It's weird to put their Darpa funding together with this decision and then lump the whole thing as Google being confused or hypocritical.
Darpa funds fundamental research. They try to look ahead to what the military could use in 15 years, but it funds open and fundamental projects. They funded Google when it was 2 graduate students trying to search web pages. It was part of the "Digital Libraries" project to make libraries more usable. They funded research that led to the internet and self driving cars (Darpa Grand Challenge). Right now they are funding exoskeletons and implantable health sensors.
This project was to deploy tech to the military that could search drone footage for targets to bomb. It is a purely offensive technology that leads directly to killing people.
They chose to draw a line at not using artificial intelligence for weapons that target human beings or for surveillance that violates human rights.
Amazon is drawing a different line, something like it's ok to use our AI to target human beings as long as it's legal.
It all seems pretty straightforward, they hadn't drawn that line before or needed to and now they did.
I haven't been able to dig up a copy, but I remember there was a file named something like AI: HUMOR; LOGO TURTLES that was a grant proposal written by some people in the LOGO group at the MIT-AI Lab, in response to a military request for proposals, about how they could hatch thousands of LOGO turtles to swarm around the battlefield in geometric patterns to confuse and bewilder the enemy.
;;HATCH CREATES A NEW TURTLE WITH THE SPECIFIED NAME. ALL PROPERTIES OF THAT
;;PARTICULAR TURTLE ARE AS INITIALLY WHEN A STARTDISPLAY IS DONE.
(DEFINE HATCH (TURTLE-NAME)
(PUTPROP TURTLE-NAME
(FILLARRAY (*ARRAY NIL T TURTLE-PROPERTIES) 'HATCH-PROPERTY)
'TURTLE)
(OR (MEMQ TURTLE-NAME :TURTLES) (PUSH TURTLE-NAME :TURTLES))
(USETURTLE TURTLE-NAME)
(SHOWTURTLE)
TURTLE-NAME)
It's nice that in addition to the compulsory Google-bashing this article explicitly points out the other companies involved. Specifically, it mentions Amazon and Microsoft who did much less yet ethics-wise than Google did and yet are rarely called out in the press.
Anyone working for Amazon or Microsoft here? Is this just a skewed press coverage? Or is there any dissent going on there?
Microsoft and Amazon are both less liberal cultures than Google. Microsoft particularly historically has skewed much closer to centrist politically, in its culture, business operations and ideology.
Microsoft is more like old IBM in that regard, which makes sense given how old its cultural foundation is (dating to the 1970s) and its history of working with more conservative old-line enterprise businesses. As are Oracle, Cisco, Intel, etc. All will very happily serve the military industrial complex. You won't find any serious dissent in Redmond.
> Is it really so terrible to research arms for the people who risk their lives keep us safe?
If this was the only thing the weapons were used for, then maybe people wouldn't be upset about this kind of stuff.
The same arms will however also be used to extrajudicially assassinate people based on nothing else than their phone signal, in countries we are not at war with; they might be sold to regimes like Saudi Arabia that kills countless civilians in places like Yemen; they might be used to fight wars based on reasons the administration knows to be false; they might be used to gun down civilians by private contractors; the list goes on.
I'd not be opposed to participating in military research if the weapons were actually used "responsibly" (I know that's a somewhat subjective terms, but most of my examples are quite clearly considered immoral by most people).
Helping a military that is behaving immorally and being unarmed are also not the only options. If more and more people refuse to work for the military on these grounds, this may in the long run put some pressure on them to change their behavior. I do admit that this is hopelessly idealistic though and I don't expect this to happen anytime soon.
Can I ask question first about "immorally" to be sure I understand you correctly?
There are few different kind of morality in circulation, so I need to know about what morality we are talking.
Liberal morale is used at the West: every person life costs infinity, so we cannot exchange life of a person to save another person or even infinity of persons.
