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I can never understand those protesters. If they can sabotage military in all countries, that may be good. But they must know it is impossible. They know their

I can never understand those protesters. If they can sabotage military in all countries, that may be good. But they must know it is impossible. They know their kind of activism has zero effect on Russian and Chinese military (imagine Huawei employees sign a letter of this kind, which will never happen). So they are volunteerily sabotage U.S. military to help the Russians and Chineses. I'm not sure how they get their head around.

whatislovecraft 8y ago
> So they are volunteerily sabotage U.S. military to help the Russians and Chineses. Choosing to not do work, or requesting to not do work, that is mostly (entirely?) unrelated to the work you were expecting to be doing at a software company in the US is not "sabotaging" the US military. It is also no indication of intent to help the Russian or Chinese military. Your words are very nearly slanderous to the protesters, as you have placed a false intent to commit some kind of treason? on them, an intent for which they have shown no evidence of having.
- dx87 8y ago
  They aren't just choosing to not work on the project, Microsoft said that they will help employees find other projects at the company to work on. The protesters are trying to get public support behind them so Microsoft drops the contract completely, preventing anybody at Microsoft from being able to work on the project, even if they want to.
  - whatislovecraft 8y ago
    I don't see how any of this relates to direct sabotage of US military. Again, requesting that your bosses not make a specific sales is not an act of sabotage nor is it in any way aide to Russia or China. The United States must set positive examples for the world. A country that effectively forces corporations and their employees for the military is fascist. The public pressure for Microsoft to work with the military is disconcerting. Opposing people like the OP make it sound like anyone who holds a differing opinion is mentally ill or something. This isn't an okay state of affairs.
    - judge2020 8y ago
      It's not direct, it's indirect sabotage. As said in OP, tech giants from China and Russia don't have employees protesting military aid just because 'the technology is scary and can do harm'. I also highly doubt the US 'setting an example' will change any of their minds. If none of the United States tech giants sign with the Government, it's very likely that the US's technology used for an upcoming world war will be inferior to that of the US's enemies.
      - whatislovecraft 8y ago
        > tech giants from China and Russia don't have employees protesting military aid just because 'the technology is scary and can do harm'. Citation needed? How do you know this? And if they don't have that, it seems like they might not have that due to totalitarian rule and a fear of the population to speak opinions. That's not a society we should emulate. > I also highly doubt the US 'setting an example' will change any of their minds. Why not? I think that it would. Demonstrating the economic impact of focusing these developments on useful, productive concerns would leave them in the dust. Seems like they would like to keep up? I don't follow your logic. > If none of the United States tech giants sign with the Government, it's very likely that the US's technology used for an upcoming world war will be inferior to that of the US's enemies. Again, I disagree and view it as the opposite. Also, if we are so bent on preparing for this future war - without conversation or allowing any kind of other ideas at all - it seems like the war will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
  - pdkl95 8y ago
    > The protesters are trying to get public support behind them So what? Exercising their right to free speech does not "sabotage U.S. military". > so Microsoft drops the contract completely, Yes, effecting larger change is the purpose behind most political speech. These employees are simply exercising their rights to speak their opinions, assemble with other like-minded people, and advocate for their political position to as wider audience in the press. To argue that they somehow don't have these rights denies the long history of SCOTUS decisions that support speech critical of the military or US policy.
    - adventured 8y ago
      > To argue that they somehow don't have these rights denies the long history of SCOTUS decisions that support speech critical of the military or US policy. I strongly agree. The employees very clearly have the right to speak their minds, on their time. And they can quit if they disagree with the business path Microsoft ultimately chooses. Microsoft typically has the right to fire employees if they're not compatible with the business path that Microsoft chooses to pursue. Overall it's a simple context. Each side has to choose what's most important. Microsoft historically is nowhere near as ideologically driven as Google and other modern Silicon Valley companies, it's obvious what Microsoft will choose to do.
      - pdkl95 8y ago
        > And they can quit if they disagree with the business path Microsoft ultimately chooses. Or, they can collectively petition, negotiate, or even apply direct political pressure against their employer. Is that what the real argument is about here? Lots of fear and anger that if engineers start to gain experience with the power of collective action, they might start to have notions about creating a union?
mav3rick 8y ago
Just because you can't voice dissent in some countries doesn't mean it's okay to not support it. You can choose a side but shutting voices down is objectively wrong.
- throwaway8879 8y ago
  There is no such thing as "objectively wrong". Please do elaborate on this. We as a tribe/culture/country/etc can come to an agreement amongst ourselves about what "wrong" is, but that is all.
  - mav3rick 8y ago
