You can use a knife to spread butter on your toast, you can use a pistol to compete at target competition, you can use a shotgun to hunt ducks, you can use an automatic weapon to, ummm, get your jollies at a shooting range or whatever (that's not my preferred source of entertainment, but if someone else enjoys doing that safely and it's not hurting other people, why shouldn't they?). You can use boots to walk in a park, or to walk into battle.

There's a continuum from boots thru iron bars thru to assault rifles. (And, I guess, thru to Predator drones and nuclear weapons.)

I'm questioning just where the hololens fits on that continuum.

I guess selling them to the army makes them "for killing", but is it really "for killing" like an automatic weapon (which many people would choose not to be employed making, and would rightly be upset if their boss sprung that on them)? Or is it more like selling iron bars to the army (which even if they don't directly beat whoever we've always been at war with this week to death, are still obviously going to be used in some small or large part to "increase their lethality" (or at least enable it, I suppose)).

Would it make sense for an iron factory worker to get upset his boss lands a deal with the army and sells them iron bars? The feels kinda precious to me. Sure an end-of-the-bell-curve pacifist could object, but I think most people would say that's about the pacifist rather than the iron factory boss. Would that be different if the iron factory boss was already selling sheet iron and iron filings to the army? I kinda feel it would.

Does it make sense to people who work for the company who makes hololens to protest their boss selling them to the army, when that company is already selling other products (Windows, Word, Excel, pretty much every enterprise MS product) to almost every western military in on the planet? Again, at least to me, it feels kinda precious. It seems like end-of-the-bell-curve pacifism, from people who's living has previously been made working from a company who's _other_ products earn profit from the military, but "my project" is a pure as the driven snow and now all of a sudden I've got blood on my hands...

If I made boots, and the military asked to buy for their soldiers, I would say no. I understand the basic need for a military, and I understand their need for boots. I accept that someone else will supply them with boots instead. But supplying military is not what I want to spend my time and energy on.

Assuming it's not a boondoggle, hololens presumably increases the soldiers efficiency and reduces both friendly and civilian casualties.

Like any tool it'll increase efficienty in achieving the goal - indifferent of whether it's friendly or malicious.