Ask HN: Why is there a stigma around working in defense-related tech?

Defense is the sanitised version.

Let's say you program code for a hellfire heat tracking missile. Now sure you can tell yourself it's only going to be used by the good guys but really you know at some point your code is going to be responsible for someone innocent getting killed.

So there's probably that bit of people with morals and a conscience who have an issue with the 'defense' industry.

How exactly does your drone defend? Does it do it by being a good offense?

That may give you an idea of why you are getting judged.

How many degrees of separation need to exist before your culpability drops to nearly zero?

One degree? Two? Three? Someone cashing a paycheck from Facebook or Google can tout how the company is connecting people, which is like military folks saying they work in defense.

I feel like almost no one working at a for-profit company can truly escape the principle of do no harm.

The fact that I lean into the positive aspects of my work is just natural. Everyone does the same thing, since every product has both good and bad aspects.

If you make bolts in a factory and some of those bolts are used for an aeroplane, some of which may be bombers it's probably negligible. If you, like the OP, are creating a drone with the specific effect of being a weapon, then I think I'm on safe ground saying there is no separation. You are actively making the world worse.

I can find good aspects to the work I've done, but certainly many hate one or more of my past employers or their industries for a variety of reasons, many good ones TBQH.

I've learned that it's best to simply not look to others for validation that your work is meaningful. This is especially true if the others are politically leftist, if only because leftists currently have more of a 'purity' complex going on than rightists. There is no winning with that because eventually you will fall short somewhere, so it's better to just not care what they think about your job from day one and focus on having a nice day.

I worked in aerospace, and all my work was defensive. Civilians don't have missiles to track or shoot down, and it was my choice if I didn't want to work on a particular project.

Selling a multi-use product or technology removes you from control. Might you approach a foundation or ex-spouse with no malicious intent? Certainly, the military, and sadly, our new paramilitary have half the GDP. But since the wealthy have the other half, why not look to them as collaborators in a worthy project? At the very least,positive use can be negotiated and cooked into the terms of use.

I know this will seem odd, but there's a skill issue sometimes. Defense companies often have a lot of people, relative to purely commercial companies because the US government likes to have its money go to a lot of constituents. Defense companies are also under equipped sometimes, for the same reason - the gov would rather the money go to voters.

There's the effect of classification too: new tech often doesn't get used in classified programs because it's hard to get new people cleared.

For these reasons and more, folks working in aerospace are often behind the curve.

I think stigma around US MIC is there's basically 100% chance your work on hardware if it's part of the kill chain is going to end up collateral damaging (murdering) some/many civilians half way around the world. Less expeditionary countries also have heir domestic MIC, it's generally not an issue until exporting to operators also actively use hardware to unalive babies.

> the obvious reason is that the military tends to involve killing sometimes

Your wording downplays it, but killing people is the entire reason militaries exist.

> People don't have similar disdain for working at advertising corps like Google and Facebook for the killings they do indirectly.

A whole lot of people do.

> My drone is for surveillance only—it has a self-detachment feature (SDA) that is activated when the drone is attacked, but other than that the drone is for surveillance only.

That makes it no less a weapon, though. Just sayin'.

As someone who has done work for the US military in the past, here's my take on the social implications of it. If you're working on an offensive (in the military sense) project, there are going to be a lot of people who find that ethically objectionable. Less so in times where the US is less belligerent, but we don't live in those times right now.

If you're working on basic research projects funded by the military (this is what I have done), there are far fewer people who would find that objectionable. If you're working on something purely defensive, that falls somewhere in the middle.

However, military work will always be polarizing to some degree.

My issue with my friend is: why is military work specially objectionable? I used the example of buying products that are produced by slaves. No doubt some died, yet he has no problem with that, saying it is different without actually explaining why.

Is the issue perception alone? Brand? What the industry advertises itself as? And the totality of their work doesn't matter?

I don't know anything about your friend so I can't speak to his perspective. For all I know, he's a pacifist.

