15 ms·

Antiwar Movement Spreads Among Tech Workers

92 points by extraterra 8y ago

Jonnax 8y ago
This is a pretty interesting shift. Is it a general trend such as it happening in Engineering, and/or sciences or is it localised to just tech? Perhaps the younger generation is more anti war? Thoughts?
- kurthr 8y ago
  And the commentary is limited to the US tech industry (FAAMG).
- devoply 8y ago
  The US practices a pretty unchecked sort of militarism. The only thing which has caused it to withdraw from war that it often unilaterally starts has been solider casualties. In the future where there are no soldiers on the battlefield what is going to dissuade the US from continuing war?
- neonate 8y ago
  Antiwar sentiment goes up under Republican presidents and down under Democratic ones, which suggests that it has something to do with domestic politics.
  - masonic 8y ago
    Antiwar sentiment goes up under Republican presidents Like 1961-1969? Or 2009-2017?
    - neonate 8y ago
      The anti-Vietnam-War movement was because of the draft. That's a different dynamic. The Obama years, though, fit the pattern well. For example, there was no significant movement against the Libyan war.
- thrower123 8y ago
  This recent rash of stories has generally involved on the order of dozens to a couple of hundred employees making mild protests, generally not even employees anywhere near the actual defense/government projects. Probably they should just spin those divisions off into a different sister company under the Alphabet umbrella.
  - true_tuna 8y ago
    This is not the case for the Google protest. The protest started in the division doing the work and spread to the rest of the company. If I recall correctly the contract was to use machine learning to pre-process video footage for the US drone program in order to identify potential targets, thus freeing up the human labor of the drone pilots to more quickly identify and kill the people they’re hunting. Which I’ll remind everyone they’re doing with a flying killer robot. I don’t think this use-case was on the table when the Machine Learning experts and general software engineers joined. I think it’s quite reasonable to resist weaponizing machine learning. To say “I’m not comfortable making it cheaper and easier to kill large numbers of people at a distance” If you were to do as you suggest and found or spin off a company to work on weapon systems, at least the people who joined would know what they were signing up for. I do hope you’d find it difficult to recruit, and I fear you’d not find it impossible. I would like to think that thoughtful people would be able to see that building terrible weapons moves us closer to a world we shouldn’t be rushing to create.
- ALittleLight 8y ago
  I think this shift is a result of the immorality of American warfare over recent decades. If the last war we had participated in was WWII and the cold war then who would object to advancing our weaponry in case we had to fight a terrible war again? Conversely, if we are routinely killing civilians in pointless decades long engagements in the Middle East, supporting both sides of civil wars in foreign lands, selling weapon systems to brutal monarchies, etc it's easier to see why people have doubts about participating.
  - freewilly1040 8y ago
    The Cold War produced plenty of immoral conflicts. Is it seriously arguable that Viet Nam was a genocide? Justifiable wars since WWII are the exception.
    - azernik 8y ago
      Genocide: "Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." The Vietnam War was immoral in many ways, but it was not a genocide. Throwing that term around willy-nilly cheapens it. Please don't.
      - rounce 8y ago
        Rather astounding that people would downvote a post defending the experience of genocide victims from being confused with subjects of a lazy adjective use. Edit: Oh, I forgot this is HN...
      - freewilly1040 8y ago
        The use of Agent Orange fits your pasted description quite well, as does the My Lai massacre and similar atrocities now anonymous to history.
- true_tuna 8y ago
  It’s about thinking through the repercussions of your work and the fruits of your labors. This is not a new concept, but it’s nice to see people realizing that they have a responsibility their inventions. People in tech make things more efficient, easier, cheaper. When tech skills are applied to weapons systems, those systems start to get terrifying —the machine does more of the work and it’s better, faster and cheaper. If you make a weapon that makes it easier and cheaper to kill it will be used to do just that. Once the invention leaves the creators hands the inventor gives up the power of choice and can not control if it is used for good or for evil (putting aside for the moment, the question of if it’s possible to kill for good). Is that who you are? Are you a maker of terrible weapons? I can only answer for myself. I have the aptitude, but that’s not who I want to be. I’m not a pacifist, I have anger and fear and the urge to escalate in response to perceived injustice just like anyone else. But I make the conscious effort not to do violence, and not to create weapons. By doing that I decide that’s not who I am. I don’t presume to answer for you, but I encourage everyone at least think it through and decide for themselves.
dev_dull 8y ago