    You're okay with your voice and POV being muffled. I consider it a basic inalienable right to speak my mind.
remarkEon 8y ago
My assumption is that Google and Microsoft (and everyone else interested in this kind of work) will just do so in secret. There's obviously a social cost here, unfortunately, but companies probably should be more judicious anyway in terms of how they go about staffing these programs.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
hanging 8y ago
I can never understand those protesters I think it's hypocrisy to say that defense/intelligence work is evil but manipulating individuals into giving away their privacy to the entire commercial space is fine and dandy.
- dmix 8y ago
  > but manipulating individuals into giving away their privacy to the entire commercial space is fine and dandy. It's only evil when China and Russia do it. Including military stuff. I'm amused people think the Huawei 5g thing is getting so much push back by 5-eyes countries + Germany is about 'security' instead of unequal access to penetrate networks globally. Mobile networks are the backbone of the modern intelligence community - agencies who are entirely offensive-focused with the odd defensive help to giant companies on the friendslist (by that I mean "information sharing" list to help "detect malware").
- fallingfrog 8y ago
  I mean, they can both be bad.
mc32 8y ago
I think they are idealists and think they can extricate themselves from realpolitik. Obviously this is not possible and usually leadership understands this, but occasionally bow to small numbers of activists because they have painted themselves into a corner. I don’t think MS (or Amazon) have done that though.
- simula67 8y ago
  I agree. I think it may be naivety. There even was a thread here on HN about how saying that the world is fallen is just religious and therefore should be avoided [1] These people might think human beings are fundamentally good and war is just evil people doing evil things to each other. But evil is just a reality. People band together to kill others to get what they want unless you kill them or raise a credible threat to kill them in return. This is what war ultimately is. If men were angels, no government would be necessary [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19210351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19210351
  - dnautics 8y ago
    You could have made the same argument about slavery in the 19th century. And today, it's nearly universally accepted as wrong and almost completely eradicated.
    - sturgill 8y ago
      With an important caveat: it’s almost completely eradicated _for now_. Civilizations come and go. Perpetual human progress is only possible if that’s what the strongest group of people want and are willing to fight for it. “Live free or die” wasn’t a cute mantra; it was a rallying cry and a warning. In the US, slavery was eradicated literally by the sword. The real genius of the Founding Fathers of the US was their distrust of human nature (and consequent aversion to centralized power).
      - creato 8y ago
        > With an important caveat: it’s almost completely eradicated _for now_. That's not even close to true. There are ~30 million slaves worldwide today [1]. I can't find a concise worldwide total for around the time most people imagine is the peak of slavery, at least in the US (1860?), but that was "only" less than 4 million [2]. Whatever point was being made about slavery as an example in this conversation IMO points exactly the opposite way the GP intended: that slavery is a "natural" state for humans to end up in, and it requires continuous effort to prevent it. Just like war. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century#Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century#St... 2. https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/slavery/timeline/1860.html https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/slavery/timeline/1860.html
blazespin 8y ago
Your logic is that two wrongs make a right. We have to stop this arms race.
- throwaway8879 8y ago
  I'm sorry, but this is a very naive perspective. And completely chronocentric. The "arms race" started when the first hominid learnt how to throw a rock at his fellow species. Do you really think we are simply going to "end" this arms race? I don't mean to be snarky, but with the inevitable colonization of space, do you really expect people to just be super awesome peaceful and loving? And not have an arms race?
- deleted 8y ago
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- GVIrish 8y ago
  It would be unwise to stop the arms race when your adversaries are proceeding apace in it. There are only two times it makes sense to withdraw from an arms race. One is when you sign an enforceable treaty with your rivals. That would be something like START. Two would be when you know that the arms race is very unlikely to bear fruit. For example, it didn't make sense to keep throwing money at the Star Wars (ballistic missile defense) program because it was very unlikely to succeed. Military applications for AI could change the global balance of power in a fundamental way. If you care about peace and human rights you don't want the repressive regimes to gain an advantage in that sphere. Because that makes conflict more likely, not less.
rjf72 8y ago
