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Comment by rahulmehta95 | Hacker News Reader

This may be an uncomfortable fact but people have surprisingly short memories: the military funded the majority of the early advances in systems, networking, and cryptography (and especially as a large part of the latter subject area, invested heavily in fundamental, theoretical research). Not saying that I disagree with the employees' opinion, just that DoD/Pentagon involvement in artificial intelligence research shouldn't be viewed as a necessarily bad thing. Many other major powers have heavily invested in AI across all fronts (including military applications), and it would be stupid for the US to not have one of its' largest strategic assets to not be part of the process.

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My memory isn't short.

You made a point of talking about cryptography. The US government also classified crypto as munitions in order to control its usage and export: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...

This had very negative effects on cryptography in general (see the FREAK exploit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FREAK )

Also, why wouldn't this be employed to better monitor Stingray (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker) systems?

I don't think the government (and specifically, the military) should be viewed as a non-partisan actor when it comes to technology.

They have an agenda that is clear but it doesn't mean they should be shutout because the investment they make can help push new ideas forward.

We should embrace the development of a surveillance state because it could spin-off some cool tech? Hmmm.

It worked when they created the internet. The original purpose was not what the internet became.

Alternatively, there is an abundance of private sources of funding.

One of the founding principles of American government was the freedom from state surveillance and intrusion into private homes. Nowadays, the federal government of the USA can legally use any technology that is patented, so why should they be allowed to restrict inventors from disclosing or selling IP that inhibits surveillance?

Oh man, is this why I have to complete all this encryption and export compliance bullcrap every time I have an iOS release?

Yes

Why don't I have to do it for Android?

Maybe you are only distributing your app to people in the US? Or maybe Android apps only use crypo built into the OS and done actually ship with any.

We also know that independent researchers often invented new cryptographic techniques in parallel with the military.

The classification of cryptography as munitions was an interesting choice. The first amendment may protect domestic encryption capabilities as stated by the wikipedia article. From a legal standpoint, does encryption being classified as munitions also put it into second amendment territory? As information becomes weaponized, it's an interesting thought. The first amendment is arguably more vulnerable these days, so I wonder if perhaps a second amendment argument could be made in support of domestic encryption. It certainly would help with marketing the argument to a certain segment of the population.

It does not, because the 2nd amendment protects arms, not munitions (for example, bombs).

Here is the entire text of the 2nd Amendment:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

What's the difference? The 2A certainly applies to cannons. Are those arms or munitions? Grenades are legal to own, just need the tax stamp.

Arms are munitions. Not all munitions are arms.

More information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Munitions_List

I think the distinction is between "arms" and "ordinance". Reading through the comments here, it seems "munitions" is a super set of both.

IANAL but I’m pretty sure the second amendment only applies to guns; you can’t walk around with an RPG on your shoulder.

Isn't the 2a just a "well armed malitia"? Maybe an RPG is more than well armed, but encryption?

"well-regulated militia," but it's pretty much an open question how much that actually has to do with the right described in the second clause. Gun rights activists tend to down-play that first bit, as it implies a collective perspective that they find conceptually incompatible with unlimited individual gun ownership rights.

Some context into the mindset and beliefs of the people who penned the original amendment is helpful in this case, but you find very little in support of the level of control that the anti-2A people want.

Gun rights antagonists tend to downplay that bit, as it implies an individual perspective that they find conceptually incompatible with tightly-controlled gun ownership permissions.

They also downplay that in every case of a gun being used in some criminal way, numerous laws and regulations are already being broken. So what difference will more regulations make? The only thing that could possibly give the gun-control people what they really want is total confiscation of all guns, and even if that were somehow possible there would be a civil war over that if it were to be seriously attempted.

> The only thing that could possibly give the gun-control people what they really want is total confiscation of all guns

Strawmen are so unhelpful in reasonable debate.

Not all gun control advocates are either anti-second amendment, nor in favor of eliminating all guns. To say otherwise, creating a false black/white dichotomy in the gun debate, does a massive disservice to both gun advocates and gun control proponents.

Ironically, by making the choice "all guns" or "no guns", gun advocates themselves are forcing the "no guns" option to the center of the debate. As a wave of frustrated anti-gun youth become voters and reasonable political moderates look at options to "protect the children", I really think it's in gun proponents' best interests to provide a better alternative than "do nothing" on one side and "civil war" on the other.

It ceases to be a strawman when it's on a sign held by protestors acting in good faith[1].

At the end of the day, these stances, even the "moderate" ones you mention, are irreconcilable all the way down to first principles. If you are for gun control, you are necessarily for measures that will restrict the right to bear arms as it is recognized today, some more, some less, but restrictions on the right all the same.

There's no real evading that.

[1] https://pics.me.me/yes-i-do-want-to-take-away-youur-guns-you...

agar said that not all gun control advocates want to repeal the second amendment, not that there aren't any gun control advocates who want to repeal the second amendment.

Of course some gun control advocates want a "we've come to collect your guns" law. I never said that no one holds extreme positions.

But that does not mean that everyone holds extreme positions, which is what you claimed.

Arguing that the extremes are the only options is a problem.

How productive would health debates be if the only two options presented were veganism and paleo? If the only sex ed options are abstinence or polyamory?

There must be room for compromise, or there is no debate, only argumentation.

The problem is that the "compromise" touted by gun control advocates is entirely one-sided - more restrictions, no concessions. No quid-pro-quo, only further restrictions on the right.

That's not compromise, that's capitulation.

This leads to an honest question on my part:

What concessions would gun rights advocates accept in order to allow some restrictions? What's there left to give on this issue that wouldn't undermine any controls.

Say, for example, I wanted gun owners/users to be required to be as responsible as car users, i.e. pass a test, maintain a license and registration for weapons and weapon users, and hold liability insurance to cover damage either intentional or accidental (that would obviously scale with the likelihood and amount of damage the gun can do). What can gun control advocates give that will get that done?

