The phrasing of this makes it sound like he wants to paint it as though he's doing community service or something. But...Defense Digital Service? At the Pentagon? That's not exactly curing cancer or solving poverty.
At the risk of wading into a fraught discussion, here's an example from yesterday: http://www.defense.gov/News-Article-View/Article/802828/cart... . Bug bounty programs have proven very effective in private industry (e.g. when Chrome pays security researchers who find vulnerabilities). The Defense Digital Service just completed one of the first bug bounty programs for the federal government. This is my personal opinion, but if bug bounty programs become more common in the government, that would mean that lots more people would be protected from hacks or identity theft.
To give another example that's under the umbrella of the US Digital Service, https://www.vets.gov/playbook/ is an attempt to bring resources for veterans into a single website. Right now, veterans may have to navigate 1000+ websites, 956 different 1-800 numbers, and just deal with more hassle than they should.
I interviewed at the US Digital Service but ended up at the Defense Digital Service because that's where I thought I could help the most. There's some good info about the sort of projects that people at the USDS/DDS work on at https://www.usds.gov/work if anyone is interested. 18F at https://18f.gsa.gov/ is also doing great work, with the extra benefit that people can work for the 18F remotely. 18F has also been a proponent for more open source in the government: https://fcw.com/articles/2016/03/25/noble-open-code.aspx
There's already plenty of smart decent people in the military and even more at defense companies. It's a structural, not a people, problem. What the US military does (both offline and online) mostly has widespread support among politicians and the US population. These policies are not a mistake to be corrected or something that will go away, it's a difference in opinion. If you don't support them you probably shouldn't be involved. There are many other ways to help your country with e.g. digital security. The "anti-military types" is just a cheap shot. Pretty much everyone I know who has been or are involved in a military (or government) has reservations about it (including myself).
Congrats Matt. I hope you kick some serious ass. I have my reservations about automating administrative and criminal law, but I think you have found a spot where what you are doing is needed and can help a lot of people. I'm within a couple of hours' drive from DC. If there's anything I can do to help, please let me know.
You shouldn't have reservations about automating criminal law. One of the great injustices of our time is the overloaded criminal court system, which can hold defendants for years before they see a courtroom due to the time it takes to handle simple pre-trial motions.
Clarification: we have too many people in jail. Automated systems that allow even more people to be jailed with little human intervention are what I am talking about. Not people getting their day in court.
No. A slower justice system increases the number of people in jail, which is where defendants are held before trial.
Sentences also need to be ratcheted back sharply across the board. But it's fallacious to suggest that improving the efficiency of the justice system will harm efforts to reduce mass incarceration.
We can argue another day. The purpose of my post was to offer congratulations and offer help, not debate the effect of automation on the criminal justice system. (Gotta love HN)
I am a frequent volunteer on poverty and homelessness issues. But, that wasn't really my point.
My comment was more about my opinion of the US military industrial complex; I believe that, in general, working for the war machine in any capacity is actively harmful to the world.
Matt clarified what he'll be doing there (I think; at least, he mentioned things that are being done there that sound nice...presumably he was implying he would be working on those nice things, rather than on more effective ways to kill brown people), and I have conceded that I was assuming the worst and could have been wrong about that assumption.
"working for the war machine in any capacity is actively harmful to the world" <- that's the kind of absolutist statement that is never right and always poisoning a debate. It also does a disservice to thousands of people in the military who really well intended and risk their lives to save others.
There are exceptions, sure. But, on the whole, war brings death, destruction of infrastructure, disruption of families and communities, and overall negative results for both the human condition and the environment. There are probably valid reasons to wage war; but the US is a nation of hawks and war profiteers at the highest levels, and has been for decades (refer to Eisenhower's military industrial complex speech, and nothing has changed since then except the numbers, both monetary and in human lives, are bigger and the wars more frequent).
To be fair, that's not working for the war machine, it's working with the war machine.
But that is a good point - we have the militaries of the US and Britain to thank not only for the internet but the computers accessing it.
And the military industrial complex has Silicon Valley to thank for its ability to conduct mass targeted surveillance through social media and browser exploits, and to kill people with metadata.
Another interesting dilemma would be, would it have been OK to work on the GPS system, back when it was implemented under the auspices of the Reagan Administration?
