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Serious question: should companies not participate in contracts from their country's defense department? Or is the argument that it's only US companies which sh

Serious question: should companies not participate in contracts from their country's defense department? Or is the argument that it's only US companies which shouldn't, because the US is uniquely evil?

0cf8612b2e1e 7d ago
Other countries probably focus quite a bit more on the defense aspect. How many times has the US military countered a hostile attacking force? Instead, I can think of significantly more instances where the US was instigating the situation.
- chanakya 7d ago
  That may be partly true, but in recent times, most western countries participated in wars like Afganistan and Iraq, and provided logistical or other support during the current Iran war.
  - buellerbueller 7d ago
    In even more recent times, the US made war on Iran for no apparent reason at all.
    - jopsen 7d ago
      There are plenty of reasons, some might even be good. But prospects for a positive outcome where probably always slim. IMO, it is particularly dumb when there is a full scale conventional war happening in Ukraine.
- stickfigure 7d ago
  US military power does most of its heavy lifting without throwing bombs. We're seeing the end of Pax Americana and it isn't pretty.
  - pphysch 7d ago
    The two major ongoing wars are due to US foreign policy and could be over tomorrow if US government fully stopped supporting their respective belligerents. A good chunk of the human population has never known a "Pax Americana" and regions such as East Asia are clearly better off due to declining American hegemony.
    - lovich 7d ago
      If you’re referring to Ukraine as one of the two, we already heavily reduced our support under Trump and there is no chance in hell that removing the leftover support causes Ukraine to capitulate by tomorrows, especially after recent territory gains and destruction of Russian logistical supply lines with Wildberries and their refinery infrastructure. Also if the other is Iran, lol at “stopped supporting respective belligerents” as if the US itself was not one of the major belligerents.
      - paimapi 7d ago
        I think the other example is Israel which seems like the much more obviously belligerent, actively colonial nation state that the US is largely propping up (and wouldn't exist otherwise) also, arguably, the half-century of creating, establishing, funding, and build-up of NATO largely supersedes the point that Trump cut spending there temporarily. that all came from American coffers and the current conflict there is a long hangover from that
        JumpCrisscross 7d ago
        > colonial nation state that the US is largely propping up (and wouldn't exist otherwise) This is a baseless, American-centric notion I've heard frequently in New York and San Francisco. If America pulled support from Israel, it would find partners in other countries. India and China are at the top of the list–they want Israeli weapons technology and intelligence. Russia would probably play too. And depending on the kind of mess we leave Iran in, some Gulf countries may also find a way to come to a nuclear technology transfer deal with Tel Aviv.
- tsunamifury 7d ago
  You dont really understand globalism and pax americana do you? But specifically yes america has been directly attacked 20 times in the last 40 some odd years... so averaging once every other year.
- Manuel_D 7d ago
  The US stopped countless wars from starting in the first place due to deterrence. Look at Ukraine to see what happens to a country that isn't part of an alliance like NATO.
  - goatlover 7d ago
    Then look at the Middle East.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 7d ago
    Ukraine seems to be what happens when a country willingly gave up their nukes (with US encouragement). I have no problem if the US navy wants to tool around shipping lanes for the good of global trade. I take issue with everything else. In the past couple of years, the US has implicitly used the strength of its military to threaten the sovereignty of Greenland, Panama, Canada, Mexico, and Cuba. Abducted a foreign head of state. Started a war. Bombed drug runners and fishermen. The death toll for the Iraq war is heavily contested, but the numbers are somewhere in the region of 200k to one million dead. All under the guise of WMDs. Like any large organization, there is a mixture of good and bad outcomes.
    - chasd00 7d ago
      Ukraine was storing nukes but did not have the keys to use them. They were useless to ukraine and presented no deterrent.
      - AngryData 7d ago
        Ukraine was home to many nuclear and rocket scientists so presumably they could have reverse engineered them if they wanted and got a big head start in it. But yeah thats only if they wanted to try and spend the money to support a nuclear program. As they sat they were unreliable at best case.
      - karp773 6d ago
        That's false. Please stop spreading Russian propaganda. Not only Ukraine was able to control and maintaining them, in fact, Ukrainian companies manufactured nuke ICBMs, and then serviced them in Russia long after the collapse of the USSR. See, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KB_Pivdenne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KB_Pivdenne
afavour 7d ago
I think it’s difficult to come up with hard and fast rules. But the fact that the US government (falsely) renamed their Department of Defense to Department of War is perhaps a useful signal.