However, at war or in military, Liberal morale can't be used, because Liberal morale forbids to send soldiers to protect civilians: life of a soldier has same cost as lives of all civilians in the country. So every military in the world uses Utilitarian morale, where each life has a cost. In most countries, order of life cost is: our politics > our commandment > our civilians > other civilians > our soldiers > enemies, and goal is to minimize loses. In some countries order can be different, e.g. religious leaders can send civilians to kill other civilians or civilians can be used to protect soldiers (e.g. famous speech of V.V. Putin: «We will put our soldier behind their (Ukrainian) mothers and children. Not in front but behind. Will they shoot at them? At their own mothers and children?» https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoQXvPsBBn8 ), and so on.
So my question is: to which kind of morality you are referring when you are talking about "immorality"?
I didn't have a concrete moral framework in mind, but I was thinking of a few baseline rules that should hold in most sensible systems, such as not bombing hospitals (like what happened with that hospital in Syria a while ago), not killing civilians without due process in countries where there is formally no state of war (drone strikes in Pakistan and other countries), not starting wars of aggression based on falsified intelligence (Iraq, Vietnam), investing reasonable amounts effort to avoid harm to non-combatants (that "Collateral Murder" video, US support for the Saudis' actions in Yemen, drone strikes based on just cellphone signals); all of these points are arguably features of many different moral systems and should be much less controversial than the dilemmas you bring up. I'm not a lawyer, but as far as I know to they are all standard components of rules of engagement (like the Geneva Convention).
Also, all of these have been repeatedly violated by the US military or its contractors, making me more hesitant to want to help them, even under the assumption that they are necessary to protect our liberal societies from other regimes.
In general, I agree with you that army should not do that. However, enemy rarely tries to help to achieve that, i.e. they are not putting markers "we are soldiers, shoot us" at their positions. So goal of typical army is to minimize loses, not to avoid them completely, because risk is non-zero for every shot.
> such as not bombing hospitals (like what happened with that hospital in Syria a while ago)
It looks like error (one bomb hit territory near to hospital), not a precise strike.
In contrasts, Russians (I will Russian-Ukraine war as example, because I know it better) are shooting civilians pretty often. I had Uber-drive with driver which served in Augustinian during USSR invasion. He told me that in Augustinian they completely destroyed nearest civilian village with all habitats when one of them was killed during mission. AFAIK, Russian army is not changed much since then.
> not killing civilians without due process in countries where there is formally no state of war (drone strikes in Pakistan and other countries)
Completely agreed. We(Ukraine) are victims of hybrid war too.
> not starting wars of aggression based on falsified intelligence (Iraq, Vietnam)
Intelligence was not falsified in case of Iraq: chemical weapons are just moved to Syria few months prior to invasion.
Not sure about Vietnam, but I know a bit about war in Vietnam from USSR side, and it not good. Not interested much in the topic.
«SADA: They were moved by air and by ground, 56 sorties by jumbo, 747, and 27 were moved, after they were converted to cargo aircraft, they were moved to Syria.»
I newer read Russian news, because they are prepared and targeted. :-) I read memories (many of them were released uncensored shortly after fall of USSR), and I also listened to stories told us by our teachers, ex-officers of USSR army.
> In general, I agree with you that army should not do that. However, enemy rarely tries to help to achieve that, i.e. they are not putting markers "we are soldiers, shoot us" at their positions. So goal of typical army is to minimize loses, not to avoid them completely, because risk is non-zero for every shot.
I agree with that. This is why I was only asking for "reasonable effort" to try to avoid this. I realize this is vague, but there are some cases that are a clear violation.
> It looks like error (one bomb hit territory near to hospital), not a precise strike.
In the incident I was referring to (but can't find a link to for some reason right now), it was a sustained attack that didn't even stop for 30 minutes after the US forces were informed that it was in fact a hospital. I'm willing to attribute that to negligence and organizational dysfunction rather than malice, but even then this indicates a lack of concern for civilians and medical infrastructure in the country.
Another case was the bombing of that infant formula factory in the first gulf war that was, as far as I remember, also claimed to be a chemical weapons site, even though the administration knew this not to be the case at the time. I don't remember many details on this though.
EDIT: Okay, seems I was mistaken about this, they didn't know this to be false, but seemingly had no strong evidence to support their claims either. Here are some other examples of US strikes on civilian targets based on very flimsy evidence though, along with details on that original hospital case I brought up:
> Not sure about Vietnam, but I know a bit about war in Vietnam from USSR side, and it not good. Not interested much in the topic.
