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

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

#321

Post by abeppu »

bluegatty wrote: post #313
bigyabai wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lines blurred, IMO. Boycotting the 8086 wouldn't hamstring ICBM development. Boycotting the microwave oven wasn't going to prevent radar complexes from being constructed. Much of the modern pushback seems to come from the new blood companies. Microsoft, Apple, Google, businesses that deliberately blurred the line to obscure which side they stand on. These companies all collude with the US government to some exten…

Microsoft Apple and Google have not blurred any lines, they are not defence contractors in any way. They are very large tech companies which will invariably have some relationship with every industry. Apple had some early contracts in defence, Google's early research grands were National Science Foundation, but that's not defence companies. 'Boeing' blurs the lines definitely - they are 35% defence contractor mostly…

You should read the actual post?

For Microsoft, the first and largest contract mentioned in the table just below the fold on that page is for an IVAS system. Microsoft had been basing this off their HoloLens system but was a distinct product (they weren't just sending over the normal HoloLens and expecting that they were gonna work in the field). This contract was then transitioned to Anduril. But just saying of Microsoft that "they are not defence contractors in any way" is hard to reconcile with the facts of having a large contract to _develop a new product_ for the military ... even if it turned out to never have been used.

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/07/08/...

https://www.army.mil/article/290020/ivas_a_solution_to_a_tri...

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

#322

Post by s1artibartfast »

slg wrote: post #311
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would you define Russia not nuking Ukraine as "strict pacifism"? Nobody reasonable would. Russia started a war of choice. That's the opposite of pacifism. Strict pacifism would be Ukraine refusing to fight after being invaded. Someone saying all war in all circumtances is evil and should not be contributed to, directly or indirectly, is sort of endorsing that view. The folks calling for nuclear disarmament, or no f…

>Nobody reasonable would. Russia started a war of choice. That's the opposite of pacifism. Yes, that was my point. The person I replied to stated a nation taking actions off the table "will inevitably become subservient to a despotic regime". As a response, I pointed to a country that many would call "a despotic regime" who seems to operate with at least some consideration towards the ethics of war even if that is du…

Maybe I'm slow , but how is that relevant to the point? Can you expand? Am I understand is that defense is important because sooner or later someone else may choose aggression.

You might put your life savings on the street in front of your house for a day or two without someone stealing it, but sooner or later someone unscrupulous is likely to come along based on the evidence we have

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

#323

Post by s1artibartfast »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #242
sophacles wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not responding to their actual comment, you're arguing something else. As for "someone else will do it if i don't".... (aka your argument). That's true of a lot of things, and I sleep great at night choosing not to steal from people even though I know others will choose to steal. It turns out I don't have the ability to choose their actions for them, only my own.

> "someone else will do it if i don't".... (aka your argument) That's not the argument. It's more like "if I don't do it then I better hope somebody else will, otherwise my whole country will inevitably become subservient to a despotic regime". Basically, the question is whether strict pacifism is a tenable national policy in the real world. All of modern and ancient history up to this point seems to suggest it is no…

I think the better argument is that Europe has a credible nuclear defense, therefore they don't need conventional military. If Russia starts rolling tanks towards Berlin, drop a nuke outside their international waters and announce the next one will be on Moscow

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

#324

Post by lovich »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #304
lovich wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Israelis can't carpet bomb. They don't have the tech. What? I’m not even responding to the rest if this is how you open up. Carpet bombing is so low tech I can’t imagine a country in the modern age that couldn’t create the technology even if they couldn’t afford actually deploying it. It’s a matter of logistics and having enough bombs. It’s literally just dropping a fuck ton of dumb bombs on an area to “carpet” it,…

> Carpet bombing is so low tech I can’t imagine a country in the modern age that couldn’t create the technology Yeah, it's artillery bombardment by more-modern means. The "modern" bit being planes.

Give me enough guano, charcoal, sulphur, steel, and flint and I can cobble together carpet bombing from my kitchen without ever having to go up the tech tree past a few hundred years ago.

Hell Hamas themselves under heavy sanctions have shown they have the technology, they merely lack the surfeit of resources to implement it.

This isn’t me arguing with you, I’m just flabbergasted that someone could say with a straight face that Israel doesn’t have the technology to carpet bomb.

I want us to decrease or end our alliance with Israel for political reasons related to how their government has interacted with ours(the US) but I am constantly surprised by these people who honestly think that Israel wouldn’t collapse the moment US support ended, like they didn’t fight several existential wars and win previous to our support.

