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.)