It must have sounded like the creepiest thing imaginable to young people who were already concerned about the US's saber-rattling posture, but like the Internet that grew out out of the work done at ARPA, it's now an indispensable public utility.
Well, nobody is curing cancer or solving poverty, so by your logic nobody could criticize. Many people are actually doing something to help either cause (from researchers down to the $10 donor), and I think all of them have the right to criticize one's choice.
That's precisely what I said: a lot of people are helping both causes, so they are trying to cure cancer or solve poverty. Possibly including the author of the comment above.
No way would SwellJoe be wasting his time curing cancer and solving poverty, that's petty stuff! No, SwellJoe is doing bigger things, like smart water bottles!
Personal attacks are not welcome here, regardless of how strongly you disagree with someone. When you see a bad subthread, please don't make it even worse. Instead, post something to turn it in a more substantive, less inflamed direction, or simply don't post at all.
USDS is heavily involved in the VA. Part of that work depends on clear communication from the Pentagon. I don't know the specific circumstances here, but I can imagine that there are many veterans whose ability to receive healthcare depends on better infrastructure at the Pentagon.
I assume you're implying the Internet would not exist without military involvement? I think that has already been debunked during the "Al Gore invented the Internet" conversation.
The military receives no benefit from my use of the Internet (aside from the tax revenue it generates, but I don't have any good way to avoid providing tax revenue to the government).
Many in the government space can go higher than that through special exceptions, projects and various other reasons. So I'm not convinced you can simply conclude that he's making $160k.
Matt is one of the nicest, most ethical people I have worked with, so I have no doubt his work in Washington will be for the benefit of society. Also, he's an expert on fighting abuse, so should be able to make some interesting contributions.
Digital Government is one of the great challenges of the next decades, and I am worried that we still see software as a "rockstar" can solve it profession.
Conways law means that changing software to meet our needs now means hanging the whole organisation. And changing government is a whole order of challenge greater than in private sector.
But I see daily the problems of scrum sprints forcing poor architectural decisions that need strong coders to push back on - and while is suspect Matt would be one of those pushing back, really the system of digitisation of government should be more - sympathetic to the challenge.
I am amazed and impressed by the XDS approach (gov.uk is a leader in this) but I remain under convinced and unable to express this coherently - I will sleep on it
Indeed. Often, meaningful progress on Digital Government can be hampered by short-term political imperatives. Even in countries where the public service is supposedly 'politically neutral' (e.g. Australia). You're right to worry about this being viewed as a 'rockstar' solvable problem: the problems are systemic and often have little to do with the merits of a given technical solution.
I did a stint at Australia's version of the UK GDS (www.dto.gov.au) and it was a supremely frustrating experience. Inter-agency politics, poor management and, frankly, a severe lack of technical competency at all levels were apparent. I was fortunately working in a team of (highly) technical competent people, who were had experience dealing with the the government bureaucracy. By about day two we were all bringing in our laptops and wireless internet dongles because the systems we were provisioned were utterly useless (Windows 7, no local admin, filtered internet). Our server and development infrastructure was mostly on AWS and GitHub.
Every single person in my unit has since either left, or been virtually pushed out of the organisation. Our preference for building up service-based infrastructure, developing a federated and privacy-preserving digital identity framework (distinct from a technical system implementation, which my team prototyped using OpenID Connect), and direct public participation (via GitHub) were at odds with the preferences of senior management. They preferred shiny new dashboards, a single government service 'portal' and a fully centralised roles-based permissions/authentication system for all citizen & business to government transactions.
I wish the solution were as simple as throwing technical talent at the problem until solved. However, this is unfortunately not the case. I admire the idealism of talented engineers who are willing to get involved to make a difference. I just hope they realise that, although absolutely necessary, rationality and technical merit are not sufficient for solving this problem. If they don't realise this, they're going to have a very unpleasant and frustrating time working in government.
Probably the most important attribute they'll need is 'persistence', of the same kind needed to successfully fight a guerrilla war.
I share your concern, but how else does radical change on this level happen without a wave of rockstars (as seen with UK's GDS)? One or two isolated rockstars, or even a team of a-bit-above-average engineers, have a negligible impact when faced with a bureaucracy. Their efforts are hampered and their results can easily be dismissed as noise.
Is a team of rockstars alone sufficient? No. It still needs the kind of empathetic engineers who want genuine improvement and will work to permeate their efforts through the organisation. Rockstars by definition are outstanding technically, but their mindsets can vary widely. Rockstars of the precocious, arrogant, variety aren't suited for this, but others (like Matt Cutts imo) are.
