The military industrial complex is, essentially, a mandatory relationship, though with significant problems leading to inefficiency and poor management decisions.
The way to fix this is through reform. It could be argued that the election of a private citizen with no government experience however significant experience in the private sector is evidence of actual voting in for change in the military leadership. Whether this translates to actual long term efficiency is yet to be seen.
Either way, voting for reformist candidates (for either way you support) in senate, house and local elections goes a long way.
What I was trying to highlight is that the rapport between the involvement in military research and the amount of revolt stemming from it is quite small, ergo the reaction is not quite a drop in the bucket but quite strong, looking at what prompted it.
In comparison, the largest petition in the US was 4.6 million signatures, a mere 1.8% of the working age population.
So more than 1 in 100 of Google's employees resigned because of the contract? That doesn't seem right, do you have a source for that. That would be huge news. Was it 1% of one particular department only?
> 5.6% of staff signed a petition and 1.6% resigned.
1.6% would be almost 12,000, not 12. I'm not familiar with this case but a quick search corroborated that it was a dozen employees that walked out.
~12 Google employees resigned. Out of ~4,000 signers to the petition. Out of ~74,000 total employees. A drop in the bucket. Clearly the vast majority of google employees don't care, rationalize away, or excuse the fact that they work for the military industrial complex.