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Microsoft Workers Demand It Drop $450M U.S. Army Contract
- Proven 8y agoHow about you instead stop voting for the shitty, MIC-controlled, political duopoly that thrives on wars, and eliminate the market for industrial scale killing?
- goodroot 8y agoI would be heart broken to learn that my work was used to facilitate killing. I empathize for the developers involved; I hope those that feel as I do find brighter opportunities.
- merlincorey 8y agoThis particular system seems to be focused on our soldiers' "lethality, mobility and situational awareness." So while the "lethality" certainly is all about facilitating killing, I would say the other points are at least somewhat about lifesaving for our troops.
- darkpuma 8y agoDead soldiers aren't very lethal, so any distinction between the two seems rather arbitrary. Technology that helps soldiers survive necessarily helps soldiers kill. But this whole topic of "for the military" or "facilitating killing" is rather arbitrary. If you work on a smartphone app for hailing taxis, that's probably not going to be plausibly military. But what if you work in a steel mill? You help in the production of steel that is necessary to create buildings and bridges, but also military ships and tanks and just about everything else. Is the production of steel a part of the military-industrial complex? Could the military-industrial complex continue operating without steel? Definitely not, the production of steel is essential to the military, yet it seems a bit strange for producers of steel to lose sleep over what their steel is used for. But actually, let's go back to that taxi app. Most military personnel aren't in warzones, virtually all of them own smartphones, and a great many of them may be using ride hailing apps regularly. If such apps increase their personal efficiency, perhaps letting them get to work faster. If a drone operator in Utah uses your app to get to work hung over after a hard night of drinking, does that mean your taxi app is helping to kill people?
- pnw_hazor 8y agoWhat about folks who work on digital skinner boxes or dark patterned tech, such as, ad networks, social media, free-to-gamble games, anything Android, gig-economy apps, or the like. People in those industries don't even have the fig-leaf of "national defense" to help them sleep at night. For them it is only about money, t-shirts, and free food. Who cares how many lives they ruin along the way. They are true sociopaths, though inexplicably they would feel horrible if their work helped save a 19 year-old soldier's life or helped enable shooters recognize an incorrect target before harming innocents.
- darkpuma 8y agoFully agree. Microsoft at least is otherwise relatively clean since they're best known for productivity software (although we could dive into what that productivity is actually accomplishing..) but when they start doing shit like promoting Candy Crush, I think that's well over the line.
- pnw_hazor 8y agoWhat if your work helped reduce the amount of innocent civilians or soldiers that are killed in war? I guess we could always go back to the good old daze when advanced tech or computers were not used in weapons systems. I wasn't around back then, but it sure seems like there sure were more innocent people killed in the bygone days of software-free weapons systems. High-tech weapon systems save lives. But I am pretty sure you already know that.
- bassman9000 8y agoAnother example: the only technology, today, being realistic, to actually make an impact in CO2 reduction, is nuclear. And nuclear was born as a weapon. In a race to beat the enemy, who would have got the technology soon after.
- humanrebar 8y agoNo, we should clearly go back to the days of low tech seige warfare, when battles were won by slowly starving people until they gave up.
- paganel 8y ago> High-tech weapon systems save lives. But I am pretty sure you already know that. Not the OP, but what the high-tech weapon systems do (among other things, like killing innocent people attending weddings in remote parts of Afghanistan or Yemen) is to disengage the killers (i.e. the people making the decision to shoot, sometime from thousands and thousands of miles away) from their acts, as those doing the killing bear almost no risks of getting killed in retaliation and they also don't get to see the distorted limbs of those they get to kill. As such, the decision to make the kill becomes more and more easy and more and more random, because it doesn't have almost any effects on those who are responsible for said killings. This is a very, very sad state of affairs for us, as a species, I mean, the fact that we've managed to make the act of killing to have almost no moral consequences on those that actually carry said killings.
