“Would you like the undercarriage coating for your new Abrams?”
I kid you not.
Wait, that's actually based as fuck. The 20th-century battleships were the pinnacle of human architecture, let him have this one.
like what are some examples of the kinds of people you mean -- what degrees are they getting, what causes are they applying their intellect to right now that are _not_ national security, etc.
The smartest people don't get that choice. Oppenheimer, Teller and Ulam were all ignored in matters of policy, the Manhattan Project was not designed to integrate their political feedback. Conversely, the scientists at Peenemünde never got to question the effectiveness of V-1 bombs with a CEP measured in miles. Their participation in policy was deliberately severed, ultimately to the detriment of the Wehrmacht.
When you start seeing technologies that affront humanity - warrantless surveillance, civilian terror weapons, chemical/biological agents - that's when normal people step out. No amount of sanewashing will fix the underlying administrative issue, it only exacerbates the underlying moral dilemma.
Which might be also good: von Neumann advocated for a U.S. nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union.
In the context of this thread my claim is simply that smarter people will yield smarter solutions that balance the tradeoffs mentioned earlier. The choice to use those weapons still lies with our elected leaders.
> smarter people will yield smarter solutions that balance the tradeoffs mentioned earlier.
That's conjecture, as far as I'm aware. Again, the earliest researchers of spacecraft were being forced to design a pitiful terrorist weapon. Those same scientists wouldn't meaningfully progress peaceful space exploration until decades later. There is no balance inherent to having good ideas or executing them well, the procurement process can (and frequently does) excise intelligent thought when tensions run high.
FWIW, I bear little ill-will towards the defense industry or US service members. I just think that "shaping the conversation" is a fool's errand when "the conversation" is warrantless surveillance, and "shaping" simply means finding the best way to do it. An intelligent humanitarian would be fired long before they instill an ounce of ethical change.
So Oppenheimer Teller and Ulam were not normal/sane people. In other words, they had the choice, and made a decision. Everything is political.
I think it's sometimes hard to debate these issues in tech circles. In my experience something like 5-10% of techies are vocally critical of these companies or anything National Security related. This article headline is a great example, a serious debate is difficult when you compare people who disagree with you to Nazis
I was discussing resume screening with a jr engineer and unprompted he mentioned he would filter out anyone who worked at a defense contractor, not knowing I had worked at one. I tried to make sure he was removed from interviewing as he obviously wasn't mature enough for it.
You know that the Nazi comparison isn't because of the disagreement, but because of what that disagreement is based on?
It's really not hard to compare ICE to the Gestapo or SA, core Nazi institutions. They're kidnapping people off the streets in brutal manners, targeting them based on immutable visual characteristics, sending them to camps from where many are never heard of again. Including people who are citizens and thus not even "guilty" of the crime which is supposedly being targeted.
Palantir as a company enables that. In the same way we legitimately call out Dehomag (IBM's German subsidiary) for them enabling all Nazi atrocities, we can call out Palantir for enabling the current atrocities.
It's not "disagreement", it's "if it quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it's a fucking Nazi duck".
But I also think we need to get more smart people interested and working in national security. That’s the way you get the best balance between effective security and the minimum negative side effects to civil liberties or collateral damage, by having the smartest people inside these companies coming up with the best tech while also shaping the conversation from the inside.
It’s easier to just dunk on the big bad company (and maybe they are bad!) but I don’t think that solves anything. National security should be something more people participate in, not less.