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Comment by labrador | Hacker News Reader

Silicon Valley is working on defense contracts. Always has, always will [1]. The heat Luckey feels is due mostly to him being a Trump supporter. Trump is viewed as a threat to American democracy, so hopefully Luckey has reconsidered by now.

[1] The rise of defense tech is bringing Silicon Valley back to its roots

https://techcrunch.com/2022/02/05/the-rise-of-defense-tech-i...

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The techcrunch piece is just cheerleading for something that might happen. It won't be more than a slice of SV anyway. More likely is that SV VCs invest in ventures headquartered in VA, CO, TX, and other defense-friendly ecosystems.

Meanwhile, SV (and especially its VCs) are really only interested in money. Just like most other sectors. If it's bad for US security, that's secondary. Get us in a war, where the source of profits shifts, that'll shift too.

Silicon Valley's growth was funded by the defense industry beginning in the 1950's. It never stopped being part of the defense industry. VCs are private money. They can fund pet rocks if they think they will make money. The 800 Billion dollar defense budget is not like that.

Right. It's here. But to say that it's what SV does will be totally misleading.

Would be interesting to see what percentage of SV's cash inflow is direct defense spending. It's a fraction, but what what fraction?

I bet a box of donuts Google is helping the defense dept with AI using a secret budget with amenable employees that have a security clearance

You'd kinda hope so

If I were head of that project I'd trick some other employees into protesting defense department work. It wouldn't be hard.

Sure, some companies are but how many? How vitriolic is the backlash when certain firms try to work with the DOD vs. China (thinking about Project Maven, ICE contracts, etc. when many companies work with a regime perpetuating an actual genocide). His personal political views aside, I think Silicon Valley as a whole until recently was not enthusiastic about working with government and especially not the DOD (in no small part this was gov's fault- insane procurement processes and sales cycle meant they were an awful customer) but hopefully they're getting their shit together with the creation of things like DIU, Afwerx, Navalx, etc. and the private sector is realizing how important it is to work with a government that has democratic values and is trying to uphold those globally instead of working with say China who helps to prop up Russia while they ravage Ukraine.

Using "Trump supporter" to smear a guy is really childish

Not really. The evidence is mounting that Donald Trump attempted a violent overthrow of the US government, so the many in SV who criticized Luckey for supporting him were right in my estimation.

This is key, there need not be any argument after that. PG wrote about this in his essay on heresy.

Once the person is branded “x-ist” or in this case “trump supporter” - there need not be any further debate on the merits of their position or argument.

I'm happy the Luckey is developing new defense tech, just as I was happy he developed VR tech. The country benefits from his talents. That doesn't make him beyond reproach. I'm sure he is right about some aspects of Big Tech wanting to please China, but his own experience as a Trump supporter in SV might be causing him to overestimate the effect.

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