How Else is a very good question - and I fear that dropping in a "wave" of anyone is just going to end up wits one wet beach - GDS is having inspirational effect but as a private contractor who is making every effort to break into (for want of better term "let me get paid for developing open source solutions to the 2000 government needs - see http://www.oss4gov.org) it is clear that they are not breaking down every barrier - there is a lot to do.
I am not saying I know of a better way - but rock stars don't change organisations. Meaningful change is really hard and conways law is a two way sword. If you can't change the organisation good luck having the software change it for you.
Here is a longer thought :
Let's look at UK schools and the department for education.
The essential jobs of the department are 1) school standards and inspection (ofsted) and 2) paying the schools and so forth.
Fundamentally we don't need a whole department to funnel money from treasury to headmasters.
There are many pieces of software that Matt Cutts could work on there, a whole career. But we could remove the need for that department and hence that OSS software by political action.
This is the point I think I am making. Software literacy is soooo vital to making sure that organisations make the right choices in their software, and software is now and will be soooo deep in all organisations (they effectively become programmable corporations) that we need software "rock stars" at the highest levels of government making the highest levels of architectural decisions
But when we talk about architectural decisions at government we basically are talking ministerial level policy making.
And that implies that companies are going to need to have their it architecture decided by their internal political structures - which will have to become more democratic
So - yeah still not making a good point. But when we want people to come in and transform digital in government, they will quickly ask political questions. And they need political answers. Even though the leverage and driving power lies in what software can offer.
"...software is now and will be soooo deep in all organisations (they effectively become programmable corporations) that we need software "rock stars" at the highest levels of government making the highest levels of architectural decisions"
This is the key issue. Having spent years working on 'IT in government', at both the cabinet policy advisory level and at the IT coalface level, I've formed the view that when it comes to IT policy, 99% of the policy outcome is determined by implementation detail. I think this makes government IT policy quite unique, and it's something policy people (like myself) can't wrap their heads around.
Perfect example: the Australian 'Standard Business Reporting' programme (http://www.sbr.gov.au/). It's hard to fault the policy position: open up APIs for reporting to government. But they fucked up the technical implementation so badly that they are now 5 years in, $1bn in the hole, and have around 1% voluntary take-up. The relevant senior decision makers were completely IT illiterate and went with the "can't go wrong with IBM" route. Consequently, any developer that values their sanity won't come near it with a 10 foot barge pole.
Reminds me of when Craig Newmark did a stint with Veterans Affairs, becoming a real evangelist for the agency and getting into the nitty gritty of office IT:
Can people rename this to something that makes sense? Seeing a post on the front page saying "A brief update" is so vague. An update by whom? About what? There's literally not enough information to gauge whether or not I should pursue this further without clicking on it.
I'm surprised to see so much negativity in the thread. It's fantastic for government to add more people like Cutts, especially in a division with innovation as a goal. He brings excellent public communication skills, I'm excited to see what he'll be working on and hope they'll report broadly.
Please help make changes in the most efficient way possible. I've seen it before when these digital agencies filled with "innovators" come only to reinvent the wheel; spending ridiculous amounts of tax payer dollars and man hours to create things that could otherwise be brought in from the private sector.
Good luck, do what's right with the tax payer dollars.
Expected and got the negative comments here. He's taking paycut and making a difference in Governance. Not Bill Gates level, but something at least. If nothing, it's better than people making condescending armchair comments here.
It's a common part of human nature. Assigning bad moral character on the basis of group identity, rather than on individual actions, is the essence of tribalism and bigotry.
Sure, the DoD has an outsized impact on people's lives and a highly controversial history including both major evil and major good.
It seems to me a positive thing that someone of good character and strong capabilities would go to make things better, vs allowing bad actors to accumulate and do what bad actors do.
Why do think covert operations, black sites, secret courts and hidden budgets exist? Or chain of command, court martials and censorship? It's not a democratic organisation of individual actions.
It's easy to say that he's of "good character" trying to make things better, but in reality he is lending his credibility to bad actors and he has little power to make things better. Keith Alexander doesn't go to defcon in jeans and a t-shirt to take input, but to sell a different image of the military.
