Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

costsofwar.watson.brown.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 405 posts

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

#101

Post by EA-3167 »

leonidasrup wrote: post #49
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.

Microsoft has been participating in PRISM program (SIGAD US-984XN) since 2007. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM There are allegation that Microsoft changed Skype architecture (after buying Skype for $8.5 billion) to make wiretapping easier. " In July last year, nine months after Microsoft bought Skype, the NSA boasted that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through Prism;…

It’s genuinely amusing to see how and why people posture, as though working for MS prior to 2023 was somehow ethical. Your post arguably only scratches the surface too.

I’ve concluded that most people care far more about appealing to the crowd than actually thinking by anything through.

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

#102

Post by ricksunny »

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.

Good on you. I left my post-university defense job after a year and a half. Of all career decisions, that's one I don't regret, and rather the regret I harbor was for joining in the first place (albeit did so under a combination of limited information & naivete).

The 'will not' list in here I Just learned about today, https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/live-not-by-lies it easily maps to the employment situation question.

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

#103

Post by SllX »

afavour wrote: post #46
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?

I think it’s difficult to come up with hard and fast rules. But the fact that the US government (falsely) renamed their Department of Defense to Department of War is perhaps a useful signal.

Defense was always just a euphemism for War. That’s not the signal you think it is.

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

#105

Post by Fraterkes »

monideas wrote: post #60
slowin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to say that I don't think I was brave at all. I actually feel a lot of shame because I knew that Microsoft wasn't compatible with my values when I joined. I didn't know the exact details that came out later, but I took a very high paying job for a company that I thought at best didn't align with my values. I had to live with a growing cognitive dissonance about the choices I made. I also didn't exit tech…

Well there's definitely a global reckoning happening, people are not having children in developed countries due to very serious social ills (every developed country except for Israel of course).

Social ills whose minds are pure machinery! Social ills whose blood is running money! Social ills whose fingers are ten armies!

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

#106

Post by lovich »

pphysch wrote: post #90
stickfigure wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US military power does most of its heavy lifting without throwing bombs. We're seeing the end of Pax Americana and it isn't pretty.

The two major ongoing wars are due to US foreign policy and could be over tomorrow if US government fully stopped supporting their respective belligerents. A good chunk of the human population has never known a "Pax Americana" and regions such as East Asia are clearly better off due to declining American hegemony.

If you’re referring to Ukraine as one of the two, we already heavily reduced our support under Trump and there is no chance in hell that removing the leftover support causes Ukraine to capitulate by tomorrows, especially after recent territory gains and destruction of Russian logistical supply lines with Wildberries and their refinery infrastructure.

Also if the other is Iran, lol at “stopped supporting respective belligerents” as if the US itself was not one of the major belligerents.

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

#107

Post by hi_im_greg_h »

leonidasrup wrote: post #49
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.

Microsoft has been participating in PRISM program (SIGAD US-984XN) since 2007. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM There are allegation that Microsoft changed Skype architecture (after buying Skype for $8.5 billion) to make wiretapping easier. " In July last year, nine months after Microsoft bought Skype, the NSA boasted that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through Prism;…

We should celebrate when people make ethical choices.

Not berate them because they didn't make it sooner.

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

#108

Post by JoshTriplett »

EA-3167 wrote: post #101
leonidasrup wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has been participating in PRISM program (SIGAD US-984XN) since 2007. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM There are allegation that Microsoft changed Skype architecture (after buying Skype for $8.5 billion) to make wiretapping easier. " In July last year, nine months after Microsoft bought Skype, the NSA boasted that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through Prism;…

It’s genuinely amusing to see how and why people posture, as though working for MS prior to 2023 was somehow ethical. Your post arguably only scratches the surface too. I’ve concluded that most people care far more about appealing to the crowd than actually thinking by anything through.

If you shame people for acting now rather than earlier, you discourage them from acting at all.

Sometimes people aren't in a position to be secure enough to act. Sometimes different issues are more effective at resonating enough to break through previously cached unconsidered patterns of thought. Sometimes people don't know all the things that are going on, and act once they've learned about them. Whatever the reason, if your reaction is "took you long enough" rather than "welcome", you discourage people from acting.

Don't punish the behavior you want to see more of.

(Also, OP is not even an instance of what you're decrying; see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49647687 .)

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

#109

Post by antonvs »

monideas wrote: post #98
antonvs wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I…

> 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.

Oh good grief. Hot take of the month right there. All you're doing is demonstrating how uninformed you are on the subject. Can you name anything you've ever read about this?

> [Thiel] displays a lot of humility in his speech and conduct.

You can't be serious. Where in this does the talk of the "Antichrist" fit?

What kind of humility are you talking about? Because if it means intellectual modesty, willingness to acknowledge one's own fallibility, or reluctance to cast one's own political/intellectual beliefs as uniquely farsighted, Thiel's public record is not consist with "displaying a lot of humility."

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

#110

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

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?

Work for defense but elect better leaders. Your leaders decide where and when the military is used.
Post reply on HN