the problem is Capitalism does not need Democracy to function or survive
many countries like Singapore, etc. prove this easily
Authoritarianism can even be desired by Capitalists if they know who to bribe to remove regulations and get approvals
and no surprise, that's exactly where the United States is right now, teetering on the edge of that hole, about to fall in
"AI" is going to be weaponized, already is, and any resistance against its abuse is simply overriden with threats to destroy profits or even company survival at all
I think this runs into a basic issue that all large software systems that enforce the law contribute to locking down a society because laws tend to need be broken to be changed.
That a system can be avoided offends the investor who want their products to be ubiquitous.
The system that is not perfectly enforced offends the engineer who dislikes broken things.
Yet both are required if we as a society are to grow. I think the thing that it might be good to learn is when to say "I've done/had enough."
I think I could collect enough weight of books on "civil disobedience" at my local library that I could crush you underneath them, even if you didn't bother reading them.
I'm sure you could. But it would in no way demonstrate that laws generally need civil disobedience to be changed. Laws are changed all the time, as bills, as legal precedent, and as regulations.
It might actually be wise [1] to create a new, slightly less permissioned license for open source wherein the open is defined as anything that isn’t in a kill or surveillance chain or, more broadly, for military use…
I don't think the author is suggesting we shouldn't build useful things. He's saying to the people who built the military system that they shouldn't be doing that.
It's the last step that's the problem, not the people who built all the things they stand on. Otherwise we'd be suggesting that no one build a database engine or a digital camera or a computer ever again in case they're used to build evil tech.
I think there's a distinction between creating generic info-gathering technology that helps them gather their own data from their own users, and you gathering data that the government can then ask (force) you to hand over.
All technology can be weaponized. It can also be de-weaponized.
One of my favorite late-night thought experiments, is "what would it take to turn an AK47 or an AR15 into a water pump?" .. the possibilities are endless.
The only difference between peaceful technology and a weapon is the intention of the user. The very real spiritual intention.
De-weaponization starts with the human being. Those who think weapons are necessary must always take lesser priority than those who invent technology to make the lives of their fellow human beings better. There are so many examples of the tool-makers winning harder and at greater scale than the bomb-manufacturer. We wouldn't be here now if the balance was the other way - our world is however threatened by having this scale weighed heavily, by those who think murder is the solution to anything.
It's a spirit thing. Not spiritu-al, a spirit thing. What is the spirit of the designer? If they want to help humanity, it will be difficult technology to weaponize (although not impossible). It will be easy to de-weaponize, also.
We need to focus more on the spirit of help, and less on hurt.
Imagine if those F35 mounting pylons were used to drop field-portable water-purification systems directly where they are needed most.
Imagine if they could be used to drop a copy of archive.org, anywhere in the world, in any language.
Imagine if those ships were being used to bring power to the villages that need it most. Instead of glide bombs, we have glide libraries. Instead of cluster musicians, cluster medical kits! Oh, the glory to be had by those who would do this - the allies in the poor and weak of the world to be found! Imagine this happening, changing the intention from hate and fear, to respect and love.
All it takes is the spirit, a bit of imagination, and any and all technology can be de-weaponized. It is the warrior narcissist who stand in the way of this. Disarm them too. Drop books, not bombs!
> Imagine if those F35 mounting pylons were used to drop field-portable water-purification systems directly where they are needed most.
Except we can (and do!) accomplish that with much simpler airplanes. The staggering costs and complexities of an F35 (the thrust:weight, maneuverability, and stealth) don't make sense for any "peaceful" application.
What is this word salad? "Spirit?" Intention? Disarm the "warrior narcissist?"
Good luck - this flies in the face of the entirety of human history.
> "what would it take to turn an AK47 or an AR15 into a water pump?"
As someone who has manufactured these from billet: why would you do this? (hence "word salad") Why does one thing at all relate to the other? Why not just manufacture a pump from the same raw resources? Why not both?
> Those who think weapons are necessary must always take lesser priority than those who invent technology to make the lives of their fellow human beings better.
Did the Allies in WWII not "make the lives of their fellow human beings better" using violence? Why didn't they just ask mean old Hitler: "Hey, be nice! Have a good spirit!"? The world has finite resources, inherently making anything often denies those resources (your time, actual materials, etc.) to other causes. "Better" is subjective.
> There are so many examples of the tool-makers winning harder and at greater scale than the bomb-manufacturer.
These organizations are often one in the same.
> We wouldn't be here now if the balance was the other way
Again, the balance is already the other way regardless of your citation-free assertion. You're using the internet to proliferate this tripe - famously a DARPA invention.
> Imagine if those F35 mounting pylons were used to drop field-portable water-purification systems directly where they are needed most.
Why is a high-performance stealth aircraft required for this? Again, why does one thing have anything to do with the other? What peaceful purpose does stealth capability serve?
> Imagine if those ships were being used to bring power to the villages that need it most.
With what? Words? Precisely how do you non-violently disarm someone who is willing and demonstrated to use violence to prevent you from disarming them?
Again, the world's resources are finite, and control of these resources inherently requires violence.
Your ability to spread these "ideas" are rooted in violence: taxation, freedom generally. Freedom isn't free, and the price is paid in blood.
The entirety of human history has survived in spite of warrior narcissists, clinging to the identity of 'protector', of 'saviour'. It is the unknown human peace-makers who have made it possible for you to sit in your chair and type such hate spew.
>As someone who has manufactured these from billet: why would you do this?
Ah ha, we have one in our midst - the ultimate, clueless warrior narcissist, blinded by his own mirror. I'd do it to make one less murder weapon in the world and one more water pump to irrigate a garden - why else?
>Why not just manufacture a pump from the same raw resources?
Because de-weaponization is more important than your identity.
>Did the Allies in WWII not "make the lives of their fellow human beings better" using violence?
Did they? The glory of WWII in which you warrior narcissist bathe is a fallacy - we are still fighting WWII. That war did not end - it was modified by your class of human into a profit machine. Did you carve that billet for profit - did it feed you?
>These organizations are often one in the same.
Utter nonsense - they are very rarely the same - there are far, far more organizations making peace in the world than your ridiculous "war is peace" ideology.
>You're using the internet to proliferate this tripe - famously a DARPA invention.
Precisely because the Internet was de-weaponized at a far greater pace and with far more vigor than it was applied to murder. There is your reason for why you should turn an AR15 into a water pump, warrior narcissist! You cannot see it because you are blinded by your own mirror!
>Why is a high-performance stealth aircraft required for this?
Because it is there, it is being used for murder, and it may as well be de-weaponized, like the DARPA Internet, like the AR15-water-pump, like the many other such examples your blind murderous myopia prevents you from seeing.
>> Disarm them too.
> With what? Words?
Yes, how else do you think two people make absolute peace with each other - they learn each others language! Do you speak Farsi? Do you speak Hebrew? Do you speak Arabic? No? Then you have no right to be bombing those who do!
>Freedom isn't free, and the price is paid in blood.
UTTER TRIPE. Freedom is paid in WORDS. DEATH IS PAID IN BLOOD.
Warrior narcissist, smash your mirror. Your identity is not worth more than life.
> Because de-weaponization is more important than your identity.
OK but how does that involve AR-15s and AK-47s? Why do I need to take a manufactured object and somehow Rube Goldberg it into something else instead of just melting it down? And at that point, the raw resources should've just been used for that purpose and there's no point in mentioning rifles.
