Microsoft Workers' Letter Demands Company Drop $479 Million HoloLens Military Contract (theverge.com) 275
A group of Microsoft workers have addressed top executives in a letter demanding the company drop a controversial contract with the U.S. army. The Verge reports: The workers object to the company taking a $479 million contract last year to supply tech for the military's Integrated Visual Augmentation System, or IVAS. Under the project, Microsoft, the maker of the HoloLens augmented reality headset, could eventually provide more than 100,000 headsets designed for combat and training in the military. The Army has described the project as a way to "increase lethality by enhancing the ability to detect, decide and engage before the enemy." "We are alarmed that Microsoft is working to provide weapons technology to the US Military, helping one country's government 'increase lethality' using tools we built," the workers write in the letter, addressed to CEO Satya Nadella and president Brad Smith. "We did not sign up to develop weapons, and we demand a say in how our work is used."
The letter, which organizers say included dozens of employee signatures at publication time, argues Microsoft has "crossed the line into weapons development" with the contract. "Intent to harm is not an acceptable use of our technology," it reads. The workers are demanding the company cancel the contract, stop developing any weapons technology, create a public policy committing to not build weapons technology, and appoint an external ethics review board to enforce the policy. While the letter notes the company has an AI ethics review process called Aether, the workers say it is "not robust enough to prevent weapons development, as the IVAS contract demonstrates." "As employees and shareholders we do not want to become war profiteers," the letter sent today concludes. "To that end, we believe that Microsoft must stop in its activities to empower the U.S. Army's ability to cause harm and violence."
The letter, which organizers say included dozens of employee signatures at publication time, argues Microsoft has "crossed the line into weapons development" with the contract. "Intent to harm is not an acceptable use of our technology," it reads. The workers are demanding the company cancel the contract, stop developing any weapons technology, create a public policy committing to not build weapons technology, and appoint an external ethics review board to enforce the policy. While the letter notes the company has an AI ethics review process called Aether, the workers say it is "not robust enough to prevent weapons development, as the IVAS contract demonstrates." "As employees and shareholders we do not want to become war profiteers," the letter sent today concludes. "To that end, we believe that Microsoft must stop in its activities to empower the U.S. Army's ability to cause harm and violence."
Dozens? (Score:3, Insightful)
Really? They employ how many thousands but only dozens signed it? They should fire every employee on that signed it.
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Well, there's not all that many Native Americans working at Microsoft, so it's probably mostly imports.
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Sure, but they've got at least 10-30,000 years seniority on the rest of us upstarts.
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What's it like in 2007? Ribbon is good, always has been
Don't know I am still using office 2003 and Libre Office on Linux
Lots of common MS software is used for war already (Score:5, Insightful)
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What do you mean becoming? Windows has been used in command & control and weapons applications for almost two decades.. I'd be happy if Microsoft stepped aside and let UNIX/linux become the primary platforms in DoD. At least something that made sense would be in use... well besides systemd.
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Look systemd is a psyop meant to drive other countries crazy
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Not that Microsoft has anything to do with it, but this is actually the case. I'm actually sitting in a warship as I write this on a port visit in New York. Most of the new combat management systems we've had installed use Linux rather than Windows. Older ones, like Link 11 management consoles, and a few civillian nav radar ARPA consoles are Windows based. But most new stuff that's coming out is Linux. It make
Re:Lots of common MS software is used for war alre (Score:5, Funny)
Why, there are dozens of signatures on that letter of protest. Management simply can't ignore that!
No, wait, they totally CAN ignore that, and will surely do so. Because dozens, out of ~135,000.
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Great point. Unless you have at least 100,000 followers on Twitter your opinion is basically worthless. Never mind that you are one of the key engineers on that project, they will effortlessly replace you if you quit. Remember that next time you think about asking for a raise.
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Well, they could always respond by thanking those employees for their input and wishing them well in their new employment search.
