271–280 of 405 posts
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> I really hope the Chinese keep killing everything that gets too big to fail. Be careful what you wish for. What happens when China gets too big to fail?
Perhaps the world gets a new hegemon that isn't going to spend the next century bombing other countries, installing dictatorships and destroying democracies? Doesn't sound too bad!
Taiwan would like a word.
I do think that for those of us who got into tech in the last couple of decades, the history can be rather obscured, but from the Fairchild semiconductor days, the military was a main customer, right? I think there's a real question: would the world be a better place had Fairchild and peers e.g. refused to build ICs for missile systems (including the minuteman), for example? Would the same tech have been developed wi…
That being said, I feel like a lot of the web-based tech, device tech etc came out of the liberal/leftist university environments, i.e. BSD unix, CERN, linux ish type projects. Berkeley/Stanford/MIT etc. So the culture of a lot of people who were rank and file and enthusiastic about this stuff from had this mindset.
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Ukraine seems to be what happens when a country willingly gave up their nukes (with US encouragement). I have no problem if the US navy wants to tool around shipping lanes for the good of global trade. I take issue with everything else. In the past couple of years, the US has implicitly used the strength of its military to threaten the sovereignty of Greenland, Panama, Canada, Mexico, and Cuba. Abducted a foreign hea…
Ukraine was storing nukes but did not have the keys to use them. They were useless to ukraine and presented no deterrent.
But yeah thats only if they wanted to try and spend the money to support a nuclear program. As they sat they were unreliable at best case.
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Because there are defence contractors in every major city.
Oh really you are out here telling us that working on defense is not a unique sin of the software industry?
There isn't a shred of reality to support the notion that software is materially different than any other industry, and 'The Silicon Valley' starts with 'Silicon' - and then went through 'Hardware' - it wasn't software dominated until the 1990s.
I would go so far to say as Software is less involved than hardware.
Defence has almost always been a 'physical' industry and most defence contracts are for gadgets, not software.
Obviously - there's a ton of 'intelligence' going on that is software oriented, but they're generally not massive contracts, but bespoke stuff.
The NSA is not spending $100B on single procurement. They're relatively small.
(FYI - one middle sized defence program is bigger than CIA/FBI/NSA budgets)
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?
Depends if they do evil shit or not. The USA does a lot of evil shit. If you wanted to not be evil, you wouldn't help people to do evil shit.
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?
No need to get serious. Only a sith deals in absolutes. There's plenty of work within the us military that is definitely not evil. Even within the field of weapons development. You could say develop a target selection approach that is less likely to blow up a school halfway across the world than existing approaches. You are literally saving lives working on that project, despite what the people who only see in black…
Then your new target selection approach is used specifically to target a school, and you just made the weapon more accurate.
You dont get to build shit for the military AND determine what its used for.
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Perhaps the world gets a new hegemon that isn't going to spend the next century bombing other countries, installing dictatorships and destroying democracies? Doesn't sound too bad!
> destroying democracies? Taiwan would like a word.
Okay, Taiwan. They are the losing side from the Chinese civil war from over half a century ago and proclaim themselves as the true Chinese government. I'm not saying China has the right to crush them, but the tension is at least understandable.
A comparison with the democracies and lives destroyed by US FP is ridiculous. If Taiwan would like a word with China, well, half the world would like a word with the US.
I do think that for those of us who got into tech in the last couple of decades, the history can be rather obscured, but from the Fairchild semiconductor days, the military was a main customer, right? I think there's a real question: would the world be a better place had Fairchild and peers e.g. refused to build ICs for missile systems (including the minuteman), for example? Would the same tech have been developed wi…
Good point, but there's a very big difference between dual use tech that gets it's start in the military, vs building weapons systems. Silicon, GPS, the Internet, nuclear power, most of rocketry and space etc., I think most would believe was worthwhile. Building cruise missiles, or 'Civilian Monitoring Tech' - that's a different question. I don't think that DARPA, the internet, or NASA etc. count as 'Military Industr…
But of course the space race proceeded from work on missiles. ICMBs are rockets that go high and fast and then happen to complete less than one full orbit.
And my understanding is that early ICs were for missiles because it was acceptable for the ICs to be very expensive in exchange for them being very light and small. Only a context that was optimizing for a tiny package (b/c extra weight also required more fuel) and was relatively cost insensitive would justify them at first. The point is building weapons sometimes _does_ turn into tech that can be used more generally. Does that justify the risk?
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And they can redirect resources to the war if we removed it. If anything, removal of our support probably leads to the use of dumber less targeted weapons like carpet bombing or good ole white phosphorus that they’ve already demonstrated use of in past conflicts. If we were giving them 30+% of their gdp then yea, dropping that probably stops the conflict. 2% is just a budget reshuffle.
you should look up how much the 2008 financial crisis shrank the US GDP. 2% of an entire nation state's GDP especially with aid concentrated in gov\mil sectors of which a huge part of Israel's private sector is dependent on for grants is not a 'budget reshuffle'
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> You might make less money, but you'll almost certainly sleep easier Idk, there's something unethical in outsourcing ethical grey areas to other people while reaping the benefits of the peace (or war far from your home) it brings. Predatory monsters exist. A wealthy society that demilitarizes learns the lesson Europe is now. (If Ukraine didn't have a domestic defence industry, it wouldn't have been able to fight the…
Dunno where the idea that defence or defensive weapons are somehow morally better comes from. It really depends on who's using them and what they're used to defend.
As a category, I think it's safe to say that defensive weapons tend to be more morally defensible than purely-offensive ones. Of course the circumstances matter. But that doesn't mean we can't make generalisations.