I respect the choices of tech sector workers who choose to protest against certain company policies and even refuse to perform certain types of work that enhance mass personalised surveillance and the enhancement of military lethality.
It’s a different world from 30 and 70 years ago.
70 years ago nearly all R&D spent was specifically military in nature. So it was pretty clear from the point of hire that you were(or weren’t working on military or related(surveillance) projects.
30 years ago military and commercial R&D hit parity and it was still quite easy to known going into an employment contract what side of the fence one was on.
Today, almost all R&D is commercial in nature, but with vast duel use military/surveillance potential.
So it’s much more convoluted and nebulous to delineate project output, perhaps a major contributing factor to recent decisions and actions.
Combined with the long standing low supply, high demand for talent enhancing leverage.
I agree that tech talent conscience is critical.
I only hope we see the same from Chinese software engineers working at Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei, etc.
I wonder if the future will see a convoluted analog to the Manhattan Project, the Rosenbergs, and apex talent migration out of 1930’s fascist countries.
It’s a different world from 30 and 70 years ago.
70 years ago nearly all R&D spent was specifically military in nature. So it was pretty clear from the point of hire that you were(or weren’t working on military or related(surveillance) projects.
30 years ago military and commercial R&D hit parity and it was still quite easy to known going into an employment contract what side of the fence one was on.
Today, almost all R&D is commercial in nature, but with vast duel use military/surveillance potential.
So it’s much more convoluted and nebulous to delineate project output, perhaps a major contributing factor to recent decisions and actions.
Combined with the long standing low supply, high demand for talent enhancing leverage.
I agree that tech talent conscience is critical.
I only hope we see the same from Chinese software engineers working at Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, Huawei, etc.
I wonder if the future will see a convoluted analog to the Manhattan Project, the Rosenbergs, and apex talent migration out of 1930’s fascist countries.