Silicon Valley is transforming the military-industrial complex? (2024) • Hacker News Board

Re: Silicon Valley is transforming the military-industrial complex? (2024)

#71

Post by monideas » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 6:25 PM UTC

PorciiVorbesc wrote: post #66

monideas wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's good you just left on your own accord, basically you fired yourself rather than wasting their time having to do it. There's an interesting dynamic with this in that the Chinese and Indian (and other foreign born/first gen immigrant) workers at big tech companies don't care about these things at all. There are some very intense ideological dynamics within big tech companies among the employee base but I alwa…

>There's an interesting dynamic with this in that the Chinese and Indian (and other foreign born/first gen immigrant) workers at big tech companies don't care about these things at all. Why do you think the elite business owning class wants to replace you with desperate and malleable foreign workers from countries where morals and human rights are suggestions at best? The other thing is, you built your nest egg takin…

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Re: Silicon Valley is transforming the military-industrial complex? (2024)

#72

Post by generuso » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 6:26 PM UTC

bpodgursky wrote: post #3

I mean... the market was handed to the prime defense contractors on a silver platter for decades, and they utterly failed to deliver cost-effective or even working solutions. It's not some 4d chess play by VCs, they just finally realized the market was dominated by the most disruptable enterprises on earth. Good riddance.

It was not just the VCs. There were also influential people in Pentagon who saw the inefficiency of the prime defense contractors, especially after having seen what SpaceX was able to do.

One of the consequences of this was the meteoric rise of the young Will Roper [1], who in a span of a few years went from a theoretical physicist to being in charge of the Air Force procurement program, and then tried to facilitate the access of startups to defense contracts, through AFWERX and "Defense Pitch Days".

Whether this worked or not is debatable, but the itch to change things was there. One example of a startup which was an early beneficiary of this top-down attention is Ursa Major [2], a rocket engine company. Unless one looks at them in the context of these military programs, their existence would seem quite puzzling.

[1] https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Biographies/Display/article/1467...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE1HZAPPSrE

Re: Silicon Valley is transforming the military-industrial complex? (2024)

#73

Post by PorciiVorbesc » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 6:28 PM UTC

monideas wrote: post #71

PorciiVorbesc wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's an interesting dynamic with this in that the Chinese and Indian (and other foreign born/first gen immigrant) workers at big tech companies don't care about these things at all. Why do you think the elite business owning class wants to replace you with desperate and malleable foreign workers from countries where morals and human rights are suggestions at best? The other thing is, you built your nest egg takin…

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>Because they're intelligent, work hard and have strong family ties.

So when imported workers are having strong conservative values prioritizing their family over progressive values = good, but when western locals are having strong conservative values prioritizing their family over progressive values = bad?

>But these things dissipate within a few generations of living in the US

Have you heard of the amish? Or the ultra orthodox jews? Or other such groups with strong conservative values. You underestimate the stubbornness of certain cultures to adopt american/western progressive liberal values. They can stay conservative longer than you can stay alive.

And also, given their significantly higher birth rates of their culture and religion, they'll also be able to outvote liberals who have catastrophically low birth rates, within a few generations. What do you think happens then with liberals and their values in a democracy?

>hence the need for more and more foreign workers.

Even when the locals are struggling to find jobs?

Re: Silicon Valley is transforming the military-industrial complex? (2024)

#74

Post by t-writescode » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 6:29 PM UTC

sadnvkse wrote: post #67

slowin wrote: post #8

It's up to us, as tech workers to push back against this. I quit my job at Microsoft due to their complicity with Israeli war crimes and oppression (and certainly the US government was involved too). It's tough to leave a high paying job, but I feel good about it every single day. We don't have to be cogs in the MIC machine and we don't have to build systems that terrorize people.

At the risk of being downvoted to oblivion. Threads like this always have lots of people agreeing to people quitting the jobs, not even ones that are directly working on that but even ones just associated with the company at hand. This is an honest question, how do you decide what is Ok? A job with a company that was involved in this is not Ok, fair enough. What about working with a company that does business with Mi…

I think you answered it. Everyone has their own moral compass and act accordingly.

The concept of “No Ethical Consumption Under Capitalism” and the moral framing of later seasons of The Good Place give good representations of how.

Ultimately each person makes a mark of what they can and cannot care about, and caring about literally everything is a fast-track to total impotence.

Some situations are (relatively) easy:

  * Harry Potter is a relatively isolated (though formative for many)
    franchise.

Some situations are way harder.

  * Nestle creates a HUGE amount of the food we eat.
  * Amazon powers half the internet
  * Microsoft is the backbone of a huge number of corporate sites.
    Excel makes the world go round.

Unfortunately, this is all up to you, and there are individual scales of “harm to the world by participating” vs “harm to you by abstaining” you have to personally weigh. There is no global answer.

Re: Silicon Valley is transforming the military-industrial complex? (2024)

#75

Post by JohnMakin » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 6:29 PM UTC

nater5000 wrote: post #69

slowin wrote: post #8

It's up to us, as tech workers to push back against this. I quit my job at Microsoft due to their complicity with Israeli war crimes and oppression (and certainly the US government was involved too). It's tough to leave a high paying job, but I feel good about it every single day. We don't have to be cogs in the MIC machine and we don't have to build systems that terrorize people.

