“Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department”, says Wernher Von Braun.
Don’t say that he’s hypocritical
Say rather that he’s apoliticalcontext for those who need it:
Making rockets wasn’t his department either.
The US wouldn’t let Von Braun go testify at Dachau. To this day there’s a lot of whitewashing. But he knew how those rockets were made.
The education system functions to indoctrinate, privilege, and filter.
If there’s one thing that I learned from grad school, it’s that talented people will be made dependent and subservient to death and doom for money… But more importantly because that’s the social system they’ve been funneled into. They don’t see any alternatives.
Yes, I spent the last 20 years developing a very particular kind of chemical agent that is tailor made to dissolve an eight-year-old’s testicles. But I assure you we only intend to use it in self-defense.
I have no idea how the Israelis got seventy of them.
I worked on a project for Rheinmetall for a bit and feel just fine about it. I would never work in advertising though. What a disgusting industry that destroys minds and societies.
I would still prefer defense industry over advertising or fossil fuels for example.
To be honest i think its one of these industries that should never be private. Why do we think it is a good idea to have people profit from war in such a direct way?
Because wherever there is a possibility to make massive amounts of money, those with power will push and push and push to be in control of it.
theoretically it allows for more competition, but in practice its much more complex
Seems like if a theory doesn’t allow for obvious-to-everyone complexity, then it’s a pretty useless theory.
I worked in the analysis tool division of a company that built civilian and military jets when I was fresh out of engineering school.
I didn’t feel too bad about it because I was making commercial aircraft quieter and more efficient with my work. Then, the Iraq war started up and they told me I had to work on the engine for the F22. I started looking for a new job that day.
Now I work in planetary defense and don’t feel guilty about it…
I’m pretty sure “planetary defense” just means more imperial offense.
Technology under capitalism is a force for exploitation, violence, control, etc.
@uuldika@lemmy.ml is right. I hunt and track asteroids. If I’m offending on behalf of an empire with this work, the empire is humanity and the offense is against chunks of rocks in space
I’m offended on behalf of myself. You are the reason I cannot reasonably assume humanity will die off in a meteor strike that allows nature time to heal.
But then it was a long shot anyway…
ALL ROCK LIVES MATTER!!!
AND MY STONE!
“planetary defense” usually means tracking and maybe deflecting asteroids that are likely to hit Earth.
Not all countries are the USA btw. Most countries use their defense budget to actually defend themselves from external very real threats.
Hahaha. Have you not noticed the empire struggling to maintain itself?
This is a sarcasm, you idiot fucks. Leave me alone.
USA is the external real threat.
Which is why they gotta sell all those patriot systems to smaller countries without established military industries.
Buy this gun unless you wanna find out what I do when you don’t.
Any superpower is a threat.
Most countries use their defense budget to actually defend themselves
Defend themselves from whom!
From whom!
Potential invaders like Russia or the US. Or in the future: China. But in Europe a nation just 1500 km away attacked it’s neighbor in 2022 and the war is still ongoing.
Or in the future: China.
It’s so crazy to see the Chinese steadily building out a dense web of business relationships and transit networks, from which their industrial and scientific power base commands enormous influence. And for westerners to look at this and conclude “They’re going to start bombing us at any moment! We need to fight back first!”
But in Europe a nation just 1500 km away attacked it’s neighbor in 2022
Europe’s been dropping bombs all over North Africa and the Middle East for the last three centuries. Hell, they’ve been bombing themselves straight through the Years of Lead and the post-Soviet civil strife. If Europeans have anyone to worry about, its each other.
How about you stop with the whataboutisms and stay on topic. As belligerent China has been to it’s neighbors and has illegal police posts in Europe to threaten dissidents, we need to be wary of the PRC.
Your second paragraph is just straight up whataboutism. European wars the past few hundred years doesn’t justify Russia invading Ukraine. Someone doing something bad isn’t a justification to continue bad behavior.
How about you stop with the whataboutism
How about you stop trying to defend genocide, eh? You’re standing on a hill of corpses and you think you’ve got the moral high ground?
Get fucked. Trump’s peeled the mask off your rotten empire. Nobody is falling for this shit anymore.
You were the one who brought up colonial endeavors when I only said we should be wary of superpowers like the US, Russia and China. And when I called you out for deflecting and going off topic, you accuse me of trying to defend genocide. Are you for real?
Pretty sure most countries use their defense budgets to steal the shit out of the population.
2% defense budget is nothing though.
2% of the GPD of a country is a lot when there’s secret budgets without any oversight.
“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.
Ah, you’re going to visit Hell, Michigan.
Sounds nice, where do i sign? :)
Got offered interviews at Raytheon and Lockheed once. Said no immediately. Can’t have a good conscience working for these companies.
Good job o7
Working for Social media companies or health insurance companies isn’t any better as far as destroying the world and mass murdering people by proxy
Yeah but profiting off of starvation, homelessness or sickness is slightly less concerned with destroying human life efficiently, more so extracting value from suffering. Far harder to wiggle your way out of a bomb dropping on you. In that way, defense contractors are especially gross imo. I guess you could argue being blown apart may be more humane though idk
I’ve seen people die in the extract profit from suffering system. If I had to choose I’d choose the quicker option. I mean at the end of the day we’re all stuck in an unethical system of oppression.
