
Microsoft CEO defends US military contract that employees say crosses a line - metaphysics
https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/25/tech/augmented-reality-microsoft-us-military/index.html
======
educationdata
I can never understand those protesters. If they can sabotage military in all
countries, that may be good. But they must know it is impossible. They know
their kind of activism has zero effect on Russian and Chinese military
(imagine Huawei employees sign a letter of this kind, which will never
happen). So they are volunteerily sabotage U.S. military to help the Russians
and Chineses. I'm not sure how they get their head around.

~~~
calhoun137
> I can never understand those protesters

In my opinion, the potential for the technology that microsoft could develop
for the military is just as dangerous if not more so than chlorine gas, which
was used in WW1.

You should watch this video [1]. It is about Einstein and Fritz Haber (who was
the father of chlorine gas). Einstein was horrified at the way Haber was so
casual about mass murdering people.

Speaking for myself: I have never and will never work on any weapon technology
that is meant for killing other people. If I was at MS and someone asked me to
do that I would raise hell like these people and absolutely refuse to do it
and quit.

There is no reason or need for an arms race on super high end weaponization of
AI between the US, Russia, and China. That is super dangerous and crazy talk.
We need peace in this world, not more high tech weapons.

I support the action of the protesters at MS 1000%. Hope that helps you
understand them.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWFe253TYmA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWFe253TYmA)

~~~
bigiain
Sure - but it's not like all the world's militaries aren't already using Excel
and Word and Powerpoint to enable more effective killing of people - what
makes the Hololens game stuff "weaponisation" categorically worse than all of
the other military use of Microsoft products?

(well, maybe not Powerpoint - I suspect it doesn't make the military more
efficient at their objective either...)

~~~
rickycook
specifics: you can use an iron bar to kill someone, but that doesn’t make an
iron bar a weapon.

putting a hololens on a soldier serves only a single purpose: to increase
their “lethality” as the US military puts it

i’m certain that if the contract was for medics, there would be no issue

~~~
bigiain
You can use a knife to spread butter on your toast, you can use a pistol to
compete at target competition, you can use a shotgun to hunt ducks, you can
use an automatic weapon to, ummm, get your jollies at a shooting range or
whatever (that's not my preferred source of entertainment, but if someone else
enjoys doing that safely and it's not hurting other people, why shouldn't
they?). You can use boots to walk in a park, or to walk into battle.

There's a continuum from boots thru iron bars thru to assault rifles. (And, I
guess, thru to Predator drones and nuclear weapons.)

I'm questioning just where the hololens fits on that continuum.

I guess selling them to the army makes them "for killing", but is it really
"for killing" like an automatic weapon (which many people would choose not to
be employed making, and would rightly be upset if their boss sprung that on
them)? Or is it more like selling iron bars to the army (which even if they
don't directly beat whoever we've always been at war with this week to death,
are still obviously going to be used in some small or large part to "increase
their lethality" (or at least enable it, I suppose)).

Would it make sense for an iron factory worker to get upset his boss lands a
deal with the army and sells them iron bars? The feels kinda precious to me.
Sure an end-of-the-bell-curve pacifist could object, but I think most people
would say that's about the pacifist rather than the iron factory boss. Would
that be different if the iron factory boss was already selling sheet iron and
iron filings to the army? I kinda feel it would.

Does it make sense to people who work for the company who makes hololens to
protest their boss selling them to the army, when that company is already
selling other products (Windows, Word, Excel, pretty much every enterprise MS
product) to almost every western military in on the planet? Again, at least to
me, it feels kinda precious. It seems like end-of-the-bell-curve pacifism,
from people who's living has previously been made working from a company who's
_other_ products earn profit from the military, but "my project" is a pure as
the driven snow and now all of a sudden I've got blood on my hands...

~~~
jononor
If I made boots, and the military asked to buy for their soldiers, I would say
no. I understand the basic need for a military, and I understand their need
for boots. I accept that someone else will supply them with boots instead. But
supplying military is not what _I_ want to spend my time and energy on.

------
FreakyT
Honestly, I agree with Nadella here. They built a technology which happens to
be useful to the military (and has many, more numerous, non-military
applications), and the military (understandably) wanted to use it.

Protesting selling Hololens to the military here is like protesting
contributing to Linux because the US DoD uses it. Should we all boycott Linux
because of the lack of an anti-military-use clause in the GPL?

~~~
brandonjm
Is the contract simply "selling Hololens to the military"? My understanding
was that they already had contracts in place to sell them to the military for
training purposes and have done so for many years. I was under the impression
from other articles that the employees are upset over the request for
"targeting ... capabilities" to be embedded into the devices.