> Because it is there
Again with it is "there." No, it is not "there." Does it just operate itself for free?
> hey learn each others language!
Ok: what happens when two cultures speak the same language but declare war? Does war just magically go away because of linguists? Why the fuck does spoken language in 2026 have anything to do with political ideals here? LLMs exist, Google Translate has existed for decades: clearly this arbitrary "speak the language" nonsense is not helping.
> Your identity is not worth more than life.
I'm not going to stop, now what? What are you going to do?
I could say the same thing of you for this very comment. And you have just joined in the fighting and the othering in the finest and noblest tradition. Textbook.
There's a real problem with governments that invade other countries and attack civilians, and we're in a particularly hot time right now. That gives many current examples, though: should Ukraine prioritize manufacturing water pumps? Or do they mostly need weapons to fight back in the war?
I get that folks don't like war. I hate war. I've seen much more evidence that deterrence produces peace more readily than disarmament. On the flip side, more destructive weapons may be used more rarely, but they kill more people when they are used.
I'm not sure what the optimal approach is, but it almost certainly requires nations to arm themselves in case they are attacked. "Provide for the common defense" was not specified idly.
Ukraine should prioritize making peaceful relationships, as should the Russians and Americans and British - and the rest of the world should be making sure they do so.
That they have not made that priority, choosing instead to prioritize their nations' collective warrior narcissist identities rather than valuing the human life of each, is why those nations are on the brink of destroying each other.
Warrior narcissism is infectious and contagious and insidious. You can see it at an individual scale and you can see it at nation scales, too. The solution is to smash the mirror: deny any and all of the identities involved their right to their own identities, until they see, underneath it all, the true value of human life.
There is no American/Russian/Ukrainian/British identity worth more than the human lives in each state. There is no Israeli/Palestinian identity worth more than the human lives in either state.
The fact that one identity is held as more valuable/important/special than the other, is what gives each the justification (not right) to murder the other.
If the rest of the world had shunned the Russians and the Ukrainians and the British and the Americans at equivalent levels until their identities were no longer of any perceived value, the conflict would not have perpetuated. The fact that Russians clung to the identities of the Russian-speaking humans in the Donbas, the fact that Ukraine nationalist identity took higher priority over respect for human life, the fact that Americans gloat over their own cultural identity of warriors, as do the Brits - is why we have the conflict.
>I've seen much more evidence that deterrence produces peace more readily than disarmament.
Bullshit. Deterrence did not stop a single human life being murdered in any of the current conflicts. "Deterrence" is just warrior narcissist speak for "I've got my mirror, it's bigger than <theirs>, and that is all that matters".
> Ukraine should prioritize making peaceful relationships
Ok, let's steel man this thing. Russia is not going to be peaceful regardless of your idealism - this isn't a disputable fact. Now, how does Ukraine "prioritize making peaceful relationships?"
Specifically, what concrete actions should Ukraine take to prevent violent incursion by an outside actor? No word salad: if you are the benevolent dictator of Ukraine today, what do you do? Counting on third parties to "shun" is out, it's not an effective option (and it arguably already happened with sanctions, but still.)
> Deterrence did not stop a single human life being murdered in any of the current conflicts.
What would Ukraine look like absent any donated war materiel from third parties? Why does Russia not own Kiev in that scenario?
"Prioritize making peaceful relationships" is entirely unhelpful along the lines of saying "Do the work". The way you're writing so dismissively of other people's analysis of this topic demands that you provide something far more specific than you are. As it is, you're writing seems completely divorced from reality.
There have always been a greater group of humans which de-weaponize (make peace) than those who make war. Always. The evidence is very clear: there are far, far, far more humans in the world not-killing each other than there are, killing each other.
>And then a group that prioritizes weapons over human-life-improving-tools kills the group that prioritizes life and takes your resources
Only for as long as those who make peace, don't pay attention to the prioritization of weapons - and that group of warrior narcissists whose identity is more important than human life must never be allowed to be bigger than the group who make peace - as is happening today at a pace far too great - because otherwise, we all die.
>We've been playing this game for as long as human beings have existed.
Yes, humans have been making peace at far greater scale than those limited few who make war. You just don't see them because a) you have your own warrior narcissist mirror obscuring your view, and b) those people are not narcissists, and are living human lives instead of primping their warrior narcissist identities...
> There have always been a greater group of humans which de-weaponize (make peace) than those who make war. Always.
What are you talking about? We're in the most peaceful period in human history by every objective measure and we spend almost a trillion dollars annually on defense. "Always" is objectively incorrect by basically every measure you use.
> Only for as long as those who make peace, don't pay attention to the prioritization of weapons - and that group of warrior narcissists whose identity is more important than human life must never be allowed to be bigger than the group who make peace - as is happening today at a pace far too great - because otherwise, we all die.
Word salad.
> Yes, humans have been making peace at far greater scale than those limited few who make war. You just don't see them because a) you have your own warrior narcissist mirror obscuring your view, and b) those people are not narcissists, and are living human lives instead of primping their warrior narcissist identities...
Other comments have pointed out this: how are you going to stop the "warrior narcissist" if you disarmed/de-weaponized the peace-makers? Even if de-weaponize after you erase all the current "warrior narcissists", how will you prevent new ones from rising up and re-weaponizing? Surely, you know that war is not the default state, so this isn't a theoretical.
Also, I think your description of "warrior narcissists" as a shallow description of the spirit of these people. You mentioned something about "identity" in later comments, and I cannot help but wonder what do you mean by that. I don't think Putin's main motive is his self-image, nor do I think Israel's leadership is murdering Palestine's populace to appear heroic.
It would also help to not assume the motives of people criticizing your ideas by presuming them to be "warrior narcissists" themselves. Elevate the discussion, not downgrade it.
I'll always appreciate the spirit of pacifism and collaboration, but your comments seem quixotic, and not in a good way.
First, you separate the technology from the person using it.
Then, the person using it incorrectly.
In this case, the person you don't want to have using technology to murder/do harm/violate the actual human rights of others, is the warrior narcissist.
So, as a technologist, I do not let my technology be used for someone who is only going to use it on others, for actual war-fighting/warrior purposes, for the purposes of protecting or promoting their identity over the life of others.
Because that is what good technology is - something which gives all users, equal rights. An equal, new identity, with each new form of technology.
So, de-weaponization means, disconnecting the use of technology in destructive ways.
Constructive ways are, such as I demonstrated with extreme prejudice, are the notion of the pink F35, dropping cluster medical supplies, water desalination pods instead of child-maiming fertilizer bombs, or indeed - fertilizer in the right place, with emergency seed-bombs for a 3 month re-supply of the landscape, food-wise, etc.
These are parables I'm dramatizing, with intent. I do know there is no chance in hell of turning off all the weapons - I for sure know that there is a way to use technology to make sure a police state doesn't happen in the first place. (Because I've been doing exactly that with technology for decades.)
Putin is an identity of someone you don't actually know, but yet, you think you know the warrior narcissism in Putin - but it is actually the identity, not the individual, that I am talking about. I rate Putin among all the other war criminals of the world - they are there, because they have the technological might of their people - or indeed the ignorance of their people in spite of this might, or indeed even collective agreement on scale, to perpetuate that identity.
And lest it not be clear, I find that in order to be a good pacifist, you have to allow for new identity, always. It is the use of technological power to gain mass identity and exploit it for war, which I am specifically calling the playground of the warrior narcissist. Those who would murder to maintain their own identity.