what do you think our rivals are doing right now? Sitting on their hands refusing to develop advanced threats? We must protect our country. Let’s not be naive to the fact that we have enemies who want to destroy us, or overtake us in power and influence if we’re weak. Personally I want the smartest people in the industry working on protecting our country and developing this tech. Which do you trust more, a self-flying UAV with deadly cargo developed by Google or some random government contractor?
- adamnemecek 8y ago
  That’s cool and all but it stops being cool when some of this tech ends up being sold to countries like Saudi Arabia. > Which do you trust more, a self-flying UAV with deadly cargo developed by Google or some random government contractor? Neither. Why would you want google to develop uavs?
  - kurthr 8y ago
    Also stops being cool when all the self-surveillance and tools end up being compromised by adversaries. Don't create a weapon, if you don't want your enemies to have it too.
    - dba7dba 8y ago
      > Don't create a weapon, if you don't want your enemies to have it too. I'm thankful US Manhattan Project went on to successful completion, and not cancelled with above reasoning. The series "The Man in the High Castle" shows what could've happened IF Hitler first got his nukes before US did. Most would agree that Hitler would've used it on London/NYC/DC with no qualms...
      - jhbadger 8y ago
        I totally agree with the reasoning at the time to go ahead with the Manhattan Project. We didn't know if the Germans or Japanese were close to creating an atomic bomb themselves. But after the war we learned that neither the Germans nor Japanese were anywhere near close. On the other hand, thanks to Klaus Fuchs and other pro-Soviet workers on the Manhattan Project, secrets were passed to the Soviets (yes, our allies in the war, but everybody knew that after the war that they wouldn't be) that allowed the Soviets to build their own bomb just 4 years later. In retrospect, without the Manhattan Project, who knows when anyone would have invented the atomic bomb. Maybe nobody for decades.
humanrebar 8y ago
Are companies like Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Palantir, Lockheed Martin, and General Dynamics not tech companies? Why do people think DARPA funds those challenges?
Jach 8y ago
I don't think it's anti-war per se, just anti-current-US-MIC-activities. Given an enemy worth fighting, I don't think the sentiment would be that strong. Who really wants to work on tech focused on bombing brown people far away? No matter, the budget is vast to train up people in house, plenty of young people will relish the tech for the tech's sake.
Hasz 8y ago
I don't blame them, some of the stats in this article are astounding. "The US is militarily involved in 76 countries."* "The U.S. spends more on arms and armies than the next seven biggest spenders combined" "U.S. and allied airstrikes in Syria and Iraq killed 6,000 civilians" *7 countries with drone strikes, 15 countries with combat troops (?!), 44 with military bases, and 58 with with counterterroism training programs, 2015-2017
- partycoder 8y ago
  The US also spends more than any country in healthcare. But most of that money only pays for administrative overhead like insurance companies, doctors filling endless paperwork to avoid being sued, or overpriced medication. It does not result in patients being healthier. Similarly, measuring the performance of a logistics company by gallons of gas consumed would be pretty dumb right? People would just drive in circles to consume more gas. Spending is about input, not output.
  - yayana 8y ago
    > Spending is about input, not output. Spending is the measure of intention. The US intends to be the world's healthiest war cult.
    - dba7dba 8y ago
      What's really interesting is that in 1930's, US had one of the smallest army/armed forces of developed nations. In 1939, which was three months before England declared war on Germany, US Army had about 180,000 men, ranked 19th in the world and smaller than Portugal’s". Had there been no birth of communism and Nazism and Japanese militarism, it might have stayed that way. But those did come about, Britain's dominance (also France) of the globe was to be replaced, which turned out to be US and not communism/Nazism/other-ism. And I am personally mightily thankful for that.
      - village-idiot 8y ago
        We also didn’t have any neighbors that were anywhere close to our power. If the US/Mexico relationship was anywhere as fraught as say, Prussia/France, we would’ve had a much larger army back in the 1930s.
noobermin 8y ago
Of the two systems they list, there is a nuance and a difference between the two, one is an facilitating technology which just makes the DoD work better and another directly helps them kill better. A similar difference is the difference between someone who say designs bombs vs designs bomb hard armor that lessens soldier deaths on our sides. It's similar to what anti-war people have done for years during drafts, which was to volunteer for medical service as opposed to fighting. It's a hard decision to make, and an easy thing to say is just if you do anything for the DoD, you're making it easier for them to kill people and hence it's wrong. Blanket statements like these however put people like janitors and paper pushers in the same bucket as those who manufacture arms that are shipped to Saudi Arabia.
- pmoriarty 8y ago
