This is incredibly cringeworthy knowing the ethical and moral issues surrounding artificial intelligence. The problem "Team SwarmShield" is obviously directly related to a problem Israeli defense forces have to deal with. It's a sad state of Stanford if they're hosting this along with allegedly leading what defined guardrails for artificial intelligence.
Wow, I thought this was satire for a second. This is a level of shamelessness that I'm really surprised Stanford (or anyone involved) can tolerate being associated with.
> Department of War Directory – This year the students had access to a Department of War Directory – essentially a phonebook of ~5,700 names of “Who buys in the Dept of War?” The directory includes a tutorial on how the DoW buys and the various acquisition and funding processes and programs that exist for startups. It provides details on how to sell to the DoW and where the Program Acquistion Officers (PAEs) fit into that process.
Literally teaching people how to make money selling misery and violence. No mention of how the tech involved can be used to constrain states, stop wars, establish justice, identify war crimes and restore victims, nothing. I thought we were beyond this in 2026.
War is the event. Defence and offence are the actions. Starting a war implies taking offensive actions while the target will undertake defensive actions. The target will then undertake offensive actions against the other country which will undertake defensive actions in turn. Offence and defence are both tasked to the department handling all things military.
Knowing this it is rather hypocritical to call the department which is tasked with undertaking offensive actions the 'Department of Defen[cs]e'. It actually seems to come straight out of 1984 where the propaganda department is called the Ministry of Truth. Better call it for what it is - and what it used to be called - which is the Department of War.
People surprised by this don’t know that the expertise that incubated silicon chips at Stanford and around the valley was based on electrical engineering work done for world war II / cold war radar technology, among other things.
Stanford and SV have always had deep defense ties. Palmer Luckey and Palantir etc are just the latest iteration of this.
7 comments
[ 1.4 ms ] story [ 27.9 ms ] thread> Department of War Directory – This year the students had access to a Department of War Directory – essentially a phonebook of ~5,700 names of “Who buys in the Dept of War?” The directory includes a tutorial on how the DoW buys and the various acquisition and funding processes and programs that exist for startups. It provides details on how to sell to the DoW and where the Program Acquistion Officers (PAEs) fit into that process.
Literally teaching people how to make money selling misery and violence. No mention of how the tech involved can be used to constrain states, stop wars, establish justice, identify war crimes and restore victims, nothing. I thought we were beyond this in 2026.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9442981
Knowing this it is rather hypocritical to call the department which is tasked with undertaking offensive actions the 'Department of Defen[cs]e'. It actually seems to come straight out of 1984 where the propaganda department is called the Ministry of Truth. Better call it for what it is - and what it used to be called - which is the Department of War.
Stanford and SV have always had deep defense ties. Palmer Luckey and Palantir etc are just the latest iteration of this.