As you go back in time every generation had some practically insurmountable and very clear enemy and 'evil' to overcome. I think this is fairly self evident if we look back before the 20th century. But going beyond that in the 1920s you had the rebuilding and reconstruction following WW1 followed shortly thereafter by the great depression. The 1940s goes without saying - WW2. In the 1960s you had the civil rights movement when people had clear and well defined purposes in getting rid of literally racist laws which had one rule if you had this skin color, and another if you had this skin color - and there was this little problem of a constant fear of nuclear annihilation due to the cold war. The 1980s are where things start to calm down. You had the end of the cold war as well as the fall of the Berlin Wall, but life started becoming pretty fair and pretty safe. By the 2000s? We certainly don't live in anything like a utopia, but we also live in what is undoubtedly the safest time ever. And while there are still many issues in society, they're becoming ever more difficult to pinpoint in terms of precise solutions. And I think it's safe to say that there will never be a time without issues in societies. People are different and often don't get along. Stick billions of them on a planet and even in systems we could describe as utopia, we'd find a way to not get along. So the point of this is that I think many people want to find an issue or an enemy to fight against. Augmented reality for military use is hardly controversial and something every single nation around the world will be applying to military purposes. But when you need to find an enemy, any enemy, just to give your life some sort of meaning -- tech that will be applied to help soldiers perform more effectively in combat, which does include killing the enemy, makes a soft target. Whether it's really a logical or reasonable thing to protest against is secondary to the issue that it's something to protest against.
- TheBobinator 8y ago
  Who's protesting? Microsoft's employee's. Why are they protesting? Because the company mission statement has changed, and they are being drug into a morass of political entanglements they want nothing to do with. What is their self-interest? They do not want to be involved on US Military projects, nor do they want to create the weapons systems of tomorrow. That's someone elses job. I guess their self-interest here must just be "something" to fight for. Being dismissive is not the correct response to what they are doing.
TheBobinator 8y ago
Here's your understanding. Maybe you don't work in the US, or come from the US, but are a microsoft employee. Maybe you you do not fully agree with the united states military policies or with their use of technology to further US military objectives and began working for Microsoft because, despite their flaws, you love tech and want to improve the world. Maybe you did not think, like the founding fathers did, that a standing army ought to be needed. Certainly, it's a new age and not every ideal is practical, nor what we think to be practical a good idea. Whatever the reason, you now have a conflict of interest; a change in the corporate mission statement and identity that is sudden and significant. Furthermore, suppose you do work on the Hololens project. You wake up in the morning to find out the knowledge in your head is now national-security critical, which means your head is now US Government property and you will be subject to a mandatory gook risk assessment. This will affect your ability to travel, send funds abroad, contact family abroad, whom you may be employed by, and all sorts of other requirements you did not sign up for upto and including special conditions delivered by the G-Men themselves to you and if you refuse you, like many others, may become a disappeared persons statistic. You did not apply for security clearance, and you have not been paid for the privilage. Perhaps you were a H1B working on that project who's H1B was ended by it. There's a long tradition of companies making a great consumer product, and the military hiring the willing staff or convincing the principal architect of the need, and making a great military weapon. What's going on here is people are being drafted. Good, creative IT people are hard to come by and they are pretty opinionated about not producing monstrosities because they are more capable than anyone of imagining how those weapons can be abused. Windows, Azure, and Office are all stagnating, dieing technologies at this point; Satya is looking for future revenue 5-10 years out. Microsoft has to play a certain amount of politics and be in the right circles to be allowed to do things like buy Github or Linkedin, both of which given their history of abusing labor they ought not to have been allowed to do. This problem is not something that is going to go away, and alienating your engineering staff is a great way to lose experienced, critical engineers to competitiors and even foreign governments. Satya is playing with fire.
partiallypro 8y ago
Seriously, if I'm a foreign adversary, I am infiltrating these companies to do two things: steal IP, and spreading company ideals that stop them from working with the US military...and I don't rule that out as something that is happening. Anyone that thinks if the US suddenly stopped every dime of military spending today would make the world full of rainbows and gumdrops is incredibly naive. I'm glad that Microsoft took this stand.
calhoun137 8y ago
> I can never understand those protesters In my opinion, the potential for the technology that microsoft could develop for the military is just as dangerous if not more so than chlorine gas, which was used in WW1. You should watch this video [1]. It is about Einstein and Fritz Haber (who was the father of chlorine gas). Einstein was horrified at the way Haber was so casual about mass murdering people. Speaking for myself: I have never and will never work on any weapon technology that is meant for killing other people. If I was at MS and someone asked me to do that I would raise hell like these people and absolutely refuse to do it and quit. There is no reason or need for an arms race on super high end weaponization of AI between the US, Russia, and China. That is super dangerous and crazy talk. We need peace in this world, not more high tech weapons. I support the action of the protesters at MS 1000%. Hope that helps you understand them. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWFe253TYmA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWFe253TYmA
- refurb 8y ago
  It's 1943 and Germany has taken over most of Europe and it's looking like Russia might fall as well. Are you saying you'd never help the Allies develop weapons that might help end the war?
  - 8note 8y ago
