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Google Engineers Refused to Build Security Tool to Win Military Contracts

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Re: Google Engineers Refused to Build Security Tool to Win Military Contracts

#271

Post by rayiner »

SauciestGNU wrote: post #264
rayiner wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ironic on so many levels. The first level is, of course, the irony of refusing to do military work at a company that only exists because of defense contractors working on a military project (ARPANET). More generally, the irony is that the U.S. military has made a far greater positive contribution to the world than Google. Under the Pax Americana , we have seen the greatest number of people rise out of abject pov…

What does the American military have to do with the economic development of, for instance, China? I'm not sure America should be credited for its adversaries' successful pushes to mitigate poverty.

China's recent economic development is the result of unprecedented levels of trade in an unprecedentedly peaceful world. That peace, in turn, is the direct result of U.S. efforts to maintain international stability, through the use or threat of military force.

Re: Google Engineers Refused to Build Security Tool to Win Military Contracts

#272

Post by 086421357909764 »

bradleyjg wrote: post #244
maroonblazer wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, not all times and places. But it's not like you can flip a switch and suddenly have all the technology you need when your quality of life is in imminent danger.

To make it concrete, currently the US spends more than the next ten countries combined on its military and associated projects and has done so since at least the end of the Cold War. It has far and away the most ships, planes, missiles and bombs. While it doesn’t have the most troops the two countries with more troops do not nearly have the same as much training or as good equipment. Presuming the OP is in the US, an…

Everyone seems to forget that the projection of might in of itself is a deterrent leveraged by all nations. Further, the US is part of multi nation programs, such as NATO in which it's the largest supplier of Capital and Manpower by a large margin. Most of the countries external to the US that bring up this argument, are happily accepting Military and in some instances Economic Aide.

You can't look at the % of spending / annual cost of the greatest military power without taking into account it's responsibilities around the globe.

Nothing above says you have to agree or disagree with the military, in fact many of us aren't pro on a lot of their actions, but this common retort as posted above, is selective data analysis, which I would hope the intellectuals of HN would be able to separate emotions from facts.

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/0...

https://www.state.gov/s/l/treaty/collectivedefense/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_aid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_projection

Re: Google Engineers Refused to Build Security Tool to Win Military Contracts

#273

Post by blueatlas »

tonfa wrote: post #208
_ptgt wrote: post #30

These employees are free to exercise their right to (not) work for whomever they want, but the certainty they express (as well as most commenters here) in their own self-righteousness seems misplaced to me. There's certainly a case to be made that a strong US military is in the world's best interest. In fact, I would wager that a majority of Americans (and a majority of citizens of democratic countries across the wor…

> There's certainly a case to be made that a strong US military is in the world's best interest. In fact, I would wager that a majority of Americans (and a majority of citizens of democratic countries across the world) hold the belief expressed in the previous statement. That's probably true for US citizens, but I highly doubt non-US folks share that view (at least from a western European perspective I'd say definite…

I'm genuinely curious - what do you think the world would look like if the US decreased their military capabilities and stopped involvement in any world conflicts or terrorism?

I'm a US citizen and I would like to see the US stop being the worlds police for 5 to 10 years, just to see what the world looks like at the end of that.

Re: Google Engineers Refused to Build Security Tool to Win Military Contracts

#274

Post by sidr »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #236
greyman wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not a US citizen, so for me the US having a strong military isn't necessarily in my best interests, depending on circumstance. Yes, that's exactly the problem. What if in the future, my country and USA will be enemies? It is not very probable, but so wasn't a prospect of war in Ukraine, for example. You just don't know how things will develop, and if a company want's to be global, it shouldn't directly support…

What if in the future your country needs the US military?

What if in the future their country ia attacked by the US military for some bullshit made up claims of WMDs? If you weight the outcomes with their probabilities of occuring, they believe that the US military is a net negative. You just have a different cost function and a different pdf of certain events occuring.

