Ask HN: Has the war in Ukraine changed your view on working on Defence projects?

The opposite, in fact. I used to be mostly neutral about war, but now I would consider myself a borderline pacifist. After studying this war and its causes, I realized that it was the consequence of geopolitical actors (including the defense industry) acting in certain ways over the last few decades. It is the kind of game where the only move is to not play.

I do think that a pacifist can stand up to violence, but I don’t think working in the defense industry is the way to do that.

The more wars I study, the more I realize the genius of MLK and Gandhi. Violence just begets violence.

I hear you, and I respect your resolve.

Nope. I entered engineering expecting to work in the Defense industry because at the time that seemed like where the best engineers went.

In the end I've never worked for a defense company but I have worked at two medical companies, so go figure :-)

Worked in defense so I have thoughts.

Warning: it's a slow moving business. Lots of subcontractors do cool stuff with modern tech stacks but the bigger companies--think BAE--are dinosaurs.

Defense touches a lot of different aspects of life. GPS came out of the US Air Force and is being maintained by Space Force (I think, might still be Air Force). DARPA funding has been critical for the development of modern robotic limbs. The Missile Defense Agency exists to protect North American airspace from bad things that explode that could come flying over the arctic. Satellite operations—communications, orbit analysis, making sure they don't get hit by debris—is a big area and only getting bigger.

So there's a lot of aspects of the defense industry that are a lot more about defending people than killing people.

There's also lots of opportunity to do work where you would work on weapons or military intelligence. Most weapons development today is about making weapons smaller and more precise to limit the number of innocent people harmed. There's lot of work in the intelligence field trying to quickly and accurate identify targets via satellite images or signals intelligence or videos posted on Telegram and Twitter to more accurately assess threats and capabilities and potential targets.

Joining the defense industry doesn't mean that you have to work on any project they give you. I'm very clear that I won't do anything for the Saudi's because of what they've done in Yemen and vocally opposed projects my past companies have done that I found disagreeable. My security clearance goes with me if I resign so defense companies want me happy cause I ain't easily replaceable. If you see something unethical, there are people who'll listen if you speak up