Would you rather those companies be startups whos employees are potentially more aware of the impact of what they’re building or just some big company that’s been making weapons since the MIC started?
That’s the real decision imo.
There are limited people with any set of skills on the planet, and infinite things to be done. Where we choose to put our effort and attention determines what gets done.
Its possible that if there is enough demand for something, someone else will do it, but no guarantee that it happens at all.
I don't care what the mindset of the people making the weapons is, the end result is the same. If you help build the war machine, you are personally culpable for the damage it does.
There is a limited labor market, our skills are in high demand. Protesting the creation of military tech can most definitely have a very real impact.
Unfortunately I don’t think protesting the military industrial complex does anything at all.
Can you get literally every engineer or would-be engineer to agree not to make weapons given an enormous personal upside?
It’s a prisoner’s dilemma. Someone will always take the paycheck and if _anyone_ does than the entire protest effort would’ve been for not bc the weapons still get made.
Examples : ARPANET, semiconductors, radar, GPS, etc, etc, etc
So, ironically, only when these weapons are there and have done their job do people appear, safe from birth till adulthood in their peaceful affluent little suburbs, who issue blanket condemnations of the defence industry as evil horrible people who produce weapons for the express purpose of "terrorizing people all over the planet for cash".
Do unto others before the do unto you.