    would there have been a Hitler if the US hadn't joined in WW1? seems to have gone badly to me.
  - blub 8y ago
    Very poor argument. Today's existential threats are climate change and having too many nukes, not an ongoing world war.
- blotter_paper 8y ago
  >There is no reason or need for an arms race on super high end weaponization of AI between the US, Russia, and China. I feel like I'm stating the obvious, and you probably already understand this point, but I'll make it anyway for the sake of advancing the discussion. From the perspective of the world as a whole, an arms race doesn't make sense. From the perspective of any single major player (United States, Russia, China) advancing your own military technology makes sense regardless of if the other players do so; if they do you have MAD (maybe) protecting you from being exploited, if they don't you can exploit them. We can argue that the major players "shouldn't" be trying to exploit each other, but the fact is that they are, and the best defense against exploitation seems to be military power. So it goes.
lllauri 8y ago
> So they are volunteerily sabotage U.S. military to help the Russians and Chineses. They chose to not support the war industry in general, the country is irrelevant. Ultimately, that is all we, as individuals, can do - to participate in something or not, diminishing it by one.
jerkstate 8y ago
Ah, so you do understand them, or at least their agitators.
xiphias2 8y ago
Maybe they are from Russia and China? How would you feel about working for the military against your own country? When I agreed to the contract for Google, my contract said ,,don't do evil'', not ,,work for a company that contracts to the US military''
lawrenceyan 8y ago
Is there an end to this sort of thinking? And if so, what kind of future does it result in? There's a reason why humanity has collectively agreed to ban chemical and bio weapons in warfare despite how effectively lethal they are. A future of increasingly automated killing is not a pretty path. And if you believe there is no choice but to go along such a path, I can only say that it's easy to resign yourself to the "inevitable" and harder, much harder, to fight for a better path. I promise you though that brighter futures/timelines do exist and reaching them is very much possible and realistic. All it takes is not immediately giving into cynicism.
- Diesel555 8y ago
  You can agree to collectively end something... it doesn't mean all players will play fair. Classification is a thing. Assuming others classify things is a thing. Back to the arms race. It used to be unjust to drop grenades from a plane.
wpdev_63 8y ago
By that logic then this program doesn't make sense because most militarized nations have nukes and which makes ground warfare obsolete(mutually assured destruction). There might be some sort of justification for it that people don't see(other than jobs) but it's really in bad taste when there's so many other things that should get funding first.
blub 8y ago
Your indignation would make sense if this were some defense contractor, but it seems to me that the same corporations that produced your search engine, Android phone, games console, cloud infrastructure, desktop operating system and much more and know a lot of stuff about you are suddenly interested in also producing stuff for the military. Military applications are a totally different game with their own cloak & dagger culture and perverse incentives. I for one wouldn't like to see companies like MS or Google which anyway abuse lobbying to find even more creative ways to abuse democracy in deals with the government. "We'll help you work on this super-duper weapon system if you don't introduce any privacy laws". And US is really the last country on this planet that needs more defense contractors. There's a whole bunch of them in what's a huge part of the economy. Ever heard of the military-industrial complex? Does it honestly look like a good idea to anyone to add US's richest companies to it?! Probably the biggest threats to the USA's national security are political corruption, social unrest caused by economic injustice, ultra-conservative policies and the actions of the current president which is pushing away your allies and wants to be friends with Russia. Has anyone on this thread noticed that your president is being investigated for his relationship with Russia, the country you all seems so afraid of?
monort 8y ago
This logic presuppose, that the military status quo is the best it can be and can't be improved. It would be wrong at any point in the past, why is it correct right now?
stunt 8y ago
> I can never understand those protesters. If they can sabotage military in all countries, that may be good. But they must know it is impossible. Every person has his/her own moral values and it is right from their own perspective. If someone did not signup to build something for army, and that is one of his/her values. It would make sense to me that he would refuse so. And what kind of value it would be if you say I won't keep it until everyone else do the same? That is not a value anymore. This argument that says "You should do it, because they will do it" is exactly the same argument that worst countries are using to brain wash and turn citizens. What is the difference then? Secondly, I see some comments are saying: "Perhaps a Chinese/Russian wouldn't want to work with military only because military might build something against China/Russia". NO my friend! Don't make that assumption. I believe it is more likely that the same person wouldn't want to work for China/Russia military either.
- humantiy 8y ago
  There is a difference to objections morally and attempting to have it completely shutdown in the company so no one else can help with what they feel is line with their values. Some believe in protecting and defending their values and freedoms and I'd say most of if not all of those people are anti-war. They know however that if it comes to that; they want their men and women to be better equipped and to hopefully come home safe. I think this is one thing lost on the protesters.