Drop books not bombs, is legitimately the simplest pacifist view I can express. I see far, far more peace to be had in the world with the concept of dropping a complete archive.org gardening section from the ping F35, you know ..
>It would also help to not assume the motives of people criticizing your ideas by presuming them to be "warrior narcissists" themselves. Elevate the discussion, not downgrade it.
Apropos quixotic.
You might notice that I am manifesting the very thing I am resisting.
That is by design. For every excuse for murdering 'those people over there', I have and can spot a greedy instance of technological mis-use.
So I'm targeting warrior narcissism intentionally, because .. after all .. dang himself, could prove the value of my point, by switching me off right now.
I would expect any invading forces would need to be surveilled by planes or satellites, or perhaps drones, since they would immediately destroy something like flock cameras.
What’s more likely is that an aspiring dictator illegally uses the military for domestic police operations, then military and police use is the same thing.
Part of the reason we're seeing objectionable government action now is because we militarized law enforcement tasks and equipment in the post-9/11 era.
You didn't expect the application you developed called "Skynet" that has an eye of sauron as it's logo to be used by the military? Sorry, I don't believe you.
Generally, yes. Most telemetry systems in software are not producing enough actionable insight to justify the privacy invasion. Spying on your customers on an opt-out basis just in case you one day come up with a use for that data is a widespread practice but clearly unethical, and leaves you (or whoever acquires your employer) in the position of being tempted to use the data for worse things than just deciding what bugs and features to prioritize.
Yes. Telemetry is anti-social at best, authoritarian at worst. We have built industries on "the user won't tell us what they want so we have to spy on them so we can build what they want" and then instead of building what they want, building the thing that extracts the most money out of their users (probably not what the user wanted!)
Do you actually object to countries having standing armies with ranged area weaponry?
This isn't what the article is talking about at all. It never says don't build military technology. It says don't build things like a database of who in the country is and isn't gay and what religion everyone practices, for fear a future bigoted administration might use it to target those people. If your government is turning howitzers on you, that's less a police state and more a civil war.
I don't know what you do against that, but it's a different situation. There is precedent in the US with the Army being used to round up and forcibly displace native populations, but that really seems to be the kind of thing that requires a political solution, not prevention of any possibility. If we didn't have an Army at all, then secession would have succeeded, there would still be chattel slavery, and one of the hostile European colonial powers likely would have simply conquered the west itself and killed all the natives anyway.
I don't think the article is saying don't build a payload-agnostic telemetry engine. The specific examples cited are that it's probably legitimate to have a vehicle registration database (with the caveat that even that could be abused), but not a database of sexual orientations or religious affiliations.
Keeping it within game dev, I will say that telemetry and bug report tooling looks really cool. Big fan of it grabbing build info directly from the session that the user was playing. Feeling kinda inspired to build something similar for the studio I work at now.
clearly people have a responsibility to sit down and think long and hard and try to rule out as much as possible the negatives of any tech or ideas they share with other people. Or at least give it a cursory thought or find someone with that mindset to tamp those issues down. Absolutely before even considering a funding step or presentation to anyone outside of a very small trusted group. Ideas take fire way too quickly now not to be cautious.
>How do you make sure a police state doesn't happen?
There is no way to be sure, all one person can do most of the time is make a personal effort and hope it is not overwhelmed by storm-trooper ambitions and communist-dictator tactics.
When I look at Flock, it is so sad. It's been 30 full years since I got my early webcams when they were made by Intel and were still expensive business machines intended for teleconferencing over dial-up. Without really needing the internet of course.
It didn't take long before I was using one for observing my fledgling company's parking lot 24/7, and on more than half my CRT monitor you could see every car that drove by on my street, which was almost constant during the daytime. This was 99% of the action compared to visitors who pulled in.
It didn't take that long before I could remotely call in to the cam plugged into the front office PC through dial-up networking in Windows 95, and when I got a smartphone in 2001 I no longer needed a remote laptop most of the time as long as I was OK with the small screen of the flip-phone form factor. Rather than leaving the spare land-line available for calling directly in, alternatively it was also possible to log into an ISP over dial-up from my company, then keep the line tied up so I (or anyone really) could have access over the internet.
When broadband internet came around it made a really big difference since the stream was not as compressed, and motion not nearly as blurry and jerky. It was nice having the choice between a private remote connection to my front office PC over direct dial-up whenever I wanted, as well as enjoying the faster speed of the public internet plenty of the time too.
Anyway it didn't take long to realize that if webcams ever really catch on, then our local law enforcement would be highly interested in what could be done if they could freely observe them like I was doing looking at my own stream. I didn't know anybody else that had a webcam at first, but for protection of my own building all I would have to do is give the law my IP address and they could pick up the stream no differently than I was. They already knew my location and I had an excellent relationship with all the first responders. Naturally nothing was encrypted back then so that wasn't even a consideration, there was really nothing confidential on my stream to begin with.
I really thought about it long and hard and it took quite a while trying to examine all the possibilities. There were a few obvious downsides regarding privacy which needed much further consideration, so I could not in good conscience pull the trigger until that had been justified very deeply.
I didn't expect to hesitate that long but it really did take more than a year to conclude without a doubt that the negatives outweighed the positives, but that was only in the short run. In the long run the virtually unlimited downsides could only accumulate in excess of the possible upsides, and it was a big unknown how scattered cams could be used to compromise general privacy. Eventually had to realize such a cam network would be more easily used in a predatory way rather than for protection from predators, regardless of who was watching or recording. At significant scale it seemed like it could very well become exponentially dystopian.
No big deal, if you're not capable of thinking of something overwhelmingly positive to base your business on, I understand.
At least I didn't pioneer it, and I assume a lot of other early webcam owners gradually engaged in some of the same thought processes or it would have gotten a lot worse a lot sooner. I sure did talk to a lot of them, as webcams got more popular over time. Most of them were on laptops though and very seldom were aimed at a public space.
There are so many worthwhile things to do which don't amount to spying on Americans.
How do you not consider all Americans spies, given the way our devices work and constantly hoover everything? Perhaps most Americans aren't approached to sell the data they essentially collect 24/7 on everything around them, assuming even just a smart phone (not to mention cars, music, nest-like devices, iot, yadda yadda), but it is one hell of a mesh.
I think that's a good observation because people are really doing it to themselves.
Most of our electronics hasn't been American for quite some time now, so there is that. It really is made in, and for, less freedom & liberty loving countries, with the USA becoming more like collateral damage each decade.
It wasn't really this bad until Facebook came along whose sole mission ended up trying to monopolize PII as much as possible. And if not that at least put billions of dollars to work changing peoples' habits to neglect their own privacy anyway even if they end up on other platforms.
If privacy wasn't so valuable in a fundamental way, they wouldn't have been able to get as rich as they did by monetizing its removal.
I think one thing that made things worse was, before modern social media there was a semi-enforced need to categorise our public conversations (bbses, usenet, web forums); now it is kind of sludge since systems weight things nothing like a sane human would. Sure, searching is easier, but cohesion and connection is far worse, and that combination combined with things like flock etc all running through the same networks adds to the feeling many have of feeling too "known" by algorithms, which will likely get far worse, weirder, more uncanny, and spyish.
The automobile, the transistor, the Internet, and basically every other technology ~could~ be used by a police state. I'm not sure how that is a helpful rule at all.
Libertarianism has its moments but it generally hasn't caught on because state capacity is unique and useful. And virtually every last bit of it can be used to facilitate a police state because it's... a state.
