This is reflection of corruption in the system that you cannot escape. No one is calling out Trump on his corruption, illegal use of powers and pathetic behavior, killing of people and setting up world war 3. And we call out others. We need to stay strong. If it comes to world war 3, we all lose.
Where things stand with the Department of War
331–340 of 862 posts
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#332I don’t feel that old, but I guess being 45 is ancient in tech. The Silicon Valley tech jobs we have now has a history rooted in World War 2 and funding of it by the US gov. https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo?si=gGza5eIv485xEKLS I’m not saying war is good or anything, but also don't ride a high horse cause none of it would be here w/o WW2.
But a civilian should have the right to participate in defense and not offense without fear of retribution or being humiliated. They are not the only game in town. All the DOW had to do was drop them, pick Openai and support the latter including recommending it to all the nations that listen to the president. That would be good for Openai business.
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#333Could they please start using the correct name? Department of Defense?
Department of War is correct.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/rest...
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
I do not think that anyone but the US and Israel have assassinated leaders in the last 30 years. I also question their autonomous drone advancement. Russia and China did not have the means to help Venezuela and they do not have the means to help Iran.
>"Russia and China did not have the means to help Venezuela" Of course they have the means. Nothing technical prohibits them from blowing couple of carriers. But the price they would have to pay is way too high.
Did you mean Venezuela or Iran?
Because there are actual technical impediments why neither China nor the Russians could have blown a US carrier in the Caribbean.
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#335Around 10 years ago, in college, in Calculus class I had a very ambitious classmate, wanted to go to DARPA and work on Robotics. I asked if he was thinking it through solely from technical perspective or considering ethics side as well. Clearly, he didn't understand the question and I directly inquired - what if the code you write or autonomous machine you contribute to used for killing? His response - that's not my…
The one industry that people dislike that I haven’t been in is war. I hope to be in weapons one day. The ethics are pretty straightforward to me: kill as few as possible to protect your interests; and that may be many people; but it is not really that many people.
Anyway, I won’t guess at your friend’s motivation but if you gave me the ability to make America’s industry better at prosecuting war you’d better believe I’d do it with great enthusiasm.
Besides I’ve been around long enough to know that when the rubber hits the road the ethical people will find their way rapidly to the Paradox of Tolerance and suddenly find that violence is highly desirable. I find this kind of high variance behaviour is undesirable and leads to unhappiness all around.
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#336It is incredible how far the overton window has moved on this issue. When I graduated in 2007, it was common for tech companies to refuse to let their systems be used for war, and it was an ordinary thing when some of my graduating classmates refused to work at companies that did let their systems be used for war. Those refusals were on moral grounds. Now Anthropic wants to have two narrow exceptions, on pragmatic an…
It's certainly entertaining to read about ancient industry history, with people on DARPA grants objecting to military interest in the stuff the military was paying them to do.
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are waiting until undergraduate level to take ethics, it's far too late to matter anyways. Doubly so for "business ethics" classes which became à la mode in the post-Enron era. They attempt to teach fundamental ethics, when at most it should be a very thin layer on top of a well founded internal moral framework and well-accepted ethical standards inculcated from day 1 of kindergarten. Morals are taught 0-9 [0]…
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> The idea of teaching some sort of “secular” ethics has never made sense to me …
Secular just means you discuss more than one viewpoint. The idea of teaching morality from only one perspective never made sense to me. You won't even get that limited viewpoint in Seminary school, even though it'll certainly be far more biased
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
Doesn’t this just lower the bar on going to war? Putting real lives on the line makes war a costly last resort.
> Putting real lives on the line makes war a costly last resort. Be grateful that you live in a culture that feels this way, and protect that culture. Not all cultures share this value.
True, but this doesn't in any way undermine the point that making war easier is not a good thing. It should be a costly decision, lest leaders of even those cultures find it too appealing.
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#339DoD still has not meaningfully moved to the DoW moniker, to me it represents the most fascist tendency, to make announcements and presume that’s enough to change the truth on the ground. The legal entity one contracts with is DoD. Going along with “DoW” is signal to me that a party has capitulated to the most absurd form of governance.
And the legal entity of Google is Google LLC yet most people don't use that name when talking about Google.
Re: Where things stand with the Department of War
#340Earlier quoted context omitted.
Safe for the aggressors, I mean. If war is easy and cheap for us to wage, we will do more of it, and likely make the world a worse place.
Your post reads as if you would rather those aggressors who threaten America to not be disposed of. How is the world a better place with the aggressors than without?
None of the recently attacked countries posed an imminent threat to the US.
In what kind of deranged world are we living that people are fighting against the notion that waging war on another country should be a costly decision!?
My, the Overton window has indeed shifted far.