- leereeves 8y agoDrone pilots are not disengaged from the psychological and moral trauma of war. > Some say that the drone war has driven them over the edge. "How many women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile? How many men have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?" Heather Linebaugh, a former drone imagery analyst, wrote in the Guardian. "When you are exposed to it over and over again it becomes like a small video, embedded in your head, forever on repeat, causing psychological pain and suffering that many people will hopefully never experience." > "It was horrifying to know how easy it was. I felt like a coward because I was halfway across the world and the guy never even knew I was there,” Bryant told KNPR Radio in Nevada. "I felt like I was haunted by a legion of the dead. My physical health was gone, my mental health was crumbled. I was in so much pain I was ready to eat a bullet myself." https://www.salon.com/2015/03/06/a_chilling_new_post_traumatic_stress_disorder_why_drone_pilots_are_quitting_in_record_numbers_partner/ https://www.salon.com/2015/03/06/a_chilling_new_post_traumat...
- leftyted 8y agoI wouldn't care. Are the designers of TCP/IP responsible for everyone whose death was assisted by the internet? Are Orville and Wilbur burning in Hell for all the people who were killed by things dropped from planes? And God help whichever unfortunate human invented the wheel. Sorry for my tone, but I find this perspective naive and annoyingly sanctimonious. I'm making tools. People can use them for whatever. I hope no one murderers anyone (unless they have a really good reason) but I'm only responsible for making sure I don't murder anyone, and so far I'm doing okay.
- SolaceQuantum 8y agoIf you're working on a technology that you know is created in contract with the military, is that not concerning?
- influx 8y agoWhat's your line? Do you work on contracts for police? What about the United Nations? Any government contract at all, including local? I can find examples of all of them acting against populations and causing harm, as well for good.
- SolaceQuantum 8y agoMy line is merely understanding and allowing others to protest things they find hurtful and believing they are valid in doing so. I never said I shared this view and I'm concerned you took my words so far from their face value.
- chillacy 8y ago> If you're working on a technology that you know is created in contract with the military, is that not concerning? Implies to me that I should feel bad morally. Just my reading of it, but if lots of people are reading it that way as well, you may want to work on the wording if people are attributing more than you intended.
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- cududa 8y agoI feel like I’m living in the twilight zone seeing how far your comments been downvoted and the responses. I totally support individuals rights to work on these kind of tools; and I totally support people demanding their work not be co-opted for lethal purposes
- tomohawk 8y agoThe Nazis used the latest card punch tech to track people and facilitate the mass killing of people. Joseph Stalin famously used the telephone in the middle of the night to make calls leading to the mass murder of thousands during his reign. Churchill and Roosevelt used the first application of spread spectrum technology to securely communicate. This led to the deaths of millions of Axis personnel. Are all of these equivalent? I would be actually horrified to find out after the fact that I did not do all I could do to stop monsters such as Hitler, Stalin, or Mao. If something I build could stop someone like that, I'm all for it.
- gdy 8y agoHow about stopping monsters from doing things like My Lai massacre? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre
- tomohawk 8y agoDo you actually think there is a moral equivalence between actions directed be Stalin, Mao, Hitler, etc, and an incident that was not directed as a general policy, and was in fact against policy, and which in fact sickened the responders?
- gdy 8y agoYeah, right, an incident. How is that smell of napalm in the morning?
- dba7dba 8y agoRoads/oil/education/internet/mining/etc can be and used for military purposes. Where do you want to draw the line?
- ahelwer 8y agoSince a link to the actual tweet posted by the Microsoft workers is somewhat conspicuously absent from the article, here it is: https://twitter.com/MsWorkers4/status/1099066343523930112 https://twitter.com/MsWorkers4/status/1099066343523930112 If you work at Microsoft, you can sign the petition on the intranet site https://aka.ms/hololens4good https://aka.ms/hololens4good
- 781 8y agoWe don't need an army. It should be completely dismantled. The Army budget should be spent on social causes.
- bassman9000 8y agoSounds good. After Russia, China, Iran, ...
- lwansbrough 8y agoDo you think it's fair to evaluate the necessity of an army at a time of relative global peace? (Which, don't forget, has followed the advent of terrible, terrible weapons, not a shared vision of global peace.) Would you have the same feeling if the Nazis had won World War II?