- SllX 7d ago
  Defense was always just a euphemism for War. That’s not the signal you think it is.
  - charlesabarnes 7d ago
    Why isn't it? The change was clearly made to indicate the posture of the department. Either to US citizens or to powers abroad. Even though its "just" words it indicates intent.
    - shimman 7d ago
      Because the US has mostly been an imperial force of evil among the world, not a net benefit outsides of the elites that benefit from the deliberate colonialism + death. War Is a Racket is almost a 100 years old and it's about one man's feelings towards his manipulation in the banana wars [1] + middle east interventions. You can go back every century and see what damage colonialism has done both abroad and at home. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Wars
    - SllX 7d ago
      It was originally entitled “Department of War” and was changed after World War II for better PR. Whether it is called “Department of War” or “Department of Defense”, it’s still the same organization maintaining the same mission operating under the same budget. Personally, I view “Department of War” as more honest, because War has always been its business.
      - throw0101d 7d ago
        > Whether it is called “Department of War” or “Department of Defense”, it’s still the same organization maintaining the same mission operating under the same budget. The mission of the Department of War, which was its name pre-WW2, and the mission of the Department of Defence (post-WW2) is completely different: this is evidenced by the number of military personnel in the two time periods (and the draw-down in personal post-1990, after the Cold War ended): * https://www.statista.com/statistics/1066986/us-armed-forces-military-personnel-capita-historical/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1066986/us-armed-forces-... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_military_personnel_and_expenditures.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_military_personnel_and...
istjohn 7d ago
If your country's defense department is conducting itself ethically, and the contracts are for equipment or technology that is not inherently ethically fraught (like autonymous weapon systems), then one might consider that acceptable if you aren't a pacifist. An enormous amount of US military technology and weapons have been recently used to perpetuate a genocide, so the US is certainly an outlier in the global landscape.
- chanakya 6d ago
  Among the list of countries which supply arms to Israel are UK, Canada, Germany, Australia, Netherlands, India, Italy, Taiwan, Romania and a few others. The US is not unique in this by any means.
umeshunni 7d ago
There's a class of people in the West who have forgotten that wars happen and that defense is necessary. American especially benefit from two oceans separating them from the rest of the world and having never seen a war except on CNN. Some of them, esp in central/eastern Europe, were rudely woken up in 2022 when Russian tanks rolle into a neighboring country. Others still have their heads buried in the sand and will not wake up even when Chinese robots march in Taipei in a few years.
- chanakya 6d ago
  Exactly. Decades of pax americana has lulled people into a view that the rest of the world are pacifists who will get along just fine but for the US.
2OEH8eoCRo0 7d ago
Work for defense but elect better leaders. Your leaders decide where and when the military is used.
- esalman 7d ago
  Hard to elect better leaders when you do not have multiple billions of dollars to spend.
  - XorNot 7d ago
    Oh, do they have some mechanism by which they just took people's votes away entirely?
    - Avicebron 7d ago
      Pretty much, corporate lobbying, corporate donations, superpacs, the list is pretty much endless. Little timmy's vote in rural nebraska isn't moving the needle. Maybe he can complain at his local town meeting about the datacenter they're building in his back yard. Or put a sign in his yard to show he's on the blue team or the red team but practically it doesn't matter. As an aside, I emailed my congressman (blue) about one of the proposals (bipartisan) to essentially force device age verification and his office emailed me back well after it passed with a few reguritared sentences about protecting the children. I bet if I called a lobbyist in Maryland and had him meet the congressman for coffee to express my view he might be more willing to listen.
      - deleted 7d ago
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      - deleted 7d ago
        [deleted]
      - chanakya 6d ago
        There was more corporate and billionaire backing and donations to the Democrats than the Republicans. Also, studies have shown that the power of money in elections is overestimated. Money tends to go for the viable candidate, it's not the money which makes them viable.
beloch 7d ago