In this case the administration lied about the reasons for the war to the general public (this was revealed by the Pentagon Papers).
I know very little about the war in Ukraine, so I'll take your word for it. My main argument was that the US military in particular (since this is the one most relevant to Silicon Valley) has a history of this type of behavior that significantly complicates the point of military research to keep us safe.
SADA: Well, up to the year 2002, 2002, in summer, they were in Iraq. And after that, when Saddam realized that the inspectors are coming on the first of November and the Americans are coming, so he took the advantage of a natural disaster happened in Syria, a dam was broken. So he — he announced to the world that he is going to make an air bridge...
> My main argument was that the US military in particular (since this is the one most relevant to Silicon Valley) has a history of this type of behavior that significantly complicates the point of military research to keep us safe.
Sorry to inform you, but army sometimes shooting even their own civilians. For example, in 2001 Russians used civil plane to fly over EU border to grab some intelligence. They turned off air responder on the plane to hide that. They decided that nobody will try to shot civil passenger plane, even if it doesn't respond. Well, nobody except Russia. Russian air defense battery shot plane with their own passengers without any doubt, even without call to commandment. Then they blamed Ukraine for that. Shit happens.
Speaking as someone in the military: yes. There are a great many weapons i dont want. Because by me (and everyone else in uniform) not wanting them they dont exist. Top of that list: plastic schrapnel. I dont want. It isnt manufactured. Therefore even ISIS cannot use it.
Also on the list: direct-energy blinding weapons design to destroy the retina. Easily biult, but happily not a thing.
Ive seen public reports about this sort of thing. It is hard to verify exactly what is being employed. Sounds like consumer-type lasers, not purpose-biult stuff.
I think all he's saying is, that until he feels his own country resolves to use its arsenal in a somewhat responsible manner (he gave some pretty good examples to the contrary), he doesn't think you can make weapons for them in good conscience.
Yep. But I'm asking about consequences. Ukraine was very poor after collapse of socialism, so USA had worries that Ukraine may sold or lost some of their nuclear bombs, ballistic missiles, or supersonic bomber to an enemy of USA, so USA (with Russia and Britain) promised security to Ukraine in exchange of promise to demolish all that, and to stop development of any new weapons which can harm USA. So we dropped our weapons and stayed unarmed in front of Russia. I personally, counter-attacked Russians with pneumatic pistole, which I then exchanged on field to hand-made grenade, so other few, with real hunter riffles, had chance against AK's and BTR.
Twitter and Facebook are used frequently to track down foreign combatants to be killed. Should people who work there be shamed as well?
In fact, those social media sites have been used to manipulate foreign militant uprisings and sway political discourses (whether in the U.S. or in other countries).
Also, people who worked on GPS technology are directly responsible for the GPS-guided missiles that have been fired into Syria and other parts of Middle East. Should those people be ashamed as well?
I think this is purposefully muddying the issue - there's a reason that mens rea* is part of law; the state of mind a person has in an action weighs heavily on our judgement of the outcome.
Facebook, Twitter, et. al. are first and foremost data-mining ad agencies that also provide social networking services. The fact that you can also use them to target terrorist is not really a by design item, much like even though you can beat someone to death with a wrench, it's primary function and the design goal behind it is to secure nuts to bolts and screws.
So yes, there is a bit of a difference when Google's tech happens to also be used by the military for image analysis from drones and when Google willingly assists and participates in such projects.
The major concern a lot of people have is that it's a very big switch in market from what they were doing to Project Maven. People who otherwise were maybe concerned, or heck, even satisfied with Google's influence on their lives and happy to participate in reCAPTCHA and pay for Google services now find their work and money being used to pay for something they disagree with.
I do not appreciate the simplification of the outcomes, as no civilized society judges in that way - we consider the motive as well as the outcome, as well as the state of mind of the person who committed the act. Likewise, there's quite a bit of a difference in US Army RnD grabbing an open source project and embedding it into drone guidance systems and Google taking a Government Contract; aside from the willingness of Google in this state, they demonstrate their complicit nature as a company via the contract and the payments; the open source project likely wasn't even aware of it until they read about it in some news article or saw snippets of their code in a Press Release/Demo.
