
Microsoft Workers Demand It Drop $450M U.S. Army Contract - petethomas
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-army/microsoft-workers-demand-it-drop-450-million-u-s-army-contract-idUSKCN1QB2LV
======
DanAndersen
Far be it from me to fall into the "everything I don't like is a
Russian/Chinese covert action" conspiracy theorizing that is increasingly
common these days -- but if I were an adversarial state actor, I would
definitely look into ways of encouraging these sorts of anti-US-military
"employee rebellions" in the tech industry. Geopolitics never rests, and an
important asset of any nation is its tech industry, both during wartime itself
and also in any long-term leadup to conflict. I wonder if the US government
has internally analyzed the question of whether, in an increasingly globalized
and politically agitating environment, its companies can be counted on to be
supportive and/or loyal in the event of conflict.

~~~
throwaway_9168
As someone who neither resides in the US (or its supposedly adversary
countries), nor works at BigTech, I don't think I have any bias here except I
hope humanity doesn't end up obliterating itself with nukes.

But your comment is, at best, a fraction of the full picture.

1 No country has ever been as ready to "spread democracy via force" as the US

2 No country has borrowed as much money to run its spendthrift military budget
to carry out #1. You combine #1 and #2, and the money lenders are wondering,
"Wait, WTF are you doing with all my money?"

3 No country has a tech sector with tentacles that spread as far. That's all
fine (for the other countries) if you happen to be, say, neutral and generally
non-aggressive Switzerland, but not so if you are a bonafide empire and keep
trying to continue being an empire.

4 No country has so many immigrants working in their tech sector. Some of
these immigrants are probably wondering "Wait, so I am developing weapons so
people I don't know are going to bomb and kill people I actually know?"

5 Last, and certainly not least, "The first casualty of war is truth". A nerd
is a nerd because he/she probably knows this very deep in their psyche
somewhere. So this nerd ends up in a massive state of cognitive dissonance
when asked to develop weapons of war. Its like telling them "Yeah, we won't
actually tell you what we might use it for. And you have to just believe any
spin we put on the whole issue. Not to mention, we might end up attacking your
kith and kin. But its all OK, because WE are the country of DEMOCRACY and
FREEDOM".

>> its companies can be counted on to be supportive and/or loyal in the event
of conflict.

That's probably a smaller question, as seen by a neutral. A bigger question at
this point is, can the USA, which managed to elect Donald Trump, by counted on
to be a stable and reliable superpower or should all the other countries
already start taking an "every country for itself approach", which is what I
think is happening?

~~~
novaleaf
no offense, but it doesn't sound like your opinion is very neutral.

I would agree that the USA has it's faults, but unfortunately so do the other
superpowers, and just about every other country out there (except those
nordics maybe?)

Not that saying "everyone has problems" is meant to dismiss your arguments,
rather you should consider if at least some of your list are actually problems
of the USA or symptoms of global inequality, or even perhaps beneficial
aspects of the USA.

Specific rebuttals:

#1: yes, but that ended in the 80's. Iraq or after isn't about democracy. The
causes of USA's direct military intervention is complicated. Simplifying to
"spread of democracy" _is_ just about the definition of biased, though I agree
the interventions are mostly not justified.

#2: yes but the USA is the police for it's allies neighborhoods, for various,
complicated, reasons. Projection of power isn't cheap, and it's not just to
burn money.

#3: USA's culture and economic impact are global, and it's spread is organic.
I would personally call this net benefit, so curious why you feel it's
nefarious.

#4: Why focus on immigrants/usa? This is story of anybody working for any big
company anywhere?

#5: it seems like you have a lot of strong feelings going on here....

~~~
anticodon
English is not my first language and maybe I misunderstood you. But #3 is net
positive only for USA. Of course, if you live in USA and watch and read only
us media, it's self assuring to believe "we do it for greater good". But it's
not.

~~~
novaleaf
I think you could argue that cultural domination is bad. I was mostly thinking
of technological and scientific improvements that came out of the USA: from
nuclear to gps to smartphones.