There is an undeniable conflict between "Don't be evil." and "Evil pays.". A lot of what militaries do can be best described as the lesser of two evils. Murdering people is bad, but sometimes a little murder can prevent a lot of murder. However ethically or unethically a state uses force, there's usually a lot of money to be had in supplying that state with the means of force. Is there room for ethics in military research and procurement? Absolutely. An AI company might say, "We will help you choose the best targets when under time pressure, but we won't provide an oracle that lets you justify indiscriminate killing of civilians." An explosives factory might say, "We'll build precision missile warheads for you, but not white phosphorous or cluster munitions, because these kill civilians indiscriminately.". People working for companies that do defence work have a moral obligation to observe how their labour is used and refuse to give it if the results are unethical. It's no different from soldiers having a moral duty to refuse illegal orders. To answer your question, I'd say that participating in the defence industry can be justifiable if you remain guided by ethics, and unjustifiable if you abandon them for money. e.g. If you're currently doing anything to help develop the IDF's Lavender or "Where's Daddy" programs, it's pretty hard to argue that you have a functioning moral compass. It's also completely fine to say, "I don't want to deal with moral grey zones" and refuse to work for companies that do military work. You might make less money, but you'll almost certainly sleep easier.
- JumpCrisscross 7d ago
  > You might make less money, but you'll almost certainly sleep easier Idk, there's something unethical in outsourcing ethical grey areas to other people while reaping the benefits of the peace (or war far from your home) it brings. Predatory monsters exist. A wealthy society that demilitarizes learns the lesson Europe is now. (If Ukraine didn't have a domestic defence industry, it wouldn't have been able to fight the fight it has been able to.) Put another way, you'll sleep easier, but it's a false security, even if it's one that may last for the rest of your own life. I'd also note that you can absolutely contribute to parts of the military where you actions are highly unlikely to directly result in anyone dying. Air-defence radars and munitions, for example, particulalry those designed to take out missiles and ballistics.
throw0101d 7d ago
> * Or is the argument that it's only US companies which shouldn't, because the* US is uniquely evil? What are the (current?) foreign policy goals of the country in question? If it leans more defensive, like Japan, that's different than a country that may have a more interventionist bent. Also what product(s) is the company developing or offering (field hospital equipment or are we talking about Palantir)?
- sebzim4500 7d ago
  What if it's interventionist but those interventions are clearly good? Think US in the 90s.
asdff 7d ago
No need to get serious. Only a sith deals in absolutes. There's plenty of work within the us military that is definitely not evil. Even within the field of weapons development. You could say develop a target selection approach that is less likely to blow up a school halfway across the world than existing approaches. You are literally saving lives working on that project, despite what the people who only see in black and white and make grandstand positions online might think.
- tastyface 7d ago
  "You could say develop a target selection approach that is less likely to blow up a school halfway across the world than existing approaches." Sure, you save some lives. Then the military realizes they can apply violence far more liberally than they ever could before. Subsequent conflicts result in a whole lot more death for the losing side. Maybe a lot more "militar-aged men" end up as cannon fodder for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or... do those lives not count? Depends on your definition of "evil," I guess: I'm using the Christian one.
  - irishcoffee 7d ago
    There’s a story in the Christian Bible about David, Old Testament. He was told to fire arrows into the ground. He shot 3. The response he got was something like “you should have shot more, now you’ll only sack 3 cities.” Tell me more about lives, Christianity, and war.
    - tastyface 6d ago
      Anyone who knows anything about Christianity knows that the New Testament supersedes the Old Testament.
      - irishcoffee 5d ago
        Man this made me laugh, that’s too funny. Either you forgot a /s or you sincerely have no idea what you’re talking about.
Centigonal 7d ago
I think this is secondary to a widespread loss of confidence in our nation's political and foreign policy apparatus to do what's right for the average American. "Working for the military is evil" descends from a post-Vietnam, post-Iraq, post-Snowden worldview that presupposes that the military will leverage technology it has access to in unexpected, undesirable, and broadly harmful ways.
- XorNot 7d ago
  Well that and it's indicative of the broader American social dysfunction that they are chronically incapable of holding themselves or their (still surprisingly democratic) government accountable and so everything is always about "the corporations". Every problem is meant to be solved by what corporations do or do not do.
  - pixl97 7d ago
    I mean, when you start believing greed is good it's all downhill from there.
protocolture 7d ago
>Serious question: should companies not participate in contracts from their country's defense department? Or is the argument that it's only US companies which shouldn't, because the US is uniquely evil? Depends if they do evil shit or not. The USA does a lot of evil shit. If you wanted to not be evil, you wouldn't help people to do evil shit.
marcosdumay 6d ago
The US is almost uniquely evil, though. People should ask the same question in the likes of Russia, Israel, North Korea, Iran. But in most countries, defense actually means that.

