Microsoft Workers Protest $480M Army Contract with Tech "Designed to Help People Kill"

I suspect that tech companies may soon have a new form for new hires to sign. <snip> etc..
I anticipate corporate working agreements to gradually become like current EULAs; 500 pages long, you have 2 minutes to read it, check and initial that you agree, and sign if you want the job.

As employment opportunities continue to dry up, corporations will have more and more demands on their employees.
 
This is just continued stupidity. If people want to protest, they should protest the military actions and wars, not the technology. The technology is there to help keep our soldiers safe.

My sister is an Air force servicewoman with multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, she would often question the purpose of these deployments as well.

Perhaps you're right and it is as simple as viewing other countries with juxtaposed interests to ours as enemies and call it a day.

Would you rather your sister was dead because she didn't have all the tools available? That is what this technology is about, not political agendas.

Nah this over simplistic Oh-rah! BS.

Just look at how the wars in Afganistan, Syria, Iraq, or Vietnam have been handled.

Its only reasonable to be cynical when you look at how the US has done militarily for decades.

So it is better to not be more prepared and let our soldiers die because of it?

This isn't the morale dilemma people are making it out to be. This is being done in other armies, it is about giving our armies the tools to compete and hopefully stay ahead of other armies. Why make soldiers pay for the orders they must carry out?
 
You would think the company would give them the choice, either work on it and make a living doing a job or be unemployed and replaced by someone eager to do your job. Plenty of projects I have worked on that I didnt like but I did my job as that is what they pay me to do. Also every country works to try to improve the odds of their soldiers surviving, not sure why they think ours should make do with less.
 
Um, they are not just going to kill random innocent people but bad people like terrorists. Typical Seattle liberal mindset.
 
They did act, they petitioned the CEO to cancel the contract.

Na, that's just whining and crying on a group scale.

Look, these people are stupid, really. OK, ignorant, not stupid.

They are ignorant of the realities of war. There was a time when we indiscriminately bombed entire cities in order to convince governments to end hostilities. This didn't start with WW2 nor did it end with Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Berlin and London were bombed heavily. Tokyo was firebombed and so were several other industrial Japanese cities, fire bombed because the homes were extensively constructed of wood and even paper, there was a point to that and the citizenry was the target not just the military and industry of the country. Paris was shelled in WW1 with immense artillery pieces that fired 8" (240lb) naval artillery shells over 80 miles and were only accurate enough to target a city, "we'll hit Paris somewhere". In the American Civil War, Charleston, SC. was bombarded for over 500 days and photos of that devastation are not hard to find.

Anything that a software developer can do to increase the accuracy and effectiveness of weapons of war work toward saving lives, not killing more people. The more effective a military is at targeting in specifically killing only those that must be killed, saves lives and works toward ending hostilities quicker reducing the suffering and damage that innocents must endure.

Someone slap these people and wake them up. Nothing they do is going to end wars, but they can do something to help some people live through them.
 
Pacifism is nice, until the bad guy has a gun to your head. Then what are you going to do? Beg for your life? That ain't going to work.

The only thing that will prevent that scenario from playing out is if good men go up against evil. And there is a hell of a lot of evil in this world!

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” ― Edmund Burke.
 
When I used to work in defense people would ask me what I did and I would just tell them, "I made things that killed people as efficiently as possible and blew shit up."

They couldn't comprehend that.
 
Pacifism is nice, until the bad guy has a gun to your head. Then what are you going to do? Beg for your life? That ain't going to work.

The only thing that will prevent that scenario from playing out is if good men go up against evil. And there is a hell of a lot of evil in this world!

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” ― Edmund Burke.

If only the world was this naively simplistic. The problem with the idea of "bad guys" is we built a multi trillion dollar industry around them. And whenever that industry has run out of actual bad guys, it's found it necessary to its survival and reason for being to invent them. Lion's gotta eat.
 
If only the world was this naively simplistic. The problem with the idea of "bad guys" is we built a multi trillion dollar industry around them. And whenever that industry has run out of actual bad guys, it's found it necessary to its survival and reason for being to invent them. Lion's gotta eat.