------
jplayer01
Meanwhile, China and Russia don't give a crap. It's nice to dream of a utopia
where weapons of death and destruction aren't necessary, but we don't live in
that world. We, the West, have real enemies with real weapons and plenty of
money going into R&D and military spending and qualms about killing people if
necessary isn't stopping them.

~~~
nickpinkston
Yea, this is what people on the Left (which I am myself) turn a blind eye.
Sure, the US has done plenty of awful shit with our military, but would you
prefer the West to not be the dominant block in the world?

That's going to end liberalism way faster. The military / real politik foreign
affairs are dirty parts of life that we'd prefer not to have, but we live in a
world where we must have them.

~~~
YJR
I'd prefer to not having a dominant block at all .

~~~
nickpinkston
Remember that multi-polar worlds tend to have far more wars. Even the bi-polar
Cold War was highly dangerous. Having a good single block is preferable.

~~~
vasac
Yeah, right. Almost no wars in the last 30 years.

Except for a few never-ending wars that last so long that are basically a new
normal so we can count them off.

~~~
nickpinkston
I'm not denying there aren't still huge conflicts with high loss of life,
however defined, but I'm glad we don't have many true state on state open wars
like the past few millennia where large percentages of the population were
killed.

------
austincheney
This conversation is pretty uninformed.

* MS has had various contracts with the military for decades. The baseline of nearly all end user software in the military is composed of MS products like many other businesses.

* Augmented reality headsets are not weapons anymore than rucksacks or combat boots.

* The military has some cool training aids, such as converted SNES systems that help teach marksmanship on simulated in door ranges. That is by no means unethical.

This really just sounds like activists searching for something to fight about.

~~~
daxfohl
It goes beyond even that. This tech would likely help _save_ lives more than
end them.

I used to work for a company that specialized in lightweight life support
devices. Their major customers were mostly military. But their uses were
mostly non-combat: natural disaster response, goodwill, etc.

Of course not everyone in the military is an expert in medical care, so having
something like a hololens and the ability for doctors and trained technicians
to guide the situation remotely would literally be a life saving option.

~~~
drak0n1c
Imagine if American engineers had boycotted weapons development when they saw
the effects of napalm in WW2/Vietnam and that's where progress stopped.

Governments would still throw napalm and bodies at problems. Many more people
would be dead and conflicts would have escalated even further. Overall,
refinements in sensors, targeting, and munitions have saved lives.

~~~
austincheney
It think its completely short to blame or qualify ethical distinctions purely
upon technology or innovation decisions. Whether those technologies are
present or not it still doesn't immediately address more immediate ethical
considerations. To solve for that you need formal policies, regulations, or
laws in place to govern use, impose oversight, and provide review.

I recommend the movie Good Kill as a solid fictional example. The topic in the
movie is morally ambiguous and that doesn't change through the movie. It
starts out completely ethical, but the ethics go away once the governing
processes are removed and consequences follow.

------
ocdtrekkie
I think there's a _huge_ difference between technology used to train our
troops and technology used to create automated killer drones. Which is to say,
I see no reason for Microsoft to hesitate on this contract, but absolutely
pushed for Project Maven to be dropped by Google.

If we want our military's actions to be humane, we need to keep real people
somewhere out on the front lines, and we need them to be well trained to
defend themselves in the event of a real threat, rather than reacting
inappropriately to a false one.

~~~
rhema
I've talked to some DARPA people. The fact that employees will openly revolt
for ethics in groups is something everyone has to consider now. The Project
Maven thing produced a chilling effect for how they write grants. They feel
the pushback and have to think about ethics a little harder.

~~~
crowdpleaser
Why don't they just engage friendlier / smaller companies?

I think there's a coordination issue here. Tech can be intolerant of views
that don't align with progressive orthodoxy (doubly so in tech hubs), the DOD
needs tech workers who are more aligned with their mission than the
progressive techie detractors. Why don't some badthinkers band together and
get a DOD contract? I imagine it's because the DOD isn't going to give a new
shop it's first chance but has anyone looked into this?

~~~
vturner
Let's just say getting DoD contracts isn't a simple process of showing you
have a good idea and tech skills. There is a lot of who knows who, and is not
entirely bad I think. We are building our security here, we need to be
confident people can do what they say they will do.

------
clouddrover
Why is this particular contract a redline? The US military uses Microsoft
Windows on their weapon systems platforms and Microsoft Office for their
office admin. Microsoft is already a provider for the military's
infrastructure and will be for the foreseeable future.