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It's reasonable to demand that Microsoft stop making products for the military, but you're right, that covers a lot of ground. It's also reasonable for Microsoft to replace those employees, because they're in business to make money, and if it's not Microsoft then it will just be someone else. If need be they'll make USABSD, or use Linux, etc etc.
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Well, if you read slashdot enough. You will realize there is a large left leaning anti-American group here who are very loud. And you replied to one asking why he hates America.
Re:Lots of common MS software is used for war alre (Score:4, Insightful)
Good point, anyone who ever changes their opinion on anything is a hypocrite and should be condemned. Never learn or evolve your ethics, figure them out when you are a kid and stick to them no matter what.
Oh, and whatever you do don't think anything is less than black and white. There is literally no difference between typing up orders in Word and using a Hololens in the field to direct drone strikes.
Good point about China and Russia too. The ICBMs and the hypersonic cruise missiles won't deter them, but Hololens is sure to make them think twice. And that's definitely what it will be used for.
Re: Lots of common MS software is used for war alr (Score:3)
There is literally no difference between typing up orders in Word and using a Hololens in the field to direct drone strikes.
There's a big difference: the guy writing up orders in word has the potential to do a lot more damage than the guy directing the drone strike.
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Good point, anyone who ever changes their opinion on anything is a hypocrite and should be condemned. Never learn or evolve your ethics, figure them out when you are a kid and stick to them no matter what.
Wait, aren't you from the same SJW movement that thinks that a person should be judged for the rest of their life for something they wrote in their high school yearbook?
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Where do you get this rubbish from?
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Do they even have armed personal in the data bases? Or is it just like file cabinets and such?
Commercial applications (Score:2)
Won't someone think of the Minecraft players?
Pathetic (Score:4, Insightful)
This kind of thing is getting a little ridiculous.
The pencils that sit on the desk at some military office somewhere are also involved with the end result. Should people object to making pencils that are bought by the military?
If these people have a problem with what the military does (and I'm not necessarily saying they shouldn't), perhaps they should get involved with politics instead. That's the right way to solve the problem, rather than hiding behind a letter and thinking that absolves them of something.
Re:Pathetic (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeh the US military hasnt got enuff weapons and hasnt helped arm and support enuff of the worlds dictators.
Perhaps instead of building more weapons the US should stop creating enemies of humanity like the Saudi gov and similar regimes who actively support fundamentalism and its cancer upon the societies they rule.
Face reality. (Score:1)
Weapons aren't optional. If we had none, then evil people would roll through our cities and murder us all!
Further, weapons deter violence. Nations don't launch assaults against nations they know will kick their ass.
Weapons are not inherently evil. That is entirely a matter of how they are used. If you want a say in that, get involved in politics.
Personally, I hope that the U.S. Military gets top-notch tech. I don't care whether or not it comes from Microsoft, I just want to make sure that we don't lose
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Weapons are not inherently evil. That is entirely a matter of how they are used. If you want a say in that, get involved in politics.
I think this is the key point. The military (in countries that are not military dictatorships) does not define policy. They follow orders that originate with the government. If you don't want to supply a country's military, then that means that you don't trust how the government of that country will employ its military. That's an entirely reasonable stance to take, but if you want to be consistent then you should also avoid supplying any branch of that country's government and any corporations that have
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If there's anything I've learned from basic training scenes in war movies, it's that you learn how to kill people with anything you have available, particularly a pencil. They should only allow the military to buy crayons.
Re:Pathetic (Score:4, Insightful)
Killing people is almost never a military objective. It is a consequence of enemy forces trying to prevent you from achieving you military objective.
No military in the history of the world has done as much to prevent collateral damage (i.e. the killing of innocent bystanders) as the U.S. military. That is just a fact.
Do innocent bystanders sometimes die? Yes, but it's not for want of trying to ensure they are not.
It's also true that war is a political decision. If you don't like the political decisions being made become more involved in politics. Conversely you don't always control when an adversary pushes you into war.
