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Comment by VikingCoder | Hacker News Reader

You don't have to "fancy yourself a pacifist" to not want to work on military projects directly.

For one, you may pragmatically think it hurts your brand more than it helps your company.

For another, you may think that is you wanted to work in defense, you would have gotten a job in defense. If your company starts chasing defense, maybe it's time to change companies.

For another, you may think the government of the United States doesn't or no longer deserves the best weapons in the world. Perhaps another Western country does.

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That last point was a major driver of leaks to the Soviet Union during the Manhattan project. Many of the scientists thought it was simply too much power to be in the hands of one nation.

Jordan implicated Harry Hopkins and other high officials in the transfer of nuclear and other secrets to the USSR. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Racey_Jordan

He also promoted the idea that fluoridation of water was a Communist plot.

Weren't they under some sort of NDA? The sort that gets you and your family killed if you break it, perhaps?

They were guilty of treason, however not everyone's morals are directly inline with the law. That isn't to say that all spies were of a noble nature, some just did it for the money or to feel important.

That's true - I left academia because I figured a lot of my work was possibly going to go to killing brown children in faraway lands, so I understand that pretty well.

But I didn't get the impression that this was the case here. It was a fairly generic object recognition program (as far as I've heard; could be wrong there).

> For another, you may think that is you wanted to work in defense, you would have gotten a job in defense. If your company starts chasing defense, maybe it's time to change companies.

Totally. Great opportunity to move teams at a big company like Google or quit and move elsewhere. But what happened was more of a statement, people walking out together. I don't think it's wrong, and I admire them for it. But I think it belies a certain naivete about the whole setup we've found ourselves in.

> For another, you may think the government of the United States doesn't or no longer deserves the best weapons in the world. Perhaps another Western country does.

Sure again, or an Eastern one, or a Southern one. Western hegemony has been very, very bad for the rest of the world, so a change might be just what we all need.

> But I think it belies a certain naivete about the whole setup we've found ourselves in.

You can only vote with your feet.

If companies learn that employees don't want their companies to work on this...

... are you kidding me?

Yes, Western governments have their problems. But honestly what alternative is there?

Chinese "communism" (really Fascism)?

Russian dictatorship / oligarchy?

African tribalism and anarchy?

Middle Eastern theocracies?

There are a lot of things I'd change about Western states. Making them truer to the Western values of reason, individualism, justice, peace and voluntarism would be a good start :)

But really, the only reason we're not living in the dark ages is those same Western principles. (Which we might now refer to as Eastern, had not Ibn Battuta and others rolled back the Islamic renaissance, plunging the world back into darkness until the Europeans caught up. What might have been, etc.)

Gah. I meant al-Ghazali. I blame sleep deprivation.

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