Very warm

Yes, I spent the last 20 years developing a very particular kind of chemical agent that is tailor made to dissolve an eight-year-old's testicles. But I assure you we only intend to use it in self-defense.
I have no idea how the Israelis got seventy of them.

To be honest i think its one of these industries that should never be private. Why do we think it is a good idea to have people profit from war in such a direct way?
- Because wherever there is a possibility to make massive amounts of money, those with power will push and push and push to be in control of it.

I worked in the analysis tool division of a company that built civilian and military jets when I was fresh out of engineering school.
I didn't feel too bad about it because I was making commercial aircraft quieter and more efficient with my work. Then, the Iraq war started up and they told me I had to work on the engine for the F22. I started looking for a new job that day.
Now I work in planetary defense and don't feel guilty about it...
- I'm pretty sure "planetary defense" just means more imperial offense.
  Technology under capitalism is a force for exploitation, violence, control, etc.
  
  @uuldika@lemmy.ml is right. I hunt and track asteroids. If I'm offending on behalf of an empire with this work, the empire is humanity and the offense is against chunks of rocks in space
  
  "planetary defense" usually means tracking and maybe deflecting asteroids that are likely to hit Earth.

We’re all guilty and we should all go on strike
- Defense contractor... Strike... I see what you did there

The number of people defending Lockheed Martin here is staggering, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised given the apparent makeup of Lemmy's population
I'll make this very, very simple: working for a well-known defense contractor who brags about making bombs is bad. Working for Lockheed Martin is unethical.
Working for a large corporation (Microsoft) that funds or supports wars (Israel) is also bad, but not as bad as Lockheed Martin, the company that actually builds the bombs that are bought with the dollars that Microsoft sends to Israel
Working for any company that could theoretically contribute economically to a war is bad, but not as bad as the previous two examples and is more or less unavoidable for working people
Paying any kind of tax (especially in the US) ultimately funds wars, and so isn't good either, but it's not as bad as any of the three above options, and no one can avoid it (except billionaires of course)
- To add, "There's no ethical consumption under capitalism" applies to your labor, as well. The phrase is meant to provide perspective, and shouldn't be used as an excuse to do whatever.
  I'm not particularly happy with everything the company I work for does. Especially the actions of the people at the top. But it's not notably worse than any other Fortune 500.
  Lockheed, though? It's bad in a more fundamental way.
- Im not surprised honestly, and yes its seriously fucked up.
- random subject is discussed
  instantly thinks about Israel
  You can really tell 4Chan is down currently.
  
  Imagine believing that weapons manufacturing is a "random subject" unconnected to zionism. Brain dead.

Not all countries are the USA btw. Most countries use their defense budget to actually defend themselves from external very real threats.
- USA is the external real threat.
  
  Any superpower is a threat.
  
  Which is why they gotta sell all those patriot systems to smaller countries without established military industries.
  Buy this gun unless you wanna find out what I do when you don't.
- Pretty sure most countries use their defense budgets to steal the shit out of the population.
  
  2% defense budget is nothing though.
- Most countries use their defense budget to actually defend themselves
  Defend themselves from whom!
  From whom!
  
  Potential invaders like Russia or the US. Or in the future: China. But in Europe a nation just 1500 km away attacked it's neighbor in 2022 and the war is still ongoing.
- Hahaha. Have you not noticed the empire struggling to maintain itself?
  This is a sarcasm, you idiot fucks. Leave me alone.

Working for Social media companies or health insurance companies isn’t any better as far as destroying the world and mass murdering people by proxy
- I haven't seen Lemmy destroy anything.
  
  Idk, just one glimpse of the fediverse chick was enough to shatter my world.
- Yeah but profiting off of starvation, homelessness or sickness is slightly less concerned with destroying human life efficiently, more so extracting value from suffering. Far harder to wiggle your way out of a bomb dropping on you. In that way, defense contractors are especially gross imo. I guess you could argue being blown apart may be more humane though idk
  
  I’ve seen people die in the extract profit from suffering system. If I had to choose I’d choose the quicker option. I mean at the end of the day we’re all stuck in an unethical system of oppression.

I volunteer in my free time so that more Russian occupiers will be eliminated. I’m very proud of myself.