- sesteel 8y agoLike unemployment for those affected by such a short sighted choice like that. If history has taught us anything, it is that war is inevitable. "Of the past 3,400 years, humans have been entirely at peace for 268 of them, or just 8 percent of recorded history." - https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/books/chapters/what-every-person-should-know-about-war.html https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/books/chapters/what-every...
- yarrel 8y agoQuite aside from that, the historical lesson is that large numbers of unemployed soldiers is not a stablizing force on a society.
- HereComesDatBoi 8y agoUnfortunately at this point the military-industrial complex is a major part of our economy. You can't just dismantle it.
- chrisseaton 8y agoDo you think it should be literally dismantled tomorrow and not replaced by anything? You can't conceive of any situation whatsoever where you may want someone to trained and equipped to defend against force being used against you or someone else?
- merlincorey 8y agoOn a side note, something in the javascript loaded after the page crashes my browser. Regarding the article itself: Employees posted a thing to twitter. Microsoft is currently not planning to stop working on this contract. Quote from the article: Microsoft and the U.S. Army did not immediately respond to requests to comment. Company President Brad Smith said in an October blog post it remained committed to assisting the military. “We’ll engage not only actively but proactively across the U.S. government to advocate for policies and laws that will ensure that AI and other new technologies are used responsibly and ethically,” Smith wrote.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- malvosenior 8y ago"Several Microsoft Corp employees on Friday demanded that the company cancel a $480 million hardware contract with the U.S. Army and stop developing “any and all weapons technologies.”" Apparently "several" means three. How and why is this news? Microsoft has thousands of employees.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Apparently "several" means three. “Several” has long meant three or more, but the article says that three workers described the effort to Reuters, not that the three constituted the entire effort.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- partiallypro 8y agoSeveral is usually not used in that context, the word in the headline should be "a few."
- darkpuma 8y ago> How and why is this news? "Described to Reuters by three Microsoft workers" doesn't necessarily mean only three workers are involved in this protest. However I would be interested to see the actual numbers. If the number of employees signing the petition were impressive, I'd expect it to be prominently reported. Since it's not, that leads me to suspect it's not very much more than three.
- nhebb 8y agoAgreed, but they got both of us to click, didn't they?
- Varcht 8y agoBut is it worthy of a click? I can find "several" people of any opinion.
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoI think there's a huge difference between technology used to train our troops and technology used to create automated killer drones. Which is to say, I see no reason for Microsoft to hesitate on this contract, but absolutely pushed for Project Maven to be dropped by Google. If we want our military's actions to be humane, we need to keep real people somewhere out on the front lines, and we need them to be well trained to defend themselves in the event of a real threat, rather than reacting inappropriately to a false one.
- rhema 8y agoI've talked to some DARPA people. The fact that employees will openly revolt for ethics in groups is something everyone has to consider now. The Project Maven thing produced a chilling effect for how they write grants. They feel the pushback and have to think about ethics a little harder.
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoI don't see that as a bad thing at all. Ethics should be at the forefront of discussion in new technology. But we need to bear in mind that military capability is, in fact, something we must have, and that many people are able to worry about the ethics of what our country does because our military ensures that very survival is not the conversation we are occupied with. Which is to say, our military can be unethical, but us having a military is not unethical.
- marssaxman 8y agoIn what way does the US Army have anything to do with "survival"? Isolated in the western hemisphere by large oceans, bordered only by large, friendly neighbors, it's as naturally safe as a nation can feasibly be. Nobody on earth has the military capacity to come attack the USA.
- aurailious 8y agoRecently some technologies were developed called airplanes and missiles. That changes things when before we just boats.
- TheTruth321 8y agoLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLL
- hugh4life 8y agoI personally find the idea that augmented reality headsets are "weapons" to be extremely stupid. Augmented reality doesn't really have much of a market yet and cutting yourself off from the US military also seems really stupid. The entire origins of computing and the internet was about facilitating the US military.
- Voloskaya 8y agoSo we have to do whatever the army wants based on the principle that we owe them for inventing computers?
