability. The tissue got here from veterans and present service members keen to place their lives on the road for his or her nation. Many of the samples got here from sufferers whose docs found ominous indicators from biopsies after which despatched the specimens to the middle for second opinions. Few signed consent varieties agreeing to have their samples utilized in medical analysis.
The pathology middle employed two specialists in AI ethics to develop moral, authorized and regulatory tips. In the meantime, the strain to cooperate with Google hadn’t gone away.
In the summertime of 2020, as COVID-19 surged throughout the nation, Olson was stationed at a naval lab in Guam, engaged on an AI undertaking to detect the coronavirus. That undertaking was managed by a navy group based mostly out of Silicon Valley often known as the Protection Innovation Unit, a separate effort to hurry the navy’s improvement and adoption of cutting-edge know-how. Although the group labored with many tech firms, it had gained a status for being cozy with Google. The DIU’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, sat simply throughout the road from the Googleplex, the tech big’s headquarters. Olson joined the group formally that August.
Olson’s COVID-19 work earned him Navy Occasions’ coveted Sailor of the 12 months award in addition to the eye of a person who would turn out to be a robust ally within the DOD, Thomas “Pat” Flanders.
Flanders was the chief info officer of the sprawling Protection Well being Company, which oversaw the navy’s medical providers, together with hospitals and clinics. A garrulous Army veteran, Flanders questioned the knowledge of working the pilot undertaking with out first getting funding to scan all the 55 million slides. He needed the pathology employees to listen to in regards to the work Olson and Google had finished scanning pathology slides in San Diego and see if the same public-private partnership may very well be cast with the JPC.
Over the objections of Moncur, the JPC’s director, Flanders insisted on having Olson attend all of the pathology middle’s conferences to debate the pilot, based on inner emails.
In August 2020, the JPC revealed a request for info from distributors curious about participating within the pilot undertaking. The phrases of that request specified that no suggestions can be given to firms about their submissions and that phone inquiries wouldn’t be accepted or acknowledged. Such conversations may very well be seen as favoritism and will result in a protest by rivals who didn’t get this privilege.
However Flanders insisted that assembly Google was applicable, based on Moncur’s statements to DOD legal professionals.
In a video convention name, Flanders instructed the Google representatives they have been “the neatest folks on earth” and mentioned he couldn’t consider he was “getting to satisfy them free of charge,” based on written accounts of the assembly supplied to DOD legal professionals.
Flanders requested Google to clarify its enterprise mannequin, saying he needed to see how each the federal government and firm would possibly revenue from the middle’s information in order that he may affect the necessities on the federal government facet — a comment that left even the Google representatives “speechless,” based on a compilation of considerations raised by DOD staffers.
To Moncur and others in attendance, Flanders was actively negotiating with Google, based on Moncur’s assertion to DOD legal professionals.
To the astonishment of the middle employees, Flanders requested for a second assembly between Google and the JPC workforce.
Concern about Flanders’ conduct echoed in different elements of the DOD. A lawyer for Protection Digital Service, a workforce of software program engineers, information scientists and product managers assigned to help on the undertaking, wrote that Flanders ignored authorized warnings. He described Flanders as a “cowboy” who despite warnings about his conduct was unlikely “to fall out of affection with Google.”
In an interview with ProPublica, Flanders disputed claims that he was biased towards Google. Flanders mentioned his focus has all the time been on scanning and storing the slides as shortly and economically as attainable. As for his lavish reward of Google, Flanders mentioned he was merely making an attempt to be “variety” to the corporate’s representatives.
“Individuals took offense to that,” Flanders mentioned. “It’s simply actually pettiness on the half of people that couldn’t get alongside, truthfully.”
A spokesperson for the Protection Well being Company mentioned it was “completely applicable” for Flanders to ask Google about its enterprise mannequin. “That is a part of market analysis,” the spokesperson wrote, including that no negotiation occurred on the assembly and that every one authorities stakeholders had been invited to attend.
Moncur referred calls to a JPC spokesperson. A spokesperson for the JPC mentioned in a press release that “Moncur was involved about assembly with distributors in the course of the RFI interval.”
“An Arm of Google”
In late 2020, the modernization workforce acquired extra troubling information. In a slide presentation for the JPC describing different AI work with Google and the navy, Olson disclosed that the corporate had “made gives of employment, which I’ve declined.” However then he advised the provide is perhaps revived sooner or later, writing, “we mutually agreed to desk the matter.” He mentioned he had “no different conflicts of curiosity to declare.” Google instructed ProPublica it had by no means immediately made Olson a job provide, although a temp company it used did.
Extra details surfaced. Olson additionally had a Google company electronic mail tackle. And he had entry to Google company information, based on inner communications from involved DOD employees members. Google mentioned it’s common for its analysis companions within the authorities to have these privileges.
“I’m extra frightened than ever that DIU’s affect will destroy this acquisition,” a DOD lawyer wrote, referring to efforts to seek out distributors for the pilot undertaking. He referred to as DIU “primarily an arm of Google.”
On the time, a DIU lawyer defended Olson. The lawyer mentioned Olson had “no additional battle of curiosity points” and had finished nothing improper as a result of the job provide had been made three years earlier, in 2017. An ethics officer on the DOD Requirements of Conduct Workplace agreed.