If it's anything that is human nature it's to despite evidence to the contrary justify how bad things are not your responsibility. NSA compromised google users data and here is one of the most famous googlers acting head recruiter for the military.
>For example I worked on software that helped soldiers
Soldiers deployed in the other side of the world where they have no business to be in the first place? Securing cheap oil resources and/or control of strategic interests?
Can we please keep HN from becoming r/politics? I know it's too late now, but every single post even remotely involving government now turns into a USA IS EVIL type discussion and it's very irrelevant.
The moral consequences of technology are extremely relevant. Technology can be used for both great good and great evil. It seems weird to not want to ever discuss that.
Are you talking to the person who wrote about helping soldiers, or is that not political, and it's just commenting on helping soldiers which is out of line? Because that seems a little one-sided and naive.
It was probably not worth it in the end, but I'm glad Saddam Hussein and Chemical Ali faced trial for genocide against the Kurdish people of Anfal. For me, genocide is a crime that justifies international response.
Except that the West didn't care when Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds. Only when he invaded Kuwait did the buck stop. Then again, Kuwait had oil. The Kurds hadn't.
Also the trial against Hussein is widely regarded as a show trial.
Seriously, on Hacker News you're going to make a political comment that has zero to do with anything I commented on? A DoD software contractor has no control over congressional level politics. The reality is that they were there / still there so while you work to campaign for changing the reality are you suggesting we should NOT make things better for our soldiers to stay safer?
Get off your high horse and make your political, off topic statements on reddit instead.
This breaks the HN guidelines, as have other comments you've posted in this thread. In cases where one has strong emotions, we all need to restrain ourselves and edit any uncivil, unsubstantive bits out of our comments here. If you can't do that, please don't post until you can.
This has nothing to do with politics but with basic moral principles.
Just because someone higher up decides something, doesn't mean you don't have any moral responsibility.
If you think what the DoD does is morally questionable (and I think it is pretty clear cut that it is) then you are morally obliged to not help them with it. It's pretty easy in the software industry to find work somewhere else.
>Seriously, on Hacker News you're going to make a political comment that has zero to do with anything I commented on? A DoD software contractor has no control over congressional level politics.
No, but they still assist those politics (and often proudly) with their engineering.
I don't really think the "it's above my paycheck concern" attitude is really moral.
>The reality is that they were there / still there so while you work to campaign for changing the reality are you suggesting we should NOT make things better for our soldiers to stay safer?
Yes, I believe we should question such things.
Unfortunately, if we give some examples about other people in other eras using similar excuses ("it was a reality, so we were just doing our job to make our military safer/more effective"), someone is going to invoke Godwin's law.
> Then just say no when the DoD asks you to work for them.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding with how DoD contracting works. Regardless this is too broad of a paintbrush to use.
> I certainly am. The safer "our" soldiers are the more people they can murder.
This is literally the exact opposite of how things work in the military. Regardless if you think killing is so horrible it's a bit shocking you would rather soldiers to be more likely to die and contribute to even more death.
if you think killing is so horrible it's a bit shocking you would rather soldiers to be more likely to die and contribute to even more death.
What a strange accusation for a person involved in the military to make. Are you saying that when the army makes an offensive operation with the goal of eliminating some enemies combatants, it's because they think killing is awesome?
Because it seems to me that the reason is much the same: we must kill these people to lower overall deaths, no?
> Are you saying that when the army makes an offensive operation with the goal of eliminating some enemies combatants, it's because they think killing is awesome?
I'm not sure how you could come to that assessment but I wouldn't come to that conclusion at all (even my previous comments echo the opposite). Regardless I wouldn't consider myself part of the military at all (especially since I've left the public contracting space 2 years ago and the army wasn't my last contract anyway).
we should've just Gaddafi enslave thousands of women in his harem \s. You should read the book 'Gaddafi's Harem: The Story of a Young Woman and the Abuses of Power in Libya' before going around spreading hate and supporting cruel, inhuman dictators.
Actually it shouldn't be your concern what he did in his own country.
Like it's not anyone's concern that say the US puts the largest number of its citizens in jail (25% of the worlds inmates for a country with 4% of the world's population) and of which the predominant number are black.
I mean it should concern people all over the world, and they should ask and lend support and diplomatic pressure to change that, but they should in no way interfere with internal politics, invade or attack the US for that. And that's something that hurts far more people (millions) compared to "some thousand".