- GavinMcG 8y agoYou're jumping at the least charitable interpretation of that comment. I'd suggest practicing the opposite: if someone seems to be saying something obviously extreme, stupid, etc... consider that your interpretation is what's wrong.
- ourmandave 8y agoI'm going to try that with Trump's twitter feed.
- djakjxnanjak 8y agoThat’s not a bad idea. I’ve found that this approach to the world (trying to think of reasons why something makes sense, instead of reasons it doesn’t) makes everything easier to understand and makes life more satisfying. And if you do come to the conclusion that someone is wrong and needs to be opposed, you’ll do a better job at it.
- hnbroseph 8y agoi actually suspect that a failure to do that is one (of many) reasons his political opponents are not remotely as effective as they ostensibly could be.
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- RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y agoIf I have learned anything from history, is that is sucks to be on the losing side of a war. As a worker, I will happily pay taxes and do stuff that helps make sure my side is never on the losing side of a war. As a citizen and voter, I will use my vote and my voice to keep us out of wars that are either unwinnable or unjust. Trying to intentionally reduce the effectiveness of my military as these Microsoft workers are trying to do is not something I will do. The alternative to US military dominance, isn't a peaceful utopia, it is either Chinese military dominance or Russian military dominance. You can be sure that Chinese and Russian tech companies are trying their best to increase the effectiveness of their country's military.
- XMPPwocky 8y agoThis is the tyranny of the Nash equilibrium. Eventually, though, it's necessary to find some solution, outside of the game- or, eventually, the inherent instability of ever-increasing military power will cause some very, very bad outcomes- for all parties involved.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y agoAny technology that is useful, tends to make the military more powerful. Road building was used by the Romans to great advantage. The British and Portuguese took advantage of innovations in ocean going vessels. The American Civil War made extensive use of the telegraph and railroad. The only way to get out of this equilibrium is to stop developing all technology.
- misterman0 8y ago>> The alternative to US military dominance, isn't a peaceful utopia, it is either Chinese military dominance or Russian military dominance Yes, it is true and well known around the world that Russia, China and the USA are warmongers that use military force to get what they want. It is something we have become used to. I'm very pleased to hear MS workers aren't happy with this status quo.
- agoodthrowaway 8y ago
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- clouddrover 8y agoWhy is this particular contract a redline? The US military uses Microsoft Windows on their weapon systems platforms and Microsoft Office for their office admin. Microsoft is already a provider for the military's infrastructure and will be for the foreseeable future.
- pmichaud 8y agoI think there's social and legal precedent the differentiates between a generally useful tool that can be used in the commission of violence (eg. cars), and a tool specifically meant for the commission of violence (eg. guns).
- crowdpleaser 8y agoAre you talking about the distinction between weapons and non-weapons? Is there another legal distinction?
- pjc50 8y ago"Dual use" in the ITAR sense? A rule of thumb would be if you wouldn't sell it to Iran you shouldn't sell it to the Saudis, and selling it to the US will result in the Saudis having it.
- darkpuma 8y agoWhat about a humvee? Is that a 'car' or a 'gun'? Is a jacket with pouches necessary to hold rifle ammunition a weapon, or merely innocent clothing? Wherever you draw the distinction, know that it's arbitrary.
- memory_grep 8y agoIt's not that arbitrary and in any case that doesn't invalidate their position.
- darkpuma 8y ago
- mrbonner 8y ago"Every up-to-date dictionary should say that "peace" and "war" mean the same thing, now in posse, now in actu" - William James in "The Moral Equivalent of War" https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/moral.html https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/moral.html
- yesenadam 8y agoFrom Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary (1906) OCCIDENT, n. The part of the world lying west (or east) of the Orient. It is largely inhabited by Christians, a powerful subtribe of the Hypocrites, whose principal industries are murder and cheating, which they are pleased to call “war” and “commerce.” These, also, are the principal industries of the Orient. BOUNDARY, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other. CANNON, n. An instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries. PEACE, n. In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting. GUNPOWDER, n. An agency employed by civilized nations for the settlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left unadjusted. PROJECTILE, n. The final arbiter in international disputes. Formerly these disputes were settled by physical contact of the disputants, with such simple arguments as the rudimentary logic of the times could supply – the sword, the spear, and so forth. With the growth of prudence in military affairs the projectile came more and more into favor, and is now held in high esteem by the most courageous. Its capital defect is that it requires personal attendance at the point of propulsion.