I think part of the reason the gun debate can be one sided from the "control" side is that the US already is quite far to the "rights" side of the spectrum, relative to the rest of the developed world. It can be difficult to see where we could plausibly move further in that direction without causing more of the problems we're (hopefully) all trying to solve: unnecessary bloodshed.

In your example, since we now have a mandatory testing/licensing scheme and insurance, I see no reason why CCW's countrywide shouldn't become shall-issue. There should also be a stipulation that licensing is a thing you grant to people, not individual weapons.

Another example I floated in previous threads is surfacing psychological issues in NICS checks (stuff like certain diseases or involuntary holds) and granting access to that system to everyday people rather than just retailers.

My state constitution clarifies it as "The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state..."

Does it really say ‘himself’?

Yes, it likely does. With English lacking a gender-neutral pronoun, "he" or "him" or "his" historically did not necessarily imply the male sex, depending on context. As "man" can refer to all of humankind, again it's a matter of context.

Yet the actual second amendment seems to avoid the problem as far as I can see. Edit: And of all the second amendment issues that could be argued, I somehow picked this one.

I wish this was the only surprising bit in the constitution of Alabama. The section outlawing interracial marriage was only removed in 2000, and it still contains a section mandating segregated public schools.

Your state constitution doesn't particularly get a say in what the US constitution means (so says the 10th amendment).

That's not necessarily true. The Supreme Court has ruled that the 2nd amendment only prohibits the federal government from "infringing" on your right to bear arms, and not the states.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_Unit...

> The Supreme Court has ruled that the 2nd amendment only prohibits the federal government from "infringing" on your right to bear arms, and not the states.

This was true only between 2008 and 2010. In 2010, the Supreme Court clarified that it was incorporated against the states by the 14th Amendment.

How is it then that different states infringe on the right to bear arms to different degrees?

And it was indeed the case well before 2008-2010. See United States v. Cruikshank (1875), Presser v. Illinois (1886), Miller v. Texas (1894).

See DC vs Heller, 2008.

> "it implies a collective perspective that they find conceptually incompatible"

so says you. it's not clear to me at all that militia members don't support collective action

The militia in that sentence IS the collective action. How many gun owners are part of a well-regulated militia?

Even the NRA removed references to that first clause from their material.

To be fair, militias of the day weren't generally standing militias, and needed to be mustered.

We do have definitions as to what militias are informed to us by writings of the founders, the federalist papers, previous drafts of the second amendment and, failing that, codified by law in 10 US Code § 311. The definition of militia there ("consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard") will likely have been expanded by our recent advances in military equality.

IAANAL but I'm pretty sure the second amendment is actually really vague in terms of what it refers to, and has actually been tested in court less often than one might think.

It depends how you look at it. What was the purpose. Presumably after fighting in the Revolutionary War the goal was not to give people hunting privileges, they had something else in mind. From that point of view, maybe RPGs should be allowed, but so should attack helicopters, surveillance capabilities, private spy satellites, etc.

> IANAL but I’m pretty sure the second amendment only applies to guns; you can’t walk around with an RPG on your shoulder.

Surprisingly perhaps you can buy a military grade flamethrower complete with a napalm package: https://throwflame.com/ it's not even classified as a firearm, and is illegal in only two states I think.

That flamethrower is awesome. What use does a flamethrower have though besides burning buildings, that a normal gun wouldn't?

Clearing brush. It's considered an agricultural tool IIRC.

Also for preburning (ahead of forest fires) IIRC.

Are you saying that literally fighting fire with fire is a thing?

I may have missed my calling . . . .

I mean... yes?

That is where the saying comes from.

Never really thought about it. But it makes sense to cut a "gap" in the forest using fire, to prevent a fire from crossing the gap. Once burned, something aint gonna burn again...

> What use does a flamethrower have though besides burning buildings, that a normal gun wouldn't?

It can be more effective at clearing bunkers and closed rooms? The military were using these in WWII for trenches, bunkers, clearing brush. My friend's grandpa in US was operating one in the Pacific during WWII.

I just brought it was an example how something potentially more deadly than guns or RPGs is not much regulated and how laws are not very rational sometimes.

> It depends how you look at it.

I recently purchased the Federalist Papers so I could have a better understanding of "how" to read it, what the context was, and what types of discussions to anticipate having with those who'd like to look at it differently

And what have you learned for those of us who haven’t read the federalist papers?

Also, why do they need to be purchased? Isn’t that information in the public domain? Surely enough time has passed and Alexander Hamilton’s family don’t need to continue to profit from it?

They don't need to be purchased(http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1404). Some people still read physical books, though, which generally requires purchasing if they wish to keep the book.

Can’t speak for the parent, but I buy public domain books because it tends to be cheaper than the paper and toner required to print it. And it looks nicer.

This has always been my way of looking at the 2A. It's clearly intended to give citizens the rights and tools to fight wars, otherwise it wouldn't mention it along with militias. Thus, it does seem logical that it extends to armaments of war, such as knives, firearms, artillery, bombs, etc (perhaps even hacking tools).

I'm a gun owner myself, and I've (long ago) taken the stance that the 2A isn't really compatible with modern life, as the people who originally wrote it could not have anticipated the weapons militaries deploy today. It makes sense in my mind that it is Congress' responsibility to regulate what it reasonable weapons for civilized society.

Congress does regulate those weapons.

There's a reason you can't just walk into a Wal-Mart and walk out with a machine gun, or a rocket launcher.

That said, I don't much care for the fact that the requirement to have legal access to machine guns is "be rich enough to buy your way around the law".

Personally, I do think we need a complete re-work of the way we treat weapons to reflect the realities of the modern world.

(1) We have four hundred million weapons in the United States. It is horribly negligent that safe weapon handling is not taught in schools, at multiple levels. Also a good touchpoint to get police interacting positively with the community.

(2) The current background check system should be replaced with a Swiss-style one; e.g., you get a code, valid for say a week or two, that any seller can use to verify that you have passed a background check.

This doesn't create a de-facto registry, so no problem getting gun owners (or the NRA) to go for this one.