Besides, what have you accomplished now? A hell hole of a country, an ex-country, with fractions fighting from several competitive sides, millions flying and hundreds of thousands dead. Yay for getting rid of the dictator, sure turned out well. And the place is a paradise now for the sex and slave trade.
Not to mention the hypocrisy of it all. Those decisions to support the rebels in official capacity wasn't because anybody really cared for the regime's victims. After all they always did and continue to do great business and have cordial relations with Saudi Arabia (how do local women fare there legally? Or search about what happens to thousands of immigrant women coming to work there as house servants etc.).
It pays to think about such events beyond what the mainstream media and the official government announcements say. Read some books, and not just celebrated books that maintain the official party line of one's government, try to find the other side's story too. And historical books, for such regions, to get perspective.
>before going around spreading hate and supporting cruel, inhuman dictators.
I'm doing what now?
BTW: Western countries didn't give a fuck about Gaddafi's human rights violations (except from condemning them verbally) until he started to lose power. Then suddenly they decided they should invade Libya.
Of course Libya has a lot of oil reserves, so this is to be expected. Can't bite the hand that keeps your economy running...
Human traffickers are very grateful for the bombing of Gaddafi. Now, no one is stopping them from sending too many people to their new grave in the Mediterranean sea.
He interned at the DoD when he was a college student. Maybe you are thinking of the NSA? Though the NSA is part of DoD, I don't think it was ever confirmed that Matt worked for the NSA.
This is a flamewar comment, which makes it bad for HN regardless of anyone's politics. But you particularly have no right to do this in the context of a personal blog post by someone whose intention to improve society could hardly be clearer.
Large institutions are complex, neither completely good nor completely evil. I don't think that's too much to ask users of an internet forum intended for intellectually substantive discourse to understand.
> This is a flamewar comment, which makes it bad for HN regardless of anyone's politics. But you particularly have no right to do this in the context of a personal blog post by someone whose intention to improve society could hardly be clearer.
> Large institutions are complex, neither completely good nor completely evil. I don't think that's too much to ask users of an internet forum intended for intellectually substantive discourse to understand.
Except you did not intellectually substantiated anything, but your own/company's opinions.
Nor it makes sense for you or anybody else to arbitrarily mark the parent as a flamewar comment.
You are very free to have and express your own opinions, you should others have and express their own, though.
I'm a moderator here, so it's my job to set these expectations. That inevitably involves judgment calls, a.k.a. opinions. I'd say the lines we draw are far from arbitrary, but of course I'm biased.
While your former is true your latter is just horribly false. I worked in the DoD space for many years and the overwhelming amount of work you're most likely to do doesn't involve killing people even indirectly. More likely you're working on systems to go keep our people safe.
For example I worked on software that helped soldiers look at patterns of IED placements to hopefully help them figure out where others were. I wouldn't consider what I worked on even indirectly supporting any type of killing but helping out people stay safer.
Eh, what do you think the military is doing when they run into IEDs? The reasons to remove IEDs is of course to grant yourself movement to fight the enemy.
I worked for the Russian military many years, and I believe Matt could do even more good for more people by using his talents in the Russian military. There is so much need there in software systems and support. It would make a great difference if there were more such volunteers. Like your experiences I agree that most of efforts were working on systems to go keep our people safe. It's nothing that involve killing people even indirectly....
But no matter Russia/US it all for a good cause - congratulations
Ultimately, though, aren't you helping soldiers stay safer so they can continue to kill others? I'm not saying that in a judgmental way, but that is the reality of war and military-related work.
This is incredibly tone deaf. I'm not sure why every thread about the DoD on Hacker News always ends up with the most extreme comments that lead to: "even if you're sending cards to the soldiers you're lifting their spirits to kill more people therefore you should feel bad about yourself".
I get it. You hate war. Most people hate war, even the soldiers in our army hate it. You want change? Vote and get outside and protest. Don't shit on a DoD contractor while sitting there doing nothing.
I mean, I'm doing something. I have a job that doesn't involve working for the DoD.
I understand the need for people to have jobs. I'm not unhappy about individual soldiers, individual cops, individual TSA workers deciding that's how they want to get employment. (I'm sort of unhappy at society-as-a-whole for making the military such a good career decision for many people, but the fact remains that it is a good career decision, and I won't begrudge that.) I'm not unhappy about you, because I have no idea what your job is or what your life is like. But this article is about a person who had an extremely good job at Google deciding that he wasn't doing enough for the world and that he could make the world a better place by working for the DoD. He could have stayed at Google; he could have even worked for the USDS for any of the non-war functions of government, if he really wanted to. I think that's fair to criticize.