  "Blanket statements like these however put people like janitors and paper pushers in the same bucket as those who manufacture arms that are shipped to Saudi Arabia." What's that saying about wars being won more through logistics than through arms? If you are working for a startup that merely delivers pizza to the troops, sure, you can't seriously be put in the same category as a torturer in Abu Ghraib. But you're still (indirectly) helping the military kill people. Whether that sort of indirect support weighs heavily on your conscience is something everyone has to decide for themselves. Personally, I don't want anything to do with the military or military contractors, even if in an ostensibly peaceful capacity.
  - noobermin 8y ago
    I mean by paying your taxes you also fund the Pentagon. By publishing research that others can read including military engineer s, you're helping the Pentagon. By supporting things like Veteran Affairs, your easing the pain of those in the military by making it clear to them they'll receive some compensation once they make it out. And even then, by living in the US, you benefit somewhat from the military defending our borders and being a ward against threats of invasion. I am against most military spending because that ends up inflating contractor salaries, as is our constantly meddling in other countries including other democracies, but so many turn this into a blanket opposition to the idea of the military full stop, which doesn't make sense in our world today, especially when everyone in this country essentially thrives due to it.
Proven 8y ago
Only if it also becomes an anti-state movement can it have positive effects. Anti-war and pro-State is still pro-war. Anti-war leftists in the 60s were pro-State and decades later we still have the same problem even when leftists presidents run the country
smithmayowa 8y ago
The tech community as a whole has always been anti-war from time immemorial, but in the past the vast majority of tech funding came from the govt and so tech companies were always involved in one way and another in building war machines so as to make money, but in recent times with the vc in tech funding more tech companies, they no longer really need to build war machines to make money, I mean the top five tech companies in the world presently are majorly consumer tech, so tech companies and the workers who make them up can say fuck you to the government sponsored tech contracts and fuck you to war in general.
chriselles 8y ago
It’s a shame the article fails to mention the history of Silicon Valley and the foundation of the tech sector being built almost entirely on Military R&D: Steve Blank “Secret History of Silicon Valley” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo Post WWII, 90%+ of R&D was military, a shockingly high number. Coinciding with the year the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 saw that military R&D proportion fall to rough parity: https://www.cove.org.au/trenchline/article-the-v-twin-effect/ https://www.cove.org.au/trenchline/article-the-v-twin-effect... Today, Military R&D has inverted compared to that post WWII, early Cold War environment making it only about 10% of R&D. But that raises the problem of duel use commercial technology. Commercial tech being combined or adapted for military purposes. Personally, I’m far more concerned with the export of commercial off the shelf tech modified for mass surveillance and control than I’m worried about kinetic weapon systems. Defence/Military money helped found Silicon Valley/Tech. In-Q-Tel(CIA) has been in the Valley funding startups for 2 decades: https://www.iqt.org https://www.iqt.org Hacking 4 Defense at Stanford is a more recent addition that leverages the increasing reliance of the military on commercial off this shelf tech(disclosure: I have had some involvement in H4D with their educator’s course). What’s OK and what isn’t for modifying commercial off the shelf tech for Defence/military use? What are the perceived black/white/grey delineations working in this space?
- ItsMe000001 8y ago
  That is one of my favorite videos. However, in this context, what do you propose? WWII was a "real war", it was easy to see you were on the good side and that it was worth fighting. Besides, that huge ("world") war already was in progress. Right now the situation is not exactly comparable? What I see from this is that somebody else - government or whatever - has a function, and relying on business alone won't work. They won't fund when returns are uncertain, no crazy ideas, no unlimited "costs don't matter" funding. What I also find interesting is that that was unlimited debt-based spending, anyone who had something that looked like an idea got funded to do whatever it took. And it worked, or is anybody still concerned about the amount of debt the US took on during WWII? So either we find a way for similar initiatives in peace times - or we wait for another huge war (or a similarly bad crisis) to convince the tax payers, but also motivate those doing the research, to get another round of innovation started with a similar disregard for debt, cost and plannability?
carapace 8y ago
Computers are war machines. They arguably won WWII, eh? Code-breaking and modeling physics of nuclear bombs. And today, of course, WWIII is playing out on the Internet and the screens of our phones. In the general case, from first principles, we have the automation of human intentions. If those intentions are harmonious and ecological, all is presumably well. If those intentions conflict, however, we have automated war: drones and IEDs, and eventually Skynet and Terminators, and then just vast robot wars. I don't think there's a a stable equilibrium between these two strange attractors. (FWIW we have technology for harmonizing human intentions. We just have to use it.)

