Hacker News Reader

Comment by infecto | Hacker News Reader

Is it that surprising? Ignoring war being good or bad, you would assume there needs to be some method to the madness. I assume before computers this meant a central com center that kept track of everything using humans and chalkboards or tables.

View on HN

War should be done by government, including dashboards for killing people. And then the focus should be on improving representation and accountability in the government. Doing this with private companies avoid accountability, the same way payment networks can regulate merchants, or the FBI outsources spying Americans to private contractors.

Not sure I follow. It’s a tracking board for assets.

I'm not sure how you don't follow. Is the board used for war? Can bugs in the board cause casualties?

Odd. You said nothing about bugs in your original post. What’s your point can you ELI5 why you would want the government to write software?

When software is written with the purpose to kill people, that is very important software. That makes the organizations that write it very important. The more important an organization is, the more people from outside the organization should know what they do, and the more they should have say on it. Private organizations don't meet those requirements, government approximates those requirements better.

Also, I don't know how you can't see the relationship between bugs and accountability.

So the government should make its own guns, tanks, food, planes, fuel etc.? Not trying to be pestering but again I don’t understand your point. Software to me is no different than a plane or a gun. The military does not make those either. It’s a tool that connects data sources to make decisions and I have yet to see a reason why the military has to make a tool instead of paying for one.

Ideally yes, if they are designed to be used to kill people. You don't want a whole industry that has the incentive to want more dead people just so it can stay alive.

On the contrary, these tools would cause less dead people. That’s the whole point and why the military uses it. By using tools that provide higher fidelity on threats, the military becomes more efficient and precise, which leads to less casualties and collateral damage.

Cool, but not related to whether they should be built by the government or private companies. Also, if all wars ended tomorrow, would Palantir's profits increase or decrease?

Ok so we are just talking about happy ideas that are not only unrealistic but will never happen. Which is ok but let’s be clear about that up front.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com