You can disagree about U.S. involvement in Iraq, but you shouldn't pretend Iraq wasn't killing U.S. citizens and supporting terrorism. (And no not being involved in 9/11 doesn't mean Iraq wasn't supporting terrorism. Certainly the Kurds are not unhappy that the U.S. became involved in Iraq.)
I want U.S. soldiers to have the very best equipment available. Because they are real people who I don't want to die because someone who lives under the protective umbrella they provide is living in a fantasy which maintains that disarming the U.S. will make things safer.
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It is not a matter of "pretend". Iraq factually was NOT supporting terrorism or killing US citizens until after the US military entered Iraq and started killing people who tried to interfere with their military objective of destroying the entire country. Once the US was there, it immediately became a magnet for radicals in neighboring areas who were eager to fight against the US, but this was not the case until after the invasion.
Let us not forget the drone strikes that the Obama administration made VERY he
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No military in the history of the world has done as much to prevent collateral damage (i.e. the killing of innocent bystanders) as the U.S. military. That is just a fact.
No it's not a fact. The best way to not kill innocent bystanders is to not get involved in the first place, something the US hasn't historically been very good at.
Now you can argue the toss about whether they should have got involved, but if you do innocents will die.
Even if you ignore that, I also don't beleive you have anything to back u
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You must have completely confused Kurds with Shia, because the USA did a hell of a lot to protect the Kurds from Hussein: a no-fly zone that allowed them to become a de-facto independent nation after the first gulf war (and immediately start slaughtering each other in a civil war, but that w
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The US deployed military force against Japan after Pearl Harbor. Before then, the US was using diplomatic and economic pressure to try to get the Japanese out of China. The Pacific War would have been far different without the US; for one thing, there would have been no way to defeat the Japanese Navy.
The US was de facto at war against Germany several months before the Pearl Harbor attack, taking an active part in the Battle of the Atlantic (and not doing particularly well). The US didn't really chang
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Testing nuclear weapons on civilians doesn't sound like trying to avoid collateral damage. Pretty sure that ruined the US scorecard, not that anyone is really keeping track.
Re: Pathetic (Score:3)
The testing was done well before the bombs were used in combat, so that's just a mind-bogglingly stupid statement. And given that civilian deaths due to the two bombs which ended the war are basically a rounding error compared to the civilian deaths caused by conventional bombardment, only an idiot would see them as somehow "ruining the reputation" of the US military.
Atomic Bombs==Bullying (Score:2)
The war was pretty much won by the time the bombs were dropped. The US had an agreement with the USSR that 1 month after Germany surenders USSR will declare war on Japan. As soon that happened and the Japanese were fighting a 2 front war they would have surrendered but that would have menat sharing Japan with USSR so Truman dropped the bomb one day before USSR declared war. The Japanese still did not surrender but in the meantime in just 3 days the Soviet armies rolled over Manchuria. So Truman dropped the
Re: Atomic Bombs==Bullying (Score:2)
So Truman dropped the second bomb adn the Japanese surrendered but one could argue the surrender was because of the pasting the Japanese Army was getting from the Soviets in Manchuria rather than the bomb.
One could argue all kinds of shit. The reason that the Russians were able to roll through Manchuria mostly unopposed is because the vast majority of the Japanese military was tied up fighting the Americans, with only a token force left on the mainland. The Japanese could have withdrawn from Manchuria entirely and focused on the defense of the home islands; it was pretty clear by that point that they were going to lose Manchuria whether or not they surrendered. The ability of Americans to wipe out entire
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What I am arguing is that dropping th bombs was not necessary to end WW2 so the excuse that thy saved lives is false. The bombs were dropped as a demonstration to the USSR. At the end of WW2 USSR had a fully mobilized and larger army. If they had decided to keep going they could easily have taken most of IndoChina, middle East, heck even Western Europe. The Allied forces in France were a fraction of the Soviet forces in Germany. The bomb was a shot over the bow of the Soviets to keep to the agreed Yalta con
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The war was pretty much won by the time the bombs were dropped. *snip*
Well, the war was won, and Japan was a dead man walking, but they surrendered because of the bombs. Their previous "surrender offers" had been pretty much an offer to return to 1937 borders and pretend WW2 never happened. Japan surrendered, and only then after a coup attempt by parts of the military, because the Emperor decided to surrender. The Emperor has stated that his reason to surrender was because of the bombs. Ironically, this may have been because of Japan's use of torture. They had a captured Amer
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You seem awfully sure of a Japanese surrender under certain circumstances.
