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Comment by tehjoker | Hacker News Reader

Ah defense. It's just common sense that we should pour money into the military. We're just out to make money, there's definitely not an entire political viewpoint entangled in this "market opportunity". Those crazy radicals that are against killing pointlessly for imperial gains don't understand the real world. In the real world, we need the military to make the world safe for capital. WW1 was a smashing success, as were Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and all extremely clearly benefited the working class and made zero money for industrialists. If anything, these wars were entirely unselfish in nature. Wouldn't Saddam still have WND if not for the pride and strength of our armed services and the weapons manufacturers, energy industry, and other geopolitical factors?

Fwiw, they're probably right. Maybe we will see more startups enter into this ripe "opportunity" to open the gates of hell and unleash the forces of greed and meyham.

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Use of force is a separate problem from the development of weapons. I don't really have a problem with startups doing weapons development - someone is going to do it, and I have a hard time seeing how the world would be better if China or Russia took the lead on this.

> someone is going to do it

You could use that excuse for almost anything morally repugnant.

Sure, but when it comes to power, you can't wish away its existence.

Someone will have it.

So how do you best mitigate the bad effects it can have? Do you let an entity which does not align with your interests have it? Or do you maintain it and work to iteratively improve your exercise of it?

The effect of wishing away power instead of grappling with it and bending it to justice is one of the central reason why many revolutions and movements have failed.

Non US Citizen here (haven't even visited yet), and pretty anti-military. But out of available options, I would definitely prefer the USA have the military upper hand.

I suppose that means, I could do my part to keep it that way, by investing in US defense contractors. (Have been looking for investment opportunities.) Something to think about.

Agree. But I think global power dynamics have changed and with that military spending/militaristic posture will go down the way it did with the end of the British Empire or colonial powers of Europe.

If there is another triggering event like 9/11 (which kept the defense industry alive), it will be a real surprise to see the US muster a response the way they did in the past.

You misunderstand - it's not an excuse. I simply expect that in the next 50 years, autonomous weapons will be developed, by someone - the only question is who. The potential value it too great for it not to happen.

Consider, for example, nuclear weapons. I think it's generally agreed these days that nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki was unnecessary at best, a war crime at worst - but I don't really see that a better world would have resulted from the USSR or Germany being the first to obtain nukes.

I would point out that if the US is already spending more money on arms than the next several countries combined, I don't think this is the relevant issue. If another power was strong enough to threaten our defenses, that would be one thing but clearly there is something much bigger going on (I would say it is the US empire, at least according to a senior official in the Bush administration: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community). I hesitate to make this argument because I think they should be abolished, but if we have nukes, why do we need new "defensive" weapons? The only reason is to be able to control events in other parts of the world to the benefit of the people that start the wars.

This perspective would imply that we should not be encouraging our citizens to devote their energies to devising ways to kill (i.e. form startups around "defense").

>but if we have nukes, why do we need new "defensive" weapons?

Nukes are neither purely offensive nor defensive weapon (except low-scale tactical ones). They solve the task of strategic deterrence [1]. There are many other tasks that nukes can't and don't solve.

It seems like your knowledge of the subject is somewhat shallow and hence the scorn. I highly recommend learning a bit more about defense -- its goals, problems, and ways to solve them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction

Because a world in which many parties have strategic nuclear defense AND sufficient non-nuclear forces is more stable and less conflict prone than a world in which major powers possess only nuclear weapons.

Such was the worry about Cold War Germany: had Russia attacked with conventional forces, the US would have been all but required to escalate quickly to nuclear weapons.

Similarly in Korea. If the Inchon landings hadn't been successful, it's a coin flip as to whether the US would have nuked North Korea, Russia, and/or China. Truman, LeMay, and MacArthur were all prepared to go to the mat for South Korea and Taiwan.

https://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/how-korean-war...

>the forces of greed

Of course. Greed drives only those fishy defense corporations. Any other for-profit organization is driven purely by desire to change the world for the better. Like Facebook, you know...

You can do defense right, you can do it wrong. But you can't do it at all. Like it or not.

I think you meant to say "but you can't not do it at all".

You're correct, that's what I meant. Can't edit it now, though.

Nothing in history had prevented more bloodshed than restricted use of force [citation needed?]. In contrast, entities that refuse to use methods of violence (UN, I'm looking at you), consistently fail in peacemaking.

There has been a pretty marked decline in violence and war since the UN was formed in 1945 https://medium.com/future-crunch/the-decline-of-war-8760f9a5...

Not all its fault perhaps but the general approach seems to be doing ok

how would the UN use violence? it's not what the UN is for? the UN is basically a meeting room for world leaders to do diplomacy, otherwise we would end up with far more not needed conflict thanks to the severing of diplomatic relations. (just look at how world war 1 originally started for example).

The UN has peacekeeping forces deployed around the world, using soldiers taken from members' militaries. Mostly in Eastern Europe & Africa.

your criticism is warranted, but remember that defense also contributed positively to the US economy through the 20th century until 1970 or so (stanford rose to prominence because of defense, for example). just as with the wider economy, greed then took over and wars became tools to fuel personal wealth, not the greater good.

the military works fine as a jobs and training program (for defensive readiness), but we don't need more, and more expensive, weapons. we can already destroy the world a thousand times over.

That's a pretty narrow view you've got there. Hell, there are plenty of non-profit defense companies too.

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