* I realize that this is meant as a method of judging guilt (hence Guilty Mind), but the concept is the same here. The state of one's mind in making an action should be relevant.
I would also say it’s one of the reasons they are getting so much flack at the moment. If the extent of data brokering was crappy mailers I would be far less passionate about the topic.
GPS and other precision guidance systems do help to save civilian casualties by allowing militaries to use smaller and fewer explosives. The designers of GPS have probably saved more lives than any doctors. I want to live in a world without human violence but creating a world like that doesn’t involve banning technology, it requires political action.
And so do weapons, because they can eliminate the very people who are killing civilians. Machine guns and bombs saved millions more Jews from being killed in WWII
Yeah, but you're barking up the wrong tree. The military will get the weaponry it wants regardless, likely at a higher cost to the taxpayer and/or more side effects (pollution, for example) if they're forced to do it in-house because all powerful private sector companies somehow agree to 'boycott' and leave the money on the table. It is in everyone's best interest for their military to be the most superior -- the real issue is in military leadership and civilian policy-makers causing the problems. It dilutes the message when you spend energy on issues that should be primarily reserved for commander-in-chief discussions.
I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a single example of any military Google might help that has gone to war based on reasons the appropriate authorities knew to be false.
I anticipate that your response would be to cite the first second Bush Administration's claim of Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. Before making that response, I encourage you to familiarize what that term means under federal law (and has meant since 1994). 18 U.S.C. §§ 2332a(c)(2) and 921(a)(4).
In order for someone to believe that the claim of WMDs was a lie, they would have to believe that the Hussein regime did not possess grenades, and that the President knew it.
None of that happening has anything to do with technology.
The only reason we know about it is improvements in communications.
Nations having people killed across borders outside of the judicial system isn't a new thing, and it isn't going away. The technology to do it is incidental, and a very minor part of defense R&D output.
Functioning communications enables war crimes just as much as or more than weapons, so why not refuse to work on computer networking research too? (one could make a million such arguments about essentially everything)
>Is it really so terrible to research arms for the people who risk their lives keep us safe?
When in recent memory has the US military risked significant amounts of soldiers to "keep us safe"?
If anything, the US military has made me unsafe. The invasion of Iraq was a disaster. Torture and drone warfare have created scores of "terrorists" - people angry that their civilian family members were killed in a war of aggression. You can trace a direct path in history from the invasion of Iraq to the rise of ISIS.
Meanwhile, money that could have been spent of social services funded these wars - leading to an economic climate so bleak that voters elected a fascist president in hopes of changing their station in life.
I'm no pacifist, but wars of aggression are not "keeping us safe" in any sense of the phrase.
Actually, the Iraqi people were happy we freed them from the iron-grip of Saddam -- we unfortunately over stayed our welcome. For a while I was seeing a banner on an overpass: "thank you for our freedom, now go home".
I kind of think they expected it to be a repeat of Panama with a quick game of "capture the dictator" followed by installing a puppet government but the general level of incompetence (i.e. de-Ba'athification of the government) didn't let that happen.
And, yes, I do kind of consider myself a pacifist who just happened to have gone down to Panama and was involved in both Iraq invasions.
Don't fool yourself. The US made life in Iraq miserable through a program of sanctions it refused to remove until Saddam Hussein was no longer in power, these sanctions started in the mid 90s.
Estimates of the effect of these crippling sanctions include half of a million dead. US and UN officials had spoken out against the sanctions calling them war crimes.
If we destroy a country then oust it's dictator who people blame for the poor state of things...are we really the good guy? I don't know if your ignoring this fact or just talking nonsense. The US destroyed Iraq and it has never recovered, and this is a widely accepted fact.
Stupid comment imo, can't believe this is serious and hasn't been called out already.
> US and UN officials had spoken out against the sanctions calling them war crimes.
You do know those were UN sanctions, involving UN inspectors, right?
And the first Gulf War was a UN action involving a whole bunch of countries? My battalion was attached to a French tank division for example.
Before Iraq invaded Kuwait there were no sanctions and after there were (plus a no-fly zone to protect the Kurds from getting gassed...again), kind of makes you wonder if maybe the two are related, maybe just a little?
