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Just because the US has better tech now doesn't mean the US can sit back and think "ah, well, they'll never catch up, let's just stop with the technological pro
by jplayer01 8y ago
Just because the US has better tech now doesn't mean the US can sit back and think "ah, well, they'll never catch up, let's just stop with the technological progress". That's entirely unrealistic. 30 years ago, China was a country of poor farmers. They're now an economic superpower that is increasingly sinking tons of money into their military and research.
I'm not sure you realize how much of our modern technology is thanks to defense technology grants and DARPA. Military, academia and private business have always been tightly coupled in the US and it's dishonest to pretend otherwise. Microsoft has always had plenty of defense contracts, hell , they have the largest or second largest R&D division in the world. These moral qualms are entirely new.
- emberrider 8y agoI don't think they're entirely new, but consider that the average tech employee is in their late 20s or early 30s and the only major exercises of US military power they've seen were in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US has squandered its goodwill among that group by engaging in wars of aggression that were only marginally necessary. They didn't experience the cold war when the threat of nuclear annihilation was hovering over everyone (until very recently; it seems to be returning). Couple that with the highly employee favored labor market dynamics in tech and it's not surprising people don't want to take military applications up. Also, it has to be said: it's a verdict on US leadership. The man in the oval office isn't someone I'd feel comfortable arming, nor was Bush. Even Obama had the thing with the drone strikes. When US Presidents demonstrate carelessness and unpredictability in their use of force, it turns reasonable, peace-loving people off.
- rland 8y agoThat unraveling of goodwill began much earlier, with Vietnam, imo.