301–310 of 1001 posts
This may be an uncomfortable fact but people have surprisingly short memories: the military funded the majority of the early advances in systems, networking, and cryptography (and especially as a large part of the latter subject area, invested heavily in fundamental, theoretical research). Not saying that I disagree with the employees' opinion, just that DoD/Pentagon involvement in artificial intelligence research sh…
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Yes, the entire Bill of Rights in fact pertains to our inalienable, universal rights. There is no difference from what one may term "fundamental" or "human" rights. It doesn't matter what the UN or anyone in other countries say or talk about -- just as the laws of physics are facts regardless of what some people may say or feel. If we have the right to life, we have the right to self-defense. If we have the right to…
Then please petetion your senator to deregulate tanks, fighter jets, nuclear warheads, ballistic missiles, submarines etc. If you are serious about arming civilians as protection to overthrow tyranny, do a better job.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Guard_of_the_United_S...
[2] http://tracinskiletter.com/2018/03/21/the-advantage-of-being...
I for one would rather have a drone strike program that actually actively avoids civilian casualties as much as possible. There are certainly gray areas here as far as the use of that program from a political standpoint (whether the strikes are warranted or whether it is part of regime changes). On the other hand, by not helping the military become more efficient we also risk losing existing lives (our own and civili…
The DoD is not interested in using their budget to reduce their number of civilian "casualties". Their only intention here is to scale up their drone programs.
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I'd argue that fundamental human rights means rights that exist inherently regardless of whether the UN or any given country recognizes them. My feeling is that people have a right to self defense, which would require them to have access to some effective weapon. In theory that could be a club or blade rather than a firearm; however, currently firearms are the only (somewhat) socially acceptable weapon to carry in th…
self defense is a human right only in a lawless society. The existence of the state makes it necessary for it to have the monopoly of the application of force, and all matters should be resolved in a civil court of law. Only in the USA is it normal to think that people should have the right to kill in self defense. Even more, many think they should be able to defend themselves from the state.. while that is the defin…
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As an engineer I have serious moral qualms about not furthering the goals of our military. After all, I would not be here, and my job would not exist, and the freedom I have to do this work would not exist, if soldiers like my grandfather hadn't stepped up to Hitler and Stalin and Mao and say "No, you're wrong, and we're willing to use violence to protect our way of life". Just my 2c but I definitely respect the ulti…
I was born and raised in Normandy, and saw the dire sacrifice a generation had to make. On my way to school, I could see the bullet holes in the walls, the tombstones of nameless soldiers, the bombs and mines we had to defuse in the fields. What our grandfathers did was noble. What we do now is the business of war. I find it diminishing to compare what they did to what Google does now.
The business of war most of the time makes us the aggressors.
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I'd vote for Belgium. Belgian atrocities in the Congo suggests that would be a very, very poor choice
By the "atrocities in the past" metric, any country would be a bad choice. The Trail of Tears comes to mind.
But wouldn’t drone strike accuracy improvement actually reduce civilian casualties? Given that these strikes will occur one way or the other, isn't this stance actually adding more misery to the world? (So do drone strikes in general. Much better to negotiate at a table with a mediator or use a sporting event to resolve disputes, but I don't currently run things here.)
Holy poopers, no. Drone strikes are not like premarital sex. The fact that we're _here_ (that being autonomous killer robots firing missiles from the sky to kill "bad guys") and no one bats an eyelash, means we're already in some kind of massive fail scenario.
We could, for example, go back to the rule of law. You know, before we believed that every bad guy out there was going to end civilization and deprive us of our "freedom." Before we decided blowing up wedding parties in Pakistan was such a great use of our time and money, and every Allahu-Ackbar-kaboom moment is a pervasive existential threat.
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That's a fair point but it also treats life as a zero sum game that's played in a steady-state arena where the threat of Tartars over the next hill is ever present. That's a good way to prevent progress and to defend yourself perfectly against the Last War but one would think the last 30 years of terrorism would have shown us the flaw in that. Put another way: who benefits from $Giant_New_Military_Platform like new f…
The Tartars are over the hills. Democracy is in decline. Authoritarianism is on the mega-rise. The state of democracy is bad and looking worse, and if the Brexit/Trump trend of destroying the EU and breaking up the Atlantic Alliance bear just a bit more fruit, you may find that these "Tartars" are a lot closer to you than you once believed. You call me blind to the future by looking at the past, but quite frankly, yo…