A rather large difference between products that were made with slave labor and the military is that the overt, express purpose of the military is to kill people. Products made with slave labor are companies behaving badly, not companies fulfilling an express purpose.

> And the totality of their work doesn't matter?

If you find the purpose of the military objectionable, then no, that they also do some good isn't that important. Speaking generally, doing good deeds doesn't erase or forgive bad ones you have done.

It sounds to me like this is a case where you and your friend have fundamentally different moral codes with this sort of thing. It shouldn't affect your friendship. You could both just acknowledge that you have different opinions about this and let it go. Nobody agrees with anybody else about everything.

> People don't have similar disdain for working at advertising corps like Google and Facebook

I can't speak for Google, but I have noticed in general people very much do have disdain for working for Facebook, and have done for the last decade.

> I thought about this because I am currently working on a pretty advanced drone that I want to sell to the DoD. My friend argued that I am in the "death industry," which pisses me off. Drones could be used to help distribute medicine in remote areas, or for surveillance. My drone is for surveillance only—it has a self-detachment feature (SDA) that is activated when the drone is attacked, but other than that the drone is for surveillance only.

Okay, so obvious question is why are you selling them to the DOD rather than directly to humanitarian organisations, medicine distributors, etc.?

I mean, obviously it's because the DOD is a massive buyer, but the reason they're a massive buyer is not because they ship *medicines* everywhere.

Who do you think it's more likely to pay money for a drone, an org that distributes medicine to remote areas or a weapon's dealer?

My friend still insisted what I'm doing is bad and equated my work to some sort of mercenary, as an analog

I do not have an answer to your original question but I would add that there are many in tech that are working on intelligence related tools that will be used in war and do not even realize it. There are hundreds of appliances in data-centers created by tech arms of the intelligence community and have offensive capabilities and this is even before we talk about some of the current hype-tech. I am not going to name them as I signed many NDA's in the past related to them but many here on HN have worked with the tech and probably did not even realize it's dual/multi-use purpose is war time related. Just because something isn't a missile does not mean it won't be used to erase a group of people even if indirectly. Some of the worst tech offenders all the way from WWII to current military engagements are not obvious weapons in the traditional sense. This is not restricted to tech either. Some in biology fields are working on dual-use medicines that are also precision weapons that can select on specific sets of genetic traits.

I guess what I am saying is that people may want to take a long hard look at all the tech they use or contribute to before making a judgement. The internet itself was designed for war-time communication and is being partially deprecated by Starlink as just one example. Most interstate highways in the US were funded for the purpose of moving military troops and equipment as another example. Mainframes and punch cards optimized the erasure of a plethora of civilians. War bucks and war needs the biggest catalysts for the funding of innovation.

They hate America, and more broadly, the west. That's really it. They never object nearly as vehemently to rogue nations like Iran or geostrategic rivals like the PRC spending money on defense as much as they do the US. Orwell noted this phenomenon in 1945:

> https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

> 5. Pacifism. The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to the taking of life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defence of the western countries. The Russians, unlike the British, are not blamed for defending themselves by warlike means, and indeed all pacifist propaganda of this type avoids mention of Russia or China. It is not claimed, again, that the Indians should abjure violence in their struggle against the British. Pacifist literature abounds with equivocal remarks which, if they mean anything, appear to mean that statesmen of the type of Hitler are preferable to those of the type of Churchill, and that violence is perhaps excusable if it is violent enough. After the fall of France, the French pacifists, faced by a real choice which their English colleagues have not had to make, mostly went over to the Nazis, and in England there appears to have been some small overlap of membership between the Peace Pledge Union and the Blackshirts. Pacifist writers have written in praise of Carlyle, one of the intellectual fathers of Fascism. All in all it is difficult not to feel that pacifism, as it appears among a section of the intelligentsia, is secretly inspired by an admiration for power and successful cruelty. The mistake was made of pinning this emotion to Hitler, but it could easily be retransferred.