How Ayn Rand do you want to go? By the same logic working for a company that pays taxes that supports the military is also helping things along. Best to withdraw entirely the efforts of your labour from the machine?
How taxes support the military is decided by lawmakers. We vote candidates based on their programs. If a candidate promised to lower contributions to defense, (s)he'd have my vote. You can have labour that doesn't feed the military.
You're technically correct. If we subscribe to a morality based on causal links of one's actions, then you'd partially responsible for the actions of your government, when paying any taxes to them. If they're involved in a war, so are you.
However, even in "peaceful" countries you'd have a hard time avoiding that, as most of them have some sort of mandatory pensions system, who in turn most likely fund arms production, which will then sometimes be sold to be used for war.
My logic included an explicit allowance for those people whose best career decision is to work for the military (or for the police, or the TSA, or whatever). I don't expect a general strike, no matter how much I want the workers of the world to lose their chains.
So the same logic would be okay with people where all reasonable career decisions require working for a company that pays taxes to the military, and both Matt Cutts and I seem to be in that situation. But I think we're both in the situation where we have plenty of reasonable options other than working for the military directly. And it specifically sounds like he took an option that is worse for him personally, because he thinks it's better for the world. I disagree it's better for the world, simple as that.
(Whether this logic would forbid working for companies that support the military indirectly is an interesting question, and I think 'BinaryIdiot has convinced me that it should.)
It's not as if Google doesn't do work on behalf of the State Department and Department of Defense to begin with. Let's not split hairs here - by your rationale Matt Cutts was already tangentially involved in helping the US government kill people while at Google.
And those IEDs they have to deal with were placed someplace because the actions of the military are mainly peaceful and only reactionary violent and the reason they are in a place fighting another military group is not caused by past and current interventions of the over-funded military? I totally get that the individuals making up the forces deserve all the safety they can get, but that doesn't change the fact why they are deployed in the first place.
Yes let's shit on the DoD contractor who worked on software that no one in combat directly used that helped them look at historical events because you disagree with congressional decisions.
I don't know what you expect your comment to accomplish here but it's incredibly tone deaf.
Aiding the work of a misguided organization that's primarily used for causing misery in the world, regardless of what tiny piece of the puzzle you've contributed, makes you on some level accountable, if you consider that it's not one's sole option of income. It's not much different from helping violent criminals by hiding them, and most of us would agree you cannot expect immunity if you do that, but somehow we make an exception for the military because of their general proclaimed mission and totally ignore how they're deployed most of the time. In that sense it's good we get more drones, as it reduces the need for on-site forces and makes it clearer what many military tasks actually are.
That said, there are certainly peaceful tasks the military is responsible for, and we can make exception for those, like handling natural disasters, providing logistics for weather research, etc., but let's not kid ourselves, the military didn't grant the invention of the Internet for connecting the world population.
I'm taken aback by this comment. This is such an out of touch extreme. You would probably do well with getting some exposure to the DoD because you're dragging in an absolute ton of issues unrelated to the conversation.
Regardless are you willing to do the same? Just as millions are employed through the various agencies of the DoD through contracting it'sthe same with the large technology companies. Google, Microsoft, Amazon and many others are actively DoD contractors. So they're making money in the exact same way and yet I never hear people telling them to stop or quit .
So are you going to continue using Google, Microsoft and Amazon knowing they actively work on DoD projects and profit off of them?
The difference lies in directly and voluntarily working for such an org vs doing general work they also happen to have a use for. I get your argument, but it's odd that we make an exception for government orgs while we don't for, say, a doctor that willingly aids criminal orgs (for profit) with underground medical services. Who decides which partially violent organization is the one that gets a pass? I certainly cannot, so to me there's no difference in working for the mob or working for the military, when most military conflicts, which are events requiring the help of all kinds of professionals, are caused by irresponsible policies.
If you don't happen to live in a region where the military is the sole employer, and therefore you have the option to not work for them, and you're also concerned by the conflict of their actions vs proclaimed mission, then what justification is there to work for them directly?