So, yeah, I can see why you think the big cuddly bear Saddam Hussein was the victim in all this...
Yes, the sanctions are a result of the invasion. But in their goal of ousting Saddam, they destroyed an entire nation. There are better ways.
They were UN sanctions pushed for by the US but many involved spoke out against them during the period and afterwards. Many more are involved in the sanctions process than the ones who decide on the sanctions...
I'm not saying that Saddam wasn't bad, but we did more damage to Iraq than he could have ever done. We fucked up in Iraq.
No sane Iraqi person is happy that the US got it's hands in Iraq, only those in personal opposition to Saddam who lied to the US in order to support an invasion. Dude, even Republicans have started to see the Iraq war for the abosolute sham that it was.
What, you think the US is a big cuddly altruistic bear trying to free people all around the world? Just don't talk about subjects you know nothing about or speak for the Iraqi people you are not a part of. Congrats, number one stupidest comment I have ever seen on HN.
> Congrats, number one stupidest comment I have ever seen on HN.
Pointing out facts (which you go on to agree with) is the stupidest comment you've seen on HN?
And, you know, "people" speak out against everything so that's not really a valid point -- "unnamed people said UN sanctions against Iraq were a war crime, news at 11..."
> Just don't talk about subjects you know nothing about or speak for the Iraqi people you are not a part of.
I was just talking about my personal experience dealing with the good people of Iraq (in my previous comment not the one correcting you for "talk[ing] about subjects you know nothing about") during and after the second invasion, who's speaking for them?
>Pointing out facts (which you go on to agree with) is the stupidest comment you've seen on HN?
My apologies for the misunderstanding, I was referring to the original comment in which the US was the savior of the Iraqi people.
>And, you know, "people" speak out against everything so that's not really a valid point -- "unnamed people said UN sanctions against Iraq were a war crime, news at 11..."
This article has some names of notable critics, searchable as well.
>I was just talking about my personal experience dealing with the good people of Iraq during and after the second invasion
You are an American, perhaps ex military? My only explanation for this is that the people who talk to you on the subject are self selecting, giving you a biased view of the situation. I can certainly say that what you propose is a narrative that even some of the most ardent war hawks from the bush era wouldn't claim.
It's not a pointless discussion to me. It can be useful to someone reading this thread in the future to have different viewpoints and decide who they agree with.
Sure, but in this case it would have been infinitely better if we did nothing at all.
We invaded because of supposed weapons of mass destruction which were not there, it was a mistake pure and simple.
I'm still surprised by the way the American people accept Bush in society with his cutesy paintings when he got the US into this expensive mess. Guess that's what we get for electing a dummy. But hey, as long as he smiles it's cool right?
This has nothing to do with the parent's comments. Whoop-de-do, so we toppled an unpopular dictator and left a power vacuum in his place; how does that "keep [America] safe"?
We should not be the World Police. We can't even afford to keep our own people out of poverty.
Two problems with this argument. You're blaming the military for decisions made by civilian leadership. And, it's not wrong to do what we can to reduce risk both for soldiers and civilians. Adding more risk wouldn't be an improvement.
Military spending is certainly tremendously wasteful, though.
> We have a volunteer army and have been engaging in "adventures" as far back as Vietnam. No one goes in not knowing what they'll be asked to do.
Vietnam prominently featured draftees, and in post-9/11 America the public was heavily led to believe that Iraq was somehow responsible or related to the 9/11 attacks such that one would have not reasonably known what they were signing up for.
Yes, the implication was that since then we've had a volunteer army. Sorry that wasn't clear to you.
>in post-9/11 America the public was heavily led to believe that Iraq was somehow responsible or related to the 9/11 attacks such that one would have not reasonably known what they were signing up for.
Weird, I was in my early teens then and somehow managed to suss out this was not the case (as did many prominent columnists).
And the official line on Iraq was that the possessed WMD, not that they did 9/11.
> Yes, the implication was that since then we've had a volunteer army. Sorry that wasn't clear to you.
Perhaps you should revise your writings, because nothing about the sentence would imply the "since then." This is an international forum, not everyone learns the history of US military recruitment practices.