You critique what you believe is a naively simplistic world view and replace it with your own desire to not have "multi trillion dollar industry around them" so you can feel better about the world in a naively simplistic way. No one ever asks, "Hey, how did it get like this for so long?" and "what is the alternative to a realistic national defense?"
 
If only the world was this naively simplistic. The problem with the idea of "bad guys" is we built a multi trillion dollar industry around them. And whenever that industry has run out of actual bad guys, it's found it necessary to its survival and reason for being to invent them. Lion's gotta eat.
The only reason why you can sit there and type that message is because a soldier killed a bad guy and more than likely gave their life for you. Remember... Freedom isn't free, freedom is bought with the blood and tears of soldiers.
 
Last edited:
They can f off. If they feel so strongly about it, they should quit. Also funny how it is only a couple hundred signatures out of the over 100,000 employees that Microsoft has. I'm wondering if the signatures they have are from some random people who have nothing to do with the project or from people who will be working on the project.
 
How many have we killed in return? Are we the bad guys to those impacted by our predator missiles?

Who are "those impacted by our predator missiles"?

Who is it that you are referring too?

I'll cut to the chase here. If you are an enemy of my country or an enemy of our allies, and you are in a fight with us, and you run around doing shit and then go home to your wife and kids while the fight is still on. It's you that brought innocent people into it. It's that person's fault that they put a target on their back and then went home to snuggle up to mom-ma and have a nice meal and tuck your kids into bed.

FFS, would you go home to mom and the kids if you knew you had small pox?

If our enemies try and hide among innocent people or use them as shields, it's on them. They are the ones who value innocent lives so little that they would use them in this way. If you think that this isn't what they are doing then you are really naive. They do this because people like you would rather blame your own then put that blame where it belongs.

You need to understand this, you are representative of their success story. The fact that you are willing to buy into this concept, to be swayed by their actions, that is what makes them do it. You are the success story, you are the motivation to hide among the innocent and sometimes get them killed. It's all so that someone like you will put that shit on the military instead of on the people who chose to involve them.

I'm sorry to lay this on you like this, but you need to wear your part in it. If nobody reacted the way you did, then they would have no motivation to do it.

Every time you say something like this, you encourage it.

All the more sorry to say it, because I do recognize that it's the last thing in the world that you would want to hear. I know you won't want to believe it. I feel like saying more, but I'm going to stop here for now.
 
Who are "those impacted by our predator missiles"?

Who is it that you are referring too?

I'll cut to the chase here. If you are an enemy of my country or an enemy of our allies, and you are in a fight with us, and you run around doing shit and then go home to your wife and kids while the fight is still on. It's you that brought innocent people into it. It's that person's fault that they put a target on their back and then went home to snuggle up to mom-ma and have a nice meal and tuck your kids into bed.

FFS, would you go home to mom and the kids if you knew you had small pox?

If our enemies try and hide among innocent people or use them as shields, it's on them. They are the ones who value innocent lives so little that they would use them in this way. If you think that this isn't what they are doing then you are really naive. They do this because people like you would rather blame your own then put that blame where it belongs.

You need to understand this, you are representative of their success story. The fact that you are willing to buy into this concept, to be swayed by their actions, that is what makes them do it. You are the success story, you are the motivation to hide among the innocent and sometimes get them killed. It's all so that someone like you will put that shit on the military instead of on the people who chose to involve them.

I'm sorry to lay this on you like this, but you need to wear your part in it. If nobody reacted the way you did, then they would have no motivation to do it.

Every time you say something like this, you encourage it.

All the more sorry to say it, because I do recognize that it's the last thing in the world that you would want to hear. I know you won't want to believe it. I feel like saying more, but I'm going to stop here for now.

I appreciate and value your perspective and thank you for sharing.

The best that I can do as a person is to operate in a gray area of half-truths and come to my own conclusion based on the information I've gathered to date. I'm sure if i did more digging, I would come to a more evolved conclusion such as yours.