What it boils down to, if I were at Red Hat, and I got presented a project to work directly with and for the military, I would kindly decline. But I would still work on Fedora and/or RHEL because those aren't exclusively for the military.
You can work for an arms producer on automatic assault rifles, but then you cannot reasonably expect me to believe you're under the impression that the products you build are purely for hunting and sports. Then there are arms which you can work on that are unlikely to be used by the military and primarily for hunting/sports, and assuming hunting is for controlling wildlife population, it's understandable why it's morally acceptable.
The original thread here was about Matt Cutts and his decision to work for the DoD, not about you.
You offered your work experience as a specific example of how you could work for the DoD without being involved in killing people. I think there's no good way to discuss the validity of that example without being a bit callous, since it involves a) your personal work b) discussions about killing people c) politics, but I think the commenters here handled it appropriately. I certainly think it would have been worse for the discussion for it to go unchallenged.
I disagree. I don't think people realize that the various militaries deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan actively clear IEDs from civilian neighborhoods that hurt and kill civilians. They are not always placed for military attack but many times insurgents attack civilians with them.
The commenters are largely tone deaf in this arena. They never call out any large technology companies for doing the exact same thing. Google and others actively work on the same projects. They are all DoD contractors. HN seems to think anyone involved in the DoD complex is accountable to some degree for military action then completely ignore all of the west coast companies involved in the exact same thing.
Then I'd like to clarify that I'm also objecting quite strongly to all companies contracting to support the US military's ability to wage illegal wars. I do think there's a fair portion of HN that is loudly unhappy about, say, Palantir. I would never work for them, although I'm not as loud about it. I think you're right that I should also never work for Google.
(Also, war is messy. I know that the insurgents also kill civilians, and I'm certainly not supporting them any more than I support the US military. I'm advocating pacifism, and if you want to say "well, pacifism doesn't work because other people want to wage war", sure, that's a debate approximately as old as the idea of pacifism itself.)
It was called the War Department between 1789 and 1949. Ironically, during that time, the US engaged in fewer foreign wars than after adopting the "Defense" misnomer.
It merged the Department of the Navy into the Department of War, because separating the Army and the Navy was inefficient. (And it was briefly called the National Military Establishment.) Let's not buy into these politically-correct renamings; it's still the department of war.
Yeah what do I know anyways? I just work there, I'm sure your google search lends you more clarity as to what they're doing than my day-after-day exposure.
Frankly, you're the one that emphasized the name as if it meant anything; maybe you should have left out that argument and made the case based on your personal experience instead.
There is no argument. What the department is or is not doing is not up for argument. Objective reality doesn't change just because the dept used to have a different name, that's stupid.
I work with dozens of peaceful, bright people, on projects that are responsible for keeping people safe without violence or conflict or any nonsense like that. Many of the people whom I work with wouldn't swat a fly, so I don't really concern myself with the thoughts of people who have no clue what they're talking about, like commenters on HN who google "depart of defense not really about defense???" and then think they've stumped me. Honestly.
Shrugger, I think we are aware that DoD is too big to only have one objective. My aunt, anecdotally, had a long career in cybersecurity with DoD. I still posted the comment about the old name because the DoD engages in expensive and unnecessary wars which use such a significant percentage of DoD's resources. Using the name "Defense" to interpret the department's actions decreases understanding of it.
Objective reality doesn't change just because the dept used to have a different name, that's stupid.
Exactly. Then why did you bring the name up? Nobody was even talking about the name before you posted; seems rather silly to complain about people discussing it now.
I actually think that working someplace gives you less insight as to what the place does, because there's a strong psychological desire to believe that you're doing something good for the world. (I've had this happen to me a couple of times before. My previous employer didn't even do anything evil, just enabled IT departments to do certain things, but I suddenly realized when they collapsed that everyone's better off if IT departments can't do those things.)
As though America is the only meaningful nation advocating for freedom in the world; or that Americans are themselves living lives of liberty, free from the shackles of systemic oppression.
The post and all comments were in the context of America. That does not in any way what so ever imply America is the only meaningful nation advocating freedom. You read what you wanted to read, not what was written.
all those who were liberated in Operation Freedom obviously. All those who now live life of a zen like peace due to Operation Enduring Peace
Reminds me of the clip of the Us Marine pointing a gun in the face of unarmed protesters screaming "GET BACK WE ARE HERE FOR YOUR MOTHERFUCKING FREEDOM"...... yeah right mate, you just keep telling yourself that.
