For those of us born 1965 and earlier it evokes https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Poverty One tragedy of history is the the deeply flawed LBJ trying to eradicate poverty in the US but mired in a brutal war against an impoverished Vietnam. The metaphor of collective effort against an ill as war — unfortunate as it is — was probably relevant in that for most US adults of the 1960s the signature mass collective effort still in memory was WWII. Ironically many of the algorithmic bias problems detailed by Cathy O’Neil, Moritz Hardt, and others seem like a technological attack upon the poor (algorithmic bias in policing, sentencing, predatory lending, etc). I wish the effort described here the best, there is much potential.

IMO all war ever produces is more war. Nobody that's fighting the war on poverty, because if they win, they won't have a job. Terrorism, hunger, poverty, whatever, you name it, when we start a war against it you only make more.

hmm, it is a war on poverty, not on the poor.