I have immense distrust for our government, it's truthfulness and it's allocation of OUR resources. It's from this basis which I operate. My primary belief is that MONEY and human greed account for more of our problems and a majority of our wars. I do not believe the military is an altruistic endeavor instead perhaps it is used as leverage to sway others into unfair positions or to protect corporate interests.

Sure, on one hand I can say, America protecting oil fields in IRAQ for private corporations is in the benefit of national interest yet I remain conflicted...

Thanks for your perspective.
 
I appreciate and value your perspective and thank you for sharing.

The best that I can do as a person is to operate in a gray area of half-truths and come to my own conclusion based on the information I've gathered to date. I'm sure if i did more digging, I would come to a more evolved conclusion such as yours.

I have immense distrust for our government, it's truthfulness and it's allocation of OUR resources. It's from this basis which I operate. My primary belief is that MONEY and human greed account for more of our problems and a majority of our wars. I do not believe the military is an altruistic endeavor instead perhaps it is used as leverage to sway others into unfair positions or to protect corporate interests.

Sure, on one hand I can say, America protecting oil fields in IRAQ for private corporations is in the benefit of national interest yet I remain conflicted...

Thanks for your perspective.


I truly appreciate both your candor, and your position.

I also can not fault many of the conclusions that you have drawn from your own experience.

Our government is just a collection of people, and as such, it is only as good or evil as those who are it's members. In my own view, all the more reason to keep it as small as we can, while still being capable of performing what it must. I find it unfortunate that over the many decades, (more than a couple centuries worth), that it has grown and become entwined in so much of our lives.

The USA is a capitalist country, and it is in competition with other countries throughout the world for resources and power. That competition means that there will be winners and losers, it's the way of the world. Humans are just a more evolved form of animal. We will even eat each other when motivated. Some may see the competition as unfair, I think that's a naive viewpoint, that fairness has little to do with it. I do know that it is not simply that small countries are eaten by larger ones. There are many smaller countries which compete very well in the world when it comes to providing a decent life for their citizens. Others not so much. There are some larger countries which seem competitive, and yet don't actually provide a better life for their people.

I don't fully understand what you mean about the military. The military is a diplomatic tool and it is used when other forms of diplomacy either fail, or are unsuited to the problem at hand. As for those who "command" it's use, again, I refer to my earlier comments on what a government is.

I think that we actually have a lot more in common on such issues than what we may disagree on.

But I would pose some questions surrounding the Iraqi oil comment; call it playing Devils Advocate.

If the USA were a communist country, and our corporations were State Owned, would the motivations for protecting those oil fields have been any different?
If the USA were helping what little of the Iraqi Government there was at the time, by protecting that nation's resource and commerce infrastructure, so that Iraq could return to a stable economic position, would it have looked any different?
Was America alone in the Invasion and prosecution of the war? And if not, where the other countries who helped with it pawns or were the strong-armed into joining us? Or did those countries come along freely and because they chose to do so on their own?
 
Being a post Vietnam war engineering graduate this has been something important to me long before it became something anyone cared about. I wrote a long dissertation about the choices science and technology experts face. I can't control what people do with things I have worked on. Who decides when something is good or bad. I have not been in anything officially connected with military for most of my career. That doesn't mean what I have worked on isn't being used for evil.
 
Cinnamon farmers in Indonesia have drafted a letter to their President asking the government to ban sales of cinnamon to the United States because Americans are abusing the spice with their immoral Youtube Cannimon Challenge rage.

More at 7:00
 
Pacifists are among the most revolting people on the planet. And vegans (often one and the same).
 
  • Like
Reactions: B770
like this
bottom line do your fking job or quit. easy none of the politics matter , just do your job. start all the petitions ya want on your time, but when you are at work just do your job. i often dont like what my boss wants me to do, but i just shut up and do my job as i like living in a house more than a ditch.
 
One of the things to remember with these tech companies is many employees are heavily invested and do feel a sense of ownership. Sense of ownership is also something the company may encourage. Frequently they are quite well off and don't need the job. Not trying to justify anything, but understanding the other person can go a long way.
 
Back
Top