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Comment by daviross | Hacker News Reader

> Recent news cycles keep revealing yet another piece military equipment suffering from software weaknesses

It's difficult to say this isn't a net moral good, as things currently stand. Competent tools put to immoral ends aren't somehow more moral than incompetent tools. The only fix is to change the ends.

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That only holds true if you consider the military rivals of the United States to be greater forces for good in the world than the US.

I would consider that an indefensible position.

Sure, but it is defensible that a greater balance of power might be a net good for the world. (Also the devil is in defining net good). And it is also quite defensible to restrict hard power to ethical channels. There's a reason we don't use chemical weapons even though they would definitely give us an edge: The moral harm outweighs the tactical benefit. (Until it doesn't, as we saw in Syria.)

I don't want a balance of power. I want most moral actor (however flawed they may be) to have a technical and tactical advantage over those that would behave immorally.

The world didn't get together and unanimously decide to stop using chemical weapons. The few strongest forces in the world decided that no one was to use chemical weapons, and by that threat of force the world became a better place.

Exactly, I don't see how setting up another cold war for the sake of proportionality will be good for the world. In the cold war nations still engaged in brutal proxy wars, and everyone lived in fear of a massive hot war. Doesn't seem preferable or more stable.

Who watches the watcher?

Flawed? Is that it? Most moral according to US citizens is a pretty significant blind spot.

The stance held by Google engineers seems to be more subtle than that, although it is fairly clear: a weapon produced by an American company may go either to kill a civilian in a pointless war in a country nobody has ever heard of (high-probability), or to kill a Chinese soldier in a future war for the survival of our country (low-probability). The US government could address this by improving the mix ratio between pointless wars that benefit nobody and wars for the survival of our country, so that a weapon would be more likely to end up used for the latter than the former.

> The US government could address this

Yes, the US government could. Interestingly, the US military couldn't. Remember to vote, kids!

Militaries may be a necessary evil, but in no way a force for good.

I think self preservation is good. Am I wrong? Do we not have the right to fight for our existance?

I think you have it twisted around backwards. I believe goodness itself includes an obligation of strength.

> It's difficult to say this isn't a net moral good, as things currently stand.

I disagree but am open to being persuaded otherwise.

I don't consider national defense to be an immoral goal. I believe it's unrealistic for there to exist a world without weapons. That being the case, I believe it's important for us to constantly improve our military capability otherwise we will be left behind.

>I don't consider national defense to be an immoral goal

My personal opinion is that what the United States has been doing for over 20 years has not been national defense

I agree but I consider improving military capability to be orthogonal to decision making into what the military does. If we wait until the military does only that with which we agree, then it may already be too late.

You raise that in an interesting way. I'm all for national defense. But we aren't using them for national defense. I'm all for having a military strength such that we don't have to have wars with Russia and China, powerful, belligerent countries. Strength is a deterrence.

But the capabilities being built, like drone bombing are primarily used in our endless wars, and used by our 'allies' like Saudi Arabia in places like Yemen.

Have you read the book "Forever Peace" by the author of the more famous "Forever War", Joe Haldeman? F.P. is a world with an endless battle against people that could stand in for the endless wars against Islamic terrorists we fight today. In this world they have robots that can be remotely controlled and you can just walk up to people and kill them. It really reminds me of the way technology could make wars in the future.

> I believe it's important for us to constantly improve our military capability otherwise we will be left behind.

Looking at the amount you spend on the military, it would be ridiculous if you weren't 100x further ahead of any other nation already.

As an Australian, I'm personally happy with the US being ahead over the alternatives - but if I was a US citizen I would be seriously questioning how far ahead you need to be if it's really about "defense".

That's well and good until China is invading Taiwan and Russia is invading Ukraine and there is no deterrence from the west to make them think twice.

But we do have enough strength to have deterrence. Our military budget is equal to the next 8 biggest countries together. The three biggest air forces in the world are, in order, us air force, us navy (their airplanes etc), us army. Each is bigger than any other countries' air forces.

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