Right now, a spokesperson within the Workplace of the Secretary of Protection instructed ProPublica the division was dedicated to modernizing the repository “whereas rigorously observing all relevant authorized and moral guidelines.”
Olson’s buddy and lawyer, Stephens, mentioned Olson had been upfront, disclosing the job provide to the innovation unit’s lawyer in addition to within the conflict-of-interest part of his slide presentation. He mentioned Olson had declined the provide, which was withdrawn. “He’s not some sort of Google undercover agent.”
Stephens mentioned the JPC would have been a lot additional down the street had it cooperated with Olson. Stephens mentioned it turned obvious to Olson that Moncur was “primarily ignoring” a “gold mine that would assist lots of people.”
“Niels is the tenacious physician who’s simply making an attempt to do the science and construct a coalition of companions to get this factor finished,” Stephens mentioned. “I feel he’s the hero of this story.”
Google Turns to Congress
In 2021, the pathology middle chosen one of the crucial prestigious medical establishments on this planet, Johns Hopkins — which plans to erect a constructing honoring Henrietta Lacks — to help it in scanning slides. It picked two small know-how firms to begin constructing instruments to let pathologists search the archive.
Google needed to be chosen, and in a confidential proposal, it provided to assist the repository construct up its personal slide-scanning capabilities.
When Google was not chosen for the pilot undertaking, the corporate went above the JPC leaders’ heads. Google claimed in a letter to Pentagon leaders that the corporate had been unfairly excluded from “full and open competitors.” In that August 2021 letter, Google argued that the nation’s safety was at stake. It requested the DOD to “contemplate permitting Google Cloud” and different suppliers to compete to make sure the “nation’s potential to compete with China in biotechnology.”
Time was of the essence, Google warned. “The bodily slides on the JPC are degrading quickly every day. … With out additional motion, the slides will proceed to degrade and a few might finally be broken past restore.”
Google stepped up its advocacy marketing campaign. The corporate deployed a lobbying agency, the Roosevelt Group — which boasts of its potential to “leverage” its connections to safe federal enterprise alternatives to its purchasers — to lift doubts in regards to the JPC’s pilot undertaking. Their efforts labored. In little-noticed language in a report written to accompany the 2023 Protection Authorization Act, the Home Armed Providers Committee expressed its concern in regards to the pace of the scanning course of and the selection of know-how, which the committee claimed wouldn’t permit the “swift digitization of those deteriorating slides.”
The committee had its personal concepts of how the pathology middle’s work must be carried out, suggesting that the middle work in tandem with the DIU, utilizing an augmented actuality microscope whose software program was engineered by Google.
In a press release, the Roosevelt Group instructed ProPublica it was “proud” of its work for Google. The agency mentioned it helped the corporate “educate skilled employees of the Home and Senate Armed Providers Committees over considerations in regards to the lack of an open procurement course of for digitization of slides.” The group chided DOD officers for being “unwilling to supply solutions to Congress across the lack of progress on the JPC digitization effort.”
The pathology middle employees was dismayed by the committee’s suggestions that it work with Olson’s group.
In a video convention assembly late final summer time with Armed Providers Committee employees, the leaders of the pathology middle tried to rebut the Home committee report. The JPC’s work was going as deliberate, they mentioned, noting that one million slides had been scanned. And the pathology middle was collaborating with the Nationwide Institutes of Well being to develop AI instruments to assist predict prognoses for most cancers therapies.
The Home Armed Providers Committee ordered Pentagon leaders to “conduct a complete evaluation” on the digitization effort, and to supply a briefing to the committee on its findings by April 1, 2023.
In a press release in response to ProPublica’s questions in regards to the invoice, Ladd, the Google spokesperson, acknowledged the corporate’s affect efforts on Capitol Hill. “We steadily present info to congressional employees on problems with nationwide significance,” Ladd mentioned. The assertion confirmed that the corporate advised “language be inserted” into the 2023 Protection Authorization Act calling for a “complete evaluation” of the digitization effort.
“Regardless of efforts from Google and plenty of on the Division of Protection, our work with JPC sadly by no means obtained off the bottom, and the bodily repository of pathology slides continues to deteriorate,” Ladd mentioned. “We stay optimistic that if the repository may very well be correctly digitized, it could save many American lives, together with these of our service members.”
On this final level, even Google’s critics are in accord. A correctly funded undertaking would value taxpayers a couple of hundred million {dollars} — a minuscule portion of the $858 billion protection price range and a small worth if the lifesaving potential of the gathering is realized.
Final 12 months, as tensions grew with Google, the modernization workforce on the repository launched a publicity marketing campaign to name consideration to the undertaking and the excessive moral stakes.
A complete panel dialogue was dedicated to the JPC effort on the 2021 South by Southwest convention. “This can be a as soon as in a lifetime alternative, and I wish to be sure we do it proper, we do it responsibly and we do it ethically,” mentioned Steven French, the DOD cloud computing engineer assigned to help the repository.
Then with out mentioning Google’s identify, he added a Shakespearean barb. “There’s loads of distributors, loads of firms, loads of folks,” French mentioned, “who’re greater than keen to do that and extract a pound of flesh from us within the course of.”
Doris Burke contributed analysis to this text.
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