Re: Google Engineers Refused to Build Security Tool to Win Military Contracts

#275

Post by AmericanChopper »

wolfgke wrote: post #259
AmericanChopper wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However bad you think America is, every other super power is much worse. A few years ago Russia literally conquered a neighboring country just because they wanted to. The engineers who object to these programs are very lucky to live in a country that guarantees them the liberty to do so, but at the end of the day that liberty is protected by the US military.

> but at the end of the day that liberty is protected by the US military. I think the citizens in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria etc. are quite happy that their liberty is protected. :-(

Sure, I bet Afghanis sit around at night reminiscing of the good old days under the taliban...

However this is completely irrelevant to the point. The question was why do we need to have a superior military to our adversaries, and the answer is because our adversaries are real, and if we care about our liberty we need to take them seriously. To say otherwise is either laughably naive, or is an outright rejection of liberty. Try refusing to work on military contracts in Russia or China and see what that gets you. In China, your career pretty much has a hard ceiling unless you want to join the communist party.

Re: Google Engineers Refused to Build Security Tool to Win Military Contracts

#276

Post by astura »

bradleyjg wrote: post #244
maroonblazer wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, not all times and places. But it's not like you can flip a switch and suddenly have all the technology you need when your quality of life is in imminent danger.

To make it concrete, currently the US spends more than the next ten countries combined on its military and associated projects and has done so since at least the end of the Cold War. It has far and away the most ships, planes, missiles and bombs. While it doesn’t have the most troops the two countries with more troops do not nearly have the same as much training or as good equipment. Presuming the OP is in the US, an…

All that American military spending bankrolled Silicon Valley.

Now suddenly Silicon Valley thinks it's better than the US military that bore it?

Re: Google Engineers Refused to Build Security Tool to Win Military Contracts

#278

Post by pixl97 »

sshine wrote: post #163
Vinnl wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have personal moral limits and you’re upfront about them Problematic here is that I might not be aware of all my moral limits until I encounter a situation they might be relevant to.

Temet nosce. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_thyself

What do you mean you don't know what you're going to do the first time you confront the Xeazyggus! You should know what to do from birth.

Re: Google Engineers Refused to Build Security Tool to Win Military Contracts

#279

Post by salvar »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #236
greyman wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not a US citizen, so for me the US having a strong military isn't necessarily in my best interests, depending on circumstance. Yes, that's exactly the problem. What if in the future, my country and USA will be enemies? It is not very probable, but so wasn't a prospect of war in Ukraine, for example. You just don't know how things will develop, and if a company want's to be global, it shouldn't directly support…

What if in the future your country needs the US military?

Isn't the point here that there are too many what-ifs to state that a strong US military is good for everyone?

Re: Google Engineers Refused to Build Security Tool to Win Military Contracts

#280

Post by bergoid »

FearOfReprisal wrote: post #156
bergoid wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not too much of a stretch to describe 9/11 as an act of war.

An act of war by whom? Which nation? Osama Bin Laden was trained in the United States by Reagan's authority when he funded/supported the Mujahadeen in a proxy war against Russia. Fast-forward 20 years to 9/11. Osama Bin Laden is funded by his family, and by other rich Saudis, which means the government of Saudi Arabia because all Saudi wealth is owned by the House of Saud. But they're our allies, so instead, we attac…

I fully agree with your assessment of the reaction (or lack thereof, and its reasons) to 9/11 by the GWB administration. It is well supported by the testimony of Richard Clarke [1] and by the investigations of senator Bob Graham [2] [3] so I don't understand why your comment gets flagged.

My point was limited in scope to the 9/11 attack itself. I think terrorism on that scale can be classified as assymetric warfare.

Warfare predates nation states. Today, most of the world is parceled into nation states. But violent non-state actors never ceased to exist. And therefore we shouldn't limit our definition of warfare only to war between nation states.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_A._Clarke#9/11_Commiss...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/10/opinion/bob-graham-releas...

[3] https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Matters-Arabia-Failure-A...

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