I wouldn’t say that developing military hardware necessarily negates the “don’t be evil” principal (especially if the developed articles are dual use, for both military and civilian applications). The western world, our principals and values have prospered for more than half a century in Pax Americana afforded, in a large part, by the prosperous US Military Industrial Complex.
I totally get the objection to developing combative AI - that’s a separate ethical question - but you can contribute to the military and still maintain your humane values.
Given that the US military has killed nearly 4,000 people with drone strikes in Pakistan over the past decade, a country in which no formal military conflict exists, nor any formal enemy, just vague accusations of terrorist networks (and likely a bunch of political dissidents fed to them by the Pakistani government), I am really wondering where the "Pax" is coming from. Because if you do the math the odds of any given person knowing someone who was killed by a drone strike, or someone who knows someone who was, are pretty damn high. The US has brought hell to Pakistan.
It's very complicated and has no good answer that would be acceptable to everyone. Pakistan is a hotbed for terrorism and radicalism; the strategy of drone strikes is not only intended to kill "ticking bombs" but also to destroy organizations and keep them busy while being constantly on the look out. Much more difficult to carry out another 9/11 when you need to sleep in a different place every day, or when your most senior operative is 23 because all of the seniors before them have perished.
It's hard to argue how effective this tactic is, being that:
a. most everything relating to this is classified
b. it's very difficult to assess how many terror operation were prevented by those actions, even if you have the classified data above.
An amazing book on this subject of state sponsored assassination I advise anyone to read is Rise And Kill First, by Ronen Bergman, detailing Israel's assassination policy from operational, political and societal perspectives - truely fascinating.
> Given that the US military has killed nearly 4,000 people with drone strikes in Pakistan over the past decade, a country in which no formal military conflict exists
Pakistan is a country with which no formal military conflict with the US exists, but it is not one in which no formal military conflict involving the US exists.
The 2001 AUMF is a (ludicrously open ended) conditional exercise of Congress' Constitutional power to declare war, and the parties targeted in Pakistan are parts of groups to which the executive branch has determined that the conditions in that act apply.
If you're going to say that the US has brought hell to Pakistan, you should at least back it up with some reasoning. What would Pakistan look like right now without the US killing those 4000 people? What would surrounding countries look like? Why did the US kill those people? Would any other country in the US's position have reasonably killed them?
It's a complex issue that can't be summed up by saying "fuck that".
Just imagine your friends' mother was killed as collateral damage in a drone strike. Or your cousin. Or your friend in school. From a missile from an invisible unmanned machine in the sky. You don't know why. You don't if they were a terrorist or mistaken for a terrorist. They were killed by a foreign government that is colluding with your own corrupt government and you have no recourse within the law, can't even fight back. Yeah, it's like that.
Would you really like to justify killed 4000 persons of unknown status with zero legal proceedings because of...opportunity cost? Because Pakistan might look different if they weren't killed? I am not sure I could keep a straight face through that one. No. Just no.
And yes, missiles from the sky killing people: FUCK THAT. Rule of law. Round up those "terrorists" and interrogate them, charge them with crimes. I have no forgiveness for psychos on any side of this that want to push us back to barbarism.
As the number of police shootings (with a high number of collateral ones) is about 1k per year over the last decade American police have killed 10,000 and America doesn't have large tribal area's and the related problems like Pakistan.
I totally get the objection to developing combative AI - that’s a separate ethical question - but you can contribute to the military and still maintain your humane values.