Edit: Upon reading their 'letter' it appears they take most issue with the use
of Hololens to 'increase lethality'. I would argue that even the use of
Hololens for training purposes (as they have done so in the past) would
increase lethality anyway (as training of any kind might) and they apparently
had no issue with it before. Even then, the military doesn't _need_ Microsoft
to do it, they could pay any of their contractors to implement it.

~~~
rickycook
yup exactly: if it was for medics, there would be no problem

------
whb07
Little do the protesters know that the actual tools of war are PowerPoint and
Word.

No mission is launched without first planning and revising using those tools.

------
cletus
It's interesting that some on this thread have raised the problem that
protesting military technology hampers you compared to your potential
adversaries. This is a topic covered in-depth in Dan Carlin's Hardcore History
episode "Destroyer of Worlds" [1], which talked about the development of
nuclear weapons after WWII.

One point of contention was the morality of developing the hydrogen bomb and
people will ask the question "what if our enemies have it and we don't?"

On the other hand, anyone having a particular capability greatly increases the
chances that everyone will have it. The US thought the Soviets would take 20
years to develop the atomic bomb. It took 4 years thanks in no small part to
espionage efforts by the USSR. Part of the reason why this worked is people
who didn't want a world where only the US had nuclear weapons. It would be too
dangerous.

So for any military tech that US companies develop consider how likely that is
to stay in their hands and not be stolen by China.

On a personal level I support employees holding their employers accountable.
If you think you're absolved of moral responsibility for what the company does
let me ask you this: why then aren't the lawyers who work for patent trolls or
the price gouging executives at Big Pharma or those who worked for Big
Tobacco?

[1] [https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-59-the-
destroyer-...](https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-59-the-destroyer-of-
worlds/)

~~~
lamarpye
>It took 4 years thanks in no small part to espionage efforts by the USSR.
Part of the reason why this worked is people who didn't want a world where
only the US had nuclear weapons. It would be too dangerous.

I believe the technical term for these kinds of people is "useful idiots". How
exactly was the world made a safer place by Joseph Stalin having a nuclear
bomb?

Try this thought experiment, at the end of WWII the Soviets have the bomb and
the United States does not. Does Russia wait 20 years for the US to develop
the bomb? Or do they attack as soon as the are able?

Which part of Stalin's morality guides his decision?

~~~
dingaling
> How exactly was the world made a safer place by Joseph Stalin having a
> nuclear bomb?

Consider that General McArthur was advocating nuclear strikes into China in
order to change the course of the Korean War. Would that have been vetoed at
Presidential level if only the USA had nukes?

And what would the USSR have done in 1962 in response to US nuclear Jupiter
missiles being deployed in Turkey and Italy? Instead of countering with
missiles on Cuba they'd probably have been provoked to attack.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
If the US only had nukes in the Korean War, they might not have needed to use
them. China would probably have backed off at a stern warning. Something like
"That big troop concentration heading for the border? In 12 hours, they better
be further away, or they all die."

And in 1962, if the US has nukes and Russia doesn't, that's going to provoke
Russia to launch an attack? "These people have weapons way bigger than we do,
so let's attack them?" No. That's insane. Khrushchev wasn't insane.

------
wpasc
I'm sorry, but why is no one commenting on the fact that 100 employees signed?
A quick search shows that Microsoft has 134k employees (not sure if that
includes contractors). but less than .1% of employees signed. All these media
headlines say "employees" like its a significant fraction, but its 100
employees according to the article. To me it seems like media grabbing at a
headline that would generate clicks.

------
throw541324
Social Credit Kill List [1]

> In 2014, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden said in a public debate,
> “We kill people based on metadata.”

> According to multiple reports and leaks, death-by-metadata could be
> triggered, without even knowing the target’s name, if too many derogatory
> checks appear on their profile. “Armed military aged males” exhibiting
> suspicious behavior in the wrong place can become targets, as can someone
> “seen to be giving out orders.” Such mathematics-based assassinations have
> come to be known as “signature strikes.”

1\. [https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-
features/how-...](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/how-
to-survive-americas-kill-list-699334/)

------
RestlessMind
"We made a principled decision that we're not going to withhold technology
from institutions that we have elected in democracies to protect the freedoms
we enjoy..."

Wow! This is really a nice way to present his argument, which captures how I
feel about this issue.

------
Balgair
Though there are important issues with protesting, right to work, and ethics
that are being brought up, the technology is not all that new. The DoD has had
_similar_ capabilities to the Hololens for nearly 15 years at this point,
almost 80 if you think of HUDs as a general idea.

The BraveMind [0][1] project has been around sine ~2005 and has been shown to
help with PTSD. USC's work with the DoD has even been shown on PBS's
_Frontline_ [2].

HUDs themselves, arguably a primitive form of AR tech like the Hololens, have
been around since the early bomber sights of WW2[3]. I'm sure we all remember
_Top Gun_ 's use of HUDs.

Honestly, from a tech perspective, the Hololens is only innovative due to it's
size, weight, and customer support. The DoD generally proclaims preference for
Off-The-Shelf parts and equipment due to many factors. The Hololens is just an
iteration of an idea and procurement process that has long been in use.

[0][http://ict.usc.edu/prototypes/pts/](http://ict.usc.edu/prototypes/pts/)

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVmxmDFCMlQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVmxmDFCMlQ)

[2][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRL0TzrNtVc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRL0TzrNtVc)

[3][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-
up_display](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head-up_display)

------
staticautomatic
Either you're in the war business or you aren't. It's a genuine choice.

------
babesh
Hololens found its killer app.

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jonny_eh
Did they protest Flight Simulator?

~~~
noddingham
Or Office?

~~~
lamarpye
What about Bob?

------
a-dub
if this whole "we're cool now!" pr schtick is gonna work, i think they need to
back it off a bit.

it's a little bit much....

can't they come up with a new and fresh identity to try and attract employees
and developers rather than s/goog/us/? it seems a little... obvious? (and
perhaps counterproductive?)