92 points by extraterra 8y ago

This is a pretty interesting shift. Is it a general trend such as it happening in Engineering, and/or sciences or is it localised to just tech? Perhaps the younger generation is more anti war? Thoughts?

kurthr 8y ago
And the commentary is limited to the US tech industry (FAAMG).
devoply 8y ago
The US practices a pretty unchecked sort of militarism. The only thing which has caused it to withdraw from war that it often unilaterally starts has been solider casualties. In the future where there are no soldiers on the battlefield what is going to dissuade the US from continuing war?
neonate 8y ago
Antiwar sentiment goes up under Republican presidents and down under Democratic ones, which suggests that it has something to do with domestic politics.
- masonic 8y ago
  Antiwar sentiment goes up under Republican presidents Like 1961-1969? Or 2009-2017?
  - neonate 8y ago
    The anti-Vietnam-War movement was because of the draft. That's a different dynamic. The Obama years, though, fit the pattern well. For example, there was no significant movement against the Libyan war.
thrower123 8y ago
This recent rash of stories has generally involved on the order of dozens to a couple of hundred employees making mild protests, generally not even employees anywhere near the actual defense/government projects. Probably they should just spin those divisions off into a different sister company under the Alphabet umbrella.
- true_tuna 8y ago
  This is not the case for the Google protest. The protest started in the division doing the work and spread to the rest of the company. If I recall correctly the contract was to use machine learning to pre-process video footage for the US drone program in order to identify potential targets, thus freeing up the human labor of the drone pilots to more quickly identify and kill the people they’re hunting. Which I’ll remind everyone they’re doing with a flying killer robot. I don’t think this use-case was on the table when the Machine Learning experts and general software engineers joined. I think it’s quite reasonable to resist weaponizing machine learning. To say “I’m not comfortable making it cheaper and easier to kill large numbers of people at a distance” If you were to do as you suggest and found or spin off a company to work on weapon systems, at least the people who joined would know what they were signing up for. I do hope you’d find it difficult to recruit, and I fear you’d not find it impossible. I would like to think that thoughtful people would be able to see that building terrible weapons moves us closer to a world we shouldn’t be rushing to create.
ALittleLight 8y ago
I think this shift is a result of the immorality of American warfare over recent decades. If the last war we had participated in was WWII and the cold war then who would object to advancing our weaponry in case we had to fight a terrible war again? Conversely, if we are routinely killing civilians in pointless decades long engagements in the Middle East, supporting both sides of civil wars in foreign lands, selling weapon systems to brutal monarchies, etc it's easier to see why people have doubts about participating.
- freewilly1040 8y ago
  The Cold War produced plenty of immoral conflicts. Is it seriously arguable that Viet Nam was a genocide? Justifiable wars since WWII are the exception.
  - azernik 8y ago
    Genocide: "Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." The Vietnam War was immoral in many ways, but it was not a genocide. Throwing that term around willy-nilly cheapens it. Please don't.
    - rounce 8y ago
      Rather astounding that people would downvote a post defending the experience of genocide victims from being confused with subjects of a lazy adjective use. Edit: Oh, I forgot this is HN...
    - freewilly1040 8y ago
      The use of Agent Orange fits your pasted description quite well, as does the My Lai massacre and similar atrocities now anonymous to history.
true_tuna 8y ago
It’s about thinking through the repercussions of your work and the fruits of your labors. This is not a new concept, but it’s nice to see people realizing that they have a responsibility their inventions. People in tech make things more efficient, easier, cheaper. When tech skills are applied to weapons systems, those systems start to get terrifying —the machine does more of the work and it’s better, faster and cheaper. If you make a weapon that makes it easier and cheaper to kill it will be used to do just that. Once the invention leaves the creators hands the inventor gives up the power of choice and can not control if it is used for good or for evil (putting aside for the moment, the question of if it’s possible to kill for good). Is that who you are? Are you a maker of terrible weapons? I can only answer for myself. I have the aptitude, but that’s not who I want to be. I’m not a pacifist, I have anger and fear and the urge to escalate in response to perceived injustice just like anyone else. But I make the conscious effort not to do violence, and not to create weapons. By doing that I decide that’s not who I am. I don’t presume to answer for you, but I encourage everyone at least think it through and decide for themselves.

