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Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage–employees “outraged”

arstechnica.com

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Re: Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage–employees “outraged”

#21

Post by hashkb »

whatshisface wrote: post #10
peterwwillis wrote: post #8

I think this is a good example of how their old ethos of "Do no evil" was a narrow-minded fantasy by privileged white people who never had to face the world they were born into. Sitting in your expensive apartment (raising rents so that the former neighbors can no longer afford to live here), sipping your Starbucks (a global commodity dependent on trade deals to somewhat stabilize paying farmers around the world abou…

Your argument is basically an encouragement to participate in the tradgedy of the commons. Just because other people are already doing evil doesn't give you an excuse to do more! None of the things you listed are fundamentally evil, they're just arenas in which the specific bad ethics of other individuals can play out. Other similar arenas include everything else in life. Is that a license to join in? No, it's all th…

> Just because other people are already doing evil doesn't give you an excuse to do more!

The excuse is that you're at a disadvantages if you don't. In a world of 99% cheaters, the 1% who follow the rules and suffer are acting irrationally.

Re: Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage–employees “outraged”

#22

Post by riku_iki »

dragonwriter wrote: post #15
riku_iki wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wars always have casualties. Technology helps to reduce them. In WW2 it was normal to wipe whole cities using bombs.

> Wars always have casualties. Technology helps to reduce them. In WW2 it was normal to wipe whole cities using bombs. Large scale aerial bombardment of cities in WWII was enabled by advances in technology in the period shortly before that period, so it's really not a good thing to bring up to support a blanket “technology helps reduce them” claim about casualties.

Still I believe it is hard to ignore improvements in modern weapons precision.

Re: Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage–employees “outraged”

#23

Post by IntronExon »

riku_iki wrote: post #22
dragonwriter wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wars always have casualties. Technology helps to reduce them. In WW2 it was normal to wipe whole cities using bombs. Large scale aerial bombardment of cities in WWII was enabled by advances in technology in the period shortly before that period, so it's really not a good thing to bring up to support a blanket “technology helps reduce them” claim about casualties.

Still I believe it is hard to ignore improvements in modern weapons precision.

Oh for sure, you can get much more bang for your buck out of a swarm of MIRV’ed ICBMs carrying megatons of hydrogen bombs than bayonets and muskets. I mean, just try ignoring intersecting blast waves and thermal pulses! And chlorine gas? Pffft, piss on your socks and you can breathe through them but try that shit with VX!

Get it?

Re: Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage–employees “outraged”

#24

Post by riku_iki »

MertsA wrote: post #12
riku_iki wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wars always have casualties. Technology helps to reduce them. In WW2 it was normal to wipe whole cities using bombs.

In fairness, can you name a time in WW2 where the US government intentionally killed US citizens without regard to due process? There is supposed to be a strict separation of never using the military against the citizens of the united states. We have the national guard for a reason. Capturing those targets wasn't an objective, the government wanted them dead and it didn't afford any of those American citizens the rig…

> where the US government intentionally killed US citizens without regard to due process?

alleged criminals are killed on the streets almost every day. From legal standpoint, what is difference between them and terrorists in your opinion?

Re: Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage–employees “outraged”

#25

Post by dragonwriter »

MertsA wrote: post #12
riku_iki wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wars always have casualties. Technology helps to reduce them. In WW2 it was normal to wipe whole cities using bombs.

In fairness, can you name a time in WW2 where the US government intentionally killed US citizens without regard to due process? There is supposed to be a strict separation of never using the military against the citizens of the united states. We have the national guard for a reason. Capturing those targets wasn't an objective, the government wanted them dead and it didn't afford any of those American citizens the rig…

> In fairness, can you name a time in WW2 where the US government intentionally killed US citizens without regard to due process?

Not off the top of my head, but the Supreme Court decision in Ex Parte Quirin, From WWII, makes entirely clear that enemy combatants who are US citizens are not entitled to special treatment as compared to enemy combatants who are not citizens.

> There is supposed to be a strict separation of never using the military against the citizens of the united states

There is no legal or historical basis for this claim; in fact, the Constitution explicitly envisions the use of military force to suppress insurrection, which is ordinarily carried out by civilians; it is clearly intended that the government not act extrajudicially against persons (not just civilians) within the jurisdiction of the US when access to the civilians justice system is available, but enemy combatants, regardless of citizenship, at least when outside the practical reach of the US civilian justice system, don't seem to have any protection from the application of military power at any time in history.

Most of the people targeted, individually or generally, by the US military in the Civil War were US citizens, for instance.

Re: Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage–employees “outraged”

#26

Post by riku_iki »

IntronExon wrote: post #23
riku_iki wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still I believe it is hard to ignore improvements in modern weapons precision.

