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defwepthrowaway | 7 months ago
I worked in the defense industry, specifically on weapons meant for export. At the time, I was considered a subject matter expert. Something that eventually got me selected to travel to a foreign nation that had purchased an update to that weapon we sold them.
This country had an active internal conflict at the time, and the soldiers I was training had used the previous iteration of that weapons system. Prior to flying out my peers had forewarned me about was that these young men loved to try to horrify us soft westerners. I was no exception of course. For me, when we were relaxing over dinner, one of the soldiers felt it was my turn. Showed me photographs of a family of corpses corpses. 5 adults. 4 children, the youngest I guess being an infant and the oldest I think was probably no older then 8 or 9 years old. A multi generational household, all civilian, all unarmed. And here he was telling me in unabashed gruesome detail about how had murdered them during a patrol, and speaking as if he had brought justice to an ancient crime. Using that older iteration of weapons I had helped create.
But I had my marching orders. No actions or words that could potentially lead to an incident. Whatever I felt got buried by black humor and a few tips on how they could do it more efficiently in the future. Later on I heard my callousness had earned modicum of respect.
Knowing what I just told you know, would you feel comfortable in your planned economy if you were ordered to join my team and work on improving that same weapon to the best of your ability? Would you say that it is the right way to use the technology we are building? Knowing who it was going to go to?
queenkjuul|7 months ago
It doesn't seem to matter whether an individual works for the weapons manufacturers, they're going to build them with my tax dollars and sell them to monsters whether i like it or not