The big sticking point was War Minister Anami. Japan couldn't surrender without his agreement, or at least his acceptance. He was a hawk, to say the least, and not interested in surrendering. The Japanese grand strategy for the war was to expand and then make it too expensive for the US to keep attacking, and that strategy was still viable. The nukes caused the Emperor to ask for peace, and Anami went along, sort of. The rest
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No military in the history of the world has done as much to prevent collateral damage (i.e. the killing of innocent bystanders) as the U.S. military. That is just a fact.
Historically, that's obviously untrue. In modern times, it is, at best, disputed. Many militaries have done far worse, of course. But starting in the 90s and continuing through the second Iraq war, the U.S. (not to mention its allies) has by many accounts expended less effort at protecting civilians than they had in former wars, not out of malice, but likely in an effort to instead minimize American soldier deaths at any cost and maintain public support for the war in the U.S. And of course, the safest sold
Re: Pathetic (Score:5, Informative)
The HoloLens military contract is specifically about (among other things) "increased lethality". Nothing about the contract is about improving achieving objectives without killing
Wrong; the objective is increased capability and accuracy which results in:
1. Fewer unintentended deaths.
2. Higher survivability of personnel equipped with that equipment.
The end result is a reduction in killing, not an increase.
Re: Pathetic (Score:2)
You're literally arguing that the literal words in the contract don't mean what they literally mean. What the fuck? I mean, the contract didn't say "increased accuracy to better control lethality". It said literally "increased lethality". You think the contract misspoke?
Nah, I'm just not a selectively-quoting jackass, whereas you apparently are. What the text actually said is:
"increase lethality by enhancing the ability to detect, decide and engage before the enemy"
Better detection and improved decision making = fewer unintended casualties, and lower losses on our end. Ergo less killing.
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They were not "innocent bystanders" although some innocents were killed. Japan was highly militarized, and every civilian adult was expected to fight if Japan was invaded. Japan had been butchering civilians throughout it's "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" - the conquered countries. They used biological warfare on Chinese, and in experiments on prisoners of war. They tortured and murdered prisoners of war. Japan was a racist society that accorded no humanity to anyone not Japanese.
The allies were pl
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Why do you want out soldiers to die? They are there protecting you.
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The ironic thing here is that the technology is wanted to help reduce casualties (if you can execute an attack faster and with more surprise and accuracy, you suffer fewer losses and can also likely end the conflict faster, reducing the number of enemy deaths as well as civilian), to make any potential battle less devastating. The project that was protested at Google was the same way. These engineers that think they're so smart are just seeing "military" and not looking at the big picture and actual end g
you knew what you were getting into (Score:2)
Microsoft employees know what they signed up for. A boring corporation that sells its product to whomever will pay. And mediocre applications that
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Microsoft employees didn't know they were signing up for a "defense" contractor. If they'd been informed of that, they may not have taken the job. They've every right to object or quit now that they've found out.
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The employees should take solace in the fact that this is not a legitimate R&D program. It is pure government pork. On the surface, it appears that the DoD is paying Microsoft for something the desperately want. In reality, Microsoft's lobbyists, are funding campaigns to have politicians direct the DoD to give them an award.
Anyone with experience in this industry knows it. Past military R&D contracts for AR technology were most likely always less than $10M, unless we are maybe talking about AR helme
Good on them! (Score:1, Insightful)
Most highly intelligent people will be anti war.