You know, if enough tech workers at Microsoft felt strongly about these ethical issues, they could influence Microsoft's decisions internally which is probably the most effective position to be in to do so. But all well, glad you can feel good about yourself by leaving so that someone with less concern about these ethical issues can fill the void and assert their own influence on the company instead.

Have you ever worked at a large company? This is simply not how things are done. Speaking up about something like this is almost a guaranteed fast track to getting laid off in the next round of reduction in force, and if you do somehow have the pull individually or collectively to make a meaningful difference here, coordinating all those levers in a way that satisfies the board/shareholders and effects meaningful change is pretty much an impossibility. And we're dealing with nation states who are going to have their own levers to push (and internally too). For an individual contributor or hell, someone who's not on the board/C suite, quitting and letting management know they're losing talent because of their stance on certain issues is probably the most effective thing someone can do in that spot.

Following your line of thinking, why don't you join microsoft and effect such change? I guess it's easier to leave a moralizing snarky comment and feel good about yourself.

Re: Silicon Valley is transforming the military-industrial complex? (2024)

#76

Post by slowin » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 6:32 PM UTC

sadnvkse wrote: post #67

slowin wrote: post #8

It's up to us, as tech workers to push back against this. I quit my job at Microsoft due to their complicity with Israeli war crimes and oppression (and certainly the US government was involved too). It's tough to leave a high paying job, but I feel good about it every single day. We don't have to be cogs in the MIC machine and we don't have to build systems that terrorize people.

At the risk of being downvoted to oblivion. Threads like this always have lots of people agreeing to people quitting the jobs, not even ones that are directly working on that but even ones just associated with the company at hand. This is an honest question, how do you decide what is Ok? A job with a company that was involved in this is not Ok, fair enough. What about working with a company that does business with Mi…

I agree that these are good questions to be asking and I asked myself many of them. It's a slippery slope imho, and it's easy to convince yourself that what you're doing is ok. At the end of the day, I was getting physically sick and I felt terrible about myself. I mentioned it up thread, I don't think I was brave, I was just forced to confront reality through increasingly difficult to dismiss cognitive dissonance.

Re: Silicon Valley is transforming the military-industrial complex? (2024)

#77

Post by 1234letshaveatw » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 6:34 PM UTC

tessierashpool wrote: post #43

1234letshaveatw wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TIL an intelligence agency spying on a foreign adversary is human rights abuse. I would be super upset if my country of residence did the same to a neighbor sending rockets my way, would make me sick to my stomach

take these theatrics somewhere else, please. you're changing the topic and you're not arguing in good faith.

Incorrect on both counts

Re: Silicon Valley is transforming the military-industrial complex? (2024)

#78

Post by antonvs » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 6:35 PM UTC

monideas wrote: post #54

slowin wrote: post #8

It's up to us, as tech workers to push back against this. I quit my job at Microsoft due to their complicity with Israeli war crimes and oppression (and certainly the US government was involved too). It's tough to leave a high paying job, but I feel good about it every single day. We don't have to be cogs in the MIC machine and we don't have to build systems that terrorize people.

Well it's good you just left on your own accord, basically you fired yourself rather than wasting their time having to do it. There's an interesting dynamic with this in that the Chinese and Indian (and other foreign born/first gen immigrant) workers at big tech companies don't care about these things at all. There are some very intense ideological dynamics within big tech companies among the employee base but I alwa…

> the foreign born employees did not care at all, they were just there to work.

There's survivor bias in that observation. There are plenty of "foreign born employees" who choose not to work for companies that explicitly violate their values by choice. (I phrase it that way because of the whole "no ethical consumption under capitalism" issue.) I know because I'm one, and I have friends with the same mindset.

Re: Silicon Valley is transforming the military-industrial complex? (2024)

#79

Post by monideas » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 6:35 PM UTC

PorciiVorbesc wrote: post #73

monideas wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

>Because they're intelligent, work hard and have strong family ties. So when imported workers are having strong conservative values prioritizing their family over progressive values = good, but when western locals are having strong conservative values prioritizing their family over progressive values = bad? >But these things dissipate within a few generations of living in the US Have you heard of the amish? Or the ul…

The elites in the West don't actually have an understanding of what they're doing. If your point is that it would be better if they promoted traditional values and invested in the native population, yes it would be, but that requires a whole metaphysical framework which elites in the West don't have.

> Have you heard of the amish? Or the ultra orthodox jews?

Yes and Western elites do not think like the Amish or like Orthodox Jews, they do not spend their time studying the Bible or care about that at all (they don't even study the Western classics).

> Even when the locals are struggling to find jobs?

They don't care about this, again this requires a whole metaphysical framework, at most they care about their own families and you'd probably be surprised at how dysfunctional these people are in their own private lives

Re: Silicon Valley is transforming the military-industrial complex? (2024)

#80

Post by righthand » Thu, Sep 10, 2026, 6:36 PM UTC

slowin wrote: post #8

It's up to us, as tech workers to push back against this. I quit my job at Microsoft due to their complicity with Israeli war crimes and oppression (and certainly the US government was involved too). It's tough to leave a high paying job, but I feel good about it every single day. We don't have to be cogs in the MIC machine and we don't have to build systems that terrorize people.

You’re doing the right thing! Glad to see this kind of action.