> Weird, I was in my early teens then and somehow managed to suss out this was not the case (as did many prominent columnists).
I, too, sussed this out in my teenage years but by then the Iraq war was "waning" and the writing was on the wall.
Perhaps you're just much more prescient than I, as well as the millions of young men and women who signed up to serve their country with the belief that Iraq had truly done wrong.
> And the official line on Iraq was that the possessed WMD, not that they did 9/11.
In the lead up to the invasion, our borderline state media apparatus was heavily reporting that Hussein was building WMDs. There was also much accusations of him either funding or supplying Jihadis.
>Perhaps you should revise your writings, because nothing about the sentence would imply the "since then." This is an international forum, not everyone learns the history of US military recruitment practices.
If someone is not a citizen of the USA, and not familiar with how it's military functions, maybe they should take some time to educate themselves before debating how it should be used.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
>In the lead up to the invasion, our borderline state media apparatus was heavily reporting that Hussein was building WMDs. There was also much accusations of him either funding or supplying Jihadis.
It's too bad no government has ever lied or distorted the facts to push for a war prior to Iraq... astute citizens could have learned from that experience and viewed US government proclamations through a critical lens.
> If someone is not a citizen of the USA, and not familiar with how it's military functions, maybe they should take some time to educate themselves before debating how it should be used.
I fully understood, being an American. I found it worth pointing out, out of consideration for others.
> It's too bad no government has ever lied or distorted the facts to push for a war prior to Iraq... astute citizens could have learned from that experience and viewed US government proclamations through a critical lens.
Have you considered running for office? Between your flippant rhetoric and amazing understanding of all issues geopolitical you would surely be a great fit!
So prospective military recruits should make sure that the government's position aligns with their political beliefs before enlisting? What about afterwards? Should an isolationist leave the military when we elect an interventionist president, and vice versa?
I do know what you mean, but technically that's false. Soldiers don't what new wars will start or any specifics about what they'll be ordered to do. But, once enlisted, they have to follow orders anyway.
The military is the enforcement of the leadership, so it's valid to criticize them. Just taking orders wasn't an excuse at nuremberg and it shouldn't be today, either.
At what point should the military refuse the orders of civilian leadership? A tactical level order to shoot civilians (or similar, non-cliche situation) should be disobeyed.
However, is it the military's responsible to disobey the decisions of a duly elected civilian government, such as the Iraq War resolution[0]? Civilian control of the military exists for a reason, and allowing/requiring the military to go against it would have wide ranging consequences. There are definitely unique cases to be explored, but credit/blame need to be assigned to the party responsible for the decision.
This is ultimately a decision that everyone has to make on its own, and it's an ethically complex issue with many facets.
My take on it is that if you contribute in any way to the development of a weapon that is used in morally unjustifiable ways, then you're complicit to murder and manslaughter, and you should be aware of that.
For example, the US is conducting drone strikes in Afghanistan, which are essentially political assassinations. These are condemned by almost any independent expert on international human rights and come with a very high death toll of civilians, including many women and children. In fact, the number of non-combatant civilian victims is routinely higher than the number of targets. Moreover, they are routinely conducted over the territory of another, sovereign country without any international mandate, without any judicial oversight, and without any trial.
If you participate in developing the drones or missiles that used in these strikes, or support them in any other way, then you are making yourself at least partially guilty of murder or manslaughter. From a moral perspective, it barely matters whether you believe or feel that the drone strikes keep your country safe. Extrajudicial killings of political opponents in foreign countries you are not at war with are illegal and immoral even if they have perceived or real positive side effects for your country.
That's just an example to illustrate that it matters a lot for which government you develop weapons and what track record your country has in terms of human rights, military aggressions against other countries or lack thereof, and so on. There's probably less of a problem if you develop weapons for the Swedish army than if you develop weapons for Russia or the US.
It also depends on the types of weapons, of course. Don't tell me it would be fine to develop chemical warfare agents, outlawed types of anti-person land mines, or autonomous killer robots, because they would 'keep your country safe'. Some technologies are just despicable. There's a reason why lasers that blind soldiers on the battlefield are outlawed.
