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Comment by mgh2 | Hacker News Reader

Not sure why this matters as most pension index funds also include Meta by the same lines... everyone buying into these indexes is complicit, no surprise

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We've successfully campaigned to make many of those same investors divest from fossil fuel investments. I don't see why investments in crazy surveillance tech should get a pass (and yes, Meta absolutely falls in the same bucket)

This. Giving markets free reign, usually doesn't result in alignment with long term best interests or political objectives.

It took years of activism and voting with our money to get banks, pension funds and similar institutions to stop funding cluster munitions, land mines, nukes, oil, tabacco. Now big tech and some AI companies are on the radar.

Land mines and cluster munitions have been essential for Ukraine to defend itself against the Russian invasion. Several other European countries including Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland have recently withdrawn from the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty. It's cheap and easy to for activists to pretend to be morally superior when they're sitting safely behind computers and don't have to deal with real world consequences.

https://apnews.com/article/poland-land-mines-ottawa-conventi...

Urm, that they're invaluable in an active warzone is unquestionable.

The issue with this tech is that they - at least historically - didn't have an expiration date. So if that war ends and you let your children play in the woods... Maybe occasionally one won't be coming back anymore.

That's the reason why they got a bad image. Because that's literally what happened post ww2 - for decades.

Maybe nowadays they could built them with a forced timer for exploding - if they did, great! If not, your descendants may consider you insane for that opinion in a few decades

So then we agree that it's morally positive for European investors to put money into companies developing advanced land mines.

As for descendants, well the people killed by Russian attacks won't have any more descendants. So that point is kind of moot.

There are expiring ("non-persistent") munitions, though generally they're safed (triggers are deactivated) rather than exploded. The former does leave explosive materials in the field, but makes the likelihood of detonating these much lower.

Self-destructing mines are also used, with timers set to explode after deployment. There's some description of these, and problems with them, here: <https://www.fcnl.org/updates/2022-07/understanding-landmines>.

Other capabilities under the rubric "smart mine" are also possible: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_mine>.

As someone who's worked in numerous war zones, and has had to deal with the real world consequences of UXO, I firmly disagree.

Biological and chemical weapons could help you win, nuclear weapons could help you win. We don't use this stuff for a reason.

So then the Ukrainians should just roll over and stop trying to resist? Losing your country is a far more serious consequence then dealing with some UXO later.

There is a big leap between not resisting and using weapons that are widely agreed to be abhorrent. You're framing a false binary choice here: either deploy weapons that the majority of countries have deemed unconscionable, or lose your country in its entirety.

There is also a difference between why we fight and how we fight. Fighting in self defence does not give a state the right to conduct a war in any way it chooses.

There are numerous ongoing conflicts in which we've seen states shed hard-won agreements on how wars should be fought. It's an incredibly dangerous trend which is leading us into a new era of horror.

Where would you put the limits on Ukraine's actions? What is beyond the pale?

What an ignorant comment, totally disconnected from reality. It literally was a binary choice: without using land mines and cluster munitions the Ukrainian defenders would have been overrun by superior Russian numbers.

You ever been in a war zone, son? You ever see what happens after? I assure you there's no ignorance in my comments.

The enemy is using them against you anyway, so you are just losing out.

I've been regularly thinking about Apartheid-era South Africa. It was a massive Thing for me as a Catholic school kid in the '80s because it seemed (to me) so clearly wrong yet accepted. There were clearly "lefties" making it visible without a lot happening but then "How did you go bankrupt? Two ways: Gradually, then suddenly" happened. And a lot of it started with university students petitioning their schools to divest and that spreading. It will not be fast, but these things can happen and we should start to build a framework for it.

And yes, yes, Enemies Lists are fraught with problems and have a history of eating themselves, etc. But the one thing I know is worse is not trying.

> (and yes, Meta absolutely falls in the same bucket)

s/Meta/FAANG

Decoupling Meta and Palantir from your 401k would not derisk your retirement from surveillance technology. You'd have to kick out Microsoft and Apple and Google next, at which point you've already forfeit most of your portfolio's growth.

Palantir is a defense company. Meta might give away your data to the USA government spying agencies, but it's not on the same level.

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