memes

"I refuse to work in defense. I'd rather my work wasn't used to blow anyone up" is a line I've used in multiple job interviews. I like to think the hell I end up going to at least has chilly weather and/or really good AC.

If I worked for a defence contractor, I would make the most accurate weapons in the world. Why? Because when the people who fired those weapons are up in court and they go "Oh well I didn't MEAN to hit that hospital, the bomb just didn't hit its intended target", the prosecutor can go "Nonsense! Those are the most accurate weapons in the world. They ONLY hit what you intended to hit with as much force as you wanted to hit it with!".

The weapons are gonna get built, I'd rather there be no ambiguity in how they get used. It's not like WW2 where Bomber Command was like "Here's the dockyards we want to blow up, and a bajillion tonnes of bombs to blow it up with", and then the bombers flatten half a city just trying to hit the docks and miss every single time because it's cloudy, or hit an entirely different city because they got lost on the way!. You only have to look at Russia's "throw enough artillery shells at the area until it's completely flat" approach to war to know what happens when you haven't got precision munitions, or not enough of them.

I had a friend in a difficult position, deciding between high pay at Buy N Large or the opportunity to work on insanely cool shit for Death Inc.

Ultimately he chose Death Inc, and the reasoning was along the lines of "This might kill a hundred people, but at least it'll kill them specifically. I can't even conceptualize the harm Amazon et al. do on a global scale to entire populations without even trying".

Made me think. I didn't have a very good answer to that.

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department", says Wernher Von Braun.

This is one of the few reasons I dislike living in the area I do, defense contractors are basically the only ones nearby hiring for engineering roles. Luckily I work remotely, but if that ever changed and I couldn't find another remote position, I'd probably have to move. I'm not about to sell my soul.

there is a misunderstanding of the MIC, they profit of weapons, not death. they dont like war, it means instability, supplychains get stressed and stuff gets expansive, asswell as their stuff gets destroyed and may shows ineffective. they like the idea of war. they want country A and B have and armsrace and get the expansive fancy stuff but never fire at each other. nor every corpo is vault tec.

Would it be like a spectrum with weapons being a cardinal sin, and cotton swabs and morphine a thing you can only do on lent? Would weapon makers be in a lower circle, logistics in the middle, and those on the periphery of the military apparatus go to purgatory?

And which benevolent corporations IS acceptable to work for?

With the amount of classified information that goes into weapons manufacturing, where your just making doo-dad#1, it's understandable some people wouldn't even know their doing something wrong.

Makes me think of the, "when does life begin" debate. When do random parts become a weapon of mass destruction?

Why?

Of all the tools for oppression and murder, advanced weaponry is pretty low on the list for what actually makes the murdering happen. If you work for a company that does any kind of business with any repressive regime (ie most companies above a certain size), the simple fact that you're working for a cog in enabling the economy of the repressive regime to pay its cops, its soldiers, its secret police and informants and massive bureaucracy, is as much as a contribution as "I was .1% of designing a multirole jet that's 10% better than the previous multirole jet"

Hell, anyone making steel of the correct grade to go into small arms probably kills more innocent people, by that standard, than your average person working for Western defense contractors.

At MIT in the 1980's it was called, "Get your fingerprints on the murder weapon."