- gist 8y agoThis is absurd. The idea that workers band together to try and get a company to stop from not only a lawful activity but one that is done for our country in particular really is upsetting. This isn't a reasonable request by any standards. The idea that employees get a vote in what a company does and everything it does can only be expressed one way. Simply resign if you want. And that is not what is happening here. What they are trying to do is clearly extort some type of behavior en masse against the company. That is quite different. Will be interesting to see what happens when the tide turns and tech employees aren't in such demand. This will happen. Only a matter of time when the supply and demand curve shifts. Only one reaction by Microsoft is appropriate. We aren't pulling out of the contract if you don't want to work here find another job.
- yarrel 8y agoMicrosoft is responsible to its shareholders, not your country. A mass exodus of employees would harm their bottom line. Preventing that is in their best interests. If you want to subject corporate interests to the military on the basis of nationalism, I've got some bad news for you about how that works out historically.
- dba7dba 8y agoThing is, there will be no mass exodus of employees over this issue. Also, I'd like to see the historical examples you mentioned.
- SolaceQuantum 8y agoExtortion implies that Microsoft ultimately doesn't have systematic power as a large corporation over their workers. Also, I sincerely hope one reconsiders the position of positioning a lessening of labor power in one of the only fields in which workers have any power. The first to go will not be the engineers in demand enough to protest, but women who are let go after becoming mothers, people of color, people with health conditions, mentorship programs, generous pay and working conditions... In short, if or when the tide turns, and the tech sector is not ready for it, we will all be weaker for it.
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- techslave 8y agolol. do they think they are googlers?
- jplayer01 8y agoMeanwhile, China and Russia don't give a crap. It's nice to dream of a utopia where weapons of death and destruction aren't necessary, but we don't live in that world. We, the West, have real enemies with real weapons and plenty of money going into R&D and military spending and qualms about killing people if necessary isn't stopping them.
- nickpinkston 8y agoYea, this is what people on the Left (which I am myself) turn a blind eye. Sure, the US has done plenty of awful shit with our military, but would you prefer the West to not be the dominant block in the world? That's going to end liberalism way faster. The military / real politik foreign affairs are dirty parts of life that we'd prefer not to have, but we live in a world where we must have them.
- YJR 8y agoI'd prefer to not having a dominant block at all .
- mc32 8y agoSo how do you get the other actors to concede and play nice?
- nickpinkston 8y agoRemember that multi-polar worlds tend to have far more wars. Even the bi-polar Cold War was highly dangerous. Having a good single block is preferable.
- vasac 8y agoYeah, right. Almost no wars in the last 30 years. Except for a few never-ending wars that last so long that are basically a new normal so we can count them off.
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- tomohawk 8y ago"we demand a say in how our work is used" Then go live in some other country instead of freeloading on the protections afforded by this one.
- Rebelgecko 8y agoOr just quit. If you're working on something you believe can be used immorally, why should it matter who your customer is?
- archagon 8y agoIf you don’t like peaceful democratic protest, it sounds to me like you’re the one living in the wrong country.
- luxuryballs 8y ago“we demand a say in how our work is used” you already have a say 100% it’s called freedom to decide where you work
- regularfry 8y agoThat's precisely what gives this any force at all: the people saying it are in a position to harm the project by removing themselves from it.
- humantiy 8y agoThat doesn't make a lot of sense. If they are a position to harm the project and did due to their objections; then they would be out of a job. If they quit given their objections then the project would also be harmed and they would still be out of a job. The outcome would be the same of seeking new employment.
- regularfry 8y agoThat's what backs up any employee's position in negotiating with the employer. If it goes down to the wire, either the employee must have a willingness to leave, or a group of employees must credibly believe that "they can't fire all of us".