(4) A red-flag law that allows immediate family members and healthcare professionals to temporarily bar an individual from purchasing weapons, with safeguards in-place to keep bad actors from abusing the system (e.g., a psychiatrist that just reports all of his patients to the system because he opposes gun ownership).

(5) Removing gun rights only in the case of violent crime. Right now, in most states, misdemeanor assault won't cost you your gun rights, but a felony for tax evasion will. That's ass-backwards.

(6) Machine guns, grenades, rocket launchers, and the like should be available with a license. You really need to be able to show that you can handle these things safely. Right now, it's just "be rich".

(7) Treat short-barreled rifles and shotguns as normal firearms, and silencers like any other accessory.

(8) Concealed-carry should be the same for police as it is for normal citizens. Same licensing requirements: a one-day course, including a test on safe weapon handling. This also ends gun-free zones: if you have a license, you can carry wherever you want.

(9) Open carry needs to work differently for urban and rural areas. The above permit will allow you to open-carry a pistol in an urban area. Rifles, no. Put it in a case. In the countryside, open carry just makes sense.

(10) Actually prosecute straw sellers. Buy a gun for somebody that can't legally buy one on their own, you permanently lose your gun rights, plus whatever punishment makes sense.

(11) Secure storage requirements. If one of your weapons is stolen and used for a crime, you are legally an accessory if you can not demonstrate that you took reasonable measures to store the weapon securely (e.g., a gun safe or lockable case). This doesn't require police inspections, but provides a strong incentive for personal responsibility.

All of this would enjoy massive support from gun owners, and address a lot of existing problems.

These all seem well thought out and reasonable. Thanks for sharing

Seriously. Congress should just concentrate on this list. Just put language around this, and I think they'd have a very reasonable set of gun laws.

How it's written I personally think you should be able to buy any weapon available on the open market. Or at least any weapon that could realistically be used by an infantryman (as the wording is "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,."

I'd rather have a new amendment then have judges be able to decide what the definition of arms is. Slippery slope. They really could one day decide that 'arms' is only muskets, or even just knives.

Broadly speaking, that's been the holding of the courts since 1939.

U.S. v. Miller loosely established the test (later solidified in 2008's Heller v DC) that weapons commonly used in militia service are inherently deserving of second amendment protections.

Miller, a known mobster who was caught with a sawed off shotgun lost his case because

a) the military testified that they had never used sawed off shotguns, so they were not useful to a military, ergo a militia (which was a lie -- they had used them, and found them useful for trench-clearing)

b) Miller's attorney was not very good, and didn't even challenge that testimony, much less so by totally disproving it -- I offer a little sympathy here as they didn't have Google at the time

Also noteworthy, Miller was actually dead when the decision came down, as he'd been murdered, and because /shrug, the trial kept going, but the defense (for obvious reasons) quit trying. He was sentenced in absentia.

You say solidified, but it was a 5-4 ruling. To determine if handguns could be banned by the city. And an 'arm' that has been used by infantry forces for generations.

Which I find just insane. People say no one wants to take Americans guns rights away, but we were literally one vote from effectively doing so.

Whenever someone says "no one wants to take your guns away", now you can just point them at this and see whether they maintain that position:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/illinois-town-votes-to-ban-assa...

Except you can own an RPG in the US... It's an NFA classified destructive device. You can also own cannons, tanks, or attack helicopters if you have the money.

There's a school of thought that the word "arms" in the Constitution might have referred mainly to sidearms, not to canons, catapults, warships, etc. The theory is that there were other words like "artillery" to describe larger weapons.

This school only makes sense if you throw out the entire section that mentions a well regulated militia. A militia would be expected to have artillery.

>"Justice Scalia also wrote: “It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service — M-16 rifles and the like — may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.”

[1] https://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/11/justice-scal...

I think for a weapon to be 'compliant' with US's second amendment a couple of criteria must be met

a) must be in current wide use in military

b) must be capable of being carried by a single person (which is why tanks and fighter jets will not qualify) This follows form 'individual' focus of the bill of right.

c) must be capable to aim it at a single person (which is why explosive or RPGs would not qualify). This follows from the notion that Bill of Right in general, does not condone collateral damage or collateral effect. As this is Individual's right, and therefore presumes individual's responsibility.

I also find this linguistic analysis of what 'bear arms' meant in 1791s, interesting/educational [2] http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=255

does encryption being classified as munitions also put it into second amendment territory?

It doesn't much matter. Even if somebody made the case that "crypto is a form of 'Arms', subject to 2A protection," the 2A doesn't grant an unregulated right to own whatever "arms" one chooses. All the rights granted by the Constitution are subject to reasonable regulation.

So, Congress could simply legislate a restriction on crypto, much as they have done with machine guns, grenades, and nukes.

Where does it say you can regulate my rights?

WRT the 2A, it's right there in the text: "well regulated".

WRT other rights... Explicitly? Not always in the Constitution. But, if you think you can cry "Fire!" in a theater, you would be mistaken.

SCOTUS has upheld reasonable restrictions on rights over and over. It's a settled matter.

(edited - cleaned up my thoughts a bit)

Stop quoting that case. That was SCOTUS upholding the right of the government to clamp down on speech that encouraged draft dodging or could even be marginally interpreted as disagreeing with it during wartime.

https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...

It ain't Dred Scott dumb, but it's up there in stupidity and retarded law.

Well regulated doesn't mean the feds get to control the details of what the militia can use either. The militia is every able-bodied 18-47 year old. The regulated part implies a command structure which the National Guard provides.

I'm not sure what case you're thinking of, because I didn't explicitly mention one.

Chaplinsky v. NH was in 1942 and had nothing to do with draft dodging.

Since then, the courts have ruled inconsistently on the matter. The only common thread is the courts mostly agree that some restriction on speech is permissible - where that line lays is very much up for debate.

WRT the militia - the government disagrees with your assertion. A random citizen cannot go into the gun store and buy a machine gun, or grenades. Special (and expensive) permitting is required. If you're contention is that these restrictions are unConstitutional, I'm not really sure we should bother debating the point.