whatislovecraft 8y ago

> So they are volunteerily sabotage U.S. military to help the Russians and Chineses. Choosing to not do work, or requesting to not do work, that is mostly (entirely?) unrelated to the work you were expecting to be doing at a software company in the US is not "sabotaging" the US military. It is also no indication of intent to help the Russian or Chinese military. Your words are very nearly slanderous to the protesters, as you have placed a false intent to commit some kind of treason? on them, an intent for which they have shown no evidence of having.

dx87 8y ago
They aren't just choosing to not work on the project, Microsoft said that they will help employees find other projects at the company to work on. The protesters are trying to get public support behind them so Microsoft drops the contract completely, preventing anybody at Microsoft from being able to work on the project, even if they want to.
- whatislovecraft 8y ago
  I don't see how any of this relates to direct sabotage of US military. Again, requesting that your bosses not make a specific sales is not an act of sabotage nor is it in any way aide to Russia or China. The United States must set positive examples for the world. A country that effectively forces corporations and their employees for the military is fascist. The public pressure for Microsoft to work with the military is disconcerting. Opposing people like the OP make it sound like anyone who holds a differing opinion is mentally ill or something. This isn't an okay state of affairs.
  - judge2020 8y ago
    It's not direct, it's indirect sabotage. As said in OP, tech giants from China and Russia don't have employees protesting military aid just because 'the technology is scary and can do harm'. I also highly doubt the US 'setting an example' will change any of their minds. If none of the United States tech giants sign with the Government, it's very likely that the US's technology used for an upcoming world war will be inferior to that of the US's enemies.
    - whatislovecraft 8y ago
      > tech giants from China and Russia don't have employees protesting military aid just because 'the technology is scary and can do harm'. Citation needed? How do you know this? And if they don't have that, it seems like they might not have that due to totalitarian rule and a fear of the population to speak opinions. That's not a society we should emulate. > I also highly doubt the US 'setting an example' will change any of their minds. Why not? I think that it would. Demonstrating the economic impact of focusing these developments on useful, productive concerns would leave them in the dust. Seems like they would like to keep up? I don't follow your logic. > If none of the United States tech giants sign with the Government, it's very likely that the US's technology used for an upcoming world war will be inferior to that of the US's enemies. Again, I disagree and view it as the opposite. Also, if we are so bent on preparing for this future war - without conversation or allowing any kind of other ideas at all - it seems like the war will be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- pdkl95 8y ago
  > The protesters are trying to get public support behind them So what? Exercising their right to free speech does not "sabotage U.S. military". > so Microsoft drops the contract completely, Yes, effecting larger change is the purpose behind most political speech. These employees are simply exercising their rights to speak their opinions, assemble with other like-minded people, and advocate for their political position to as wider audience in the press. To argue that they somehow don't have these rights denies the long history of SCOTUS decisions that support speech critical of the military or US policy.
  - adventured 8y ago
    > To argue that they somehow don't have these rights denies the long history of SCOTUS decisions that support speech critical of the military or US policy. I strongly agree. The employees very clearly have the right to speak their minds, on their time. And they can quit if they disagree with the business path Microsoft ultimately chooses. Microsoft typically has the right to fire employees if they're not compatible with the business path that Microsoft chooses to pursue. Overall it's a simple context. Each side has to choose what's most important. Microsoft historically is nowhere near as ideologically driven as Google and other modern Silicon Valley companies, it's obvious what Microsoft will choose to do.
    - pdkl95 8y ago
      > And they can quit if they disagree with the business path Microsoft ultimately chooses. Or, they can collectively petition, negotiate, or even apply direct political pressure against their employer. Is that what the real argument is about here? Lots of fear and anger that if engineers start to gain experience with the power of collective action, they might start to have notions about creating a union?

mav3rick 8y ago

Just because you can't voice dissent in some countries doesn't mean it's okay to not support it. You can choose a side but shutting voices down is objectively wrong.

throwaway8879 8y ago
There is no such thing as "objectively wrong". Please do elaborate on this. We as a tribe/culture/country/etc can come to an agreement amongst ourselves about what "wrong" is, but that is all.
- mav3rick 8y ago
  You're okay with your voice and POV being muffled. I consider it a basic inalienable right to speak my mind.

