
Microsoft Staff: Do Not Use HoloLens for War - sambeau
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47339774
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taspeotis
Previous discussion [1].

    
    
        Microsoft Workers Demand It Drop $450M U.S. Army Contract (reuters.com)
        202 points by petethomas 13 hours ago | cached | flag | hide | past | web | favorite | 260 comments
    

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19229773](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19229773)

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bayesian_horse
Where exactly is the limit?

Windows, Microsoft Office and other Software is used "for war" all the time,
and not just by the US.

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imglorp
I think that's a false dichotomy. Office software is general purpose, and
maybe the military buys it like everyone else. AR gear for soldiers is not
general purpose.

Similarly, criminals and non-criminals alike use public roads and internet,
but only one of those groups would have need of a weapon with a ground-off
serial number, for example.

So is the point the buyer, or the purpose?

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jplayer01
Microsoft is a defense contractor. They've been working closely with the
military since the 90s. I'm not sure when people decided to suddenly ignore or
forget this.

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alistairSH
Does it matter when? If the employees decide they don't want to develop for
the military, that's their prerogative. They can try to change their current
employer's practices, or they can leave.

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egao1980
It will be used for porn and military purposes. It's extremely naive to assume
the opposite.

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seba_dos1
What's more, it's extremely naive to work in big tech like Microsoft or Google
and not expect your work to be used by military some day.

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cbg0
You say that as if there's a huge history of these companies' tech being used
to enhance warfare.

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Sendotsh
Militaries around the world already use the Xbox 360 controller extensively.
As well as Surfaces, and of course the obvious like Windows, Excel, Word, etc.

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cmroanirgo
And before that, different versions of windows. I recall going for an
interview with some sonar guys looking at using Direct3D back in the late 90s.

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alkonaut
Refreshing to see employees of a megacorp speak up against company decisions.
I wish we could see more of the same from Facebook. Unfortunately a huge
paycheck seems to do weird things to your ethical compass. It’s not enough
that those that disagree simply quit.

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austincheney
What is the ethical consideration here? Augmented reality headsets aren't
weapons.

I find it unrefreshing to see employees warping something benign to achieve
personal attention. This is a fight in search of a subject.

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alkonaut
> Augmented reality headsets aren't weapons.

Who you sell to can always be an ethical consideration, even if the product
isn't "unethical" in itself.

> to achieve personal attention.

What makes you think these people would want "personal attention"? Isn't the
attention here mostly a _risk_?

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austincheney
Who they are selling to is an ethical entity, their own government, so this
point doesn’t make any sense.

I am thinking this matter is about personal attention because the complaint is
absurd. It simply isn’t rational.

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laythea
This sounds like a publicity stunt.

No group of educated people can seriously think this would have any effect...

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vitro
Do something is better than do nothing.

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apple4ever
Not necessarily. Doing something can be worse than doing nothing.

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mjfl
let's add some critical thinking: why not use it for war? Would it be better
for the world if the US military was less well equipped relative to Al-Qaeda,
Russia? I sure don't think so. I think it's best that any fight our military
gets into is as asymmetric as possible, and in general the more asymmetry, the
less people will die.

I'd further like to emphasize that the idea that the inequality in strength
between our military and various 3rd world warlords is a form of injustice is
absurd and childlike and anyone who thinks this way deserves to have their
opinions discounted like children.

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GeneralTspoon
Interesting thought experiment: if you think of the military as a business -
then you’re basically advocating for the US to have a monopoly on military
power.

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simonh
3rd world warlords aren't the only other militaries in the world.

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cbg0
They can always package up anything used for military purposes and move it to
a different branch or subsidiary to create a large enough disconnect that will
keep most employees satisfied.

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bayesian_horse
Not really, because they need to keep HoloLens inside the company. They could
create a subsidiary which buys HoloLenses and sells them to the government,
but that would still mean that Microsoft is taking a contract to sell the
units.

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cbg0
> Not really, because they need to keep HoloLens inside the company.

HoloLens maybe, but the hypothetical repackaged FreedomLens could simply be
based off of it.

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dlahoda
I hope they will use SignalR and Orleans as backend for battle operations so I
can market my skills as battle tested.

[https://github.com/dotnet/orleans](https://github.com/dotnet/orleans)

[https://github.com/aspnet/AspNetCore/tree/master/src/SignalR](https://github.com/aspnet/AspNetCore/tree/master/src/SignalR)

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jrs95
If they really want to have any control over what Microsoft does with their
technology they should unionize. Same goes for any other large tech company.

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AllegedAlec
They are completely free to quit if they don't like what they're building is
used to help their soldiers defend their own country.

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mjburgess
The only attack on american soil I can recall is Pearl Habor...

Almost invariably, to provide the american military with hardware is to arm an
offensive force.

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wrkronmiller
As has been pointed out repeatedly in other comments, we live in a post-
nuclear era where military strength is, itself, the defense. In this
particular case, it's less relevant, but since we are generalizing I'm
pointing it out.

As for improving military training and tactical hardware, yes it will most
likely be used for offensive purposes. The absence of the technology wouldn't
stop those offensives though; the absence would just result in less-well-
trained less-well-equipped troops in the same situation. As has been pointed
out elsewhere, bad training and lack of information is likely to lead to more
deaths.

While I think it's wonderful employees of major tech companies are trying to
drive more ethical choices, this was an odd choice for a line in the sand.

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freeflight
> we live in a post-nuclear era

That's a bold statement to make, particularly in the context of the US pulling
out of INF and JCPA (Iran deal), especially when accounting for the reality
that nuclear weapons "modernization" is still steadily going on [0]. That's
not something you'd expect to see in the "post-nuclear era".

Particularly not with a US president who clearly does not understand nuclear
weapons and would just love to sell and use them.

[0] [https://thebulletin.org/2017/03/how-us-nuclear-force-
moderni...](https://thebulletin.org/2017/03/how-us-nuclear-force-
modernization-is-undermining-strategic-stability-the-burst-height-
compensating-super-fuze/)

~~~
wrkronmiller
Post-nuclear as in: following the invention and use of nuclear weapons.

