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Comment by keepamovin | Hacker News Reader

Yes and in general I think it's a good thing. It's a shame and a moral obscenity (and moral injury for the people staffing those systems) when they can see crimes or abuses but are unable to do anything due to "national security" (when such withholding seems to undermine it!).

Good connecting of the dots with the Titanic! Interesting. Did not know that :)

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I don't think these issues can be easily resolved. Intelligence isn't just about what you know, but also about the other side knowing what you know. What if exposing that capability to public will allow enemies to circumvent it, thus leading more lives lost? This isn't something confined to questions of military intelligence.

That being said. There was series, Person of Interest, exactly about this problem.

> but also about the other side knowing what you know

The israelis used the Spike missile for DECADES (they even had mock tanks launching it) and kept it quiet.

The ukrainians immediately uploaded videos of them using FPVs, I was sure at that time that the russians will in no time catch up and surpass ukraine in their FPV drone usage.

It's the intersection of morality, and power. In the game of power morality is often suspended, or vastly differs. In the realm of ordinary human affairs, where people are not endless in competition, morality reigns supreme and governs ideals for interactions, such as interpersonally. Both morality, and game of power, are necessary and important, I guess. But it's not easy because I think there's a fundamental tension between morality and power always.

That's why people in intelligence (fundamentally a power game) need moral flexibility. This can go right, or sometimes it goes wrong. But having to make such high stakes decisions all the time would at the least be fatiguing I imagine. And overtime, with the inevitable bad decisions, or implementing decisions made by others, the moral injury sets in.

Sort of related but a lot of the bigdrone pilots have serious PTSD and suicide: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2GFcNynl9qY

One might think that “moral obscenity” happens when “people staffing those systems” get their jobs and pretend that their responsibility is now delegated to some imaginary authority from the contemporary tales (which is not carved from wood or stone in our enlightened times).

In other words, such dramas are fake, and smokescreen the unclean consciousness. Remember the story about digital spying clerks from US complaining about being lent to Saudi Arabia, not because it was against their principles or laws, but because they were not paid “well enough”?

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