Sure, we could all live without IDs and use motio belli for defence but this arrangement will be soon replaced by someone more organized because there is a huge return to that organization despite its risks.
It's not about someone willing or not, it's about you, an ostensibly grown adult who should think in terms of your own responsibilities instead of others'.
Just because someone is willing to build it doesn't mean it has to be you.
We may all play some part in societies that have some degree of monstrous outcomes, but I feel like staying on the "tragic civilian casualty" side versus the "legitimate target" side of a freedom fighter's bombing campaign is probably the way to go.
Well, there are quite a few frames to think about. What about the unintended consequences of building something for a worldview at the time? Then the next generation of stewards take over, do not have the same understanding of the problem the system solved and different ideas on how to use the system. That's definitely something worth writing about. Stewardship in software is a real and common aspect of the greater system we all live in, and has unknown consequences with each generation that takes over. When you step in as a gen-1 builder, you should probably consider what it is you are about to build.
Has this philosophical approach ever worked? It's a commonplace in the hard sciences and engineering fields (ie, refusing to work on weapons systems), but weapons systems are elite and well-compensated engineering projects that don't have any trouble finding talent. The same thing goes for NSA, which has a line out the door from elite academia.
I'm not dismissing the sentiment here. It's morally sound. You should act in accordance with your principles and it useful to be reminded how those principles intersect the world. I have similar guardrails (probably not the same as the author's). I just wouldn't want people to overestimate what can be accomplished with this approach.
Recently my wife got locked out of her bank account - all cards blocked, unable to log in to the website or app, so effectively her whole finances were frozen - because she was trying to order a new bank card over the phone and some system couldnt do voice recognition (which we did not know they even used). We were getting ready to get on a plane to NYC, from California (she banks with TD bank) but after a tearful session of phoning anyone and everyone we could at TD, suddenly it magically got reversed.
The problem is not just the tech, its building systems where humans are essentially slaves to the system, with no recourse or power over whats happening.
The other rule here is that you cannot avoid politics if you want to create a better world. If you want the freedom to develop technology without worrying it will be used by a police state, you need to put in the work to make sure a police state doesn't happen - you cannot ignore politics and just "focus on technology."
On the other hand, a few heuristics will get you pretty far:
Don't build technology that interacts with people in ways they did't consent to. Don't build skinner boxes. Let the user decide who gets whatever data they generate while using the thing. Let the user control how it will work, insofar as it doesn't contradict the other heuristics.
These are political principles, but they're pretty basic. You don't have to keep up to date with the news, just check in with your morals once in a while.
Seems like most popular mainstream platforms violate many of those heuristics. Google, Facebook, maybe even hacker news probably, does things with your data you likely never consented to. Do we decide who gets whatever date we generate on those platforms?
I like some platforms do give us choice over our data but rarely do they not have our data be a component of the product. OpenAI, and anthropic for example use our data for "analytic purposes" which is broad enough that we compromise our agency over our data.
So what do you do when the majority of the systems you use on a daily basis to function in a normal life, require you (or atleast the majority of the populace) to compromise on morals? Do you know its expensive rise-wise, cost-wise, socially etc to check in with you morals in that kind of environment. I'm just curious your thoughts on this or if I'm misreading it. edit: And I'm not all doom gloom, I have hope and desire and trust in a future where morals aren't compromised in this way - I just see it as coming with a higher up-front cost and being aware that the most common environments around you systematically actively oppose you.
How do you make sure a police state doesn't happen? Block traffic? Tweet? Cut off ties with friends and family that don't share your political beliefs?
Of course you can avoid politics. Just be a good person. Vote for who you think is the best candidate at the time. And move on with your life.
Ironically the people most involved in politics don't have their own house in order. They're often mentally ill, over educated, underemployed and without meaningful ties in their life (e.g. family, real life community, etc).
There are a lot of answers to this, but since we're likely coders in here, there's a software design answer worth pointing out.
Watch how police states behave. What tools do they use? Typically, it's roots of trust. They take down sites by tampering with their domain name. They MITM web traffic by compelling certificate authorities to do unstrustworthy things. They spy on cell phones by mimicking external authorities that the phones are wired to trust explicitly and without input from the user. They insert devices into ISP infrastructure which users tend to assume is neutral.
So if we want to prevent this: Don't tolerate roots of trust that the user cannot configure. Use a threat model that includes nation states. Don't design with the assumption that trusted third parties will remain trustworthy. Think about how to protect your users privacy. Prefer peer-to-peer where possible, because your server may at one point become compromised and harm the users. Think about how they can protect themselves if that happens. Give them control over whether to install updates. Publish your API so users can make unauthorized clients if they don't trust yours. Prefer repeatable builds, and check hashes to spot malware. Review contributions and be wary of binary blobs that may have hidden use cases.
Mostly this is just sound engineering. It means doing your job well, which is not always the same as doing the job the shareholders asked for. They invested so they could have leverage, so ask yourself ahead of time if those are the same kinds of levers that police states want to pull. Shoot them down in the design phase if possible, sabotage them after the fact if necessary.
There's nothing that could convince me to do the opposite of what a proponent of a policy is advocating for than inconveniencing me to that extend.
If someone blocks traffic because of [topic], I don't think "gee maybe we are overly-dependent on oil", but the reverse. Most people are the same.
If I see someone defiling a public space, I am more accepting to more authoritative means to restore order.
If someone cuts ties with me because of their political beliefs, I am further convinced they are part of a cult. Because that's essentially what cults advocate for.
You can believe what you want, but you should not be deluded to think you're changing anyone's mind by behaving this way.
Actually, you cannot avoid sex. Everything is about sex, even politics. If you want the freedom to develop technology without worrying it will be used by a police state, you cannot ignore sex and just "focus on technology"
An objection of conscience is definitely a right you have as a professional, but it's a neutral action, you refuse to do something, and you let someone else do it. If you really are against it, you actively do something about it, like presenting a law or making a criminal complaint.
That said, they are both compatible, you can refuse to do something, and make efforts so that nobody does it.
But I think the the latter is the actual core security model of our society, and refusals aren't really effective to the point that I wouldn't worry much about it and just focus on compartimentalizing and executing on my duties. Isn't it theoretically possible that upper management divides duties so that engineers cannot accurately judge the ethical correctness of the task and the overall mission? As an individual you don't have the right tools to make such an evaluation. You can be pushed to investigate further, but the moment you do so, you cease your role as an engineer and put your citizen hat on.
>An objection of conscience is definitely a right you have as a professional, but it's a neutral action, you refuse to do something, and you let someone else do it.
Correct, and the lessons in the CIA's very own Simple Sabotage Field Manual
are still as helpful as when they were written.
> An conscientious objection is definitely a right you have as a professional, but it's a neutral action, you refuse to do something, and you let someone else do it.
Yes, but it’s still the case that you didn’t do it. You cannot directly control the actions of others, just your own. Do that, at least.
Getting other people to also not do it is the rest of the political act. It’ll never be the case that nobody’s willing to perform an act, but if all the people who are doing so under duress stop, at the very least it helps one identify the proper size and shape of one’s political coalition and the power therein.
And, yes, people have bills. That’s what we mean by politics. We’re 50 years behind the curve on building the capacity to act in their own interest or on their own beliefs; that’s no reason not to start now.
Politics in the broadest sense is just any decision-making process where a single decision affects multiple people and those people don't all agree on which decision should be made.
