341–350 of 1001 posts
Oh boy. Being on the inside of Maven, I can't tell you how confused these Googlers are.
The fact that you are outing yourself (now and in your HN profile) is very unlike any other "spook" I know.
It's laughable that you say your " background is all out there for people to see".
"As Google defends its contracts from internal dissent, its competitors have not been shy about publicizing their own work on defense projects. Amazon touts its image recognition work with the Department of Defense, and Microsoft has promoted the fact that its cloud technology won a contract to handle classified information for every branch of the military and defense agencies." Google should stop hiring activists an…
A large fraction of the world's best engineers don't want to be associated with military projects. So companies have a choice to hire them and not do military projects, or not hire them and do them. When I was running a robot company, I made the decision to not do military projects (mostly for personal reasons) and it helped me hire some great people that I couldn't have otherwise.
Ive been around the block a few times, I've worked in the defense industry myself and I've worked in non-defense private sector as well. The quality and quantity of engineers are extremely similar in my experience.
Don't forget, a lot of the tech we use everyday started as military projects, such as the Internet and GPS. Even Siri has its roots as part of a DARPA project. You really think the engineers involved in those technologies are second tier?
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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…
Over what time-frame? Do you have supporting data you can point me to ("In the past 10 years, more countries have switched from democratic to non-democratic government than vice versa")?
Thanks!
I doubt this would happen, but I wish these only petitions would include counter-petitions, which people could sign if they don't agree with the petition, so we could get an estimate of whether this is just a very vocal minority of Googlers or viewpoints are split.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/273744/number-of-full-ti...
Serious question for those who agree with this petition. Which country's military would you like to see be the most technologically advanced in 20 years?
There's certainly enough opportunity to work for a more peaceful world instead - scenarios where two large military powers clash should probably better be avoided anyway, so it's probably even a more productive use of one's time than optimizing for yet another variant of mutually assured destruction.
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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…
You're quite incorrect. The state properly has a monopoly on the retaliatory use of force (and none other) under objective laws and legal processes. But self-defense is an emergency, and there is no rational argument to claim that one may not protect oneself, one's family, or one's property against beasts or thugs. On the other hand, if you kill someone in self-defense, you had better be prepared to explain how neces…
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…
My memory isn't short. You made a point of talking about cryptography. The US government also classified crypto as munitions in order to control its usage and export: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th... This had very negative effects on cryptography in general (see the FREAK exploit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FREAK ) Also, why wouldn't this be employed to better monitor Stingray ( http…
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I'd vote for Belgium. More seriously: the US has nuclear weapons, rendering them safe from any direct confrontation with enemies challenging them technologically. They have a conventional military 10x the size needed for the sort of intervention that actually succeeded in the past (the Balkans, the first Gulf war). The rather unsuccessful wars (Afghanistan, Iraq) were lost not for technological reasons or any other d…
>I'd vote for Belgium. I always laugh when people suggest these meek tiny European states should be in charge of running the world and how much more civilized they are. The reality is that these countries aren't meek by choice and we already know from history what a country like Belgium would do if given a tiny sliver of power.
America is a federation of 50 states. The EU is trying to become a federation of the European states.
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Incidentedly, I worked on drones for the Navy and Marines for many years. My issue is with the hypocracy. Don't claim to be moral and sell this Kool aid. It sounds a lot like religious high priests that I have a viceral reaction to (given where I come from). It could just be my own personal issue with the faux moral sell of the valley.
> My issue is with the hypocrisy. There are degrees of morality. Just like a criminal might object to being defrauded because they feel it crosses a line. Everybody is a hypocrite to some extent, you at least seem to be aware of that fact that you are simply a gun for hire which makes it easier to reason about the position of others.
That probably is the case. Morality is also very subjective (which, to some, is a matter of belief). Maybe "hypocrisy" is not the right word. Perhaps I was looking for "lack of self awareness". That is kind of what I meant with "delusion".
There are a lot of good, empathetic people in Silicon Valley. More empathetic than probably any other subgroup I have ever encountered. And they have a deep desire to change the world. I have a lot of respect for that.
But they also circle jerk about that all the time (you see this in finance at charity events too). And in that circle jerk, thinking they are improving humanity, they end up cozing up with the federal government, foreign dictators, and even suppressing free thought! And I am not acquitting the Military Industrial Complex of doing a lot of the same things (but at least they are less deluded, having the "American interests" narrative as opposed to "make the world a better place" narrative).
Do we really want to test a theory that we can have a repeat of the 1930s when the democracies fell far behind an autocratic regime in the arms race, and again the autocratic regimes will not win? Democracies are in retreat around the world, and I only hope we wake up before it is too late. The military-industrial complex may have become far bigger and perhaps in some ways a burden, but the world is a dangerous place…
> Democracies are in retreat around the world, and I only hope we wake up before it is too late. What are you advocating? Arming governments with autonomous killer drones in order to "protect democracy"? Because the world is a "dangerous place"? I don't even...