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Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

I think there's a huge difference between technology used to train our troops and technology used to create automated killer drones. Which is to say, I see no reason for Microsoft to hesitate on this contract, but absolutely pushed for Project Maven to be dropped by Google.

If we want our military's actions to be humane, we need to keep real people somewhere out on the front lines, and we need them to be well trained to defend themselves in the event of a real threat, rather than reacting inappropriately to a false one.

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I've talked to some DARPA people. The fact that employees will openly revolt for ethics in groups is something everyone has to consider now. The Project Maven thing produced a chilling effect for how they write grants. They feel the pushback and have to think about ethics a little harder.

I don't see that as a bad thing at all. Ethics should be at the forefront of discussion in new technology. But we need to bear in mind that military capability is, in fact, something we must have, and that many people are able to worry about the ethics of what our country does because our military ensures that very survival is not the conversation we are occupied with.

Which is to say, our military can be unethical, but us having a military is not unethical.

In what way does the US Army have anything to do with "survival"? Isolated in the western hemisphere by large oceans, bordered only by large, friendly neighbors, it's as naturally safe as a nation can feasibly be. Nobody on earth has the military capacity to come attack the USA.

Recently some technologies were developed called airplanes and missiles. That changes things when before we just boats.

And if anyone launches a direct attack on the US, they’ll be attacked with nuclear weapons in return. Hololens wouldn’t help the US at all for self defense, only for action involving deploying troops.

Deploying troops is far less genocidal than dropping nukes, don't you think? I'd much rather us the former than the latter.

> And if anyone launches a direct attack on the US, they’ll be attacked with nuclear weapons in return. Hololens wouldn’t help the US at all for self defense, only for action involving deploying troops.

So you're saying the US should have nuked Afghanistan? I think you have an oversimple view of international relations and military affairs.

No. An obvious solution to the afganistan problem is to simply cut off all immigration from that country.

Or enact similar immigration restrictions, like Trump did about a year ago.

Nuclear weapons weren't necessary for that job, but the outcome was the same: the removal of the Afghani government through military force.

I think you're forgetting about Pearl Harbor.

It's defense through deterrence - i.e. the opportunity cost of forcefully acquiring control of the largest-GDP nation is quite high.

In a post-nuclear world, this is incredibly complex so it usually ends up playing out in different theaters (Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Syria, etc.) rather than the shores of the U.S. as you pointed out, but the total reserve and reach of that force is still just as important.

The argument can get slippery though when trying to justify allocating resources, because with deterrence it's hard to know exactly how much you need, especially when gaining that knowledge usually comes through defeat of some sort.

ICBMs can go anywhere.

This is literally what the USA thought before pearl harbor

The USA didn't have a nuclear arsenal capable of destroying all major cities on Earth a few times over in 1941. Nor a military force that is larger than the next ten biggest militaries on earth combined.

It's hardly similar circumstances. An attack on the US mainland today would mean global nuclear war. It's highly improbable to ever happen.

The USA's neighbors only became friendly after the USA's military got way more powerful than theirs.

Much of Mexico's territory is de facto controlled by enemies of both Mexico and the USA, and Russia has, or at least is eyeing having, an outpost in the Caribbean right now.

The US used its army directly in the New World at least as recently as 1982, in the invasion of Grenada.

> The US used its army directly in the New World at least as recently as 1982, in the invasion of Grenada.

Or even more recently in '89 down in Panama.

Or in Haiti in '94 -- though that one wasn't necessarily an invasion but the troops were in the air if diplomacy failed.

Why don't they just engage friendlier / smaller companies?

I think there's a coordination issue here. Tech can be intolerant of views that don't align with progressive orthodoxy (doubly so in tech hubs), the DOD needs tech workers who are more aligned with their mission than the progressive techie detractors. Why don't some badthinkers band together and get a DOD contract? I imagine it's because the DOD isn't going to give a new shop it's first chance but has anyone looked into this?

Let's just say getting DoD contracts isn't a simple process of showing you have a good idea and tech skills. There is a lot of who knows who, and is not entirely bad I think. We are building our security here, we need to be confident people can do what they say they will do.

It's also that tech workers simply don't need the money. They aren't going to starve if they leave Microsoft or Google over some project dispute; they'll find another job in two seconds.

Only policy change can make your military more humane.

If your military policy is to siege populated cities and villages, bomb amd shell them, killing thousands of people caught in the cross-fire in the process, that's what should be the focus, if you're interested in humane military.

That's already much more indiscriminate than some Google killer drone ever will be.

We are more humane. So much more then in any conflict before this. Looks at Dresden in WW2 or the carpet bombing of N. Vietnam. We have become too humane if you ask me. A Roman citizen could walk the length of the world untouched because the penalty was that the Romans would kill everyone as a reprisal. The job of the military is to kill people and break things. The job of the military is to end a conflict as quick as possible with the least amount of death of their own people. We forgot this in Korea and Vietnam. We forgot the first rule. I lost friends because we could not call in heavy support (Afghanistan). The Korean War would have ended with far less dead civilians if they let MacAuthur fight without tying his hands - A Chinese plane, takes off from China, kills UN troops, American plane gives chase, Chinese plane crosses an imaginary line and has to be let go, to land unbothered only to kill again the next day. 2.5M civilian dead, 2M soldiers because a weapon was consider to be to lethal. Bayonet, Bullet, Bomb or Nuke on a military target, they all kill. One just ends it faster.

Here here. There is only total war. Anything else is just getting people killed for reasons.

Sorry about your friends. That really turns my stomach. My son was an Army Ranger (FIST/JTAC) he said being in SOCOM gave them more ROE freedom. And, in the rare cases when things started to get sketchy bombs and missiles could be brought on target on the authority of the ground commander (company cmdr or platoon leader) no questions asked.

edit: a/an

I understand, but what I was trying to say is that I just don't think that automated killer drones are some distinct category of weapons when it comes to something being more humane or not.

These things will still be commanded by humans, and there will still be decisions made at some level wrt how many bystanders it's ok to kill in the operation. Just like with bombs, artilery, etc.

I thought Maven was mostly for scanning vast amount of collected non-live zoomed out satellite imagery (think of finding where North Korea hides missiles), rather than live killer drone use case.

Probably just refit of stuff they sell to China already.

There is a huge difference, but that doesn't mean this project is Ok. Supporting war is supporting war. The budget and size of the US military are so far beyond what is needed for practical defense. If we want our military's actions to be humane, we should drastically cut their budget and stop sending soldiers to kill people in other countries.

There is no closing pandoras box when it comes to military tech.

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