They were responding to the mention of "fire in a crowded theater," a reference to Schenck v. United States.

Regulated does not imply a command structure, look up the 18th century definition of that word please. Also, to be clear, the National Guard IS the government. The purpose of the 2nd A was to provide a check against the government— it wasn’t a protection for the states — it was a protection for individuals — the Bill of Rights was a declaration of individual liberties not protections for the states. The tenth amendment is an outlier, but even that was part of a coordinated effort to limit the size, scope and power of government.

>The regulated part implies a command structure which the National Guard provides.

That's completely wrong. Each of the 1st ten Amendments - The Bill of Rights - enumerates rights of the individual against government power. Its absolutely absurd to argue that the 2nd amendment somehow refers to a government commanded and organized military body and not to the right of citizens to remained armed to prevent the government from getting out of line.

"Well regulated" in it's historical context doesn't mean anything close to what we think of as "regulation" today. The phrase means "functional" or "functioning". E.g. “If a liberal Education has formed in us well-regulated Appetites and worthy Inclinations.”, or "The equation of time … is the adjustment of the difference of time as shown by a well-regulated clock and a true sun dial.”

It could be argued that the 2nd amendment was put in place to ensure a means of the citizenry to overthrow the government (as an absolute check on an unjust government). Unfortunately it's now just a vestige of an older time and the 2nd amendment only serves to protect the rights of gun hobbyists.

The guns that a person are allowed to bear are nowhere near sufficient to take on the US military, and the modern arms such as encryption and freedom from surveillance are not even guaranteed by the 2nd amendment.

> The guns that a person are allowed to bear are nowhere near sufficient to take on the US military,

I'm tired of reminding HNers about Aghanistan.

Can you elaborate?

I believe he's referring to the Taliban's ability to hold off two modern armies (USSR in the 80s, USA in the 00s) with a much more basic arsenal than either super-power brought to bear.

IEDs were far more of a problem in Afghanistan than small arms.

Yep. And who do you think have the easier time getting ingredients for an IED, the person with a gun or the person without a gun?

Who has the better chance at ambushing and getting away with the enemys weapons: the one with the gun or the one without a gun?

You can do a lot of damage with IEDs, but you can’t overthrow the government with IEDs.

Look at Turkey. The primary tool was encrypted communications and information dissemination. That’s modern power that citizens should have. Right now power comes from information and the preservation of speech and private communications, not a few handguns and rifles (or IEDs).

When the 2nd amendment was written a gun was relatively way more powerful than it is in today’s world. If you had a group of men with guns you were basically on par with the government military.

IMO Turkey has mostly failed now.

However, I'm not saying I'd want them a civil war, just that it failed despite doing everything "right" it seems.

That's an away match.

>The guns that a person are allowed to bear are nowhere near sufficient to take on the US military,

You're getting into spherical cow[1] territory if you think the US citizenry couldn't defeat the US military.

The US military will not be fighting the US citizenry in a hypothetical clean room, it'll be fighting in America. Who are you going to bomb, who are you going to strafe, when your opposition can quietly fade into the populace that provides your material?

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow

380 million Americans, 2 million members of the military.

Unless the US were to nuke itself, given the geography, a motivated citizenry could easily take on the US military. Not a scenario I want to imagine, but the US military has troubles in Afghanistan and Iraq — imagine that kind of conflict in the US. Just look at rebels in Syria to see this on a smaller scale.

The 2nd amendment doesn't apply to foreigners. Classifying encryption as a munition meant that I have never truthfully answered all the visa waiver questions on entering the US.

It does. A permanent resident alien can purchase and carry firearms in most states, and nonresident aliens can get a license to do so as well.

Fischer v Massachussetts[1] (and other cases won by the second amendment foundation) holds that resident aliens are counted amongst "the people" for purposes of second amendment protection (and other rights too!)

[1] - http://ia800500.us.archive.org/20/items/gov.uscourts.mad.135...

resident alien != foreigner

I believe GP was referring to times s/he's entered the US on a visitor visa of some sort.

Then there may be a de facto restriction against the exercise of such a right by such a person, as one needs to have a permanent address to comply with the laws as they are currently interpreted.

Nuclear weapons are munitions. A U235 bomb like Hiroshima’s is technically a gun even. Do you have a right to carry one of those?

If you can carry a Hiroshima bomb, I’m ok with letting you.

This is actually a question that was featured in an xkcd comic[1].

[1]: https://www.xkcd.com/504/

Novel thought. I could definitely see an argument for it falling under 2A.

this itar business had a huge chilling effect on the formative years of internet protocol design. public key was available at the time. here were alot of loud voices in ietf clamoring for strong foundational security. The US position made it highly impractical to use, and may have cost us an effective and ubiquitous security/identity model.

Yes, they made some bad choices, and then they corrected them. They also funded the research that created the field. Things can be morally mixed. On balance though, the US military funding for cryptography has been pretty clearly a good thing.

I love how any defense of US military history often boils down to, “sure they did terrible things in the past, but we definitely learned from them.”

I’m sure people have been saying that for decades if not centuries. Terrible things just get declassified slowly so we only learn about them later.

You realize that the US military is the reason the world isn't ruled by Hitler and/or Stalin, right?

I hear you, and I want to make a "times change" argument.

This is my perspective, because I read too much scifi: I can conceive of a couple possibilities in 300 years.

1. Humanity is gone or stone-aged. Either because it failed to colonize before being wiped out by disease, because it nuked itself, or because it implemented AI in a way that got itself killed.

2. Humanity has turned peaceful, formed a global community (if not wholly, then at least nearly so regarding scientific resources), and colonized.

I draw such a sharp line because I don't see how the resources to colonize can be mustered without justifying it with an arms race unless peaceful cooperation is established. Without this, I think somebody is going to put a nuke in orbit around Mars and call themselves King/Queen of the inner solar system.