remarkEon 8y ago

My assumption is that Google and Microsoft (and everyone else interested in this kind of work) will just do so in secret. There's obviously a social cost here, unfortunately, but companies probably should be more judicious anyway in terms of how they go about staffing these programs.

deleted 8y ago
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hanging 8y ago

I can never understand those protesters I think it's hypocrisy to say that defense/intelligence work is evil but manipulating individuals into giving away their privacy to the entire commercial space is fine and dandy.

dmix 8y ago
> but manipulating individuals into giving away their privacy to the entire commercial space is fine and dandy. It's only evil when China and Russia do it. Including military stuff. I'm amused people think the Huawei 5g thing is getting so much push back by 5-eyes countries + Germany is about 'security' instead of unequal access to penetrate networks globally. Mobile networks are the backbone of the modern intelligence community - agencies who are entirely offensive-focused with the odd defensive help to giant companies on the friendslist (by that I mean "information sharing" list to help "detect malware").
fallingfrog 8y ago
I mean, they can both be bad.

mc32 8y ago

I think they are idealists and think they can extricate themselves from realpolitik. Obviously this is not possible and usually leadership understands this, but occasionally bow to small numbers of activists because they have painted themselves into a corner. I don’t think MS (or Amazon) have done that though.

simula67 8y ago
I agree. I think it may be naivety. There even was a thread here on HN about how saying that the world is fallen is just religious and therefore should be avoided [1] These people might think human beings are fundamentally good and war is just evil people doing evil things to each other. But evil is just a reality. People band together to kill others to get what they want unless you kill them or raise a credible threat to kill them in return. This is what war ultimately is. If men were angels, no government would be necessary [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19210351 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19210351
- dnautics 8y ago
  You could have made the same argument about slavery in the 19th century. And today, it's nearly universally accepted as wrong and almost completely eradicated.
  - sturgill 8y ago
    With an important caveat: it’s almost completely eradicated _for now_. Civilizations come and go. Perpetual human progress is only possible if that’s what the strongest group of people want and are willing to fight for it. “Live free or die” wasn’t a cute mantra; it was a rallying cry and a warning. In the US, slavery was eradicated literally by the sword. The real genius of the Founding Fathers of the US was their distrust of human nature (and consequent aversion to centralized power).
    - creato 8y ago
      > With an important caveat: it’s almost completely eradicated _for now_. That's not even close to true. There are ~30 million slaves worldwide today [1]. I can't find a concise worldwide total for around the time most people imagine is the peak of slavery, at least in the US (1860?), but that was "only" less than 4 million [2]. Whatever point was being made about slavery as an example in this conversation IMO points exactly the opposite way the GP intended: that slavery is a "natural" state for humans to end up in, and it requires continuous effort to prevent it. Just like war. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century#Statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century#St... 2. https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/slavery/timeline/1860.html https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/slavery/timeline/1860.html

blazespin 8y ago

Your logic is that two wrongs make a right. We have to stop this arms race.

throwaway8879 8y ago
I'm sorry, but this is a very naive perspective. And completely chronocentric. The "arms race" started when the first hominid learnt how to throw a rock at his fellow species. Do you really think we are simply going to "end" this arms race? I don't mean to be snarky, but with the inevitable colonization of space, do you really expect people to just be super awesome peaceful and loving? And not have an arms race?
deleted 8y ago
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GVIrish 8y ago
It would be unwise to stop the arms race when your adversaries are proceeding apace in it. There are only two times it makes sense to withdraw from an arms race. One is when you sign an enforceable treaty with your rivals. That would be something like START. Two would be when you know that the arms race is very unlikely to bear fruit. For example, it didn't make sense to keep throwing money at the Star Wars (ballistic missile defense) program because it was very unlikely to succeed. Military applications for AI could change the global balance of power in a fundamental way. If you care about peace and human rights you don't want the repressive regimes to gain an advantage in that sphere. Because that makes conflict more likely, not less.