And now we get to read all the comments from the sociopaths who can't comprehend how anyone could be anti war.
Re:Good on them! (Score:5, Insightful)
Most highly intelligent people will be anti war.
I believe that most highly intelligent people understand that conflict is an inescapable human trait, and no amount of feel-good rhetoric is going to change the fact that there are people in power out there who simply don't give a damn about human life if it stands in the way of their goals, or if taking it will further those goals. If you've got a means of dealing with such people that doesn't involve force, you've got a Nobel Peace Prize waiting for you. "We can use sanctions!" Sure, but how do you go about enforcing those? I mean, it's worked so well for North Korea, right?
It's admirable to be against war and killing, and it'd be great not to need that, but as long as there are those that will kill with impunity, there will be a need to play on their level.
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One can obviously be against the planet's biggest unnecessary war production machine without being against all possible wars. I'm all for wars of defense, and even wars to defend friendly NATO countries which have been invaded. Decades of isolation and a firm anti-war commitment even after close allies were invaded did not lead to the USA being conquered when the Japanese attacked in 1941... or even losing an inch of valuable land for a day. Even if the USA completely disarmed (which it shouldn't), invading
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Majority of UK's "highly intelligent people" were very much "appease Hitler", ridiculing those who stood on position of making the country stronger to deter Germany. It's always the same cadre placing themselves above commoners, believing they know how the aggressive tyrants feel, confident they can always negotiate their safety.
Nope. You have to have a biggest stick to scare evil people away before they even think to act.
Re:Good on them! (Score:5, Insightful)
He also wasn't happy about it in the slightest (Score:2)
Also, the bomb is pretty much the last word in military. Between that and our two oceans we don't need to keep building up like we do.
And even animals know what ends a fight (Score:2)
> Most highly intelligent people will be anti war.
Yes, normal people don't want to be fighting.
And virtually all mammals know what ends a fight. You seem to be missing that particular insight.
Hint - singing a song does not stop an attack.
Re:And even animals know what ends a fight (Score:4)
Re: And even animals know what ends a fight (Score:2)
Kind of a dumb quote; for the incompetent, violence is usually the first or only refuge, not the last. Regardless .. what do you do when an incompetent resorts to his "last refuge" against you?
Re: And even animals know what ends a fight (Score:5, Insightful)
"Anyone who clings to the historically untrue -- and thoroughly immoral -- doctrine that 'violence never settles anything' I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms." - Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
Isaac Asimov was a great writer. His Foundation series remains, and will remain, one of the great classics of SciFi. But on this manner he is completely wrong. Violence is not the last refuge of the incompetent. Violence is the first choice of the incompetent. It is usually the only choice or the last choice of the desperate.
Re: And even animals know what ends a fight (Score:2)
Yeah, that's what I was getting at, but I really like the way you've phrased it.
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Virtually everyone is "anti-war". That doesn't mean you have to be a pacifist, in fact, the more lethal and effective your weapons, the easier it is to avoid it. As evidenced by the fact that almost no one here has ever had to fight in a war, get drafted, or killed, and why there have been no major world conflicts since 1945.
The US military exists to *prevent you from getting killed*, "provide you with the freedom to succeed in life*, and is generally responsible for your extremely safe, weal
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Re:Good on them! (Score:5, Insightful)
The goal of everyone not wanting to be screwed over this way then, is to make it more expensive for someone to take your resources away by force, than it would be for them to grow/collect/build the resources themselves. This means maintaining a military which can inflict sufficient damage upon an attacker so that even if they win, the stuff they manage to pillage from you is worth less than the damage they'll sustain from your counterattack. Nobody actually plans to use those military weapons - the threat alone is enough to cause the desired behavior.
Fail to maintain that level of military capability, and you relegate yourself to repeatedly and endlessly being screwed over by others. Your only protection then becomes the pity of others who happen to have sufficient military power to intimidate or force your attacker into stopping.