0cf8612b2e1e 7d ago

Other countries probably focus quite a bit more on the defense aspect. How many times has the US military countered a hostile attacking force? Instead, I can think of significantly more instances where the US was instigating the situation.

chanakya 7d ago
That may be partly true, but in recent times, most western countries participated in wars like Afganistan and Iraq, and provided logistical or other support during the current Iran war.
- buellerbueller 7d ago
  In even more recent times, the US made war on Iran for no apparent reason at all.
  - jopsen 7d ago
    There are plenty of reasons, some might even be good. But prospects for a positive outcome where probably always slim. IMO, it is particularly dumb when there is a full scale conventional war happening in Ukraine.
stickfigure 7d ago
US military power does most of its heavy lifting without throwing bombs. We're seeing the end of Pax Americana and it isn't pretty.
- pphysch 7d ago
  The two major ongoing wars are due to US foreign policy and could be over tomorrow if US government fully stopped supporting their respective belligerents. A good chunk of the human population has never known a "Pax Americana" and regions such as East Asia are clearly better off due to declining American hegemony.
  - lovich 7d ago
    If you’re referring to Ukraine as one of the two, we already heavily reduced our support under Trump and there is no chance in hell that removing the leftover support causes Ukraine to capitulate by tomorrows, especially after recent territory gains and destruction of Russian logistical supply lines with Wildberries and their refinery infrastructure. Also if the other is Iran, lol at “stopped supporting respective belligerents” as if the US itself was not one of the major belligerents.
    - paimapi 7d ago
      I think the other example is Israel which seems like the much more obviously belligerent, actively colonial nation state that the US is largely propping up (and wouldn't exist otherwise) also, arguably, the half-century of creating, establishing, funding, and build-up of NATO largely supersedes the point that Trump cut spending there temporarily. that all came from American coffers and the current conflict there is a long hangover from that
      - JumpCrisscross 7d ago
        > colonial nation state that the US is largely propping up (and wouldn't exist otherwise) This is a baseless, American-centric notion I've heard frequently in New York and San Francisco. If America pulled support from Israel, it would find partners in other countries. India and China are at the top of the list–they want Israeli weapons technology and intelligence. Russia would probably play too. And depending on the kind of mess we leave Iran in, some Gulf countries may also find a way to come to a nuclear technology transfer deal with Tel Aviv.
tsunamifury 7d ago
You dont really understand globalism and pax americana do you? But specifically yes america has been directly attacked 20 times in the last 40 some odd years... so averaging once every other year.
Manuel_D 7d ago
The US stopped countless wars from starting in the first place due to deterrence. Look at Ukraine to see what happens to a country that isn't part of an alliance like NATO.
- goatlover 7d ago
  Then look at the Middle East.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 7d ago
  Ukraine seems to be what happens when a country willingly gave up their nukes (with US encouragement). I have no problem if the US navy wants to tool around shipping lanes for the good of global trade. I take issue with everything else. In the past couple of years, the US has implicitly used the strength of its military to threaten the sovereignty of Greenland, Panama, Canada, Mexico, and Cuba. Abducted a foreign head of state. Started a war. Bombed drug runners and fishermen. The death toll for the Iraq war is heavily contested, but the numbers are somewhere in the region of 200k to one million dead. All under the guise of WMDs. Like any large organization, there is a mixture of good and bad outcomes.
  - chasd00 7d ago
    Ukraine was storing nukes but did not have the keys to use them. They were useless to ukraine and presented no deterrent.
    - AngryData 7d ago
      Ukraine was home to many nuclear and rocket scientists so presumably they could have reverse engineered them if they wanted and got a big head start in it. But yeah thats only if they wanted to try and spend the money to support a nuclear program. As they sat they were unreliable at best case.
    - karp773 6d ago
      That's false. Please stop spreading Russian propaganda. Not only Ukraine was able to control and maintaining them, in fact, Ukrainian companies manufactured nuke ICBMs, and then serviced them in Russia long after the collapse of the USSR. See, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KB_Pivdenne https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KB_Pivdenne

afavour 7d ago

I think it’s difficult to come up with hard and fast rules. But the fact that the US government (falsely) renamed their Department of Defense to Department of War is perhaps a useful signal.

