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Comment by alottafunchata | Hacker News Reader

Thanks to DARPA we have things such as the internet, GPS, Siri, and autonomous vehicles. Not to mention the DoD provides us with the security to pursue private ventures.

Go pound sand.

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You don't even have to get 1/4 of the way through the article to see that 3,000 Google employees disagree with you about that. Do you think you can find 2,999 other people to share your "go pound sand" argument, or do you think you're an outlier?

I also agree with the parent. It is the United States Military that defends American interests including the corporate interests of Silicon Valley, polices the seas and keeps a big enough stack of big enough sticks to make anything remotely resembling an invasion of American territory look like a suicide note of nation-sized proportions.

It isn't Peace Corps. keeping the world at relative peace.

> It isn't Peace Corps. keeping the world at relative peace.

What would happen if the US government poured as much money/effort into keeping the peace as they did towards disrupting the peace?

That would still be Imperialism under a different banner.

Count me as one who agrees with the parent comment. Maybe that makes a difference for your popularity-based reasoning?

Nation-states require people working on real problems, especially if we are continuing to shoulder the burden of securing the rest of the western world. We cannot run on maintenance-mode without a technical team.

If we are to do something we should do it well. Otherwise we should own the alternative of turning inward, reducing our obligations to NATO and the UN, and shrinking the size/scope of the federal government.

Well, I agree with alottafunchata.

Are Google employees an unbiased sample now? Also, regardless of what authority / stature they may have, the "call to authority" fallacy would apply if you use that data-point as the crux of your argument.

Lastly, accuracy <> popularity - an argument can be right or wrong regardless of how many people agree with you.

I'll agree with him. Our industry was created by men like Alan Turing and John von Neumann who contributed their effort and intellect to the preservation of democracy against totalitarianism. When free people refuse to weaponize technology, tyrants will, and free people will be at a disadvantage.

Weapon inventors usually have no control once the weapon is sold. Richard Gatling thought he was making war more decisive and thus more necessary to avoid. He didn't anticipate machine guns being deployed against indigenous people defending against colonizers, nor did he anticipate the New York Times turning his gun on a riot.

Precisely. Also: Alfred Nobel, and many physicists who worked on the atomic bomb, including Oppenheimer.

Its a difficult question and its sad to see how technology created originally for benefiting humanity can sometimes be re purposed for its destruction. In a world where sovereign nations are not bound by arms restrictions though, its hard to see how this endless march of destruction can be stopped.

The SALT and other arms-reduction treaties b/w the US and erstwhile USSR where, IMO, a very good compromise. I find it hard to do something similar in the future if we continue to have dysfunctional administrations governing the US though.

> and many physicists who worked on the atomic bomb, including Oppenheimer

After 1945 (arguably 1953 at the latest), there were absolutely no direct wars between any two major powers. Nuclear weapons did make war too destructive to ever risk.

> preservation of democracy against totalitarianism

I don't think I will ever understand this sentiment. At the time of WW2, the US still legally discriminated against colored people. The UK had a sprawling empire whose colored citizens were not given full rights or representation. France was also similar; in fact France tried to claw its empire back which led to some ugly wars in IndoChina (Vietnam) and Algeria.

Let me say that Nazism and Fascism were surely forces that needed to be defeated and put down. But the Allies were hardly the perfect coalition of "free people" or the "free world" that people today glorify them to be. They were at best a "better side that was moving in the right direction".

> They were at best a "better side that was moving in the right direction".

That is democracy. Fascism and communism were the worse sides that were moving in the wrong direction, and allowing those factions to gain a military advantage would have been morally indefensible. The UK and France abandoned their empires in the 20th century; the Soviets expanded theirs.

I think it's wonderful that liberal democracies have a rich culture of self-criticism when it comes to their flaws and imperfections. That's what makes it so important to preserve them.

> When free people refuse to weaponize technology, tyrants will, and free people will be at a disadvantage.

There is no guarantee that the Department of State will not use said technology in a non-tyrannical fashion. In fact, we have decades of evidence that it will use it in a tyrannical fashion (And then lie their pants off about it), whenever it serves their interests.

That's a drop in the bucket compared to the total number of people who work at Google.

And I agree with OP's statement.

I agree with him

There are few things more ideologically pure than Google's employees.

> Thanks to DARPA we have things such as the internet, GPS, Siri, and autonomous vehicles.

Internet and GPS originated from ARPA-funded research. That might seem like a minor difference in nomenclature but a person feeling ecstatic about DoD involvement in research might want to look at how much bang for their buck the government got as the defense establishment's involvement increased and increased over the years.

> Not to mention the DoD provides us with the security to pursue private ventures.

The controversial part of the DoD is not national defense, its imperialism.

There's only one United States Department of Defense, one sitting President of the United States, one Joint Chiefs of Staff, and one sitting session of the United States Congress.

You might not support American Imperialism, but a lot of Americans do and you take the good with the bad.

Or, you support the good and try to change the bad? Is that not allowed?

Start by convincing the American public that it is bad then.

Most policy changes do not go through the public. The public has a very small amount of impact on this - both major parties, despite rhetoric to the contrary, are imperialists. They quibble over the details of how the empire should run.

You mean like, for example, by submitting opinion pieces to the New York Times?

For clarity DARPA isn't part of the DoD it's a civilian run federal research organization.

No, DARPA is DoD.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._Department_of_Def...

If you doubt Wikipedia, here's a DOD org chart from inside government: http://dcmo.defense.gov/Portals/47/Documents/PDSD/201509_DoD...

As others noted, it takes little effort to verify that DARPA is part of the DoD.

I'm also not sure what point you're trying to make, because of course the DoD is also civilian run. That's been fundamental to the Department of Defense since its founding.

Yes it is. It's a subagency of the DoD and it exists to develop new technologies for the military.

> Not to mention the DoD provides us with the security to pursue private ventures.

Citation needed, because there have been a lot of injuries and deaths they have failed to prevent (domestic violence, poor healthcare, etc) and even many cases of them causing death for US citizens (wars on vague ideas like "drugs", "terrorism", etc).

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