- kevingadd 8y agoThat's totally not true? Many people signing this letter specifically worked on the project before they knew it was going to be used for warfare. Now they are demanding a say in whether the multi-purpose product will be explicitly sold for warfare or not. If you ambush people with a reveal that they were actually working on military tech you can't expect them all to be happy about it. That's very different from taking a job offer, showing up to work, getting told 'we're making military tech' and saying 'OK'. HoloLens is an existing product, the result of a very large amount of engineering and research. Many of the people who contributed - perhaps even pivotal, highly-compensated employees - were definitely not aware that it would get sold to the US military, even if it's not a big leap to suggest that they might be a customer.
- taobility 8y agoAs a Microsoft employee, I never grant them to represent me. And also I don't support their demand.
- LordHumungous 8y ago>Several Microsoft Corp employees Lol ok
- rdiddly 8y agoCertain lines of thinking kick in on the "second one." Sometimes the "second one" reflects a heightened degree of intent/planning. If you see one person dancing, it's just one person dancing, but if a 2nd person is dancing the exact same way, it must be a planned performance. One plane crashes into a building, it's an accident; 2nd plane crashes, it's no accident. And so on. Hang on, I'm gettin' there. Other times the "second one" makes it occur to you to extrapolate all the way to the end. Your friend eats one of your doughnuts - "Enjoy." She eats a 2nd one, "Hey don't eat them all!" This is more like that. When one big tech company's employees say no to a military contract, it's like "The military will go somewhere else." But when the second one does it, then it occurs to me to ask, could it ever happen that everybody would refuse? Could the Pentagon ever run out of competent tech people before they ran out of people refusing? I don't think it's likely, but still it's interesting to imagine. Far from leading to world peace I suppose it would just mean that those projects were still done, but incompetently. Dunno how I feel about that. War sucks, but waging it competently is better than e.g. blowing up your buddy by accident.
- Mindless2112 8y ago"Those who are reluctant to feed their own army shall feed a foreign army."
- DanAndersen 8y agoFar be it from me to fall into the "everything I don't like is a Russian/Chinese covert action" conspiracy theorizing that is increasingly common these days -- but if I were an adversarial state actor, I would definitely look into ways of encouraging these sorts of anti-US-military "employee rebellions" in the tech industry. Geopolitics never rests, and an important asset of any nation is its tech industry, both during wartime itself and also in any long-term leadup to conflict. I wonder if the US government has internally analyzed the question of whether, in an increasingly globalized and politically agitating environment, its companies can be counted on to be supportive and/or loyal in the event of conflict.
- yyyymmddhhmmss 8y agoThe argument that The United States’ involvements in World War II were so impactful and influential was only possible because of the faith of it’s citizens negotiated by Eisenhower’s New Deal is not new. And an interesting angle of it involves the position that, even if you conclude the US did not actually exhibit expertise, the fact remains that it’s reputation took the credit anyhow. Any of the above would demand a sovereign citizenry.
- throwaway_9168 8y agoAs someone who neither resides in the US (or its supposedly adversary countries), nor works at BigTech, I don't think I have any bias here except I hope humanity doesn't end up obliterating itself with nukes. But your comment is, at best, a fraction of the full picture. 1 No country has ever been as ready to "spread democracy via force" as the US 2 No country has borrowed as much money to run its spendthrift military budget to carry out #1. You combine #1 and #2, and the money lenders are wondering, "Wait, WTF are you doing with all my money?" 3 No country has a tech sector with tentacles that spread as far. That's all fine (for the other countries) if you happen to be, say, neutral and generally non-aggressive Switzerland, but not so if you are a bonafide empire and keep trying to continue being an empire. 4 No country has so many immigrants working in their tech sector. Some of these immigrants are probably wondering "Wait, so I am developing weapons so people I don't know are going to bomb and kill people I actually know?" 5 Last, and certainly not least, "The first casualty of war is truth". A nerd is a nerd because he/she probably knows this very deep in their psyche somewhere. So this nerd ends up in a massive state of cognitive dissonance when asked to develop weapons of war. Its like telling them "Yeah, we won't actually tell you what we might use it for. And you have to just believe any spin we put on the whole issue. Not to mention, we might end up attacking your kith and kin. But its all OK, because WE are the country of DEMOCRACY and FREEDOM". >> its companies can be counted on to be supportive and/or loyal in the event of conflict. That's probably a smaller question, as seen by a neutral. A bigger question at this point is, can the USA, which managed to elect Donald Trump, by counted on to be a stable and reliable superpower or should all the other countries already start taking an "every country for itself approach", which is what I think is happening?