I had a friend in a difficult position, deciding between high pay at Buy N Large or the opportunity to work on insanely cool shit for Death Inc.
Ultimately he chose Death Inc, and the reasoning was along the lines of "This might kill a hundred people, but at least it'll kill them specifically. I can't even conceptualize the harm Amazon et al. do on a global scale to entire populations without even trying".
Made me think. I didn't have a very good answer to that.
- those bombs will kill far more than just a hundred people, far more than he can ever conceptualize. the consequences of those deaths will shape the world more than the extra microsecond an engineer could shave off of an internal Amazon function
  
  The argument the person was saying is that we already have big bombs that do catastrophic damage, the R&D is how do you make those bombs more targeted so they have less collateral damage.
  Now whether that will actually lead to less deaths or will just cause the bombs to be used in places they otherwise wouldn’t be used with the same amount of collateral damage is unknown.
  But it brings up a bit of a utilitarian dilemma of “is it ethical to work on weapons if it leads to an overall reduction of collateral damage to civilians”
  It doesn’t have a necessarily correct answer
  
  yea but nestle
- That’s an interesting take. One on one side the death is a haphazard byproduct and on the other it is at least motivated by someone. Somebody has to have a vision for why these weapons need to be used. I’d argue though that in the case of Amazon, wether or not it’s of any priority to them, the suffering would be something worth ironing out over time whereas, for weapons companies, it’s the entire product they sell
- Also, "if I don't make this thing that will kill a hundred people specifically, they'll just use something that kills more people with less precision / more casualties."
  
  Ah good ole ego.
- It should make you think about how your friend is in a brainwashed delusion.
  
  Not quite, no. Not everyone works on the weapons.
- How is precision weaponry "insanely cool shit"???
  
  Anduril has had many, many recruiters desperately trying to get me to work for them. On the surface, what they make does sound incredibly cool: embedded systems/operating systems for autonomous robotics.
  The only problem is those robots happen to be death bots (and Palmer Luckey, who makes me want to stay far, far away).
  
  I mean it's impressive from an engineering standpoint
  
  Military technology has got a near unlimited budget, that means you get tons of cool and technically impressive toys and things to work with
  I enjoy watching the breakdowns of the most advanced weaponry and stuff like jet fighters (that we have access to information about), nuclear armaments, and other stuff like that, because they are very very impressive from an engineering perspective
  But, of course, I really do strongly hate them for existing in terms of their actual purpose. It would be much cooler for similar engineering feats to be in use for civilian purposes. But I can't deny that they are amazing from a purely technical perspective
  
  It means you can take out the bride's party, or the groom's party.
  
  Technically if you think about it, he’d be saving innocent lives, since non precise weapons have more collateral damage. Might as well make bombs accurate and hit the right targets.
  
  Well, I can't get into details, but the field is vast.
  
  That's how the entire "education" process goes. They lure kids with promises of making cool video games or whatnot. Then they brainwash them, teach them helplessness, and exploit their entire life in order to profit from murdering people.
- I worked gps until i determined The Customer was not interested in reducing civilian casualties.
  They wanted the induced fear, priming the next generation ready for revenge, the garuntee of future business.

I completely lost respect for an intern when I found out he was going to a weapons company next.

"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department", says Wernher Von Braun.
- Making rockets wasn’t his department either.
  The US wouldn’t let Von Braun go testify at Dachau. To this day there’s a lot of whitewashing. But he knew how those rockets were made.
  Arthur Rudolph’s crimes were so egregious, that after letting him build the Saturn 5, we decided to ask him firmly to leave the country. In 1984.
- Don't say that he's hypocritical
  \ Say rather that he's apolitical
  
  context for those who need it:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro

The education system functions to indoctrinate, privilege, and filter.
If there's one thing that I learned from grad school, it's that talented people will be made dependent and subservient to death and doom for money... But more importantly because that's the social system they've been funneled into. They don't see any alternatives.

"I refuse to work in defense. I'd rather my work wasn't used to blow anyone up" is a line I've used in multiple job interviews. I like to think the hell I end up going to at least has chilly weather and/or really good AC.
- Ah, you’re going to visit Hell, Michigan.
  
  Sounds nice, where do i sign? :)

This is one of the few reasons I dislike living in the area I do, defense contractors are basically the only ones nearby hiring for engineering roles. Luckily I work remotely, but if that ever changed and I couldn't find another remote position, I'd probably have to move. I'm not about to sell my soul.
- Same for me, except IT.
  Its pretty much either work at The Base or Geek Squad. One of these options pays enough to leave the area.
  
  Am getting a niche going for elderly centric IT help.
  All we have is elderly here 🤷 take that over jarheads
  
  I know which one it isn’t!
- Or, and hear me out, get a job and suck at it.
  
  Found the Boeing recruiter!