I've been arguing with folks on Reddit about this lately when it comes to Google's changes to Android (where they've made it more difficult to install any software on your device without Google first tracking the identity of the developer). My argument ultimately comes down to the fact that Google (and Apple already) have built a technology that gives them immense power to control individual computing freedoms, and no matter their internal policy, they still must follow US law. No amount of promises or legit good faith on their part matter, they've made a dangerous technology and are behold to a government that is very eager to censor anything it doesn't like. It's so disappointing to see 1. Google engineers build such a thing, and 2. For people to support it.
The article is not completely wrong in its premises, but phrased incorrectly.
This is not about technologies (after all, an authoritarian government will use many existing technologies, from the car to the computer), but about powers granted to a government, that could be used differently by the next party/majority in power.
The answer to that is to not grant government too much power in the first place.
Of course, this is often a contentious point for leftists, since they do want to grant government a lot of power in the first place; they're just concerned that the exact same powers will then be used by a different political side in a way that bothers a different category of people.
You will get downvoted to oblivion for even suggesting it here but it's so obviously a take that maps on cleanly to reality. Massive power centralization in government makes everything dual use in the service of a police state. The easiest thing to do is resist massive centralization of power in a government.
Technology is force multiplier. Everything could be used for oppression. Deal with it - the future is boot stomping on human face forever. There are lucky few that could choose whether they will be the face or foot. But it is inevitable.
Or we could stop all tech development. But it is not going to happen.
this is an important topic, and i hate that people forget how difficult it is. in any political conversation, it's pretty easy to pull this thread to unravel anyone's adamant belief in one thing or another (e.g. gun control). my biggest concern is that people seem less willing than before to actually have those discussions.. they'll immediately just label you as being opposed to their views, "against" them.. when really we need these conversations to find viable policy solutions that wont easily be used in the exact opposite way that they were intended when implemented
"Civic hygiene isn't about saying we distrust our current government - it's about not trusting the next government." I've made similar points. Granting one government administration more power, is by extension granting it to all future administrations. Do so only with great care.
This is missing the "(2013)" at the end of the HN link, but it does seem weirdly prescient as we say a rise of more polarised politics across the World, just 13 years later.
I find it frusrating how the conversation around this almost always focuses on one side of the equation. Why is it always about preventing tools from being built in case authoritarians comes to power rather than preventing those authoritarians from coming to power in the first place? I'm far more scared off the authoritarian aspect than the tech. The Nazis didn't need Flock cameras to kill millions. It seems like focusing on the actual bad guys is going to be more effective because if the state wants to bear its weight on you, it rarely requires tech to do it.
>The Nazis didn't need Flock cameras to kill millions.
No, but they were extremely happy to hop over to France and realize that we kept lists that indirectly listed jews. Actions have consequences that we may not be able to predict.
People have incentives to become more powerful - through wealth or in other ways.
So unfortunately, authoritarianism tends to have gravity going for it.
The Nazis relied heavily on IBM technology for national census data (to identify jews), military logistics, ghetto statistics, train traffic management, and concentration camp capacity
I fully agree with your base perspective, that the main focus should be on preventing authoritarians from coming to power in the first place.
I also agree with your final point, that the government doesn't need tech to lean on a person.
We disagree in the middle, on how tech that makes evil orders of magnitude easier might be a contributing factor and might enable the government to lean on many more people than it would otherwise.
My comment was made knowing and understanding the Nazis use of tech. But it's an argument of efficiency and efficiency matters less and less when dealing with the state due to their relative resource and power imbalance compared to individuals. Tech might have sped up the Nazi death machine, but the desire and intent for murder is all that matters in the long run. Their efficiency was of note really only because their time in power was relatively brief. If they were like some other authoritarian regimes and remained in power for decades, they likely would have eventually racked up the same death toll with or without the tech.
We also never seem to accept this answer for other forms of tech. Should we ban encryption because it makes it easier for terrorists to hide? Should your phone run ever photo you take through a CSAM database to catch preditors? Should we ban 3d printers because someone might print gun parts? For some reason we understand that people motivated enough to commit crimes will find a way to do it. This is much truer when it comes to the actions of the state than it is for individuals. I'm never going to learn to smith parts for a gun, but I could figure out 3d printing pretty easily. If the state wants me dead or in jail, I don't think the Flock cameras are that meaningful.
Defaulting to discussing the US here: let's start with reducing the state's size - it shouldn't be the world's largest employer, it shouldn't be able to run an unfathomably large deficit, it shouldn't be able to declare war without congressional approval. Technology to run a police state is just the last step in a long line of ridiculously unacceptable steps.
It won’t work for any country. They all want more control, and also create a class of people depending on government money to be on their side. Only people losing out are the powerless ordinary citizens and taxpayers
How does the number of state employees de facto result in a police state?
I agree with you on our obscene debt and our obsession with "conflicts" around the world, but I'd argue we're seeing the mass reduction of state employees and it's just making everything worse (eg massive deregulation and the destruction of checks and balances).
I in no way endorse taking people's jobs away once they have them. I'm saying the situation itself is absurd to begin with - now we are in a terrible situation where it can only be shrunk across a long timespan where people retire and orgs shrink naturally.
Let's slip in your pet bugaboo. Workforce size very little to do with state surveillance. In fact, mandating that it shrink can result in blowback, just like we have seen with how the US provides a great antagonist for China to evolve its own capabilities faster than if we had done nothing.
Never once said shrinking should happen at any rate that people lose their livelihood, you totally read that in yourself. The first step is recognizing that it's actually a problem worth solving. The simple idea the government should be laser focused on key areas of effort and avoid expanding to all areas of life should be obvious but it isn't for perverse reasons.
We should all cry a tear when an administrator loses their job. /s
No, what I would argue with, is if you want an org to laser focused, GET THEM TO DO THAT. Making them smaller doesn't reduce the focus, it could perversely, cause them to 100x their automation into all the areas you don't want them. Don't try and control an autonomous system by its second order effects.
I'm in the UK and it always seems weird to me how in the USA its totally normal to publically register yourself as either a Democrat or a Republican. To me seems like the kind of thing that should be private. In the UK I might choose to be a member of a political party but no-one needs to know that except that particular party. Or I can just join no party and vote in private on polling day.
It seems quite weird. Our parties are generally quite weird because were are not supposed to exist in the first place and so most of the rules are sort of ad-hoc.
I don’t belong to one, but it is sort of annoying to not be able to vote in the “primary elections” (where the parties pick their candidates). My state has a strong partisan lean so this is the only election that actually matters here. Oh well.
I used to change parties every few years for this reason. Went independent because I was sick of spam calls. Then learned that independent is apparently some bs party so fixed it to no party.
It's because we have open primaries in the US - registering as a Democrat or Republican is only important as far as voting in primaries. In other countries the selection of candidates is internal to the political parties themselves. There are pros and cons for both systems but the US system is fairly unique globally aside from a few exceptions in South America.
Isn't it kinda internal here too? Parties get to pick their candidates how ever they want. The major ones have primaries, but I still don't know if anything legally requires them to respect the votes there.
It's weirder still because you often don't actually have to register with a party, even to vote in the primaries like other commenters have mentioned; it depends on which state and which party. [0]
For example, I just voted in the Minnesota primaries. Ours are open primaries, so you don't need to register with any party and the ballot has every party on it. Though, it spoils your ballot to vote in multiple parties' primaries. So you gotta choose, but you do that privately.
