Serious question for those who agree with this petition. Which country's military would you like to see be the most technologically advanced in 20 years?
Note : I do not agree with the petition, but the question was too tempting.
More seriously: the US has nuclear weapons, rendering them safe from any direct confrontation with enemies challenging them technologically.
They have a conventional military 10x the size needed for the sort of intervention that actually succeeded in the past (the Balkans, the first Gulf war). The rather unsuccessful wars (Afghanistan, Iraq) were lost not for technological reasons or any other dimension of military might, but because the US military sucks at convincing people of the benefits of democracy.
Want to win the next ten wars? Put the money into Hollywood blockbusters and the world's best Halal fast food chain.
I always laugh when people suggest these meek tiny European states should be in charge of running the world and how much more civilized they are. The reality is that these countries aren't meek by choice and we already know from history what a country like Belgium would do if given a tiny sliver of power.
America is a federation of 50 states. The EU is trying to become a federation of the European states.
Belgian atrocities in the Congo suggests that would be a very, very poor choice
I think the problems are far easier to explain. Watching the documentary Restrepo, I was surprised to see how terrifyingly stupid American GIs are at anything but actual warfare.
The most telling scene was a meeting they had with the local "elders". This was in one of the most isolated valleys, even by Afghani standards. They were talking about a road to be build, and promising jobs for the locals.
Yet it was absolutely clear that these villagers did not even share the concept of a "job". They were goat herders mostly, and possibly some farmers. I'd bet that not one of them is a wage-earning employee or worker. They simply tend to their family's animals.
"Trade" is probably understood in these places, "jobs" is not. They tried to win over the local population with promises entirely based on an American POV.
In larger cities, such promises might have had a better chance to succeed. But I think it's instructive to look at the only people whose "hearts & minds^ the US actually managed to win: translators and other local employees tend to be the US' most ardent supporters. That's maybe due to the money they got, yes. And there's some selection bias at play, as well. But if I had to guess, I'd say simple, honest day-to-day social contact had the most influence.
I think the Us military should form a brigade entirely made up of hippies that can play instruments, like to talk to strangers, can play soccer and basketball, grow weed, and are good petting dogs and getting children to smile.
A lot of Silicon Valley's justification for its immoral actions rests on the _belief_ of the inevitability of outcomes. It's ok to monopolize and centralize everything, discarding the lives of people who are negatively impacted because it's inevitable. It's ok to make robots able to kill people better because it's inevitable, etc.
The thing is, it's a _belief_ that this is inevitable — not a proven fact of nature. And people who don't believe in it will logically withdraw their cooperation from building that future.
Both sides are 'proving' their point of view. If enough people object, then it wasn't inevitable after all. If enough people work to bring us into that future, maybe it was. But thats the struggle and moral choice we face.
No, I can't prove that. But it seems like a very reasonable belief to have. What reason do you have to believe that it won't be so?
From a less grassroots perspective, international regulations and sanctions tend to be fairly effective.
A) not be developed without support from Google, which is categorically untrue; The DoD might simply find it more difficult to acquire top talent if that talent is opposed to the work on philosophical grounds.
And B) be necessary for the US military to remain the most advanced and/or powerful in 20 years, which is also exceptionally doubtful - unless you believe ML to have such effective wartime applications as to render a nearly threefold larger military budget (compared to China, the next largest) moot.
The US isn't spending 800 billion a year on nothing.
Nukes are enough to stop any war from happening between any of the most powerful countries in the world.
What else do we even need?
The various factions in the various civil wars around the world can kill themselves in their own war, and we shouldn't be a part of it killing even more people.