- austincheney 8y agoThis conversation is pretty uninformed. * MS has had various contracts with the military for decades. The baseline of nearly all end user software in the military is composed of MS products like many other businesses. * Augmented reality headsets are not weapons anymore than rucksacks or combat boots. * The military has some cool training aids, such as converted SNES systems that help teach marksmanship on simulated in door ranges. That is by no means unethical. This really just sounds like activists searching for something to fight about.
- daxfohl 8y agoIt goes beyond even that. This tech would likely help save lives more than end them. I used to work for a company that specialized in lightweight life support devices. Their major customers were mostly military. But their uses were mostly non-combat: natural disaster response, goodwill, etc. Of course not everyone in the military is an expert in medical care, so having something like a hololens and the ability for doctors and trained technicians to guide the situation remotely would literally be a life saving option.
- drak0n1c 8y agoImagine if American engineers had boycotted weapons development when they saw the effects of napalm in WW2/Vietnam and that's where progress stopped. Governments would still throw napalm and bodies at problems. Many more people would be dead and conflicts would have escalated even further. Overall, refinements in sensors, targeting, and munitions have saved lives.
- daxfohl 8y agoSure, though that's going a little further than I was intending. I mean, there's a point to what you say, but. At the above company we also had an opportunity to take a contract to design a new kind of bomb trigger. We debated for some time but ultimately turned it down. I was on the fence at the time: "if we don't do it someone will ... it's a defense project for national security so it's fine, right? ... etc etc". But ultimately after what has been happening in Yemen I'm SO glad I don't even have to wonder whether it has my name on it.
- outside1234 8y agoA whole 94 workers? Yeah, that isn't a rebellion.
- lawrenceyan 8y agoIt’s about time. Good on Microsoft employees for following Google. Now we just need our Amazon employees to step up.
- mojomark 8y agoAnd nobody said "boo" about the thousands, if not millions, of Microsoft office installations on NMCI and other DoD computers. What, you think the Integrated Master Schedule for that latest Vertical Launch System wasn't organized using MS Project?
- harekaze 8y agoIf only there are deflector shields in reality. Current technologies fail to afford a clear distinction between offensive and defensive potentials, which inevitably leads to controversies and trust issues. Forgive my imaginativeness, if there are effective yet distinctly defensive potentials like deflector shields in reality, I guess most controversies and trust issues will magically resolve by investing most of the resources in this domain to develop such technologies, even though technologies that are not distinctly defensive will still be needed.
- skookumchuck 8y agoI'd sure hate to be the one stalling jet aircraft development only to be confronted with an Me-262.
- thomasmarriott 8y agoAccepting the truth is far less painful than rediscovering it.
- vs2 8y ago93 people signed the petition out of 130,000 microsoft employees!
- rdl 8y agoThe correct response is generous severance to the employees who sign this letter. If a US company doesn’t participate in the defense of the US, it is going to be basically unsustainable to get any immigration permitted for technology employment.
- dlahoda 8y agoDoes contract involve some backend work using .net core?
- ScottAS 8y agoShh... No one tell them what operating systems the army uses.
- ScottAS 8y agoThe ultimate technomurder mastermind was Charles Babbage. Rest in shame.
- tracer4201 8y agoI work at a big tech company. We had a group of maybe 30 people make such demands and it was all over the news as if half or all of workers were rioting. Should tech companies provide assistance to the military is an important topic but this headline is Sensationalist clickbait garbage at best.