Therefore, I think we should be working towards the cultural changes that I believe necessary immediately. This is why I'm a staunch proponent of universal education, universal healthcare, gun control, etc. I think there's no better time than the present to "be in the race together" globally than now. Given climate change, death of bees, super-bacterias, and narcissists with penis-size complexes holding fingers over red buttons, I see a ticking clock.

Avoid (1) by tackling culture, is my theory, and I think that's what these googler employees are here. (I post this very much looking forward to being challenged on all points)

I worry that culture doesnt help at the top of leadership.

Once you get to the top of an organization, only a few people need to listen to you. As long as you keep their paychecks and power, they will listen to you.

Dictators dont care if war is unpopular as long as its beneficial.

I think nukes may be obsolete because war is no longer beneficial, but leadership of a company may be 100% set on finding AI by any means necessary.

Can you clarify your second line, "Once you get to the top of an organization, only a few people need to listen to you. As long as you keep their paychecks and power, they will listen to you." Are you saying that everyone has to do what you say because you pay them? If so, I don't think that point applies to this situation - we're talking Google engineers, they shouldn't be hard pressed to pick up their things and find a job elsewhere that aligns better with their values.

Capital interests wont go away quietly, but I hope you're right.

I doubt they will go away peacefully, either. I cannot think of an instance in history where they have though I’d love to be wrong.

I honestly cling to the hope daily that the internet has changed what people's reactions to power will be in the future. It's the one of the few deep things that's changed.

> Either because it failed to colonize before being wiped out by disease, because it nuked itself, or because it implemented AI in a way that got itself killed.

If the probability of a kind of disaster is sufficient to blow up Earth, it is likely that the same kind of disaster will blow up all the handful of colonies we can hope to build. At astronomic scale, the speed of light is quite slow.

Potentially. I think the possibility of quarantine is much higher between planets, though.

there's a dead post from @Ataturk who nails my arguments against your point, but doesn't do so very nicely.

history should be a guid here.

presuming penis-size conversation is anything more than an intentional dig by a chauvinist powermonger, probably isn't helpful here.

I don't see the dead post, though I've looked. I'm happy to hear the points.

after removing insulting remarks, ataturk's comments looks like this (which i personally agree with):

Globalism == lack of agency, the end of voting and elections.

Universal education == total indoctrination and ideological consistency of the collectivistic variety.

Universal healthcare == the end of individual choice, individual responsibility, all new extensive taxing regimes, the destruction of the individual on many levels.

Gun Control == People control. Then total domination by the state and a monopoly on the use of force. Which, by the way, has never worked out well for any citizen anywhere.

Thank you for taking the time to find and share the points. I'd like to rebuke :

>Globalism == lack of agency, end of voting and elections

If federalism didn't lead to this, why would globalism? What even is globalism? I am skeptical of this because "globalism" seems to be used as a catch-all alt-right bogeyman lately.

>universal education == total indoctrination, ideological consistency

Universal access to education doesn't have to mean homogeneous curriculum. It doesn't have to mean lack of education choices. It doesn't even have to mean requirement to receive education.

Another thing I find curious - the very people I find rejecting education "collectivism" are often people who wouldn't blink before forcing their own "indoctrination" upon others. We fight this fight in Texas far too often - should schools teach facts (evolution), or give "fair credence" to falsehoods (intelligent design) because of religion? Woops, out goes falsehoods as soon as the satanists get involved and also flex their constitutional rights, never mind, we'll take evolution!

>universal healthcare == the end of individual choice

I don't see why this has to be true, it isn't in any of the current implementations of universal healthcare.

>end of individual responsibility

Are you presently responsible for your water being clean? Are you presently responsible for the quality of your roadways? Are you presently responsible for the guarantee that your medication contains advertised active ingredients that do as it says on the label?

>Extensive taxing regimes

Shift military funding, close ultra-rich tax loopholes.

>destruction of the individual

Fail to see how this is true. Unsupported by argument.

>gun control == people control

False equivalence.

>then, total domination by the state and a monopoly on the use of force

Currently working just fine in countries with gun control laws, which, by the way, completely nullifies the false "has never worked out well" absolute you ended with. Furthermore, the USA has right now a monopoly on the use of force. The US and its laws have sovereign control over whether you are allowed to use force or not. You have almost no say in the matter. Furthermore, this isn't 1776. The gap in armament between civilians and a martial state is so large as to be hilarious. Were the need to arise, US combined armed forces could drone strike, Tomahawk, artillery, AC130, or just door to door ground and pound any organized militia to dust. Or, you know, nuke it.

Are you, private US citizen, allowed to build a nuke?

I see this kind of response a lot to "the globalist threat."

What's the end game, for people that believe these things? Endless culture war? A galaxy-spanning human civilization that still has their "I'm an American and you're Chinese" safe little lines? Is there a fear that the "wrong" culture will persist into the future?

Not the author of the dead post, and definitely not a fan of the alt-right, but the term globalism immediately resonated with me when I first heard it:

> What's the end game, for people that believe these things? Endless culture war? A galaxy-spanning human civilization that still has their "I'm an American and you're Chinese" safe little lines?

If we didn't have several superpowers on this planet, but only one unified government instead, what would whistleblowers do? Right now Snowden can fly to Russia, and Chinese dissidents can voice their opinions in the West. In a truly globalized world, there'd be nowhere to run.

We try to maximize competition and avoid monopolies and cartels in our economy. Why should we aim straight for the opposite when it comes to our governments?

If you're so worried about the world destroying itself with its own weapons, how are you going to enforce your weapons ban without using weapons?

But if all the guns were gone we wouldn't need any anymore, ergo world peace, cats and dogs living together, and mcdonalds becomes vegan. /s

The same way Japan "enforces" around violent and petty crime - by removing the need for it, and establishing a culture opposed to it.

It's not nearly as easy as that but that's the basic summation of my philosophy around the idea.

The funding come from the DoD because any other appropriate entity is financially starved because the DoD gets so much money. The latest budget provides them:

$700,000,000,000

Or as Obama said in the 2016 State of the Union:

"We spend more on defense than the next 8 nations COMBINED."

