Where things stand with the Department of War • Hacker News Board

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#671

Post by davedx » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 2:21 PM UTC

jmward01 wrote: post #144

randerson wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypothetically if we had a choice between sending in humans to war or sending in fully autonomous drones that make decisions on par with humans, the moral choice might well be the drones - because it doesn't put our service members at risk. Obviously anyone who has used LLMs know they are not on par with humans. There also needs to be an accountability framework for when software makes the wrong decision. Who gets fi…

War is not moral. It may be necessary, but it is never moral. The only best choice is to fight at every turn making war easy. Our adversaries will, or likely already have, gone the autonomous route. We should be doing everything we can to put major blockers on this similar to efforts to block chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The logical end of autonomous targeting and weapons is near instant mass killing dec…

When is war necessary, at the limit?

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#672

Post by davedx » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 2:21 PM UTC

dotancohen wrote: post #616

adrian_b wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem in modern wars is that those who start them claim that they do this for survival, but the claim is not based on any real action of the adversary or on any evidence that the adversary is dangerous, but on beliefs that the adversary might want to endanger the survival of the attacker some time in an indefinite future, and perhaps might even be able to do that. Nobody who starts a war today acknowledges that…

[flagged]

> They have both an active nuclear program and a means to deliver a nuclear weapon.

No, they do not

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#673

Post by zelphirkalt » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 2:23 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #40

hglaser wrote: post #18

It 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 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. (spoiler alert) Wasn't this one of the plot points of the Val Kilmer movie Real Genius ? They had to trick the students into creating a weapon by siloing them off from each other and having them build individual but related components? How far…

Fallen far, or maybe we are just more aware now, but anyway, I don't think that a lecture in ethics at university will fix things. That's:

(A) way too late, and

(B) without a strong character to begin with, this lecture will simply become a "necessary chore" for students, and basically go in one ear, and out the other ear. (Does that saying/phrase translate to English?)

By the time people start their undergrad, if they are not already at least trying to act ethically, that ship has sailed for most. Their upbringing and education did not manage to drill that into them before. I see it as more of an early childhood and parenting topic. If the parents are not leading by example and teaching their children ethics, then the children are often just going with the flow, not swimming against the current to uphold ideals. Why would they, if the other way is easier. I think it is rare, that people adopt ethics that they have not grown up with / raised according to.

So I would advocate ethics as a mandatory subject at school, if not primary school already.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#674

Post by ImPostingOnHN » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 2:26 PM UTC

Rohunyyy wrote: post #203

agigao wrote: post #140

Around 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…

See in your case with the military you can directly say, hey my code will be used to bomb other people possibly. But in today's times it isn't (I am sure even then) so cut and dry. I worked in AdTech industry (like 60% of the bay area techies). So the ad tech I write gets shown to millions/billions. What about ads influencing elections and then politicians waging wars? Anti-vax ads which influence people and then kil…

> So the ad tech I write gets shown to millions/billions. What about ads influencing elections and then politicians waging wars? Anti-vax ads which influence people and then kill them. Scam ads. Insurance ads and then people not getting cancer meds from the same insurance.

Don't forget ICE and other government agencies using the bidstream data to track the location and behavior of immigrants, dissidents, etc, so they can be tracked down and arrested and sent to the gulag.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#675

Post by dv35z » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 2:29 PM UTC

meroes wrote: post #381

the_af wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. And the military in movies used to be depicted as inflexible, stubborn, paranoid, incompetent, and usually either "the bad guys" or authorities that impeded the progress of the main characters. (With exceptions; I'm not forgetting about Top Gun). Then there was a sudden switch, with the military shown with cool gadgets, airplanes, tech, heroics, and generally being glorified. The transition must have ha…

Just rewatched Buffalo Soldiers with Joaquin Phoenix. Really don't think that movie could be made today.

Such a great and underappreciated movie.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#676

Post by davedx » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 2:29 PM UTC

Rohunyyy wrote: post #203

agigao wrote: post #140

Around 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…

See in your case with the military you can directly say, hey my code will be used to bomb other people possibly. But in today's times it isn't (I am sure even then) so cut and dry. I worked in AdTech industry (like 60% of the bay area techies). So the ad tech I write gets shown to millions/billions. What about ads influencing elections and then politicians waging wars? Anti-vax ads which influence people and then kil…

Hi, I work in edtech.

There are hundreds of sectors and industries that don't have net negative effects on society and involve software development.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#677

Post by davedx » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 2:31 PM UTC

xdennis wrote: post #249

agigao wrote: post #140

Around 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…

> what if the code you write or autonomous machine you contribute to used for killing? This line of thinking, that creating machines that kill is unethical, will destroy the West. If the US wasn't so good at producing killing machines in WW2, you wouldn't be here to complain about DARPA ethics. Instead of having engineers develop the most advanced machines for killing (i.e. protecting the West) such people go into pr…

> This line of thinking, that creating machines that kill is unethical, will destroy the West.

He specifically said autonomous killing machines. You understand the difference right?

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#678

Post by roysting » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 2:32 PM UTC

benterix wrote: post #564

lukan wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"DARPA sponsored half of the nice things we're using every day" That's a very bold claim. (And I am aware of the history of the Internet)

"Half" is obviously an exaggeration but apart from time-sharing operating systems, the Internet, what is now CSAIL and (partially) GPS, they sponsored a ton of open source projects. They used to maintain a catalog[0]. The Web Archive version[1] contains a partial list (e.g. OpenBSD was sponsored only for a few years and is not included there). [0] https://www.darpa.mil/opencatalog [1] https://web.archive.org/web/2014…

The bigger issue with your perspective is that you do not realize that the underlying purpose of the things you do not attribute to the military or equate as bad, is still groundwork or “capacity building” deliberately for militaristic purposes and objectives, usually very intentionally so that you don’t realize it. You would likely not support things if you were overly told what the underlying objective was.

Let me put it this way, if you wanted a populace that will willingly enter the military to serve your purposes of world domination through constant warfare, would you promote TV and movies, rather than reading classical literature and philosophy; and fund and press movie houses to make films that put joining the military to go to war and templating being a “warrior” as a positive thing instead of a negative, murderous thing?

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#679

Post by ImPostingOnHN » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 2:33 PM UTC

Planktonne wrote: post #617

kortilla wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Moderator responded that they couldn't find them qualified enough to take part in the discussion. With a gate keeping attitude like that, are you really surprised engineers don’t want to participate?

The problem as stated isn't finding interested engineers, but qualified ones. Reframing it as just about appeal is disingenuous.

Why would an anyone need prequalification to walk into a room and sit in an audience while lawyers talk about stuff on stage? Just let them in.

Re: Where things stand with the Department of War

#680

Post by sailfast » Fri, Mar 06, 2026, 2:34 PM UTC

grosswait wrote: post #621

tedd4u wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s a “warfighter?” Do they come from the “Gulf of America?” We used to call them servicemen or service members. Emphasizing they served the people. I guess that’s too effeminate for our roided up and ironically hyper-insecure Secretary of Defense.

The term war fighter is distinct from service member. War fighter means mission critical and typically in a theater, while a service member might be someone sitting behind a desk in a less critical role. Similar to having mission critical production systems and supporting production systems. When you perform your business impact analysis, these will bubble up in different ways, requiring some differences to the playb…

There isn’t really a distinction day to day on this in practice. It covers everybody - just easier to say than all the official titles and typically for morale helps to carry the name all the way to the back office to connect to what’s happening at the pointy end.