I'd say depends on which one and what lobby work they have done. If it is from the US or Russia, it is probably a big no-no.
If it is a European or South American defense contractor or weapons manufacturer, it varies.

damn it's true

And which benevolent corporations IS acceptable to work for?
- no ethical consumption under capitalism etc etc but… there are companies that don’t make a profit by murdering middle eastern people
  
  That number is shrinking alarmingly fast
  
  I think it's picking nits, economic destruction can be just as complete as military. People starve all over the world every day. Some people live in slavery to make the shirts Walmart sells, etc.
- Maybe "work" is the actual problem. Maybe people shouldn't waste their entire lives serving murder profiteers. Maybe it's always been a garbage slaver system.
  
  Of course it is, but I think it's only marginally better than Walmart. I mean after all, Walmart IS a force for good in the world, right?

I don’t work for a defence contractor, but i’ll probably be going to hell anyway since I picked up making/racing drones as a hobby specifically so i have some way of raising hell if my country is ever invaded.

With the amount of classified information that goes into weapons manufacturing, where your just making doo-dad#1, it's understandable some people wouldn't even know their doing something wrong.
Makes me think of the, "when does life begin" debate. When do random parts become a weapon of mass destruction?
- I'm unable to get any info on what my grandpa did after leaving active duty and going to work for LM on government contracts. I have paperwork mentioning him, and it's alllllllll still sharpied out almost 70 years later. Dude was a logistics engineer, he basically organized warehouses, yet apparently was so important to the nuclear sub program (Mare Island in the 50s & 60s tells me that much) apparently that I'm not allowed any further info
  It's entirely possible he didn't know what he was working on, I only have guesses because of other shit we know from decades after his death

Why?
Of all the tools for oppression and murder, advanced weaponry is pretty low on the list for what actually makes the murdering happen. If you work for a company that does any kind of business with any repressive regime (ie most companies above a certain size), the simple fact that you're working for a cog in enabling the economy of the repressive regime to pay its cops, its soldiers, its secret police and informants and massive bureaucracy, is as much as a contribution as "I was .1% of designing a multirole jet that's 10% better than the previous multirole jet"
Hell, anyone making steel of the correct grade to go into small arms probably kills more innocent people, by that standard, than your average person working for Western defense contractors.
- It almost sounds like you might be suggesting that there's no ethical consumption under capitalism
  
  Something like that. And little ethical work.
- First, props for backing a bonafide unpopular opinion so unflinchingly. (A) discusses your argument. (B) challenges it.
- I mean yes there is a sort of "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" dilemma when it comes to working. But just with that dilemma, you don't just give up, you try to minimize your participation as much as you can healthily do. And I think not working for a corp who's sole purpose is to develop weapons for killing people is one of those no brainers.
  
  Communists make weapons too tho. It's kind of a whole cycle.
  
  It might be a no-brainer if it was all "We are making orphan crushers for the orphans", but the defense industry is much more complex than that. For example, would you say that a Ukrainian working for a Ukrainian defense firm, whose sole purpose is to develop weapons for killing people, is evil?
- If less people worked to make weapons, there would be less weapons made.
  How is this a hard concept to understand?
  
  If less people worked to make weapons, there would be less weapons made.
  Okay?
  How is that relevant?
  Do you think that there is a dire shortage of tools for murder, and only the modern defense industry is sustaining the strained supply?
- I agree: Everyone is terrible.
- Plus you have deterrance weapons like the F22. It hasn't actually killed anyone, because no one has challenged it. That sort of weapon can keep wars from starting, since they're less likely to win.
  
  Hooray for worthless planes that have never been used on our impoverished enemies! Build more bazillion dollar planes!!! smh.
  
  Not so sure about the deterrence argument. My point is just that defense industry firms are not particularly core to the problem of people murdering each other, and certainly not the workers therein, any more than farmers are guilty of feeding murderers if their client sells to a genocidal state.
- There’s a big difference between making steel vs knowingly making weapons that are themselves illegal or being used in genocide.
  
  knowingly making weapons that are themselves illegal
  Beg pardon
  or being used in genocide.
  Of course, making other materials to support genocide is much more moral.
- I'll go even farther. Have you voted in the last 50 years? Guess what you help elect the president and chief commanding death at the end of the bayonet and the from the top of the drones.
  
  And if you haven't voted (but been able to), you are likewise guilty for allowing the candidate who became president and CiC to commit their crimes (instead of the crimes the other candidate would have committed).
  The only way forward is to improve society as a whole.
- Why not just murder people yourself directly? With a knife maybe? It's pretty low on the list for what actually makes murdering happen. If you work for any company under capitalism, then they're going to be collaborating with evil regimes and whatnot. You're just enable the cogs. Why not be a useful cog for your masters?
  Hell anybody selling lemonade is just feeding the troops of genocide. So you might as well just murder people yourself. It only makes sense.
  \s duh... Seriously tho this post is beyond sociopathic brainwashing.

