If you're a minion, then you just build the volcano headquarters and the atomic missiles because, hey, it's your job. They don't pay you to think. Your job is to make your boss look good. You give 110% and think outside the box only when it's firmly inside the box of the primate dominance hierarchy you are embedded in.
Professionals, though, explicitly recognize they are part of a society. They owe something to the client/employer, but also to the public and the profession. For example, read through the preamble here: https://ethics.acm.org/code-of-ethics/software-engineering-c...
I see myself as a professional. I sell my labor, not my ethics. So what I would have lost by selling my ability to speak out about a problem? My integrity. My independence. My freedom. $40k is a lot of money, but it wasn't worth 40 years of shutting up about anything Twitter would want me to keep quiet about.