Keep in mind, most of that 8 are allies.

I struggle to see why we should be praising a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Just imagine if we stopped spending on defense in the 80s when the cold war ended and we had to deal with today's Russia with decades old technology

I think we would be fine with a smaller military. Nobody is talking about completely stopping military expenditures. The question is whether it really needs to be as big as it is right now.

Overturning so many regimes in petrol filled countries is a messy business. I think a big chunk of the spending goes to intelligence and misinformation.

Personally I think a big chunk goes to not well thought out missions like Syria, Afghanistan or Iraq. It seems nobody is willing to admit that there is no path to winning or ending things so they just keep going and spending a lot of money and energy. And the defense contractors are certainly happy with this.

Or how about having to deal with the rapidly ascendant Chinese military that is annexing vast territory in Asia right now? There's nothing they respect except for strength, they're not even subtle about that fact.

Or if the US hadn't spent over a trillion dollars defending South Korea from the China, USSR, North Korea axis across decades. South Korea would not exist as we know it today. It'd more likely look like North Korea.

There's an exceptionally strong argument for the US working with regional military allies in Europe and Asia on defense and having a very powerful military to match its $20 trillion economy. Should the spending be more like $450 billion or $730 billion - that's the primary debate.

We aren't going to go to war with Russia, despite the propaganda that everyone is spreading.

Wars between nuclear countries don't happen any more.

The reason we aren't going to war with Russia is because Russian leaders know that it is impossible to win a war against the current US military.

The reason it's impossible to win a war against the current US military is because the US has spent an obscene amount of money building it for decades.

If the US military were not capable of defending Eastern Europe, Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics would be under Russian rule today.

No, it is because of the nukes.

Nukes prevent any war from happening between any powerful nation.

If we spent 1 tenth the amount on our military, we'd still have the power to blow up the entire world X times over.

I just think that if you have the ability to destroy the entire world, then that's a powerful enough military and you don't need anything more for defense.

You actually believe that the US would use nuclear weapons against Russia, ensuring the deaths of 10s of millions of Americans and sparking global nuclear war, if Russia invaded Estonia?

The only thing preventing Eastern Europe from being invaded is the conventional military. The US will never risk it's own existence for another country. The Russians know this.

I don't want the US to be involved in proxy wars with other countries.

So no, I don't believe that the US would do that and I am happy about that.

The US would only use Nukes if there was an attack on the US.

I want the US to stay out of all wars that aren't directed related to attacks on US soil and US citizens.

If the EU is worried about invasion, then they should have their own military to defend themselves.

I suspect conventional war is a thing of the past.

Cyber-warfare is going to be where it's at. You spend years infiltrating adversary networks, backdooring critical systems/infrastructure and exfiltrating intelligence so when the time comes for conflict, you already know what cards they're going to play, where all the pieces are on the map and you can shut it all down with a few commands. Then you start your blitzkrieg unopposed.

It's telling Russia, China and North Korea so heavily encourage cyber-espionage and malware development. Meanwhile in the US, we've got idiots passing laws criminalizing mere infosec research. We're handicapping ourselves against a threat our adversaries are all too eager to employ.

India and Pakistan went to war briefly in 1999 and both of them had nuclear weapons at the time (and still do, I think). I wouldn't rule out the possibility of future wars between them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kargil_War

The Cold War ended in the 90s, not when the Wall came down. Now how would we possibly handle all those T-72s with just M1 Abrams? If anyone still fought conventional wars.

Naming it 'defense' is already a huge stretch. I realize every country does this but it is as much or more about projecting power all across the globe as it is defense.

Fwiw, it used to be called the far more accurate Department of War.

George Carlin had a fantastic bit about this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSp8IyaKCs0

It's not Defense. But I was trying to keep it simple.

> I realize every country does this but it is as much or more about projecting power all across the globe as it is defense.

I disagree that "every country" does this. Many countries in Europe and Asia do not use their defense forces as a tool for attacking other countries and getting involved in regional conflicts that were only affecting people in those countries. And countries that do it are usually just "helping" US-lead invasions of countries (an example would be Australia -- the single reason we were ever in the Vietnam War was because of the US).

(While I may be a biased given that America bombed my home country and engaged in a "peacekeeping mission" when I was a child, for a civil war that had been going on for many years and had nothing at all to do with the US, I never understood how Americans can see invasion of other countries as being anything other than that.)

> I disagree that "every country" does this.

I meant that they call their armies/airforces/navies 'defense'.

> Many countries in Europe and Asia do not use their defense forces as a tool for attacking other countries and getting involved in regional conflicts that were only affecting people in those countries.

I wished that were true, but almost all deployments of EU troops over the last 4 decades fall into that category. And there have been a lot of those.

> And countries that do it are usually just "helping" US-lead invasions of countries (an example would be Australia -- the single reason we were ever in the Vietnam War was because of the US).

Ditto Iraq, Afghanistan.

> While I may be a biased given that America bombed my home country and engaged in a "peacekeeping mission" when I was a child, for a civil war that had been going on for many years and had nothing at all to do with the US, I never understood how Americans can see invasion of other countries as being anything other than that.

Agreed, they are invasions, and the worst ones are the ones under some kind of pretext.

Where are you from originally?

There was a lot of EU and NATO forces involved in the Balkans not that long ago

Spending on its own isn't the only measure. The US is incredibly wasteful with its military spending where other countries with better political systems are more savvy. Plus the US has to invent 80% of the tech in the first place, something that costs 10x what it does to replicate it.

While the US military is wasteful, I don't think you'll find a military that is enormously less wasteful. After all, the largest line item in the DOD budget by far is salaries.

Cough Nimrod Cough La 85 Cough "the Age of the manned Fighter is over" plenty of countries have inefficient r screwed up military procurement.

That 700 billion seems small compared to the 2 trillion that we spend on Social Security + Medicare + Medicaid.

>the military funded the majority of the early advances in systems, networking, and cryptography

For the purposes of being better at waging war. I am not disagreeing with your statement, but I think leaving out the reason why is treating the military like it's "NASA with a few guns laying around" and implying that one can work on weapons systems without having any moral culpability for how they are used.