I haven’t seen Lemmy destroy anything.
Idk, just one glimpse of the fediverse chick was enough to shatter my world.
its not a company.
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.
those bombs will kill far more than just a hundred people, far more than he can ever conceptualize. the consequences of those deaths will shape the world more than the extra microsecond an engineer could shave off of an internal Amazon function
The argument the person was saying is that we already have big bombs that do catastrophic damage, the R&D is how do you make those bombs more targeted so they have less collateral damage.
Now whether that will actually lead to less deaths or will just cause the bombs to be used in places they otherwise wouldn’t be used with the same amount of collateral damage is unknown.
But it brings up a bit of a utilitarian dilemma of “is it ethical to work on weapons if it leads to an overall reduction of collateral damage to civilians”
It doesn’t have a necessarily correct answer
Have advancements in precision bombing technology ever led to an overall reduction in collateral damage to civilians? Is that even an argument defense contractors make, or are you just making it up?
Or has every study shown the exact opposite, that “precision” bombs actually cause more civilian deaths?
Yep, in world war 2 without precision bombing we fire bombed entire cities to the ground and one of them was so bad it caused a fire tornado that literally suck people into it! World war 2 had such a problem with imprecise bombing that they are still finding bombs today
yea but nestle
How is precision weaponry “insanely cool shit”???
Technically if you think about it, he’d be saving innocent lives, since non precise weapons have more collateral damage. Might as well make bombs accurate and hit the right targets.
The “right targets” tend to be innocent lives as well. Besides, who said anything about precise weaponry? These days, it’s all about AI, where precision is actually not the goal
If we’re murdering the planet, we might as well do it well! hur dur…
Shame that the right targets are often schools, hospitals, weddings, and apartment complexes
I mean it’s impressive from an engineering standpoint
Anduril has had many, many recruiters desperately trying to get me to work for them. On the surface, what they make does sound incredibly cool: embedded systems/operating systems for autonomous robotics.
The only problem is those robots happen to be death bots (and Palmer Luckey, who makes me want to stay far, far away).
That’s how the entire “education” process goes. They lure kids with promises of making cool video games or whatnot. Then they brainwash them, teach them helplessness, and exploit their entire life in order to profit from murdering people.
It means you can take out the bride’s party, or the groom’s party.
i mean… it sorta is. like take a look at this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUdHzKRiBX8 - thats impressive af
Military technology has got a near unlimited budget, that means you get tons of cool and technically impressive toys and things to work with
I enjoy watching the breakdowns of the most advanced weaponry and stuff like jet fighters (that we have access to information about), nuclear armaments, and other stuff like that, because they are very very impressive from an engineering perspective
But, of course, I really do strongly hate them for existing in terms of their actual purpose. It would be much cooler for similar engineering feats to be in use for civilian purposes. But I can’t deny that they are amazing from a purely technical perspective
Well, I can’t get into details, but the field is vast.
Also, “if I don’t make this thing that will kill a hundred people specifically, they’ll just use something that kills more people with less precision / more casualties.”
Ah good ole ego.
I worked gps until i determined The Customer was not interested in reducing civilian casualties.
They wanted the induced fear, priming the next generation ready for revenge, the garuntee of future business.
That’s an interesting take. One on one side the death is a haphazard byproduct and on the other it is at least motivated by someone. Somebody has to have a vision for why these weapons need to be used. I’d argue though that in the case of Amazon, wether or not it’s of any priority to them, the suffering would be something worth ironing out over time whereas, for weapons companies, it’s the entire product they sell
It should make you think about how your friend is in a brainwashed delusion.
Not quite, no. Not everyone works on the weapons.
I volunteer in my free time so that more Russian occupiers will be eliminated. I’m very proud of myself.
At MIT in the 1980’s it was called, “Get your fingerprints on the murder weapon.”
Jesus Christ, Finch.
I guess it would
Lockheed does more than just defense contracts
Yeah sometimes they crash spacecraft on Mars
Lockmart felt the pound-force from that burn a kilomile away.
I’ll have to insist in using BTUs for the measurement of burns
Compact fusion could literally save our civilization.
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.
Or, and hear me out, get a job and suck at it.
Found the Boeing recruiter!
Same for me, except IT.
Its pretty much either work at The Base or Geek Squad. One of these options pays enough to leave the area.
Am getting a niche going for elderly centric IT help.
All we have is elderly here 🤷 take that over jarheads
Id take the jarheads tbh. They can usually follow instructions and admit it if they don’t know what they’re doing. Civil Engineers were always a fun tech support call, too.
Sounds like good honest work but i don’t think id have the patience for it long term
Fair.
I’m not the smartest tech person. Don’t really have a passion for it, but for whatever reason listening to an elderly prattle has never been draining. If I can turn airplane mode off for those fuckers and write them instructions on how to send an email I’ll take that over actually working lol
Nothing wrong with that; Social engineering is what i would consider an essential skill for customer support, and it can take people far in the field of IT.
Does it pay enough to ever be free one day?
I’ll let you know when I find out.
(Guessing no)
I know which one it isn’t!