Anyone who pays taxes to the US federal government contributes to the development and maintenance of nuclear weapons. Most other weapons have insignificant effects by comparison. We should not underestimate their danger just because they have not recently been used.
That's the conundrum Americans should all be thinking about.
Debatable. There's a strong argument that nuclear weapons have prevented direct conflicts between the major powers (mutual assured destruction).
Of course, there are a number of situations in which nuclear weapons could end up being used in the future (or very nearly were used in the past), but saying nuclear weapons should be completely dismantled by everyone is not as clearly desirable as you make it seem.
Actually I only said that we should think carefully about this conundrum because it's the really important one. For a variety of reasons most people underestimate the risk of nuclear weapons.
As noted up-thread how you choose to react is a personal issue. At a minimum complacency seems like an unwise response.
I've spent a good amount of time looking into the issue (for a number of reasons), and it seems to me that nuclear policy, on the level of an individual US citizen, is highly complex, especially if one concludes, as I have, that keeping nuclear weapons on some scale is the best option.
if you contribute in any way to the development of a weapon that is used in morally unjustifiable ways, then you're complicit to murder and manslaughter, and you should be aware of that.
Then you need to basically move out of society. Every western country has provided funds to develop or employ some kind of military weapon that has led to the death of a civilian at some point. If you pay taxes or are not actively an anti-government anarchist then by default you are "contributing."
Whether you think your contribution is large enough to warrant complicity or not is just a matter of where you draw the line in your own head.
False dichotomy. If they occur as unintended side-effects, civilian deaths can under certain circumstances be excusable. It's a matter of scale and ratio of killed combatants to civilians, of the international laws that apply, and whether there is an international mandate for the military intervention. It's also not a matter of "drawing a line in my own head". There is established and ratified international law about these issues and there are signed conventions that prohibit certain practices. There are illegal activities and activities that are permitted or excusable under the rules of war, as codified in various international conventions.
For example, the US is the only country in the world that openly conducts drone strikes on foreign territory for extrajudicial killings of political opponents. Not just in Afghanistan, but also in Yemen and a number of other countries.
To give another example, if a country uses chemical warfare agents against civilians, this is a clear-cut violation of international laws, treaties, and conventions. Moreover, the verdict of experts and international judges does count.
Although there is plenty of room for disagreement and legal procedure, as in any other legally and morally relevant matter, none of these issues are based on "an arbitrary line in my head" at all.
My point was, the line in which you think your contribution to the system is impactful is arbitrary. So for example is paying taxes the line for when you should protest? What about living in the state of California? How about being an employee of Google? Maybe it's being part of the program as a PM? Maybe it's a labeler for the dataset for enemy combatants?
So yes, the line of demarcation between when you feel you are complicit with the "immoral" behavior is arbitrary and not based on any legal basis.
extrajudicial killings of political opponents
It's important to note that this is not true legally. It conflicts with EO 12333 [1] [2]. The targeting process for any airstrike (except in VERY rare cases like Op Neptune) goes through a very complex, legal de-confliction process in close coordination with local governments/militaries and is not done for political purposes. In this sense "political" is a term of art, not a statement about the philosophical position of a potential target.
I think the major problem here is the massive disparity with what the general public thinks they know about airstrikes in general and UAV strikes (aka drone) specifically. The general public has about 1/1000th of the information they need to understand it and how it actually happens in practice. The DoD is largely to blame for not being more explicit about this, but there are real concerns with security/secrecy.
"evil" assume we attach a moral judgment to the people in the military.
But personally I don't. I understand why they do it. I understand the cost. I know the pros and the cons. I don't have a hate for people in the military.
I'm not even against weapons, after all I go to the shooting range.
I just don't want to have anything to do with the activity of war and I'm lucky enough to have life currently giving me the freedom to do so.
Oh but that's not a military problem per say as much as an American problem. Most countries in Europe have an army, and the bomb, but we don't do things that way.
I think it's important to separate the 2 debates, one is quite universal, while the second one is a contextual issue to solve.
The military's responsibility is to defend the country. If they're buying fighter jets when they should be buying laptops then they are failing to do their duty.
Everyone acts like military research is obviously evil.