It's perfectly possible to remember every technological invention the military has ever been involved in and still object to participation in military research.

Possible reasons, using Wernher von Braun's rocket development as an example:

- He, or somebody else, would have invented rockets anyway at some point

- That 'some point' would have been much earlier if the money spent on military (research & some of the rest) would instead have been put into rockets in the first place

- even if the two mechanisms abovc were not true: I'd probably be willing to forgo the benefits of the space age if it meant undoing WW2 and the Holocaust

- In most ethical frameworks except utilitarianism, it's strongly discourage to accept some evil for some perceived greater good. Meaning: Even if rockets have saved far more lives than WW2 vanquished, participating in the project is morally dubious at best

Specifically to Google's project:

- This seems to actually invert the usual idea of the military funding basic research that later gets adapted for civilian use. They are building on the fundamental research into AI already done by Google and others, and using it very specifically to kill people. Any advances useful for other purposes would seem to be even more coincidental than usual.

- While "minimising collateral damage" i. e. civilian casualties may seem to be a worthy cause, it cannot be ignored that such advances are likely to result in greater use of the technology. Drones are actually the best example of this effect. Just look at the Obama administration's willingness to expand the use of drone strikes, which was a direct result of the technology appearing to be the lesser evil compared to manned missions on the ground.

You are saying that military R&D is important no matter what they are involved in. This incredibly stupid reasoning can be used to justify the development viruses that can erradicate the human species.

> DoD/Pentagon involvement in artificial intelligence research shouldn't be viewed as a necessarily bad thing.

Let's be spesific: they are using current AI algorithms to track everyone's movements from airborn imagery. It will be used to kill people in drone strikes and for population control.

I'll take this over massive world wars.

I'd rather have neither, but I'm realistic.

I hardly think that this kind of technology will be useful in stopping a world war.

A guided tallboy on Hitler's bunker would have

As opposed to using dumb bombs which are far more likely to have collateral damage.

One thing is acknowledging that if you pour lots of money into getting better at anything (space exploration, waging war, etc) you'll get cool technological advances applicable in other areas.

Another thing is to specifically choose to dedicate resources to one of those areas instead of another area. Why can't google bid on AI projects for better detection of geological landmarks in other planets? (which I'm guessing is a similar endeavor to what the article mentions - and already has ongoing research)

Steve Blank talks a lot about this history of Silicon Valley and how most of the original technology scene was started by DoD projects.

https://steveblank.com/secret-history/

Well the project "uses artificial intelligence to interpret video imagery and could be used to improve the targeting of drone strikes."

That's a direct application of tech to killing people, not some abstract network or compiler tech. There's a big difference.

The flip side is better targeting should result in less collateral deaths

Broken glass fallacy. Just because government and military funded some technology does not mean that technology would not be in an advanced state otherwise. Especially if you consider the countless failures and unnecessary excessive spending that took the resources indirectly from people and inventors. Besides brains that worked for military and government funded projects would perhaps find much better things to work on otherwise.

Military funding is used as a slight of hand. The legislature scares the public, the public hands over money, and then the military is used to invest the money in long term goals to build a future technological society that the private sector is wholly unwilling to do because of short term profit focus.

This also has the benefit of getting war averse liberals to say nice things about the large standing army and bloody foreign interventions of the US empire, most of which have failed to produce anything other than blowback and civil war across the globe.

https://archive.org/details/NoamChomsky-ScienceMilitaryFundi...

have you watched "Good Kill" or maybe even are familiar with the work of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung's research on US military drone program at Ramstein airbase? I guess not, because what you're proposing are further crimes against humanity. If the US wants AI/autonomous weapons then they should agree to have their troops held accountable at the The Hague International Court of Justice.

- The Global Assassination Grid: The Infrastructure and People behind Drone Killings: https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8425-the_global_assassination_gr...

- The Drone Papers: https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/

- Graphs, Drones & Phones: The role of social-graphs for Drones in the War on Terror: https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7259-graphs_drones_phones

> If the US wants AI/autonomous weapons then they should agree to have their troops held accountable at the The Hague International Court of Justice.

Why would US agree to that if Russia or China couldn't care less about it? That'd be just handicapping the military.

because it'd be less hypocritical when playing "world-police"

But that'd cripple the world-police and China or Russia would have much more leverage.

The military also funded advances in airplanes, trucks, and medicine, but that doesn't mean that doctors should have no qualms about working on biological weapons.

Also, many people, including myself, consider drone strikes to be state-sponsored terrorism. Just because some part of the military may be justifiable, does not mean all of it is.

Arguments from utility do not form a solid basis to argue about morality.

As Carl Jung might say, just because a thing has base origins, it doesn't mean that it has to be a base thing. Google should not shrug and say "from violence we came to violence we will return." I'm moved by the people speaking out, as much as I am disappointed to hear of Mr. Schmidt's involvement with the Pentagon.

They cost a great deal of R&D budget for their role in the development IT technology, and the larger part of development came from non military research, from academia and companies like Bell Labs.

The Google workers urging their CEO to pull out of Pentagon projects are the ones who do not have such short memories as to be distracted from the blatant deceptions and disasters carried out in recent history, with no sign of relenting.

This idea of justifying military buildup by it's beneficial trickle down into civilian technology always struck me as very odd. It seems like an absurdly inefficient and roundabout way of funding R&D. If the government wants to invest in research they should just invest in research.

Whilst agreeing in part, the history of martially-motivated technical development through all of human history is remarkable. I'd argue it's been a vastly greater influence than so-called market motivations.

As an evolutionary selective pressure, war and military necessity are unparalleled.

Re-reading Samuel B. Griffith's translation of The Art of War, I noticed that he mentions, in 1963, Joseph Needham's Science and Civilisation in China, which had only begun delivering volumes (the work remains in progress). That would include not only metalurgy, but entire volumes devoted to both martial and marine technologies.