~~~
pmichaud
I think there's social and legal precedent the differentiates between a
generally useful tool that can be used in the commission of violence (eg.
cars), and a tool specifically meant for the commission of violence (eg.
guns).

~~~
pnw_hazor
You have it backwards. Computers, software engineering, networking,
cryptography, wireless digital comms, and so on, were made for war. It so
happens they turned out to have some good peacetime applications too.

~~~
dba7dba
Computer, internet, CPU, and pretty much a lot of modern tech was
created/refined out of funding by and for armed forces.

I find this news to be incredibly ironic.

And I disagree with the demands, just in my personal opinion.

We have real, powerful enemies that would love to dethrone US as the dominant
nation. Those who demand this restriction for working on military contracts
have to seriously consider this.

~~~
SllX
After looking at what happened with Google, never even mind this, I think we
need to seriously consider having the military taking the Apple approach to
systems: own the whole damn widget, or system.

If private sector workers can regularly get their private sector companies to
pull out of US military contracts, we have a problem.

------
hugh4life
I personally find the idea that augmented reality headsets are "weapons" to be
extremely stupid. Augmented reality doesn't really have much of a market yet
and cutting yourself off from the US military also seems really stupid. The
entire origins of computing and the internet was about facilitating the US
military.

~~~
Voloskaya
So we have to do whatever the army wants based on the principle that we owe
them for inventing computers?

~~~
GavinMcG
You're jumping at the least charitable interpretation of that comment. I'd
suggest practicing the opposite: if someone seems to be saying something
obviously extreme, stupid, etc... consider that your interpretation is what's
wrong.

~~~
ourmandave
I'm going to try that with Trump's twitter feed.

~~~
djakjxnanjak
That’s not a bad idea. I’ve found that this approach to the world (trying to
think of reasons why something makes sense, instead of reasons it doesn’t)
makes everything easier to understand and makes life more satisfying. And if
you do come to the conclusion that someone is wrong and needs to be opposed,
you’ll do a better job at it.

------
merlincorey
On a side note, something in the javascript loaded after the page crashes my
browser.

Regarding the article itself:

Employees posted a thing to twitter. Microsoft is currently not planning to
stop working on this contract.

Quote from the article:

Microsoft and the U.S. Army did not immediately respond to requests to
comment. Company President Brad Smith said in an October blog post it remained
committed to assisting the military.

“We’ll engage not only actively but proactively across the U.S. government to
advocate for policies and laws that will ensure that AI and other new
technologies are used responsibly and ethically,” Smith wrote.

------
tomohawk
"we demand a say in how our work is used"

Then go live in some other country instead of freeloading on the protections
afforded by this one.

~~~
archagon
If you don’t like peaceful democratic protest, it sounds to me like _you’re_
the one living in the wrong country.

------
rdiddly
Certain lines of thinking kick in on the "second one." Sometimes the "second
one" reflects a heightened degree of intent/planning. If you see one person
dancing, it's just one person dancing, but if a 2nd person is dancing the
exact same way, it must be a planned performance. One plane crashes into a
building, it's an accident; 2nd plane crashes, it's no accident. And so on.

Hang on, I'm gettin' there.

Other times the "second one" makes it occur to you to extrapolate all the way
to the end. Your friend eats one of your doughnuts - "Enjoy." She eats a 2nd
one, "Hey don't eat them _all!_ " This is more like that. When one big tech
company's employees say no to a military contract, it's like "The military
will go somewhere else." But when the second one does it, then it occurs to me
to ask, could it ever happen that everybody would refuse? Could the Pentagon
ever run out of competent tech people before they ran out of people refusing?
I don't think it's likely, but still it's interesting to imagine. Far from
leading to world peace I suppose it would just mean that those projects were
still done, but incompetently. Dunno how I feel about that. War sucks, but
waging it competently is better than e.g. blowing up your buddy by accident.

------
ahelwer
Since a link to the actual tweet posted by the Microsoft workers is somewhat
conspicuously absent from the article, here it is:
[https://twitter.com/MsWorkers4/status/1099066343523930112](https://twitter.com/MsWorkers4/status/1099066343523930112)

If you work at Microsoft, you can sign the petition on the intranet site
[https://aka.ms/hololens4good](https://aka.ms/hololens4good)

~~~
leereeves
How many workers have signed the petition?

