Stanford students used to chase jobs at Meta and Google. Now work on war | Hacker News Reader

Stanford students used to chase jobs at Meta and Google. Now work on war

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The implications of the "defense" tech boom are horrific because the only way for this industry to achieve the hockey stick growth demanded by Silicon Valley investors is a hot war.

It's also very depressing for students to talk like it's a foregone conclusion that people must die. Youthful naivete isn't a bad thing and I much prefer the idealistic pro-Palestinian protesters to this sort of "people are going to die (and in the process I'm going to make a bunch of money)" attitude.

That's an interesting take. War is very good business for the military-industrial complex. VC profits will come from money spent. There is a gargantuan amount of waste/excess profit in the complex, I have no problem with efficiencies eating away enormous profits at the incumbents to produce large profits with overall reduced spend at new tech, but the incumbents know how to fight for their revenue so I expect increases overall.

Honestly I think this speaks as much or more to the bleak prospects of entering the consumer tech sector as opposed to changing views on war. Finding work in Silicon Valley as a fresh graduate is as difficult as it's ever been; and if you want to do meaningful work that will have an actual positive impact on people's lives, well, good luck. More likely than not you'll be doing something that sucks the soul out of you in service of a company sucking the souls out of everyone else.

Morally the 'defense' industry is distasteful enough for me to stay away, but as someone also looking to enter the tech industry I don't blame anyone for looking for a lesser of evils. I can only hope things improve enough in the private sector for the choice to be clear before it's too late.

If you want to do meaningful work that will have a positive impact on people's lives... Like being elected to Congress, anyone can do it, but there are very few actual seats so almost no one gets to.

Are you excluding B2B from your "bleak prospects"? There's a lot of non-consumer tech to do out there. Defense tech will be, for the most part, soul-sucking work too. Just that some of actually does suck the souls out of everyone else.

Re-read "War is a Racket" and the words of Dwight Eisenhower.

I just finished War is a Racket (haven't read it before, thank you for the recommendation). I'm not sure what words of Dwight Eisenhower you're referring to.

To be perfectly clear, I am not sympathetic to war; war is the most terrible thing humanity can do. Avoiding it should be one of our primary goals as a species. Which begs the question: what can motivate people to contribute to that? War hasn't become any less horrible, so why are people more open to being a part of the industry now?

The short answer is, of course, money. But to look a bit deeper, we have to understand the mentality that's driving the change:

> “National security includes the toughest and the most exciting problems that the country has to offer. And Facebook is basically fentanyl for your head. Why would I want students to go there?”

> [unnamed student] described national security work as “mission-driven,” unlike the “empty pursuit” of consumer software.

As much as I support anti-war sentiment for its own sake, that sentiment has been the prominent thinking for the better part of the last decade, yet it has evidently failed to stop the shift in mentality we see happening now.

These students do not believe in consumer tech. They do not believe we are collectively working towards a better future, a sentiment I share. That is what needs to change to stop this move towards national 'defense'. There will always be enough people who choose practicality over principles for evil things to happen if evil feeds mouths where principles do not. Principled action must be focused toward making principles and practicality the same.

Total agreement on the ability to have purpose, on the social utility of any social media. Thiel said it well: They promised us flying cars and all we got was 140 characters.

Sucks that there aren't apparently profitable alternatives for tech-minded folks, though eventually with enough tech folks little is highly profitable (supply/demand).

Here's some vintage Eisenhower. Remember that he led the Allies in WWII and knew a thing or two about fighting and war:

> "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road. the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron." Address "The Chance for Peace" Delivered Before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, 4/16/53

I tear up every time I read this, even now.

> "We need an adequate defense, but every arms dollar we spend above adequacy has a long-term weakening effect upon the nation and its security." Waging Peace, page 622

> A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. . . . American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. . . . This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . .Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

[https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwigh...]

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