It still is. It is not necessary for world peace to help the Pentagon to build better killing machines.

Citation needed

Sure, I'll bite. Just falsify it: the Pentagon's killing machines have never brought about world peace, and world peace has never occurred while the Pentagon received killing machines.

You say that as if “world peace” was an attainable goal in any realistic timeframe. War doesn’t exist because people “hate peace”.

I didn't bring world peace into the thread, but at any rate there's also the saying that "All war represents a failure of diplomacy," which I tend to agree with. I also think "are indifferent toward" should replace "hate" there.

You are blatantly embedding a false premise here; that the goal is or should be world peace.

That is an absolutely inane stance to take. How about instead of the obviously unattainable and unrealistic goal of "world peace", we just go for "more peace", or "less violent death" or similar goals. It is very hard to argue that American hegemony has not significantly reduced conflicts around the world. Not all of them, not equitably, and generally in pursuit of economic rather than ideological interests, but there is basically nothing to be gained by opening up the US to actually being threatened by competing powers.

Unless you're the one getting shot

You'd rather they had "worse" killing machines

Pentagon and their killing machines is the #1 reason why there’s now peace here in Balkans, for 18 years and counting.

I don’t think people of ex-Yugoslavia would stop killing each other without being forced to.

'build better killing machines'. They are able to kill people well enough already.

People also seem to forget that the Google self driving car was initially developed by the team that one the DARPA challenge. Government, especially the military have been funding all the risky tech that Google profits from. Even google itself was funded by a government grant. Google's logo has been on the side of rockets launching spy satellites for years. Google Maps was originally a government contractor. Google the company knows who butters their bread.

What the google employees need to do is push for a civilian government research and science funding effort, like ARPA was back in the day. Unfortunately that sort of funding is politically dead, while military funding is always in style.

Idealists on the left would apparently prefer China getting a complete monopoly on military AI and expanding their dictatorship globally instead of being pragmatic.

Reminder, if you work in tech you are collecting blood money because everything we use was initially funded by the military for military application. If you are going to attack Google for this and don't leave the industry you are a hypocrite

> This may be an uncomfortable fact but people have surprisingly short memories: the military funded the majority of the early advances in systems, networking, [...]

And what do we have to show for it? Wikipedia is great and Youtube is entertaining, but the rest of the internet is horrible. I say that as a software developer.

Due to the wonderful internet our children now have attention spans far below the time a typical class lesson takes. The smartest brains on Earth are not building spaceships or curing disease, but rather implementing systems to get you to click on ads. Our bodies and habits are being tracked, our opinions manipulated, and our privacy is being handed of willingfully for a chat and photo-sharing platform.

Military tech _often_ has implications far beyond what the original scientists and engineers intended. Sometimes for the best. But as you allude AI to the internet, don't forget how much damage the internet is doing to us even as we enjoy it and profit from it.

While that may be the reality of things, it surely can't be a justification in any way. If anything, I'd be afraid to revert back to those dark times where technological advancements were driven mainly by military needs.

Can you elaborate more on why you consider those to be "dark" times?

I strongly disagree with this comparison. In the prior, successful cases, the military funded research which was open, while in this case, the direction of information is reversed and the outcome is secret.

Or maybe they remember it perfectly, but don't consider it a valid argument to say, "X supported something you like 40 years ago, therefore X is beyond reproach"?

What's theoretical about drone strikes?

The military was also responsible for the miserable state of nuclear power in the United States.

yes but the weapon systems may be sold or transferred to some countries like Israel/Saudi Arabia eventually.. how would you view their use on protesters or civilians by them or would their be international laws that would prevent such use ?

What makes you think the signatories of the google letter have forgotten that?

Completely agree. If it isn't Google it'll be someone else.

I think DoD/Pentagon put up the funding for what later became Google maps. Not to mention the GPS constellation we all enjoy using.

Its a shame progress has to be made through these channels but it has proved very effective in the past.

> Completely agree. If it isn't Google it'll be someone else.

That's an excuse people without any morals often use. It's up to each one of us to do the right thing.

After all: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing” - or I would add that evil also rises when "good men" actually do the evil thing "because otherwise the bad men would do it anyway."

Google likely has the most advanced AI tech in the world right now. That means if that they allow the US government to use it, they will be directly responsible for accelerating the progress of autonomous killer robots or making them real in the first place. After all, I don't see too many other companies with AI that can learn the Go game within days and beat world champions.

If it isn't Google it'll be someone else.

The obvious reply is: great, then we're not needed, let someone else do it!

This way you end up with someone unskilled taking a job and instead of 1 drone you have to send 10 because only 1 will hit the target.

If our war machine kills less people, sounds like a win to me.

Not if these people are terrorists or enemy combatants.

Worse aim often means you’ll kill more people.

Exactly. China just turned dictatorship, and has already installed AI facial recognition and soon voice recognition software for its police. This could allow China to better manage its Uighyr concentration camps and kidnap freedom fighters in Hong Kong. Along with its ambition to have everything 'Made in China' in 2025, and invade Taiwan, China is looking like a AI enhanced Hitler Germany 2.0.

We need weapons to fight an enemy like this, with help from US technology companies.

I am OK with weapons development. What I don't like is that these weapons get turned into big business selling them to unstable regions and in the case of the NSA the technology gets used against its own citizens.

This depiction of China is blown way out of proportion and it's basically thanks to US propaganda which is used to justify the kinds of military spending and activities it undertakes.

there is no inherent reason that these technologies need to be developed by the military, they could just as well be developed for civilian use when given the funding.

also it is not surprising that these things are invented by the dod when you're spending ~600-700 bilion a year on warfare and intelligence operations.

That last sentence of yours rubs me kinda the wrong way; that is a dangerious premise that could set us back ~30 years when the cold war and the arms race was well and alive, but this time we'd have robots and AI

China is currently heavily funding genetically engineering geniuses and AI. The US can either wake up or sit around and wait to be subjugated via an autonomous drone swarm developed by 250IQ Chinese scientists

I... hope this is sarcasm?

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