Oh for sure, you can get much more bang for your buck out of a swarm of MIRV’ed ICBMs carrying megatons of hydrogen bombs than bayonets and muskets. I mean, just try ignoring intersecting blast waves and thermal pulses! And chlorine gas? Pffft, piss on your socks and you can breathe through them but try that shit with VX! Get it?

because superpowers have ICBMs, we don't see large scale wars with 10s millions of casualties for 70 years.

Re: Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage–employees “outraged”

#27

Post by oldcynic »

riku_iki wrote: post #4
IntronExon wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/world/asia/drone-strikes-... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone... Whatever you think of civilian deaths, don’t forget that we assasinated 6 US citizens without a trial. Freedoms my ass. What about the freedom of people attending a wedding or receiving medical treatment not to be killed? If this was another country doing the same to the US, would your non-a…

Wars always have casualties. Technology helps to reduce them. In WW2 it was normal to wipe whole cities using bombs.

Technology progresses fastest during wartime.

Without WW2 and Enigma, who knows when, or even if, computers might have developed? 20 years later, 40?

Technology of the airplane went from the first 200kts monoplanes, through to the hard limits of propeller aviation, and the birth of jets and rocketry by the end of the war.

Without the development of tacho bomb sights (eg Norden and Mk XIV), mass bombing would not have been worthwhile, as it was too inaccurate. They would lead to inertial guidance systems, enabling the ICBM.

Technology was the enabler of most of those deaths.

Re: Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage–employees “outraged”

#28

Post by anigbrowl »

MertsA wrote: post #12
riku_iki wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wars always have casualties. Technology helps to reduce them. In WW2 it was normal to wipe whole cities using bombs.

In fairness, can you name a time in WW2 where the US government intentionally killed US citizens without regard to due process? There is supposed to be a strict separation of never using the military against the citizens of the united states. We have the national guard for a reason. Capturing those targets wasn't an objective, the government wanted them dead and it didn't afford any of those American citizens the rig…

There is supposed to be a strict separation of never using the military against the citizens of the united states.

Due process and judicial process in a courtroom are not the same thing. Your citizenship isn't a bubble you carry around with you that gives you enhanced protection from your government under all circumstances; if you choose to put yourself in a kinetic theater of operations then it doesn't act as a bullet proof vest.

In the case of Al-Awlaki, his due process was people in the executive branch (specifically the National Security Council) looking at the fact that he was running around on battlefields with people the US was fighting with, and deciding that he'd chosen to become an enemy combatant. You can certainly critique the general conduct of war by states, and whether the US should be engaged in asymmetric wars in general or in that theater in particular, but I am no more or less exercised about al-Awlaki's death than I am about any of his Yemeni/Al Qaeda associates that were blown up at the same time.

Put another way, if you were OK with them being killed, then you should be OK with him being killed because he chose to affiliate with them. If you're not OK with it, then I'd say the problem is the War on Terror as a whole, since it effectively functions as a blank check to target any group that can be designated as a military threat.

Re: Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage–employees “outraged”

#29

Post by anigbrowl »

IntronExon wrote: post #18
lotu wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese internment camps? I’m sure at that scale people died that would not have. Next given the scale of wwii I’m sure there were us citizens fighting for the axis powers. The main difference is we lacked the ability to track, research, and target individuals like we do today.

While those camps were morally reprehensible and constitutionally indefensible, the goal was not to kill people. Can we at least agree that the whole , “A secret court has ordered your death from the sky,” thing is a lot more purposefully murderous? Not capture, not detain, just kill.

Well that's the whole problem with the War on Terror, isn't it - the designation of who's an enemy is rather unilateral.

Re: Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage–employees “outraged”

#30

Post by IntronExon »

riku_iki wrote: post #26
IntronExon wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh for sure, you can get much more bang for your buck out of a swarm of MIRV’ed ICBMs carrying megatons of hydrogen bombs than bayonets and muskets. I mean, just try ignoring intersecting blast waves and thermal pulses! And chlorine gas? Pffft, piss on your socks and you can breathe through them but try that shit with VX! Get it?

because superpowers have ICBMs, we don't see large scale wars with 10s millions of casualties for 70 years.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-mil...

That’s tens of millions, and I’m being generous in ignoring how you’ve moved the goalposts. Your thesis is simply unsupportable, sorry.

Besides, we don’t know what the future holds, but in terms of raw possibilities we can now end all human life on Earth thanks to technology. That’s also new in the last 70 years. Hopefully we’ll never do it, but we could. Thst also flies in the face of the “technology reduces casualties” business. Of course, so does all of human history for thousands of years, but hey, let’s keep it simple.

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