Assholes like this were all for the police state back when it was up to stop-the-spread “contact tracing”, real-time “fact-checking” my private messages, arresting people for facebook posts, and transing your kids.
Now that the red pedophiles are in charge instead of the blue ones, he changes his tune.
Edit; wrote this comment before I realised this is a blog post from 2013. In 2013 I would've agreed 110% with this.
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This is one of those things that make for great post title and gets you all riled up at first but when you think about it, it's really shallow.
Most civic databases can be abused by any sufficiently authoritarian government. A homeless shelter's records may contain exactly the sort of information that could be used to get "undesirables" off the street. But those same records are useful for coordinating beds, outreach, medical care, etc. Surely the conclusion isn't that the shelter shouldn't keep records.
It seems much more useful to focus on limiting what gets collected, who gets access to it, and how long it can be retained. In other words, boring things like data-minimisation and retention laws. Somewhat amusingly, that gets you pretty close to the sort of principles behind GDPR, which isn't exactly universally loved around here.
I don't really disagree with the blog post's moral intuition. What bothers me is the emphasis on individual moral choices by the people building these systems. I've seen plenty of my peers happily work for companies that have spent the last twenty years building exactly this kind of technology, there will always be someone willing to build it. That's not an argument for abandoning personal ethics, but it is an argument against treating personal ethics as any form of serious societal safeguard. "good engineers should refuse to build them" means nothing.
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[ 1.2 ms ] story [ 13.4 ms ] threadmany countries like Singapore, etc. prove this easily
Authoritarianism can even be desired by Capitalists if they know who to bribe to remove regulations and get approvals
and no surprise, that's exactly where the United States is right now, teetering on the edge of that hole, about to fall in
"AI" is going to be weaponized, already is, and any resistance against its abuse is simply overriden with threats to destroy profits or even company survival at all
Economic freedom is a necessary but not sufficient condition for political freedom.
That a system can be avoided offends the investor who want their products to be ubiquitous.
The system that is not perfectly enforced offends the engineer who dislikes broken things.
Yet both are required if we as a society are to grow. I think the thing that it might be good to learn is when to say "I've done/had enough."
Nope.
[1] https://gdcvault.com/play/1012227/Development-Telemetry-in-V...
[2] https://www.army.mil/article/85934/solution_to_weapon_develo...
It might actually be wise [1] to create a new, slightly less permissioned license for open source wherein the open is defined as anything that isn’t in a kill or surveillance chain or, more broadly, for military use…
[1] for the community
It's the last step that's the problem, not the people who built all the things they stand on. Otherwise we'd be suggesting that no one build a database engine or a digital camera or a computer ever again in case they're used to build evil tech.
But maybe easier than it sounds.
All technology can be weaponized. It can also be de-weaponized.
One of my favorite late-night thought experiments, is "what would it take to turn an AK47 or an AR15 into a water pump?" .. the possibilities are endless.
The only difference between peaceful technology and a weapon is the intention of the user. The very real spiritual intention.
De-weaponization starts with the human being. Those who think weapons are necessary must always take lesser priority than those who invent technology to make the lives of their fellow human beings better. There are so many examples of the tool-makers winning harder and at greater scale than the bomb-manufacturer. We wouldn't be here now if the balance was the other way - our world is however threatened by having this scale weighed heavily, by those who think murder is the solution to anything.
It's a spirit thing. Not spiritu-al, a spirit thing. What is the spirit of the designer? If they want to help humanity, it will be difficult technology to weaponize (although not impossible). It will be easy to de-weaponize, also.
We need to focus more on the spirit of help, and less on hurt.
Imagine if those F35 mounting pylons were used to drop field-portable water-purification systems directly where they are needed most.
Imagine if they could be used to drop a copy of archive.org, anywhere in the world, in any language.
Imagine if those ships were being used to bring power to the villages that need it most. Instead of glide bombs, we have glide libraries. Instead of cluster musicians, cluster medical kits! Oh, the glory to be had by those who would do this - the allies in the poor and weak of the world to be found! Imagine this happening, changing the intention from hate and fear, to respect and love.
All it takes is the spirit, a bit of imagination, and any and all technology can be de-weaponized. It is the warrior narcissist who stand in the way of this. Disarm them too. Drop books, not bombs!
Except we can (and do!) accomplish that with much simpler airplanes. The staggering costs and complexities of an F35 (the thrust:weight, maneuverability, and stealth) don't make sense for any "peaceful" application.
Good luck - this flies in the face of the entirety of human history.
> "what would it take to turn an AK47 or an AR15 into a water pump?"
As someone who has manufactured these from billet: why would you do this? (hence "word salad") Why does one thing at all relate to the other? Why not just manufacture a pump from the same raw resources? Why not both?
> Those who think weapons are necessary must always take lesser priority than those who invent technology to make the lives of their fellow human beings better.
Did the Allies in WWII not "make the lives of their fellow human beings better" using violence? Why didn't they just ask mean old Hitler: "Hey, be nice! Have a good spirit!"? The world has finite resources, inherently making anything often denies those resources (your time, actual materials, etc.) to other causes. "Better" is subjective.
> There are so many examples of the tool-makers winning harder and at greater scale than the bomb-manufacturer.
These organizations are often one in the same.
> We wouldn't be here now if the balance was the other way
Again, the balance is already the other way regardless of your citation-free assertion. You're using the internet to proliferate this tripe - famously a DARPA invention.
> Imagine if those F35 mounting pylons were used to drop field-portable water-purification systems directly where they are needed most.
Why is a high-performance stealth aircraft required for this? Again, why does one thing have anything to do with the other? What peaceful purpose does stealth capability serve?
> Imagine if those ships were being used to bring power to the villages that need it most.
No need to imagine, this already happens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powership
> Disarm them too.
With what? Words? Precisely how do you non-violently disarm someone who is willing and demonstrated to use violence to prevent you from disarming them? Again, the world's resources are finite, and control of these resources inherently requires violence.
Your ability to spread these "ideas" are rooted in violence: taxation, freedom generally. Freedom isn't free, and the price is paid in blood.
>entirety of human history.
The entirety of human history has survived in spite of warrior narcissists, clinging to the identity of 'protector', of 'saviour'. It is the unknown human peace-makers who have made it possible for you to sit in your chair and type such hate spew.
>As someone who has manufactured these from billet: why would you do this?
Ah ha, we have one in our midst - the ultimate, clueless warrior narcissist, blinded by his own mirror. I'd do it to make one less murder weapon in the world and one more water pump to irrigate a garden - why else?
>Why not just manufacture a pump from the same raw resources?
Because de-weaponization is more important than your identity.
>Did the Allies in WWII not "make the lives of their fellow human beings better" using violence?
Did they? The glory of WWII in which you warrior narcissist bathe is a fallacy - we are still fighting WWII. That war did not end - it was modified by your class of human into a profit machine. Did you carve that billet for profit - did it feed you?
>These organizations are often one in the same.
Utter nonsense - they are very rarely the same - there are far, far more organizations making peace in the world than your ridiculous "war is peace" ideology.
>You're using the internet to proliferate this tripe - famously a DARPA invention.
Precisely because the Internet was de-weaponized at a far greater pace and with far more vigor than it was applied to murder. There is your reason for why you should turn an AR15 into a water pump, warrior narcissist! You cannot see it because you are blinded by your own mirror!
>Why is a high-performance stealth aircraft required for this?
