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Comment by bradleyjg | Hacker News Reader

To make it concrete, currently the US spends more than the next ten countries combined on its military and associated projects and has done so since at least the end of the Cold War. It has far and away the most ships, planes, missiles and bombs. While it doesn’t have the most troops the two countries with more troops do not nearly have the same as much training or as good equipment.

Presuming the OP is in the US, and in light of the above, it seems perverse to suggest that his refusal to work on military projects is endangering his loved ones.

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Everyone seems to forget that the projection of might in of itself is a deterrent leveraged by all nations. Further, the US is part of multi nation programs, such as NATO in which it's the largest supplier of Capital and Manpower by a large margin. Most of the countries external to the US that bring up this argument, are happily accepting Military and in some instances Economic Aide.

You can't look at the % of spending / annual cost of the greatest military power without taking into account it's responsibilities around the globe.

Nothing above says you have to agree or disagree with the military, in fact many of us aren't pro on a lot of their actions, but this common retort as posted above, is selective data analysis, which I would hope the intellectuals of HN would be able to separate emotions from facts.

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/0...

https://www.state.gov/s/l/treaty/collectivedefense/

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

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

I don’t see how that’s relevant to the point I made. Regardless of any self imposed “responsibilities” at the end of the day if it was ever necessary the entire US military would be available to protect the United States and the people living here.

There’s no way to recontexualize the numbers such that we are in imminent danger if some software engineers decide they will not work on military contracts. We are absurdly far away from such a scenario.

All that American military spending bankrolled Silicon Valley.

Now suddenly Silicon Valley thinks it's better than the US military that bore it?

Maybe there's more than one part of the military, and the resilient internal communications network part is different from the wedding-bombing part.

Well, for the past 20 years, the military has been preoccupied with bombing brown people halfway around the world. I'd say simply by virtue of not doing that, Silicon Valley is better, yes.

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