dev_dull 8y ago

what do you think our rivals are doing right now? Sitting on their hands refusing to develop advanced threats? We must protect our country. Let’s not be naive to the fact that we have enemies who want to destroy us, or overtake us in power and influence if we’re weak. Personally I want the smartest people in the industry working on protecting our country and developing this tech. Which do you trust more, a self-flying UAV with deadly cargo developed by Google or some random government contractor?

adamnemecek 8y ago
That’s cool and all but it stops being cool when some of this tech ends up being sold to countries like Saudi Arabia. > Which do you trust more, a self-flying UAV with deadly cargo developed by Google or some random government contractor? Neither. Why would you want google to develop uavs?
- kurthr 8y ago
  Also stops being cool when all the self-surveillance and tools end up being compromised by adversaries. Don't create a weapon, if you don't want your enemies to have it too.
  - dba7dba 8y ago
    > Don't create a weapon, if you don't want your enemies to have it too. I'm thankful US Manhattan Project went on to successful completion, and not cancelled with above reasoning. The series "The Man in the High Castle" shows what could've happened IF Hitler first got his nukes before US did. Most would agree that Hitler would've used it on London/NYC/DC with no qualms...
    - jhbadger 8y ago
      I totally agree with the reasoning at the time to go ahead with the Manhattan Project. We didn't know if the Germans or Japanese were close to creating an atomic bomb themselves. But after the war we learned that neither the Germans nor Japanese were anywhere near close. On the other hand, thanks to Klaus Fuchs and other pro-Soviet workers on the Manhattan Project, secrets were passed to the Soviets (yes, our allies in the war, but everybody knew that after the war that they wouldn't be) that allowed the Soviets to build their own bomb just 4 years later. In retrospect, without the Manhattan Project, who knows when anyone would have invented the atomic bomb. Maybe nobody for decades.

humanrebar 8y ago

Are companies like Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Palantir, Lockheed Martin, and General Dynamics not tech companies? Why do people think DARPA funds those challenges?

Jach 8y ago

I don't think it's anti-war per se, just anti-current-US-MIC-activities. Given an enemy worth fighting, I don't think the sentiment would be that strong. Who really wants to work on tech focused on bombing brown people far away? No matter, the budget is vast to train up people in house, plenty of young people will relish the tech for the tech's sake.

Hasz 8y ago

I don't blame them, some of the stats in this article are astounding. "The US is militarily involved in 76 countries."* "The U.S. spends more on arms and armies than the next seven biggest spenders combined" "U.S. and allied airstrikes in Syria and Iraq killed 6,000 civilians" *7 countries with drone strikes, 15 countries with combat troops (?!), 44 with military bases, and 58 with with counterterroism training programs, 2015-2017

partycoder 8y ago
The US also spends more than any country in healthcare. But most of that money only pays for administrative overhead like insurance companies, doctors filling endless paperwork to avoid being sued, or overpriced medication. It does not result in patients being healthier. Similarly, measuring the performance of a logistics company by gallons of gas consumed would be pretty dumb right? People would just drive in circles to consume more gas. Spending is about input, not output.
- yayana 8y ago
  > Spending is about input, not output. Spending is the measure of intention. The US intends to be the world's healthiest war cult.
  - dba7dba 8y ago
    What's really interesting is that in 1930's, US had one of the smallest army/armed forces of developed nations. In 1939, which was three months before England declared war on Germany, US Army had about 180,000 men, ranked 19th in the world and smaller than Portugal’s". Had there been no birth of communism and Nazism and Japanese militarism, it might have stayed that way. But those did come about, Britain's dominance (also France) of the globe was to be replaced, which turned out to be US and not communism/Nazism/other-ism. And I am personally mightily thankful for that.
    - village-idiot 8y ago
      We also didn’t have any neighbors that were anywhere close to our power. If the US/Mexico relationship was anywhere as fraught as say, Prussia/France, we would’ve had a much larger army back in the 1930s.

noobermin 8y ago

Of the two systems they list, there is a nuance and a difference between the two, one is an facilitating technology which just makes the DoD work better and another directly helps them kill better. A similar difference is the difference between someone who say designs bombs vs designs bomb hard armor that lessens soldier deaths on our sides. It's similar to what anti-war people have done for years during drafts, which was to volunteer for medical service as opposed to fighting. It's a hard decision to make, and an easy thing to say is just if you do anything for the DoD, you're making it easier for them to kill people and hence it's wrong. Blanket statements like these however put people like janitors and paper pushers in the same bucket as those who manufacture arms that are shipped to Saudi Arabia.