~~~
ahelwer
There's no way to tell, it's just a form you can fill out to sign the open
letter.

------
taobility
As a Microsoft employee, I never grant them to represent me. And also I don't
support their demand.

------
luxuryballs
“we demand a say in how our work is used”

you already have a say 100% it’s called freedom to decide where you work

~~~
regularfry
That's precisely what gives this any force at all: the people saying it are in
a position to harm the project by removing themselves from it.

~~~
humantiy
That doesn't make a lot of sense. If they are a position to harm the project
and did due to their objections; then they would be out of a job. If they quit
given their objections then the project would also be harmed and they would
still be out of a job. The outcome would be the same of seeking new
employment.

~~~
regularfry
That's what backs up any employee's position in negotiating with the employer.
If it goes down to the wire, either the employee must have a willingness to
leave, or a group of employees must credibly believe that "they can't fire all
of us".

------
Mindless2112
"Those who are reluctant to feed their own army shall feed a foreign army."

------
mrbonner
"Every up-to-date dictionary should say that "peace" and "war" mean the same
thing, now in posse, now in actu" \- William James in "The Moral Equivalent of
War"
[https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/moral.html](https://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/moral.html)

~~~
yesenadam
From Ambrose Bierce's _Devil 's Dictionary_ (1906)

OCCIDENT, n. The part of the world lying west (or east) of the Orient. It is
largely inhabited by Christians, a powerful subtribe of the Hypocrites, whose
principal industries are murder and cheating, which they are pleased to call
“war” and “commerce.” These, also, are the principal industries of the Orient.

BOUNDARY, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations,
separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other.

CANNON, n. An instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries.

PEACE, n. In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods
of fighting.

GUNPOWDER, n. An agency employed by civilized nations for the settlement of
disputes which might become troublesome if left unadjusted.

PROJECTILE, n. The final arbiter in international disputes. Formerly these
disputes were settled by physical contact of the disputants, with such simple
arguments as the rudimentary logic of the times could supply – the sword, the
spear, and so forth. With the growth of prudence in military affairs the
projectile came more and more into favor, and is now held in high esteem by
the most courageous. Its capital defect is that it requires personal
attendance at the point of propulsion.

------
malvosenior
_" Several Microsoft Corp employees on Friday demanded that the company cancel
a $480 million hardware contract with the U.S. Army and stop developing “any
and all weapons technologies.”"_

Apparently "several" means three. How and why is this news? Microsoft has
thousands of employees.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Apparently "several" means three.

“Several” has long meant three or more, but the article says that three
workers described the effort to Reuters, not that the three constituted the
entire effort.

~~~
partiallypro
Several is usually not used in that context, the word in the headline should
be "a few."

------
goodroot
I would be heart broken to learn that my work was used to facilitate killing.

I empathize for the developers involved; I hope those that feel as I do find
brighter opportunities.

~~~
pnw_hazor
What if your work helped reduce the amount of innocent civilians or soldiers
that are killed in war?

I guess we could always go back to the good old daze when advanced tech or
computers were not used in weapons systems. I wasn't around back then, but it
sure seems like there sure were more innocent people killed in the bygone days
of software-free weapons systems.

High-tech weapon systems save lives. But I am pretty sure you already know
that.

~~~
paganel
> High-tech weapon systems save lives. But I am pretty sure you already know
> that.

Not the OP, but what the high-tech weapon systems do (among other things, like
killing innocent people attending weddings in remote parts of Afghanistan or
Yemen) is to disengage the killers (i.e. the people making the decision to
shoot, sometime from thousands and thousands of miles away) from their acts,
as those doing the killing bear almost no risks of getting killed in
retaliation and they also don't get to see the distorted limbs of those they
get to kill. As such, the decision to make the kill becomes more and more easy
and more and more random, because it doesn't have almost any effects on those
who are responsible for said killings.

This is a very, very sad state of affairs for us, as a species, I mean, the
fact that we've managed to make the act of killing to have almost no moral
consequences on those that actually carry said killings.

~~~
leereeves
Drone pilots are not disengaged from the psychological and moral trauma of
war.

> Some say that the drone war has driven them over the edge. "How many women
> and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile? How many men
> have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest
> compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?" Heather Linebaugh,
> a former drone imagery analyst, wrote in the Guardian. "When you are exposed
> to it over and over again it becomes like a small video, embedded in your
> head, forever on repeat, causing psychological pain and suffering that many
> people will hopefully never experience."