I don't think the military is evil, or that military research is inherently wrong, or anything like that. I just think Google needs to be honest about it upfront. Let them change their terms and conditions to state "We are an American company serving American national interests and by using our services you consent to your data being used for this purpose". But they are being deeply disingenuous, and that is what is annoying people, not the military aspect per se.
You have a point there: Kim Jong-un's nuclear research program has kept North Korea very safe, and was obviously the best use of resources. And since the US only spends more on its military than the next 8 countries combined, the US needs to boost military spending to implement Trump's pledge of rebuilding the military to its former glory by buying more horses and ironside frigates, instead of spending it on things like health care. /s
Terrible, maybe not. However, could we possibly be better spending some of the trillions of dollars of military budget on something like education or healthcare?
It's important to note that many of these companies have a global workforce, and therefore plenty of employees who are not the "us" in the phrase "keep us safe". Imagine yourself happily working for a company not based in your home country, your research project may very well end up being used against your own country's defenses.
> Is it really so terrible to research arms for the people who risk their lives keep us safe?
If that’s all that was going on, maybe not. But when armaments and enterprise become intertwined, the idea of safety becomes subservient to economic growth. We are well past the point that any reasonable person would consider “preserving safety” and have been for some time.
The deep history of Silicon Valley is the history of WWII and unrestrained debt-based government spending on R&D. Only after that foundation was laid did the private businesses grow on that fertile ground.
"Secret History of Silicon Valley" (Computer History Museum, Mountain View)
> Today, Silicon Valley is known around the world as a fount of technology innovation and development fueled by private venture capital and peopled by fabled entrepreneurs. But it wasn't always so. Unbeknownst to even seasoned inhabitants, today's Silicon Valley had its start in government secrecy and wartime urgency.
> In this lecture, renowned serial entrepreneur Steve Blank presents how the roots of Silicon Valley sprang not from the later development of the silicon semiconductor but instead from the earlier technology duel over the skies of Germany and secret efforts around (and over) the Soviet Union. World War II, the Cold War and one Stanford professor set the stage for the creation and explosive growth of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley. The world was forever changed when the Defense Department, CIA and the National Security Agency acted like today's venture capitalists funding this first wave of entrepreneurship. Steve Blank shows how these groundbreaking early advances lead up to the high-octane, venture capital fueled Silicon Valley we know today.
Since the American public (and not just the American one) considers such kinds of unrestricted government spending as a waste of resources the way left to fund basic research apart from the little bit that doesn't lead to cries of "government waste" - because let's face it, a lot of it is, that's just what happens when you do very basic research with no immediate goal in mind - is military spending. If the role of military research is considered bad I think there has to be a culture shift coming from all voters. As long as they allow such government actions as long as it's "for defense" but not for anything else (at least not even close to the scale) then stuff will get done through the military. Apparently the demand (pull factor) is there, so if the only path is spending through military channels this is what happens.
I guess you can be a "Silicon Valley" company and be located anywhere now? This article lists exactly 3 companies, Google, Microsoft and Amazon. Two of those are headquartered in Washington.
From the title, I thought this was going to be a story about the HP garage, Fairchild Semiconductor, and DOD dollars flooding the Valley with talented engineers in the 60s and 70s.
Have the armed forces of the United States subjected the civilian population to inhuman treatment prohibited by international law?
Yes (unanimously).
Is the United States Government guilty of genocide against the people of Vietnam?
Yes (unanimously).
Todays war are different than WW2. Today is more like the US military needs a country to play with (also NSA, ...). Today is more like let's bomb a random country in the middle east.
https://steveblank.com/secret-history/
The video and slide set do a great job of covering it comprehensively.
I had a chance to learn directly from Steve and his Hacking 4 Defense team.
BIG changes since WWII when military R&D was nearly all R&D.
Today, most R&D is commercial with a lot of duel use potential for Defense(hence the desired ties).
It’s quite interesting that military/commercial R&D proportional parity was achieved the year the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War paused.
Here’s an article I wrote that borrows a bit from Steve Blank’s presentation and blog posts.
https://www.cove.org.au/trenchline/article-the-v-twin-effect...
The military is utterly dependent on commercial off the shelf technology modified to suit its needs.
How the tables have turned in R&D.