Because it is there, it is being used for murder, and it may as well be de-weaponized, like the DARPA Internet, like the AR15-water-pump, like the many other such examples your blind murderous myopia prevents you from seeing.
>> Disarm them too. > With what? Words?
Yes, how else do you think two people make absolute peace with each other - they learn each others language! Do you speak Farsi? Do you speak Hebrew? Do you speak Arabic? No? Then you have no right to be bombing those who do!
>Freedom isn't free, and the price is paid in blood.
UTTER TRIPE. Freedom is paid in WORDS. DEATH IS PAID IN BLOOD.
Warrior narcissist, smash your mirror. Your identity is not worth more than life.
OK but how does that involve AR-15s and AK-47s? Why do I need to take a manufactured object and somehow Rube Goldberg it into something else instead of just melting it down? And at that point, the raw resources should've just been used for that purpose and there's no point in mentioning rifles.
> Because it is there
Again with it is "there." No, it is not "there." Does it just operate itself for free?
> hey learn each others language!
Ok: what happens when two cultures speak the same language but declare war? Does war just magically go away because of linguists? Why the fuck does spoken language in 2026 have anything to do with political ideals here? LLMs exist, Google Translate has existed for decades: clearly this arbitrary "speak the language" nonsense is not helping.
> Your identity is not worth more than life.
I'm not going to stop, now what? What are you going to do?
I get that folks don't like war. I hate war. I've seen much more evidence that deterrence produces peace more readily than disarmament. On the flip side, more destructive weapons may be used more rarely, but they kill more people when they are used.
I'm not sure what the optimal approach is, but it almost certainly requires nations to arm themselves in case they are attacked. "Provide for the common defense" was not specified idly.
That they have not made that priority, choosing instead to prioritize their nations' collective warrior narcissist identities rather than valuing the human life of each, is why those nations are on the brink of destroying each other.
Warrior narcissism is infectious and contagious and insidious. You can see it at an individual scale and you can see it at nation scales, too. The solution is to smash the mirror: deny any and all of the identities involved their right to their own identities, until they see, underneath it all, the true value of human life.
There is no American/Russian/Ukrainian/British identity worth more than the human lives in each state. There is no Israeli/Palestinian identity worth more than the human lives in either state.
The fact that one identity is held as more valuable/important/special than the other, is what gives each the justification (not right) to murder the other.
If the rest of the world had shunned the Russians and the Ukrainians and the British and the Americans at equivalent levels until their identities were no longer of any perceived value, the conflict would not have perpetuated. The fact that Russians clung to the identities of the Russian-speaking humans in the Donbas, the fact that Ukraine nationalist identity took higher priority over respect for human life, the fact that Americans gloat over their own cultural identity of warriors, as do the Brits - is why we have the conflict.
>I've seen much more evidence that deterrence produces peace more readily than disarmament.
Bullshit. Deterrence did not stop a single human life being murdered in any of the current conflicts. "Deterrence" is just warrior narcissist speak for "I've got my mirror, it's bigger than <theirs>, and that is all that matters".
Ok, let's steel man this thing. Russia is not going to be peaceful regardless of your idealism - this isn't a disputable fact. Now, how does Ukraine "prioritize making peaceful relationships?"
Specifically, what concrete actions should Ukraine take to prevent violent incursion by an outside actor? No word salad: if you are the benevolent dictator of Ukraine today, what do you do? Counting on third parties to "shun" is out, it's not an effective option (and it arguably already happened with sanctions, but still.)
> Deterrence did not stop a single human life being murdered in any of the current conflicts.
What would Ukraine look like absent any donated war materiel from third parties? Why does Russia not own Kiev in that scenario?
>And then a group that prioritizes weapons over human-life-improving-tools kills the group that prioritizes life and takes your resources
Only for as long as those who make peace, don't pay attention to the prioritization of weapons - and that group of warrior narcissists whose identity is more important than human life must never be allowed to be bigger than the group who make peace - as is happening today at a pace far too great - because otherwise, we all die.
>We've been playing this game for as long as human beings have existed.
Yes, humans have been making peace at far greater scale than those limited few who make war. You just don't see them because a) you have your own warrior narcissist mirror obscuring your view, and b) those people are not narcissists, and are living human lives instead of primping their warrior narcissist identities...
What are you talking about? We're in the most peaceful period in human history by every objective measure and we spend almost a trillion dollars annually on defense. "Always" is objectively incorrect by basically every measure you use.
> Only for as long as those who make peace, don't pay attention to the prioritization of weapons - and that group of warrior narcissists whose identity is more important than human life must never be allowed to be bigger than the group who make peace - as is happening today at a pace far too great - because otherwise, we all die.
Word salad.
> Yes, humans have been making peace at far greater scale than those limited few who make war. You just don't see them because a) you have your own warrior narcissist mirror obscuring your view, and b) those people are not narcissists, and are living human lives instead of primping their warrior narcissist identities...
More word salad.
Also, I think your description of "warrior narcissists" as a shallow description of the spirit of these people. You mentioned something about "identity" in later comments, and I cannot help but wonder what do you mean by that. I don't think Putin's main motive is his self-image, nor do I think Israel's leadership is murdering Palestine's populace to appear heroic.
It would also help to not assume the motives of people criticizing your ideas by presuming them to be "warrior narcissists" themselves. Elevate the discussion, not downgrade it.
I'll always appreciate the spirit of pacifism and collaboration, but your comments seem quixotic, and not in a good way.
First, you separate the technology from the person using it.
Then, the person using it incorrectly.
In this case, the person you don't want to have using technology to murder/do harm/violate the actual human rights of others, is the warrior narcissist.
So, as a technologist, I do not let my technology be used for someone who is only going to use it on others, for actual war-fighting/warrior purposes, for the purposes of protecting or promoting their identity over the life of others.
Because that is what good technology is - something which gives all users, equal rights. An equal, new identity, with each new form of technology.
So, de-weaponization means, disconnecting the use of technology in destructive ways.
Constructive ways are, such as I demonstrated with extreme prejudice, are the notion of the pink F35, dropping cluster medical supplies, water desalination pods instead of child-maiming fertilizer bombs, or indeed - fertilizer in the right place, with emergency seed-bombs for a 3 month re-supply of the landscape, food-wise, etc.
These are parables I'm dramatizing, with intent. I do know there is no chance in hell of turning off all the weapons - I for sure know that there is a way to use technology to make sure a police state doesn't happen in the first place. (Because I've been doing exactly that with technology for decades.)
Putin is an identity of someone you don't actually know, but yet, you think you know the warrior narcissism in Putin - but it is actually the identity, not the individual, that I am talking about. I rate Putin among all the other war criminals of the world - they are there, because they have the technological might of their people - or indeed the ignorance of their people in spite of this might, or indeed even collective agreement on scale, to perpetuate that identity.
And lest it not be clear, I find that in order to be a good pacifist, you have to allow for new identity, always. It is the use of technological power to gain mass identity and exploit it for war, which I am specifically calling the playground of the warrior narcissist. Those who would murder to maintain their own identity.
Drop books not bombs, is legitimately the simplest pacifist view I can express. I see far, far more peace to be had in the world with the concept of dropping a complete archive.org gardening section from the ping F35, you know ..
>It would also help to not assume the motives of people criticizing your ideas by presuming them to be "warrior narcissists" themselves. Elevate the discussion, not downgrade it.
Apropos quixotic.
You might notice that I am manifesting the very thing I am resisting.