Yeah, all those people with their new-found 'freedom', granted them by the West, are all either floating across the Mediterranean right now, or sitting in camps being protested by the 'truly free people' whose country they are 'invading' ..
That's probably a fascinating study in general, but if you bring it up in the context of one specific agreeable, conscientious person, it's a personal attack, and those are not allowed here.
I generally advise nice, ethical people who want to benefit society to avoid working for morally ambiguous organizations, as it can have a degradating effect on their character. Still, some people find their principles in unexpected places. And for someone who is an expert on fighting abuse, there is an rare opportunity for outstanding service to their country and the principles that made it great by applying such skills to the situation at Guantanamo.
This is a flamewar comment that is bad for HN, that indeed set off a wretched flamewar like clockwork (bomb-timer clockwork). Threads like this are not welcome here, so please don't post such stuff again.
There's also a question of intellectual maturity. Consider that Noam Chomsky has spoken many times about good things that were done with DoD funding, as well as about how no one can rightly condemn others for not being in a pristine moral position because no such position exists (pointing to his own career at MIT as an example). If the deepest and most trenchant critic of American militarism understands this, I think internet commenters who fancy themselves critics of American militarism can be expected to understand it too, at least in this corner of the internet. If you want to condemn others or blare with ideological megaphones, please do so elsewhere.
As terrible as each of those things were, his point largely stands. Most things labeled 'terrorism' are better handled by police/. Obviously the stupidly large mountain of money the US gov spends on 'defense' didn't save people from those. A country's defense budget is really for defending itself from invasion, and our risk of that is low. The last meaningful example anyone can give is pearl harbor - which was 80 years ago in a pre nuclear world.
You don't need to spend more than most of the rest of the planet on the military to defend an area of land that's a tiny proportion of the world's surface. Are you sure you've been paying attention to US foreign policy over the last hundred years?
Note that Matt here claims he's taking a "leave from Google" to join the Defense Digital Service at the Pentagon. This is in addition to the recent announcement three months ago that Eric Schmidt would also be taking on a job at the Pentagon... also while he still works for Google.
Google's partnership with our current administration has me increasingly uncomfortable. Before this year, it was generally limited to former Googlers in DC, or former government employees at Google, but this year, we have two major, very high level Google employees working directly for the Department of Defense.
Completely off topic sidenote: even when completely muted, my MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) makes a sound when hovering over the names in the first chart, and a different (deeper and quieter) sound when hovering over the second one. The sound appears to come from below the F2/F3/2/3 keys. I tried to record it, but its too quiet and there's too much background noise here to hear it on the video.
Anyone have an idea what this would be? I presume it's the CPU/GPU underneath, but I've never heard this before. Does this happen to anyone else?
With my Fall 2011 MBP, it's the wall wart that produces a wide variety of sounds depending on the CPU load.
Desktop motherboards are known for high-frequency sounds in response to varying load - the source are the low-voltage regulators for the different CPU domains.
Schmidt is sitting on an advisory board, not taking a position within DoD. You can ask about the propriety of a corporate executive sitting on a board advising the civilian defense component on new and emerging technologies -- especially since Google until recently was a speculative-tech defense contractor through BosDyn -- but it's not uncommon and certainly nothing unusual to Google.
As for the OP, well, consider me skeptical of the idea that "digital government" can have a significant effect on governance itself. The problems within government agencies lie in a mix of politics, policies, processes and people, with a healthy dose of iron-triangle confusion of interests where applicable. Better digital can improve an agency's operations, but can't address whether those operations are fundamentally misguided.
While they were technically a defense contractor through Boston Dynamics, yes, they claimed they didn't want to be, and would end the relationship as soon as Boston Dynamics fulfilled it's existing obligations at acquisition time.
Which shows some hesitation, apparently, to work with the DoD. Except for all the Googlers working with the DoD.
We've banned this account for violating the HN guidelines. If you don't want it to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com. We're happy to unban people when there's reason to believe that they'll only post civil and substantive comments (and particularly avoid personal attacks) in the future.
A lot of back and forth between Google and the U.S. government lately. Even Eric Schmidt joined the Pentagon. I think if Google would've kept the robot division, it would've inevitably become a defense contractor (even though they promised they wouldn't). Fortunately, it's going to sell it, but there's still time to become that with DeepMind, etc.