> "It was horrifying to know how easy it was. I felt like a coward because I
> was halfway across the world and the guy never even knew I was there,”
> Bryant told KNPR Radio in Nevada. "I felt like I was haunted by a legion of
> the dead. My physical health was gone, my mental health was crumbled. I was
> in so much pain I was ready to eat a bullet myself."

[https://www.salon.com/2015/03/06/a_chilling_new_post_traumat...](https://www.salon.com/2015/03/06/a_chilling_new_post_traumatic_stress_disorder_why_drone_pilots_are_quitting_in_record_numbers_partner/)

~~~
nickpinkston
Thank you for posting this.

------
lawrenceyan
It’s about time. Good on Microsoft employees for following Google. Now we just
need our Amazon employees to step up.

------
harekaze
If only there are deflector shields in reality. Current technologies fail to
afford a clear distinction between offensive and defensive potentials, which
inevitably leads to controversies and trust issues. Forgive my
imaginativeness, if there are effective yet distinctly defensive potentials
like deflector shields in reality, I guess most controversies and trust issues
will magically resolve by investing most of the resources in this domain to
develop such technologies, even though technologies that are not distinctly
defensive will still be needed.

------
tracer4201
I work at a big tech company. We had a group of maybe 30 people make such
demands and it was all over the news as if half or all of workers were
rioting.

Should tech companies provide assistance to the military is an important topic
but this headline is Sensationalist clickbait garbage at best.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
If I have learned anything from history, is that is sucks to be on the losing
side of a war. As a worker, I will happily pay taxes and do stuff that helps
make sure my side is never on the losing side of a war. As a citizen and
voter, I will use my vote and my voice to keep us out of wars that are either
unwinnable or unjust. Trying to intentionally reduce the effectiveness of my
military as these Microsoft workers are trying to do is not something I will
do.

The alternative to US military dominance, isn't a peaceful utopia, it is
either Chinese military dominance or Russian military dominance. You can be
sure that Chinese and Russian tech companies are trying their best to increase
the effectiveness of their country's military.

~~~
XMPPwocky
This is the tyranny of the Nash equilibrium.

Eventually, though, it's necessary to find some solution, outside of the game-
or, eventually, the inherent instability of ever-increasing military power
will cause some very, very bad outcomes- for all parties involved.

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
Any technology that is useful, tends to make the military more powerful. Road
building was used by the Romans to great advantage. The British and Portuguese
took advantage of innovations in ocean going vessels. The American Civil War
made extensive use of the telegraph and railroad.

The only way to get out of this equilibrium is to stop developing all
technology.

------
vs2
93 people signed the petition out of 130,000 microsoft employees!

------
outside1234
A whole 94 workers? Yeah, that isn't a rebellion.

------
mojomark
And nobody said "boo" about the thousands, if not millions, of Microsoft
office installations on NMCI and other DoD computers. What, you think the
Integrated Master Schedule for that latest Vertical Launch System wasn't
organized using MS Project?

------
ScottAS
Shh... No one tell them what operating systems the army uses.

~~~
ScottAS
The ultimate technomurder mastermind was Charles Babbage. Rest in shame.

------
dlahoda
Does contract involve some backend work using .net core?

------
skookumchuck
I'd sure hate to be the one stalling jet aircraft development only to be
confronted with an Me-262.

------
thomasmarriott
Accepting the truth is far less painful than rediscovering it.

------
rdl
The correct response is generous severance to the employees who sign this
letter. If a US company doesn’t participate in the defense of the US, it is
going to be basically unsustainable to get any immigration permitted for
technology employment.

------
781
We don't need an army. It should be completely dismantled. The Army budget
should be spent on social causes.

~~~
sesteel
Like unemployment for those affected by such a short sighted choice like that.
If history has taught us anything, it is that war is inevitable.

"Of the past 3,400 years, humans have been entirely at peace for 268 of them,
or just 8 percent of recorded history." \-
[https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/books/chapters/what-
every...](https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/books/chapters/what-every-person-
should-know-about-war.html)

~~~
yarrel
Quite aside from that, the historical lesson is that large numbers of
unemployed soldiers is not a stablizing force on a society.

