The phrasing of this makes it sound like he wants to paint it as though he's doing community service or something. But...Defense Digital Service? At the Pentagon? That's not exactly curing cancer or solving poverty.
To give another example that's under the umbrella of the US Digital Service, https://www.vets.gov/playbook/ is an attempt to bring resources for veterans into a single website. Right now, veterans may have to navigate 1000+ websites, 956 different 1-800 numbers, and just deal with more hassle than they should.
I interviewed at the US Digital Service but ended up at the Defense Digital Service because that's where I thought I could help the most. There's some good info about the sort of projects that people at the USDS/DDS work on at https://www.usds.gov/work if anyone is interested. 18F at https://18f.gsa.gov/ is also doing great work, with the extra benefit that people can work for the 18F remotely. 18F has also been a proponent for more open source in the government: https://fcw.com/articles/2016/03/25/noble-open-code.aspx
Sentences also need to be ratcheted back sharply across the board. But it's fallacious to suggest that improving the efficiency of the justice system will harm efforts to reduce mass incarceration.
Those are good things, and I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions, based on my own very strong bias against US militarism.
And for the anti-military types out there, ask yourself if the world is a better place if decent citizens don't get involved with the US military.
You may as well label them Nogoodniks and be done with it.
I also find it ridiculous that's the standard you set for "community service."
My comment was more about my opinion of the US military industrial complex; I believe that, in general, working for the war machine in any capacity is actively harmful to the world.
Matt clarified what he'll be doing there (I think; at least, he mentioned things that are being done there that sound nice...presumably he was implying he would be working on those nice things, rather than on more effective ways to kill brown people), and I have conceded that I was assuming the worst and could have been wrong about that assumption.
There are exceptions, sure. But, on the whole, war brings death, destruction of infrastructure, disruption of families and communities, and overall negative results for both the human condition and the environment. There are probably valid reasons to wage war; but the US is a nation of hawks and war profiteers at the highest levels, and has been for decades (refer to Eisenhower's military industrial complex speech, and nothing has changed since then except the numbers, both monetary and in human lives, are bigger and the wars more frequent).
Says a guy on the Internet.
But that is a good point - we have the militaries of the US and Britain to thank not only for the internet but the computers accessing it.
And the military industrial complex has Silicon Valley to thank for its ability to conduct mass targeted surveillance through social media and browser exploits, and to kill people with metadata.
It must have sounded like the creepiest thing imaginable to young people who were already concerned about the US's saber-rattling posture, but like the Internet that grew out out of the work done at ARPA, it's now an indispensable public utility.
The military receives no benefit from my use of the Internet (aside from the tax revenue it generates, but I don't have any good way to avoid providing tax revenue to the government).