At MIT in the 1980's it was called, "Get your fingerprints on the murder weapon."
- Jesus Christ, Finch.

If I worked for a defence contractor, I would make the most accurate weapons in the world. Why? Because when the people who fired those weapons are up in court and they go "Oh well I didn't MEAN to hit that hospital, the bomb just didn't hit its intended target", the prosecutor can go "Nonsense! Those are the most accurate weapons in the world. They ONLY hit what you intended to hit with as much force as you wanted to hit it with!".
The weapons are gonna get built, I'd rather there be no ambiguity in how they get used. It's not like WW2 where Bomber Command was like "Here's the dockyards we want to blow up, and a bajillion tonnes of bombs to blow it up with", and then the bombers flatten half a city just trying to hit the docks and miss every single time because it's cloudy, or hit an entirely different city because they got lost on the way!. You only have to look at Russia's "throw enough artillery shells at the area until it's completely flat" approach to war to know what happens when you haven't got precision munitions, or not enough of them.
- But if you look at the actual reality of what happens, those bombs are still used to kill civilians with no repercussions.
  
  Bombs are going to be used to kill civilians anyway. Would you rather their deaths be intentional or accidental? Either way a bomb is going to go off, the best you can do is ensure the bomb hits where the person dropping it intended. That way, if it's a civilian, the person dropping the bomb has no deniability because they hit exactly what they intended to hit.

Catching General Dynamics strays
- Search for Veridian dynamics commercials from Better Off Ted

I guess it would
Lockheed does more than just defense contracts
- Yeah sometimes they crash spacecraft on Mars
  
  Lockmart felt the pound-force from that burn a kilomile away.
- Compact fusion could literally save our civilization.

Got offered interviews at Raytheon and Lockheed once. Said no immediately. Can't have a good conscience working for these companies.
- Good job o7

Would it be like a spectrum with weapons being a cardinal sin, and cotton swabs and morphine a thing you can only do on lent? Would weapon makers be in a lower circle, logistics in the middle, and those on the periphery of the military apparatus go to purgatory?

It would've been better if you cropped out the useless comment

I laughed and upvoted the meme but then I had to find it again and double check to see if it specified a country.

there is a misunderstanding of the MIC, they profit of weapons, not death. they dont like war, it means instability, supplychains get stressed and stuff gets expansive, asswell as their stuff gets destroyed and may shows ineffective. they like the idea of war. they want country A and B have and armsrace and get the expansive fancy stuff but never fire at each other. nor every corpo is vault tec.

The Devil vs an A10, who would win?
- That might be a good buddy comedy about the rapture where Hell rises to the surface but the US Military's actually got it under control somehow. Like a damn minotaur comes through the fences and swings a helicopter into the pavement by it's rudder, but a dude in a turret on a humvee shreds it like swiss cheese and all the goblins storming the gate stop cold and kneel with their hands on the back of their head very nervously.
  
  Someone was telling me about a series about a similar premise, which ended with the US military bombing Hell with all the civilians in it, out of essentially religious fanaticism.
  Feels more fitting.
- Depends, are we in Georgia and is there a golden ~~fiddle~~ gattling gun on the line? If so, I'd take that bet, the A10's the best there's ever been.
- Brrrrrrrrt

God I wish I was smart enough to be a Galen Erso

Billionaires got no morals, why should I?

I used to be opposed to working in the defense industry. Based on my experiences, I have reached the conclusion that the only ethical outcome is the extinction of humanity before we make this planet uninhabitable for all other life. The sooner the better. Maybe raccoons won't have billionaires, fascists, microplastics, etc. We should give them that chance. That's why I work for a defense contractor now.
- Defense industry goon celebrates and profits from the destruction of humanity? Sounds about right.
  The only question is why Lemmy would upvote this. jfc.
  
  My take: either trolls or just bad people with a defeatist mindest.
- Why would raccoons have a better chance at surviving than us? Or crows for that matter? All the shit that kills us kills them just as fast.
- This is too stupid to not be satire.
  
  A filthy human wrote this.
- There are better ways to depopulate, such as antinatalism. Murder and war is not an ecologically friendly way of depopulation.
  
  The better methods will never happen completely. Even in the midst of the abhorrent east African famines of the 1980s, people were still reproducing. The billionaires want us to breed more wage slaves until the petri dish is full and no more resources exist. Our natural inclination to kill each other just needs some more effective fuel.
  The outcome is inevitable, I would just like to accelerate it and try to leave something for the nonhumans.