pmoriarty 8y ago
"Blanket statements like these however put people like janitors and paper pushers in the same bucket as those who manufacture arms that are shipped to Saudi Arabia." What's that saying about wars being won more through logistics than through arms? If you are working for a startup that merely delivers pizza to the troops, sure, you can't seriously be put in the same category as a torturer in Abu Ghraib. But you're still (indirectly) helping the military kill people. Whether that sort of indirect support weighs heavily on your conscience is something everyone has to decide for themselves. Personally, I don't want anything to do with the military or military contractors, even if in an ostensibly peaceful capacity.
- noobermin 8y ago
  I mean by paying your taxes you also fund the Pentagon. By publishing research that others can read including military engineer s, you're helping the Pentagon. By supporting things like Veteran Affairs, your easing the pain of those in the military by making it clear to them they'll receive some compensation once they make it out. And even then, by living in the US, you benefit somewhat from the military defending our borders and being a ward against threats of invasion. I am against most military spending because that ends up inflating contractor salaries, as is our constantly meddling in other countries including other democracies, but so many turn this into a blanket opposition to the idea of the military full stop, which doesn't make sense in our world today, especially when everyone in this country essentially thrives due to it.

Proven 8y ago

Only if it also becomes an anti-state movement can it have positive effects. Anti-war and pro-State is still pro-war. Anti-war leftists in the 60s were pro-State and decades later we still have the same problem even when leftists presidents run the country

smithmayowa 8y ago

The tech community as a whole has always been anti-war from time immemorial, but in the past the vast majority of tech funding came from the govt and so tech companies were always involved in one way and another in building war machines so as to make money, but in recent times with the vc in tech funding more tech companies, they no longer really need to build war machines to make money, I mean the top five tech companies in the world presently are majorly consumer tech, so tech companies and the workers who make them up can say fuck you to the government sponsored tech contracts and fuck you to war in general.

chriselles 8y ago

It’s a shame the article fails to mention the history of Silicon Valley and the foundation of the tech sector being built almost entirely on Military R&D: Steve Blank “Secret History of Silicon Valley” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo Post WWII, 90%+ of R&D was military, a shockingly high number. Coinciding with the year the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 saw that military R&D proportion fall to rough parity: https://www.cove.org.au/trenchline/article-the-v-twin-effect/ https://www.cove.org.au/trenchline/article-the-v-twin-effect... Today, Military R&D has inverted compared to that post WWII, early Cold War environment making it only about 10% of R&D. But that raises the problem of duel use commercial technology. Commercial tech being combined or adapted for military purposes. Personally, I’m far more concerned with the export of commercial off the shelf tech modified for mass surveillance and control than I’m worried about kinetic weapon systems. Defence/Military money helped found Silicon Valley/Tech. In-Q-Tel(CIA) has been in the Valley funding startups for 2 decades: https://www.iqt.org https://www.iqt.org Hacking 4 Defense at Stanford is a more recent addition that leverages the increasing reliance of the military on commercial off this shelf tech(disclosure: I have had some involvement in H4D with their educator’s course). What’s OK and what isn’t for modifying commercial off the shelf tech for Defence/military use? What are the perceived black/white/grey delineations working in this space?

ItsMe000001 8y ago
That is one of my favorite videos. However, in this context, what do you propose? WWII was a "real war", it was easy to see you were on the good side and that it was worth fighting. Besides, that huge ("world") war already was in progress. Right now the situation is not exactly comparable? What I see from this is that somebody else - government or whatever - has a function, and relying on business alone won't work. They won't fund when returns are uncertain, no crazy ideas, no unlimited "costs don't matter" funding. What I also find interesting is that that was unlimited debt-based spending, anyone who had something that looked like an idea got funded to do whatever it took. And it worked, or is anybody still concerned about the amount of debt the US took on during WWII? So either we find a way for similar initiatives in peace times - or we wait for another huge war (or a similarly bad crisis) to convince the tax payers, but also motivate those doing the research, to get another round of innovation started with a similar disregard for debt, cost and plannability?

carapace 8y ago

Computers are war machines. They arguably won WWII, eh? Code-breaking and modeling physics of nuclear bombs. And today, of course, WWIII is playing out on the Internet and the screens of our phones. In the general case, from first principles, we have the automation of human intentions. If those intentions are harmonious and ecological, all is presumably well. If those intentions conflict, however, we have automated war: drones and IEDs, and eventually Skynet and Terminators, and then just vast robot wars. I don't think there's a a stable equilibrium between these two strange attractors. (FWIW we have technology for harmonizing human intentions. We just have to use it.)