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

costsofwar.watson.brown.edu

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

#91

Post by antonvs »

monideas wrote: post #83
antonvs wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They put their energy into their families instead of trying to derive meaning from political activism. It's useful that psychopaths always tell on themselves like this.

Putting energy into your family is generally the opposite of psychopathy, it's actually a good thing to do. On the other hand you can actually find a lot of psychopaths who find their outlet in political activism "The Dark Triad traits predict authoritarian political correctness and alt-right attitudes" https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7369609/

The psychopathic tell is dismissing political activism as "trying to derive meaning." It's right up there with the idea that moral or ethical claims are "performative".

These kinds of claims generally come from people who don't feel any moral or ethical impulses. These people are most commonly malignant narcissists and psychopaths. A great example is Elon Musk who described empathy as a "bug".

Morality is a fundamental feature for most humans. The people who make the kinds of claims above constitute a small, single digit percentage of the population. They tend to have an outsize influence though, because they exploit the trust of others to rise to positions of power, where their lack of compunction can be an advantage.

People like Trump, Musk, and Thiel are canonical examples of this. Eventually, when their actions make things bad enough for everyone else, people tend to take action. We may be approaching a time like that. You acknowledged this yourself in earlier comments.

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

#92

Post by umeshunni »

chanakya wrote: post #22

Serious question: should companies not participate in contracts from their country's defense department? Or is the argument that it's only US companies which shouldn't, because the US is uniquely evil?

There's a class of people in the West who have forgotten that wars happen and that defense is necessary. American especially benefit from two oceans separating them from the rest of the world and having never seen a war except on CNN.

Some of them, esp in central/eastern Europe, were rudely woken up in 2022 when Russian tanks rolle into a neighboring country. Others still have their heads buried in the sand and will not wake up even when Chinese robots march in Taipei in a few years.

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

#93

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, maybe they will be more efficient than the usual defense contractors whose main goal is to charge as many hours as possible. Similar to SpaceX who have accelerated innovation while also lowering prices for launches.

On the other hand, it looks like Silicon Valley has run out of ideas for consumer stuff and are now looking to merge with the government to extract tax dollars while building the perfect surveillance state.

The way it looks right now, we are probably more going in the direction of Silicon Valley becoming a part the military industrial complex while also providing plenty of money making opportunities for people who are connected to Washington DC.

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

#94

Post by cyanydeez »

sippingabonedry wrote: post #89
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.

On the contrary, you will do exactly as you're told if you expect to cash those sweet MSFT paychecks, which I assume you did prior to this epiphany, otherwise you would have returned all the money. Has this level of obtuseness infected the software industry because this is not the first time I've heard this; usually someone will take a job at a missile factory then later realize "Wait, we build war machines AND sell…

I bet your opinion of effective altruism is essentially the same as mine: the idea that you can do the worst things in the world to make enough money to solve all the worlds problems is a delusions on par with "prosperity gospel". Humans are just excellent as crafting a philosophy that suits what they've already chosen to do.

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

#95

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

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.

The question is whether SV will do better than the prime contractors or just become another one.

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

#96

Post by reverius42 »

JohnMakin wrote: post #75
nater5000 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cha…

There's a solution to this problem, and that solution is workers unionizing.

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

#97

Post by foobiekr »

Benjammer wrote: post #29
davidw wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like tech has lost its way recently. It's a huge, huge field, so there have always been people working on 'bad' things, but IDK, I just don't have the same feeling of optimism about things that I used to and I wish there was some kind of movement bringing that back.

Recently? Blind (teamblind.com) culture has been taking over tech for like a decade at this point.

Blind culture is really just asian cultural values in aggregate form.

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

#98

Post by monideas »

antonvs wrote: post #91
monideas wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting energy into your family is generally the opposite of psychopathy, it's actually a good thing to do. On the other hand you can actually find a lot of psychopaths who find their outlet in political activism "The Dark Triad traits predict authoritarian political correctness and alt-right attitudes" https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7369609/

The psychopathic tell is dismissing political activism as "trying to derive meaning." It's right up there with the idea that moral or ethical claims are "performative". These kinds of claims generally come from people who don't feel any moral or ethical impulses. These people are most commonly malignant narcissists and psychopaths. A great example is Elon Musk who described empathy as a "bug". Morality is a fundament…

Most of what people call morality is just their own feelings or interest or some attempt to protect their ego, it's basically just an expression of narcissism.

The cultivation of a sense of actual morality requires a lot of study and humility and quieting your own feelings and ego. This is very difficult and most people can't do it, ideally in a healthy society the elites you have are people who can and do do this.

Ironically Thiel in particular is precisely one of these people. He's very thoughtful and well read and displays a lot of humility in his speech and conduct.

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

#99

Post by cyanydeez »

tombert wrote: post #62
georgeburdell wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you support the status quo of millions of H1Bs? Those people I doubt can or will take such a principled stance, making collective action by tech workers impossible.

Wouldn't this be an argument for people who can take principled stances to do so?

that they'll be replaced by H1Bs?

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

#100

Post by dietr1ch »

georgeburdell wrote: post #51
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.

Do you support the status quo of millions of H1Bs? Those people I doubt can or will take such a principled stance, making collective action by tech workers impossible.

You can comfortably go back to your home country. It might feel that you wasted your time in the US, but it was hard to foresee Trump ruining the US so fast and there's little to do about it as an immigrant.
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