[mcpar-land]

Don't Get Distracted

https://calebhearth.com/dont-get-distracted

[halJordan]

This is a good article. I disagree with its implications. I would agree that the average us citizen is much too far removed from the defense industrial complex and that creates these situations where a Google engineer (not necessarily this guy) is perfectly willing to help destroy American society with his advertising tech but balks at automating image tagging for the dod's big data lake because would rather have another 9/11 than be responsible for a false positive in the ME.

[wat10000]

How is cell phone tracking going to prevent another 9/11? And looking at the historical track record, the DoD has done a lot of killing and very little 9/11 prevention in the past 24 years.

[throwaway-11-1]

hey man what country were the 9/11 hijackers from? What counties did we invade and which did we give f-35’s to?

[endtime]

This is designed to save people.

[bastawhiz]

Sure, until someone says "hey can we stick this on a truck and use it against cars?" "Hey can we stick this on the belly of a plane and use it on a building?" "Hey what happens if we do a flash of this at protestors?"

[jmyeet]

There is no such thing as a defensive weapon.

You might be tempted to say "what about a missile shield?" but such a thing allows the owner to act with impunity with levels of violence we arguably haven't seen since 1945.

As a real example of this, the only reason a deeper conflict didn't develop with Iran this year was because Iran demonstrated they could overwhelm the various layers of Israel's missile shield and Iran seriously depleted the various munitions used by those air defense systems (eg interceptors, THAAD) and those take a long time to replenish.

[cogman10]

Could definitely be used in an offensive capacity. I don't think it'll be a red alert 2 style prism cannon, but I do think it can be used to gain air superiority. With a long enough runtime, this thing could definitely take out a plane.

That said, it's pretty tame. We can already take out planes with flak cannons. This is just more efficient.

[wslh]

I think the historical relationship between war and human societies is deeper than many like to admit. We often act as if advancing technology, and some societies well-being, have fundamentally changed human behavior, but in reality conflict and the use of force have been central to how groups have interacted for millennia. The peace utopia doesn't click.

This isn’t an endorsement of corruption or violence; it’s just a recognition that human social organization has long involved the use of force alongside diplomacy, negotiations, trade, and other political instruments. The modern/post-modern/meta-modern isms may change how we fight, but it doesn’t by itself make the underlying dynamics disappear.

[unfitted2545]

The blood meridian quote that stuck with me for this:

"War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner."

[breppp]

it's almost as if it is unrelated to the article discussed