371–380 of 405 posts
There is a world in which weapons are not needed. It’s just not a world that exists where there are humans. I for one want my country to have the best weapons that kill the most enemy combatants in the most efficient way with the fewer non combatant casualties and with the less collateral damage. For a world without weapons, I usually go to the fantasy isle of the bookstore.
No it isn't. What's transforming the military-industrial complex are the wars in Ukraine and Iran which have shown that cheap drones can totally defeat a much larger and more advanced military force. The road we've taken where we make air-defense missiles costing $5 million a piece which we'd run out of in a shooting war within two weeks is just untenable. The military-industrial complex with its overpriced toys is a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Defense was always just a euphemism for War. That’s not the signal you think it is. No, it was not. Tom Nichols, professor emiritus of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College: > It is almost impossible to overstate the inanity of this move. The United States has a Department of Defense for a reason. It was called the “War” Department until 1947, when the dictates of a new and more dangerous world re…
I answered in response to a different comment about the level of patience I have with men that think changing one word in the title of the bureaucracy in charge of war somehow meaningfully changes the reality or meaning of war (spoiler: none). I wanted to address this though: > The Department of War had a different function for a different geopolitical outlook that no longer matched reality in the post-WW2 world. The…
Except it wasn't just a change in the name in the department: the Department of War actually became the Department of the Army, the DoNavy was merged with, the Air Force was split off from being with-in the Army (USAAF -> USAF), creation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and CIA, etc:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Act_of_1947
> But whether a war was actually offensive or defensive still came down to what story we wanted to tell ourselves at the end of the day.
And sometimes a war does not happen because someone has a big enough stick that other people don't want to risk it being used on them. It's not like the 'other side' was passively sitting around:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_empire
There needed to be various measures done (on a spectrum from more to less 'active') to keep things in check:
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…
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…
> Serious question: should companies not participate in contracts from their country's defense department?
I contend that unless you want your government to be toppled by a foreign invader, companies contributing to your nation's military capabilities is something you should generally be in favor of.
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.
A few days ago I recall you taking the position that Israel should not exist and that anyone who disagree is a Zionist (correct definition) that you would not associate with. The implication of your idea is what? The desire for a destruction of a state of 10 million people and another exhile of the Jews? That's the stance you deem moral - or am inferring unfairly (I hope I am actually) If I am following correctly - y…
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…
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…
Teaching individuals quickly and at scale is a core necessity for militaries. Whether not or it gets used, the US Army usually has access to whatever is near the edge there (as in some unit or officer somewhere was promoting the method, and had the sign offs necessary to disseminate it, but culturally it was not fully put in place).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about if Russia starts sending troops to "protect" the ethnic Russian population in Latvia? Would the USA, UK, and/or France really threaten to nuke Moscow and start WW3 in that scenario? It's better to have a credible conventional deterrent and a range of possible responses instead of betting everything on an all-or-nothing nuclear response.
I dont think they would, but think it would work if they did
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…
Even before Fairchild Semiconductor was founded, much of the original SF Bay Area tech industry started during and after WWII to develop radar and electronic warfare systems for the military.