Comment by sharikone | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sharikone | Hacker News Reader

For politicians in democracies citizens are potential voters, foreigners don't matter.

It's still arguably better than dictatorships, where your citizens don't matter either, as long as you have a good police system.

We act surprised when we notice such things but we shouldn't be, it is a mistake to apply the same standards that we, as the lucky citizens of "free countries" enjoy, to any other system of power.

From a less cynical point of view, as an Israeli, I am not happy at all to see this kind of export products from my country. It is in great part because of the conflict. Te SIGINT units are huge and among the people who graduate from the army with this kind of knowledge you will certainly find many who will turn a blind eye to ethics for a huge paycheck. Not to mention that the research itself that the defense apparatus needs attracts capitals from other countries that will buy some of it and use it for unorthodox means. I wish we exported less of these things, especially to autocratic countries. I agree it's horrible.

> in democracies citizens are potential voters, foreigners don't matter

Not long ago, what determined whether you "mattered" or not was your religion and belief. We now replaced it with a state issued piece of paper and convinced ourselves that this is progress.

That's correct from a "spiritual" point of view, but pragmatically it is possible to define a spectrum from tyranny to democracy based only on the structure of power. More precisely you can look at the number of people the ruler needs to benefit to get their way. Religion and belief are important, no doubt, but they can be separated a bit from each other with this kind of analysis. In this respect modern democracies with universal suffrage, equal rights, legal protection from state violence are a big deal. It's not necessary for them to represent "progress" to be very very valuable.

Also, "belief" has a propensity to produce circular logic (I believe in X because X is true), non-escapable rational traps (you don't believe in anything, so you believe in non believing, so you believe...), tribalism (we should convert the nonbelievers), righteousness (how can't they see it? It is the truth), wishful thinking (I believe that X is good and Y is bad so of course I will ascribe every good event to X and every bad one to Y), insincere debates, existential crisis caused by the lack of it, and so on... So as much as it's possible I in favor of leaving beliefs and religions out of the analysis.

I’m not following. Are you saying citizenship replaced religion and it functions in the same way as religion did for empires and kingdoms of yesteryear?

It functions in the same way in a sense that it's the current criteria for "acceptable" dehumanization.

Living in a region full of conflict might be an additional factor why regards to ethics may be of secondary concern.

But I am sure that governments of all countries might be interested because it is just a weapons race from their perspective. A race to the bottom again.

I don't think it is the job of Israel to decide who is going to use it and how. Do we even know what countries are using it for? in most cases it is unknown. I find it a bit disingenuous that people who got no problem trading with countries like China suddenly find one case where some other country misused eavesdropping and manage to slap "Israel" in the headline as if it is their responsibility and they are the main issue here.

I an not so naive to think that the recent deals with the Gulf states and the thawing with SA are not related to these exports. We benefit from it. I am very conscious of the enormously disproportionate criticism and hate Israel gets in many circles and of course they slapped "Israel" in the headline in part for the ritual condemnation.

But two wrongs don't make a rights. It's despicable to export weapons, especially to dictatorships, no matter if you are Israel, China, Russia, Italy or Sweden (the last two being major weapon exporters but keeping themselves conveniently under the radar)

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