The pacifist notion that the military is full of bullies and guys with a macho complex who want to beat up and kill others, is rather disconnected from reality. The vast majority of people serving in the military believe their country has a good thing going, and wish to help defend and maintain it. If you don't believe in protecting what we have, then that is your right. But realize that you can enjoy your livelihood and pacifist lifestyle solely because of those willing to fight in your stead. Pacifism is not self-perpetuating; it can only perpetuate when someone else is willing to fight to defend it.
Of course having a military available means it can be mis-used. And a society needs to implement measures to prevent the military from being mis-used that way. But advocating the complete elimination of the military is socio-economic suicide. Nations without a military or a friendly ally with a military tend not to last too long. They get invaded and taken over, and their pacifist government is replaced by their conqueror.
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Profit (Score:3)
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Profit. It's the only reason that for-profit companies exist. They make money, or they die. If a company passes up an opportunity to make money, another company will step in.
Several have tried, including some pretty well capitalised ones. No one has made one remotely as good as the Hololens.
That's capitalism, baby!
Except it's not. There's an undersupply of labour. The kind of person who can build a hololens vision system will have a PhD in a rather niche area of computer vision then probably 10 years post P
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And only temporarily. >99% of the time the drive for profit eventually overrides everything. Given a few more years, another company could fill the need. Computer v
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Computer vision is advanced, but not all that advanced anymore. It's gone beyond the stage of "a few nobel-level people understand it".
Not really: the majority of the computer vision field and research money has moved on into deep learning. While in principle more people could understand it now, the time when there were a number of different university vision labs world wide churning out people who could do this has passed.
It's pretty complex, to the point where it needs a good number of years of training a
We live in great and easy peasy times. (Score:5, Informative)
No you don't, you only switched sides (Score:1)
Back then, 70 years ago, the US was defending against attacks, even defending other countries.
Nowadays it is always the US which starts the attacks, committing war crimes and massacres. No more "defense".
So as the ones you defended against back then, you are the same murderous criminal thugs now.
Even that one time 70 years ago was a fluke, a one time thing basically. The US is built on genocides of indians, continued with war and
We have nukes and two oceans (Score:2, Insightful)
At this point the only thing keeping wars going is the Military Industrial Complex. Folks standing up to stop feeding that beast is a good thing.
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The workers' request is perfectly reasonable though; particularly if working for a defense contractor is not what you signed up for in the first place. And it doesn't even need to be an anti-combat, or any other ethical, stance. Have you every worked for a defense, or other government, contractor? I did, in my first job out of college. And that's a mistake I plan to never, EVER, make again. And it's nothing at all to do with ethics; though with the current occupant of the White House, that is a certain
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The European Theater, yeah. The Pacific Theater, not so much.
Heck, they didn't even have to avoid WWI to avoid WWII in Europe. If they could have just avoided bungling the peace process at the end of WWI, that would've done it.
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You know, this board could use a new metric, TTT, "Time To Trump." It could replace Godwin's Law.
Dividing line (Score:3)
I do see how this contract is different, but Microsoft's self-serving business practises have held back the progress of human civilization by two decades. I don't feel anything connected with Microsoft - certainly not their employees - have any credibility on matters relating to ethics.
... 800 military bases in more than 70 countries.. (Score:3)
Quote: "... the United States still maintains nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad..."
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And zero world wars since those bases opened.
Regarding Pacifism (Score:1)
Pacifism is a luxury afforded to those whose enemies live far from them
Must be nice to live in a bubble... (Score:5, Insightful)
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There is a difference between, say, using chemical weapons and using conventional weapons. Someone willing to work on a conventional bomb design may be unwilling to work on one designed to deliver a chemical warhead.
Given what we have seen of how drones are being used and abused, I can see why they are reluctant to develop this technology for the military.