rjf72 8y ago

As you go back in time every generation had some practically insurmountable and very clear enemy and 'evil' to overcome. I think this is fairly self evident if we look back before the 20th century. But going beyond that in the 1920s you had the rebuilding and reconstruction following WW1 followed shortly thereafter by the great depression. The 1940s goes without saying - WW2. In the 1960s you had the civil rights movement when people had clear and well defined purposes in getting rid of literally racist laws which had one rule if you had this skin color, and another if you had this skin color - and there was this little problem of a constant fear of nuclear annihilation due to the cold war. The 1980s are where things start to calm down. You had the end of the cold war as well as the fall of the Berlin Wall, but life started becoming pretty fair and pretty safe. By the 2000s? We certainly don't live in anything like a utopia, but we also live in what is undoubtedly the safest time ever. And while there are still many issues in society, they're becoming ever more difficult to pinpoint in terms of precise solutions. And I think it's safe to say that there will never be a time without issues in societies. People are different and often don't get along. Stick billions of them on a planet and even in systems we could describe as utopia, we'd find a way to not get along. So the point of this is that I think many people want to find an issue or an enemy to fight against. Augmented reality for military use is hardly controversial and something every single nation around the world will be applying to military purposes. But when you need to find an enemy, any enemy, just to give your life some sort of meaning -- tech that will be applied to help soldiers perform more effectively in combat, which does include killing the enemy, makes a soft target. Whether it's really a logical or reasonable thing to protest against is secondary to the issue that it's something to protest against.

TheBobinator 8y ago
Who's protesting? Microsoft's employee's. Why are they protesting? Because the company mission statement has changed, and they are being drug into a morass of political entanglements they want nothing to do with. What is their self-interest? They do not want to be involved on US Military projects, nor do they want to create the weapons systems of tomorrow. That's someone elses job. I guess their self-interest here must just be "something" to fight for. Being dismissive is not the correct response to what they are doing.

TheBobinator 8y ago

Here's your understanding. Maybe you don't work in the US, or come from the US, but are a microsoft employee. Maybe you you do not fully agree with the united states military policies or with their use of technology to further US military objectives and began working for Microsoft because, despite their flaws, you love tech and want to improve the world. Maybe you did not think, like the founding fathers did, that a standing army ought to be needed. Certainly, it's a new age and not every ideal is practical, nor what we think to be practical a good idea. Whatever the reason, you now have a conflict of interest; a change in the corporate mission statement and identity that is sudden and significant. Furthermore, suppose you do work on the Hololens project. You wake up in the morning to find out the knowledge in your head is now national-security critical, which means your head is now US Government property and you will be subject to a mandatory gook risk assessment. This will affect your ability to travel, send funds abroad, contact family abroad, whom you may be employed by, and all sorts of other requirements you did not sign up for upto and including special conditions delivered by the G-Men themselves to you and if you refuse you, like many others, may become a disappeared persons statistic. You did not apply for security clearance, and you have not been paid for the privilage. Perhaps you were a H1B working on that project who's H1B was ended by it. There's a long tradition of companies making a great consumer product, and the military hiring the willing staff or convincing the principal architect of the need, and making a great military weapon. What's going on here is people are being drafted. Good, creative IT people are hard to come by and they are pretty opinionated about not producing monstrosities because they are more capable than anyone of imagining how those weapons can be abused. Windows, Azure, and Office are all stagnating, dieing technologies at this point; Satya is looking for future revenue 5-10 years out. Microsoft has to play a certain amount of politics and be in the right circles to be allowed to do things like buy Github or Linkedin, both of which given their history of abusing labor they ought not to have been allowed to do. This problem is not something that is going to go away, and alienating your engineering staff is a great way to lose experienced, critical engineers to competitiors and even foreign governments. Satya is playing with fire.

partiallypro 8y ago

Seriously, if I'm a foreign adversary, I am infiltrating these companies to do two things: steal IP, and spreading company ideals that stop them from working with the US military...and I don't rule that out as something that is happening. Anyone that thinks if the US suddenly stopped every dime of military spending today would make the world full of rainbows and gumdrops is incredibly naive. I'm glad that Microsoft took this stand.

calhoun137 8y ago

> I can never understand those protesters In my opinion, the potential for the technology that microsoft could develop for the military is just as dangerous if not more so than chlorine gas, which was used in WW1. You should watch this video [1]. It is about Einstein and Fritz Haber (who was the father of chlorine gas). Einstein was horrified at the way Haber was so casual about mass murdering people. Speaking for myself: I have never and will never work on any weapon technology that is meant for killing other people. If I was at MS and someone asked me to do that I would raise hell like these people and absolutely refuse to do it and quit. There is no reason or need for an arms race on super high end weaponization of AI between the US, Russia, and China. That is super dangerous and crazy talk. We need peace in this world, not more high tech weapons. I support the action of the protesters at MS 1000%. Hope that helps you understand them. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWFe253TYmA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWFe253TYmA

