To the people who complain about the ethics of defence tech: I hear you, but we live in an increasingly hostile world.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
If you want peace you must prepare for war.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
If you want peace you must prepare for war.
Si vis pacem, par bellum does not really apply to the United States. The US is bellum paratum enough for war to be it's own election, and it has elected for war enough to know that making more weapons for the US won't being any peace.
First of all, the vast majority of conflicts the US was involved in would not have been fought by regional powers, or not with that intensity, see Libya, various conflicts in South America, etc...
Second, when the US was in China's position, it did everything China does right now, with even more violence. The US annexed, failed to annex or dominate every one of it's neighbors until it relented. There has been no fundamental change in policy since then.
There's a neighborhood in my city where this family has taken on the role of community police. Strangely enough, most people outside that family believe they have taken on the role of the dominant criminal gang; I wonder why that is. When accused of violence, they mention the belligerence of some of their (real and imaginary) rivals.
However, if we are going to take an ethical perspective, it seems like a particularly inopportune time to be joining the industry given that the intended customer (the US government) has refused to abide by its own laws with regard to selling weapons to regimes that fail to meet the necessary standards.
Women and children in Yeman would be an example of misuse of US weapons.
*War Atrocities in Yemen Linked to US Weapons
Columbia Law School researchers have unveiled a disturbing connection between American arms and civilian deaths.
a joint investigation by the Security Force Monitor [..] recently concluded that a “substantial portion” of airstrikes that have killed civilians in Yemen have been carried out by jets developed, sold, and maintained by US companies and flown by US-trained pilots.
THe UK is also at fault here, it's not just the US that supply advanced weapon systems with casual disregard for end use.
America should stop them.
We used to have a major, major war every generation.
Improved weaponry (and nukes) have been a huge force for peace since 1945. There have been only proxy wars since then and battle deaths per 100k people dropped off a cliff.
If they kept their nukes, there’d be no invasion.
I’m not an American and live in a country where gun ownership is highly regulated.
For example, you can express all the democracy you want in the US but you have F35s, aircraft carriers, etc that supports the system. Like it or not.
Look up the early history of Google and Facebook, you'll find tons of links to three letter agencies. Every FAANG (or whatever the acronym du jour is now) or equivalent startup is run by spooks and sociopaths with blood on their hands. That's just how America works.
Even in certain unnamed European countries, they proliferate more freely than you'd think, staying unnoticed as long as they’re deniably placating their wrongdoings within the civilian sector. Certain ones are known to become increasingly bold as they encroach on organized crime and PMC breeding grounds, both in close proximity, as of recently. It happens in seemingly ordinary situations, and you'd be surprised at how insidious certain individuals can become.