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A comment on Microsoft Workers Demand It Drop $450M U.S. Army Contract. Parent comment

Re:Microsoft Workers Demand It Drop $450M U.S. Army Contract by Barrin92 on Saturday February 23, 2019 @12:02AM (#19231741)
Yes, but Lockheed has the label on the door. You know that you're going to be building defense technology that is used in (foreign!) wars. Building technology that can just as well used at home at a company that faces consumers and puts funny colored letters on the door is very different.

When Amazon develops facial recognition technology that can just as easily be thrown at migrants at the border the line isn't as easy as talking about building aircraft to fight fascism in Europe.

In liberal democracies there's a line between civilian technology and military technology, and you generally know what you sign up for. This is also precisely what the engineers here talk about, they did not join Microsoft to build weapons.

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Re:Microsoft Workers Demand It Drop $450M U.S. Army Contract by solidsnack9000 on Sunday February 24, 2019 @03:22AM (#19237697)
In liberal democracies there's a line between civilian technology and military technology...

This isn't true. Consider Boeing, Colt, Texas Instruments, CamelBak, AM General. Even companies, like Colt, that are dedicated to making arms also sell products into the civilian market. That is in part because in a liberal democracy the government can not restrict a company to doing business solely with them: companies are allowed to recycle their know-how in the civilian market.

Working with private enterprise and repurposing civilian capabilities is how liberal democracies do defence. Should it be otherwise? It would seem to imply even greater scope for secrecy and mismanagement, and even less civilian control and input, if defence agencies didn't work with private enterprises for most of their needs.

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