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

#325

Post by [deleted] »

megous wrote: post #265
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[deleted]

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

#326

Post by esalman »

monideas wrote: post #220
esalman wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quotes from the man himself: On Democracy and Freedom: "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible" On Competition: "Competition is for losers" On Technology and Control: "One of the things I like about technology is that when technology is unregulated, you can change the world without getting approval from other people. At its best, it's not subject to democratic control and not subject to the maj…

Just because these ideas are heterodox relative to prevailing norms which makes you uncomfortable, it doesn’t make them immoral ideas. I wouldn’t say these statements even have moral judgments in them either way. For example, this doesn’t even ascribe moral weight to “freedom” or “democracy” just that they are at odds. This is why these types of things are better left to elite minded people who are capable of these t…

If these were mere ideas we wouldn't have a problem. On a given day anyone can come up with worse ideas.

What makes us separate from animals and thrive as a civilization is that majority of us do not act on our intrusive ideas without consequences.

Thiel is an exception because he is acting on thsea ideas, causing harm to real innocent people, without any regard for consequences.

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

#327

Post by justin66 »

abeppu wrote: post #319
justin66 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In retrospect it does seem like in the 1950s-70s the military was willing to fund some stuff that was actually not especially close to applications of killing people. There's no "seem" about it, what you're saying is true, and it was because of changes in federal law. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Mansfield#Mansfield_Amend...

Thanks for pointing that out; I was not aware of it. At the same time, when I helped with research in a cognitive psychology lab in school (much closer to the present than to that law), our PI said our funding came partly from a grant from the US Navy. We worked on Bayesian models of human learning and reasoning -- so "direct or apparent relationship to specific military function" has perhaps at times been interprete…

As a practical matter, I'm not sure the Mansfield amendment affected all agencies equally. My impression is that it affected ARPA (later DARPA) most profoundly. (pretty much everything I've read about this was in the context of ARPA and XEROX Parc so my perception might be a little skewed)

I'd speculate the Navy had perhaps more discretion over how it spent its research funding. For example, they funded polywell fusion research for years.

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

#328

Post by JumpCrisscross »

slg wrote: post #314
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Putin wants to take Ukraine largely intact to control its population and resources, not turn it into an irradiated wasteland Nuking Kyiv, Odessa and Lviv would probably force Ukraine to surrender. > use of WMDs would invite economic sanctions from key neutral trading partners such as India This is the real constraint. There is still the credible threat of being economically isolated by America, Europe, China and In…

>Nuking Kyiv and Lviv would probably force Ukraine to surrender. Or if we want to take nuclear options off the table because Russia values infrastructure, they aren't attacking population centers with bioweapons. >This is the real constraint. There is still the credible threat of being economically isolated by America, Europe, China and India. (Neither China nor India wants the normalisation of nuclear bombardment no…

> if we want to take nuclear options off the table because Russia values infrastructure

Putin doesn't care about infrastructure in Kyiv. He wants the natural gas and resources in the east. A nuked rump Ukraine isn't a threat to his power.

> why would this pressure work for nuclear weapons and not this new military tech?

Because the normalisation of nuclear weapons has global consequences in a way conventional warfare does not. The most problematic aspects of Trump's Iran war for India and China are that it raises oil prices.

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

#329

Post by bluegatty »

abeppu wrote: post #321
bluegatty wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft Apple and Google have not blurred any lines, they are not defence contractors in any way. They are very large tech companies which will invariably have some relationship with every industry. Apple had some early contracts in defence, Google's early research grands were National Science Foundation, but that's not defence companies. 'Boeing' blurs the lines definitely - they are 35% defence contractor mostly…

You should read the actual post? For Microsoft, the first and largest contract mentioned in the table just below the fold on that page is for an IVAS system. Microsoft had been basing this off their HoloLens system but was a distinct product (they weren't just sending over the normal HoloLens and expecting that they were gonna work in the field). This contract was then transitioned to Anduril. But just saying of Micr…

I see what you're trying to say - but MS is not a defence contractor. The amount of business they do selling 'Windows' and 'Azure' to DoD is 100x whatever little tiny bit of co-research they are doing otherwise. It's not relevant to their business, that's just 'a tiny project that happens to cross into some field'.

I understand that technically, it's a project that can be used for defence, but if you say that MS is a 'defence contractor' - then you also have to say:

MS is an 'Investment Bank' - almost 50% of MSFT's Operations are financial. Their financial opts are bigger that most investment banks.

MS is a 'Healthcare Company'

MS is a 'Gaming Company'

MS is an 'Entertainment Company'

MS is XXX, YYY and ZZZ etc.

better: "MS is a Tech Conglomerate that sells Windows (OS), Office, Outlook, Sales and Ops SaaS, and has Bing some other services, with XBox as major subdivision. They have a major financial footprint, and also have research activities in other sectors."

Palantir is partially Defence contractor even if a minority of their business is defence, it's a strategic business line for them, and it's material to their existence.

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

#330

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

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.

"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."

The workers can't even influence things like office setup and floor plans. They certainly can't influence business decision to any meaningful degree.

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