Let them go (Score:3)
They didn't sign up to work on gov't projects for the military? Fine, leave - they'll find someone else to do your job. This is a half-billion dollar project, with private market implications and potential, these dozen engineers are replaceable. They replaced Ray Ozzie, they can replace a dozen random engineers fairly quickly.
"Don't let the door hit 'ya where the good lord split 'ya!"
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r/lord/$diety
Remember who were dealing with here.
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demanding the company drop a controversial contract
Sounds like you made your preference known to management -- "hey, stop that". I'm sure they will take that into consideration, somewhat.
Since it seems they've pretty much decided already, you'll mostly have to execute (ha!) the implicit ELSE clause in your note. Or grumble beneath your breath and continue on.
If a company is doing something so horrendous to you, you should quit helping them -- seriously. I doubt they'd have me -- I'm old and out of touch (MS-DOS 1.1 supports CP/M calls), but I'd
Do you hate people? (Score:2, Insightful)
One thing the military is involved in a lot of places around the world is humanitarian relief, since they can bring in basically a small city with modern medical supplies, doctors, food and water purification plants on demand to any coast.
So don't forget you are demanding not to help THAT either. Seems fairly short-sighted and ill considered to me.
Virtual training can reduce civilian casualties an (Score:3)
Better Weaponry Makes for Less War (Score:3)
The better weapons you have (bigger, more accurate stick), the less you tend to have to use it. Also the less collateral damage. You can be sheep, or you can be the sheepdog.
US mil then has the freedom to find other brands (Score:2)
But know the US mil still needs the same products and services.
0. Do it within the mil. That might not happen due to politics and having to always buy in services/products.
1. Create a CIA front company and let it be free to "compete" in the open marketplace.
Wy the CIA, so any sudden international interest can be detected globally.
2. Give that created new company mil work.
3. Let it grow and become a normal company.
4. Fi
Russian meddling (Score:3)
You want to find Russian meddling? Here's where you look - the KGB was skilled at exploiting "useful idiots" in the West throughout the cold war.
This has all the hallmarks of the strident, well-intentioned but stupid protests against the Pershing 2 in the 1980s.
Ob. clippy (Score:2)
It looks like you're trying to fight a war.
Do you want to
- win hearts and minds
- drone strike
- lock and load!
- nuke 'em 'till they glow
Comment (Score:2)
No, they don't want people to get use to the idea of, "--out of ammo-- [shoot outside the LOS to reload!]"
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It could happen, but it's not a good idea. It just gets Microsoft into a pissing match with righteous SJWs. They really should not be fired, just ignored. Employees don't set policy. If they are bothered by this, they can quit. Microsoft management should know that anything they say will be used against them, so just don't say anything beyond "Thank you for your input."
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I do believe their profits would spike if they went to war with them. May not last forever but they would have a good year. And it may even convince the rest of the companies to stand up to the few loudmouth scum.
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I'm kind of surprised these demands do not result in the immediate termination of employment. Or is WA not a state where that can happen?.
MS has a generous employee stock purchase program so likely these employees are (minor) shareholders and perfectly within their rights to "demand" this kind of thing. Executive leadership is equally free to completely ignore them unless they can get a sizeable block of shareholders on their side.
Re: Fire them (Score:1, Informative)
Then they should send the letter as shareholders. In fact, something called a shareholder proposal exists and any shareholder can submit one. If enough other shareholders agree, then the company has to follow.
Submitting as an employee is stupid.
Re: (Score:2)
[citation needed]
Re: (Score:2)
Now this is a letter I can fully support.
Re: (Score:3)
If it wasn't for the military's need to communicate securely. Slashdot would not exist! You would not have been able to voice your adolescent opinion.
Re: (Score:3)
Very fine comment. And Thank you for you service! The Men and Women like you are why we are a free nation today. And also why these people can express their feelings about this project. I would like to see them try this in Russia, China, Iran, well. I'm sure you get the point. Hopefully they do eventually.