SllX 7d ago
Defense was always just a euphemism for War. That’s not the signal you think it is.
- charlesabarnes 7d ago
  Why isn't it? The change was clearly made to indicate the posture of the department. Either to US citizens or to powers abroad. Even though its "just" words it indicates intent.
  - shimman 7d ago
    Because the US has mostly been an imperial force of evil among the world, not a net benefit outsides of the elites that benefit from the deliberate colonialism + death. War Is a Racket is almost a 100 years old and it's about one man's feelings towards his manipulation in the banana wars [1] + middle east interventions. You can go back every century and see what damage colonialism has done both abroad and at home. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_Wars
  - SllX 7d ago
    It was originally entitled “Department of War” and was changed after World War II for better PR. Whether it is called “Department of War” or “Department of Defense”, it’s still the same organization maintaining the same mission operating under the same budget. Personally, I view “Department of War” as more honest, because War has always been its business.
    - throw0101d 7d ago
      > Whether it is called “Department of War” or “Department of Defense”, it’s still the same organization maintaining the same mission operating under the same budget. The mission of the Department of War, which was its name pre-WW2, and the mission of the Department of Defence (post-WW2) is completely different: this is evidenced by the number of military personnel in the two time periods (and the draw-down in personal post-1990, after the Cold War ended): * https://www.statista.com/statistics/1066986/us-armed-forces-military-personnel-capita-historical/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1066986/us-armed-forces-... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_military_personnel_and_expenditures.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_military_personnel_and...

istjohn 7d ago

If your country's defense department is conducting itself ethically, and the contracts are for equipment or technology that is not inherently ethically fraught (like autonymous weapon systems), then one might consider that acceptable if you aren't a pacifist. An enormous amount of US military technology and weapons have been recently used to perpetuate a genocide, so the US is certainly an outlier in the global landscape.

chanakya 6d ago
Among the list of countries which supply arms to Israel are UK, Canada, Germany, Australia, Netherlands, India, Italy, Taiwan, Romania and a few others. The US is not unique in this by any means.

umeshunni 7d ago

There's a class of people in the West who have forgotten that wars happen and that defense is necessary. American especially benefit from two oceans separating them from the rest of the world and having never seen a war except on CNN. Some of them, esp in central/eastern Europe, were rudely woken up in 2022 when Russian tanks rolle into a neighboring country. Others still have their heads buried in the sand and will not wake up even when Chinese robots march in Taipei in a few years.

chanakya 6d ago
Exactly. Decades of pax americana has lulled people into a view that the rest of the world are pacifists who will get along just fine but for the US.

2OEH8eoCRo0 7d ago

Work for defense but elect better leaders. Your leaders decide where and when the military is used.

esalman 7d ago
Hard to elect better leaders when you do not have multiple billions of dollars to spend.
- XorNot 7d ago
  Oh, do they have some mechanism by which they just took people's votes away entirely?
  - Avicebron 7d ago
    Pretty much, corporate lobbying, corporate donations, superpacs, the list is pretty much endless. Little timmy's vote in rural nebraska isn't moving the needle. Maybe he can complain at his local town meeting about the datacenter they're building in his back yard. Or put a sign in his yard to show he's on the blue team or the red team but practically it doesn't matter. As an aside, I emailed my congressman (blue) about one of the proposals (bipartisan) to essentially force device age verification and his office emailed me back well after it passed with a few reguritared sentences about protecting the children. I bet if I called a lobbyist in Maryland and had him meet the congressman for coffee to express my view he might be more willing to listen.
    - deleted 7d ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 7d ago
      [deleted]
    - chanakya 6d ago
      There was more corporate and billionaire backing and donations to the Democrats than the Republicans. Also, studies have shown that the power of money in elections is overestimated. Money tends to go for the viable candidate, it's not the money which makes them viable.

