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Comment by drpancake | Hacker News Reader

By visiting Silicon Valley am I supporting the US government's covert wars, extrajudicial drone strikes and interference in the affairs of other countries? Not in any meaningful way. This is an absurd argument.

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It's a hypocritical argument, not an absurd one. One could argue that it's also wrong to uncritically celebrate the technological achievements of Silicon Valley.

Well over a million people have been killed in U.S. wars of aggression (Vietnam, Iraq, etc.) and there are very direct ties between SV high tech funding and the Pentagon. Exhibit A: DARPA.[1] Even more direct than in China. A lot of what SV does is commercializing military technology developed at taxpayer expense. Autonomous vehicles and Siri are just a couple recent examples.[2][3]

[1] https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/darpa-history-and-timeline

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CALO

Vietnam was not a US war of aggression: the US came at the request of the French presence as the communist north tried to take the French allies in the south. The result was a mess, sadly, predictably.

Nonsense. As if one colonial power asking another to come slaughter the population would make it any less aggressive.

The French agreed to leave and support elections with the Geneva Accords. The U.S. propped up a dictator and organized a campaign of brutal suppression and terror, then outright bombed the hell out of peasants in the south starting in 1962 under JFK to block a political settlement. That's as aggressive as it gets.

Are we talking about the American-Vietnam war or the Sino-Vietnam war? If the latter, China wanted to give Vietnam a taste of Chinese freedom for something going on in Cambodia.

Granted it's hypocritical unless the original commenter applies the same principle to every country that he or she visits — which would be an absurd way to live.

Don't forget systematically imprisoning its black population.

1/3 of male African American are locked up in U.S. prisons. Think about that. One third.

> 1/3 of male African American are locked up in U.S. prisons

Huh, no. I agree it's much too high, but it's more like 2.3% according to the 2010 US census: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics_of_incarcerated_Afr...

(I think that includes women too, but still nowhere near 33%)

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