refurb 8y ago
It's 1943 and Germany has taken over most of Europe and it's looking like Russia might fall as well. Are you saying you'd never help the Allies develop weapons that might help end the war?
- 8note 8y ago
  would there have been a Hitler if the US hadn't joined in WW1? seems to have gone badly to me.
- blub 8y ago
  Very poor argument. Today's existential threats are climate change and having too many nukes, not an ongoing world war.
blotter_paper 8y ago
>There is no reason or need for an arms race on super high end weaponization of AI between the US, Russia, and China. I feel like I'm stating the obvious, and you probably already understand this point, but I'll make it anyway for the sake of advancing the discussion. From the perspective of the world as a whole, an arms race doesn't make sense. From the perspective of any single major player (United States, Russia, China) advancing your own military technology makes sense regardless of if the other players do so; if they do you have MAD (maybe) protecting you from being exploited, if they don't you can exploit them. We can argue that the major players "shouldn't" be trying to exploit each other, but the fact is that they are, and the best defense against exploitation seems to be military power. So it goes.

lllauri 8y ago

> So they are volunteerily sabotage U.S. military to help the Russians and Chineses. They chose to not support the war industry in general, the country is irrelevant. Ultimately, that is all we, as individuals, can do - to participate in something or not, diminishing it by one.

jerkstate 8y ago

Ah, so you do understand them, or at least their agitators.

xiphias2 8y ago

Maybe they are from Russia and China? How would you feel about working for the military against your own country? When I agreed to the contract for Google, my contract said ,,don't do evil'', not ,,work for a company that contracts to the US military''

lawrenceyan 8y ago

Is there an end to this sort of thinking? And if so, what kind of future does it result in? There's a reason why humanity has collectively agreed to ban chemical and bio weapons in warfare despite how effectively lethal they are. A future of increasingly automated killing is not a pretty path. And if you believe there is no choice but to go along such a path, I can only say that it's easy to resign yourself to the "inevitable" and harder, much harder, to fight for a better path. I promise you though that brighter futures/timelines do exist and reaching them is very much possible and realistic. All it takes is not immediately giving into cynicism.

Diesel555 8y ago
You can agree to collectively end something... it doesn't mean all players will play fair. Classification is a thing. Assuming others classify things is a thing. Back to the arms race. It used to be unjust to drop grenades from a plane.

wpdev_63 8y ago

By that logic then this program doesn't make sense because most militarized nations have nukes and which makes ground warfare obsolete(mutually assured destruction). There might be some sort of justification for it that people don't see(other than jobs) but it's really in bad taste when there's so many other things that should get funding first.

blub 8y ago

Your indignation would make sense if this were some defense contractor, but it seems to me that the same corporations that produced your search engine, Android phone, games console, cloud infrastructure, desktop operating system and much more and know a lot of stuff about you are suddenly interested in also producing stuff for the military. Military applications are a totally different game with their own cloak & dagger culture and perverse incentives. I for one wouldn't like to see companies like MS or Google which anyway abuse lobbying to find even more creative ways to abuse democracy in deals with the government. "We'll help you work on this super-duper weapon system if you don't introduce any privacy laws". And US is really the last country on this planet that needs more defense contractors. There's a whole bunch of them in what's a huge part of the economy. Ever heard of the military-industrial complex? Does it honestly look like a good idea to anyone to add US's richest companies to it?! Probably the biggest threats to the USA's national security are political corruption, social unrest caused by economic injustice, ultra-conservative policies and the actions of the current president which is pushing away your allies and wants to be friends with Russia. Has anyone on this thread noticed that your president is being investigated for his relationship with Russia, the country you all seems so afraid of?

monort 8y ago

This logic presuppose, that the military status quo is the best it can be and can't be improved. It would be wrong at any point in the past, why is it correct right now?

stunt 8y ago

> I can never understand those protesters. If they can sabotage military in all countries, that may be good. But they must know it is impossible. Every person has his/her own moral values and it is right from their own perspective. If someone did not signup to build something for army, and that is one of his/her values. It would make sense to me that he would refuse so. And what kind of value it would be if you say I won't keep it until everyone else do the same? That is not a value anymore. This argument that says "You should do it, because they will do it" is exactly the same argument that worst countries are using to brain wash and turn citizens. What is the difference then? Secondly, I see some comments are saying: "Perhaps a Chinese/Russian wouldn't want to work with military only because military might build something against China/Russia". NO my friend! Don't make that assumption. I believe it is more likely that the same person wouldn't want to work for China/Russia military either.

humantiy 8y ago
There is a difference to objections morally and attempting to have it completely shutdown in the company so no one else can help with what they feel is line with their values. Some believe in protecting and defending their values and freedoms and I'd say most of if not all of those people are anti-war. They know however that if it comes to that; they want their men and women to be better equipped and to hopefully come home safe. I think this is one thing lost on the protesters.