beloch 7d ago

There is an undeniable conflict between "Don't be evil." and "Evil pays.". A lot of what militaries do can be best described as the lesser of two evils. Murdering people is bad, but sometimes a little murder can prevent a lot of murder. However ethically or unethically a state uses force, there's usually a lot of money to be had in supplying that state with the means of force. Is there room for ethics in military research and procurement? Absolutely. An AI company might say, "We will help you choose the best targets when under time pressure, but we won't provide an oracle that lets you justify indiscriminate killing of civilians." An explosives factory might say, "We'll build precision missile warheads for you, but not white phosphorous or cluster munitions, because these kill civilians indiscriminately.". People working for companies that do defence work have a moral obligation to observe how their labour is used and refuse to give it if the results are unethical. It's no different from soldiers having a moral duty to refuse illegal orders. To answer your question, I'd say that participating in the defence industry can be justifiable if you remain guided by ethics, and unjustifiable if you abandon them for money. e.g. If you're currently doing anything to help develop the IDF's Lavender or "Where's Daddy" programs, it's pretty hard to argue that you have a functioning moral compass. It's also completely fine to say, "I don't want to deal with moral grey zones" and refuse to work for companies that do military work. You might make less money, but you'll almost certainly sleep easier.

JumpCrisscross 7d ago
> You might make less money, but you'll almost certainly sleep easier Idk, there's something unethical in outsourcing ethical grey areas to other people while reaping the benefits of the peace (or war far from your home) it brings. Predatory monsters exist. A wealthy society that demilitarizes learns the lesson Europe is now. (If Ukraine didn't have a domestic defence industry, it wouldn't have been able to fight the fight it has been able to.) Put another way, you'll sleep easier, but it's a false security, even if it's one that may last for the rest of your own life. I'd also note that you can absolutely contribute to parts of the military where you actions are highly unlikely to directly result in anyone dying. Air-defence radars and munitions, for example, particulalry those designed to take out missiles and ballistics.

throw0101d 7d ago

> * Or is the argument that it's only US companies which shouldn't, because the* US is uniquely evil? What are the (current?) foreign policy goals of the country in question? If it leans more defensive, like Japan, that's different than a country that may have a more interventionist bent. Also what product(s) is the company developing or offering (field hospital equipment or are we talking about Palantir)?

sebzim4500 7d ago
What if it's interventionist but those interventions are clearly good? Think US in the 90s.

asdff 7d ago

No need to get serious. Only a sith deals in absolutes. There's plenty of work within the us military that is definitely not evil. Even within the field of weapons development. You could say develop a target selection approach that is less likely to blow up a school halfway across the world than existing approaches. You are literally saving lives working on that project, despite what the people who only see in black and white and make grandstand positions online might think.

tastyface 7d ago
"You could say develop a target selection approach that is less likely to blow up a school halfway across the world than existing approaches." Sure, you save some lives. Then the military realizes they can apply violence far more liberally than they ever could before. Subsequent conflicts result in a whole lot more death for the losing side. Maybe a lot more "militar-aged men" end up as cannon fodder for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or... do those lives not count? Depends on your definition of "evil," I guess: I'm using the Christian one.
- irishcoffee 7d ago
  There’s a story in the Christian Bible about David, Old Testament. He was told to fire arrows into the ground. He shot 3. The response he got was something like “you should have shot more, now you’ll only sack 3 cities.” Tell me more about lives, Christianity, and war.
  - tastyface 6d ago
    Anyone who knows anything about Christianity knows that the New Testament supersedes the Old Testament.
    - irishcoffee 5d ago
      Man this made me laugh, that’s too funny. Either you forgot a /s or you sincerely have no idea what you’re talking about.

Centigonal 7d ago

I think this is secondary to a widespread loss of confidence in our nation's political and foreign policy apparatus to do what's right for the average American. "Working for the military is evil" descends from a post-Vietnam, post-Iraq, post-Snowden worldview that presupposes that the military will leverage technology it has access to in unexpected, undesirable, and broadly harmful ways.

XorNot 7d ago
Well that and it's indicative of the broader American social dysfunction that they are chronically incapable of holding themselves or their (still surprisingly democratic) government accountable and so everything is always about "the corporations". Every problem is meant to be solved by what corporations do or do not do.
- pixl97 7d ago
  I mean, when you start believing greed is good it's all downhill from there.

protocolture 7d ago

>Serious question: should companies not participate in contracts from their country's defense department? Or is the argument that it's only US companies which shouldn't, because the US is uniquely evil? Depends if they do evil shit or not. The USA does a lot of evil shit. If you wanted to not be evil, you wouldn't help people to do evil shit.

marcosdumay 6d ago

The US is almost uniquely evil, though. People should ask the same question in the likes of Russia, Israel, North Korea, Iran. But in most countries, defense actually means that.