That is by design. For every excuse for murdering 'those people over there', I have and can spot a greedy instance of technological mis-use.
So I'm targeting warrior narcissism intentionally, because .. after all .. dang himself, could prove the value of my point, by switching me off right now.
Eg. Flock cameras don’t help the military but do help the police state.
I would expect any invading forces would need to be surveilled by planes or satellites, or perhaps drones, since they would immediately destroy something like flock cameras.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/cour...
The same code was used in another project of this same company. The project was a missile. It felt weird.
This isn't what the article is talking about at all. It never says don't build military technology. It says don't build things like a database of who in the country is and isn't gay and what religion everyone practices, for fear a future bigoted administration might use it to target those people. If your government is turning howitzers on you, that's less a police state and more a civil war.
I don't know what you do against that, but it's a different situation. There is precedent in the US with the Army being used to round up and forcibly displace native populations, but that really seems to be the kind of thing that requires a political solution, not prevention of any possibility. If we didn't have an Army at all, then secession would have succeeded, there would still be chattel slavery, and one of the hostile European colonial powers likely would have simply conquered the west itself and killed all the natives anyway.
Thanks for sharing!
>How do you make sure a police state doesn't happen?
There is no way to be sure, all one person can do most of the time is make a personal effort and hope it is not overwhelmed by storm-trooper ambitions and communist-dictator tactics.
When I look at Flock, it is so sad. It's been 30 full years since I got my early webcams when they were made by Intel and were still expensive business machines intended for teleconferencing over dial-up. Without really needing the internet of course.
It didn't take long before I was using one for observing my fledgling company's parking lot 24/7, and on more than half my CRT monitor you could see every car that drove by on my street, which was almost constant during the daytime. This was 99% of the action compared to visitors who pulled in.
It didn't take that long before I could remotely call in to the cam plugged into the front office PC through dial-up networking in Windows 95, and when I got a smartphone in 2001 I no longer needed a remote laptop most of the time as long as I was OK with the small screen of the flip-phone form factor. Rather than leaving the spare land-line available for calling directly in, alternatively it was also possible to log into an ISP over dial-up from my company, then keep the line tied up so I (or anyone really) could have access over the internet.
When broadband internet came around it made a really big difference since the stream was not as compressed, and motion not nearly as blurry and jerky. It was nice having the choice between a private remote connection to my front office PC over direct dial-up whenever I wanted, as well as enjoying the faster speed of the public internet plenty of the time too.
Anyway it didn't take long to realize that if webcams ever really catch on, then our local law enforcement would be highly interested in what could be done if they could freely observe them like I was doing looking at my own stream. I didn't know anybody else that had a webcam at first, but for protection of my own building all I would have to do is give the law my IP address and they could pick up the stream no differently than I was. They already knew my location and I had an excellent relationship with all the first responders. Naturally nothing was encrypted back then so that wasn't even a consideration, there was really nothing confidential on my stream to begin with.
I really thought about it long and hard and it took quite a while trying to examine all the possibilities. There were a few obvious downsides regarding privacy which needed much further consideration, so I could not in good conscience pull the trigger until that had been justified very deeply.
I didn't expect to hesitate that long but it really did take more than a year to conclude without a doubt that the negatives outweighed the positives, but that was only in the short run. In the long run the virtually unlimited downsides could only accumulate in excess of the possible upsides, and it was a big unknown how scattered cams could be used to compromise general privacy. Eventually had to realize such a cam network would be more easily used in a predatory way rather than for protection from predators, regardless of who was watching or recording. At significant scale it seemed like it could very well become exponentially dystopian.
No big deal, if you're not capable of thinking of something overwhelmingly positive to base your business on, I understand.
At least I didn't pioneer it, and I assume a lot of other early webcam owners gradually engaged in some of the same thought processes or it would have gotten a lot worse a lot sooner. I sure did talk to a lot of them, as webcams got more popular over time. Most of them were on laptops though and very seldom were aimed at a public space.
There are so many worthwhile things to do which don't amount to spying on Americans.
Most of our electronics hasn't been American for quite some time now, so there is that. It really is made in, and for, less freedom & liberty loving countries, with the USA becoming more like collateral damage each decade.
It wasn't really this bad until Facebook came along whose sole mission ended up trying to monopolize PII as much as possible. And if not that at least put billions of dollars to work changing peoples' habits to neglect their own privacy anyway even if they end up on other platforms.
If privacy wasn't so valuable in a fundamental way, they wouldn't have been able to get as rich as they did by monetizing its removal.
Sure, we could all live without IDs and use motio belli for defence but this arrangement will be soon replaced by someone more organized because there is a huge return to that organization despite its risks.
It's embarassing for an adult to think like this. There will always be someone willing to build that thing (and that was true even before llms)
We may all play some part in societies that have some degree of monstrous outcomes, but I feel like staying on the "tragic civilian casualty" side versus the "legitimate target" side of a freedom fighter's bombing campaign is probably the way to go.
I'm not dismissing the sentiment here. It's morally sound. You should act in accordance with your principles and it useful to be reminded how those principles intersect the world. I have similar guardrails (probably not the same as the author's). I just wouldn't want people to overestimate what can be accomplished with this approach.
The problem is not just the tech, its building systems where humans are essentially slaves to the system, with no recourse or power over whats happening.
Don't build technology that interacts with people in ways they did't consent to. Don't build skinner boxes. Let the user decide who gets whatever data they generate while using the thing. Let the user control how it will work, insofar as it doesn't contradict the other heuristics.
These are political principles, but they're pretty basic. You don't have to keep up to date with the news, just check in with your morals once in a while.
I like some platforms do give us choice over our data but rarely do they not have our data be a component of the product. OpenAI, and anthropic for example use our data for "analytic purposes" which is broad enough that we compromise our agency over our data.
So what do you do when the majority of the systems you use on a daily basis to function in a normal life, require you (or atleast the majority of the populace) to compromise on morals? Do you know its expensive rise-wise, cost-wise, socially etc to check in with you morals in that kind of environment. I'm just curious your thoughts on this or if I'm misreading it. edit: And I'm not all doom gloom, I have hope and desire and trust in a future where morals aren't compromised in this way - I just see it as coming with a higher up-front cost and being aware that the most common environments around you systematically actively oppose you.
The alternative is doing nothing while the world gets less and less safe for our children.
Of course you can avoid politics. Just be a good person. Vote for who you think is the best candidate at the time. And move on with your life.
Ironically the people most involved in politics don't have their own house in order. They're often mentally ill, over educated, underemployed and without meaningful ties in their life (e.g. family, real life community, etc).
That is definitionally not avoiding politics.
I think you misunderstand what politics is, at a fundamental level.
Watch how police states behave. What tools do they use? Typically, it's roots of trust. They take down sites by tampering with their domain name. They MITM web traffic by compelling certificate authorities to do unstrustworthy things. They spy on cell phones by mimicking external authorities that the phones are wired to trust explicitly and without input from the user. They insert devices into ISP infrastructure which users tend to assume is neutral.
So if we want to prevent this: Don't tolerate roots of trust that the user cannot configure. Use a threat model that includes nation states. Don't design with the assumption that trusted third parties will remain trustworthy. Think about how to protect your users privacy. Prefer peer-to-peer where possible, because your server may at one point become compromised and harm the users. Think about how they can protect themselves if that happens. Give them control over whether to install updates. Publish your API so users can make unauthorized clients if they don't trust yours. Prefer repeatable builds, and check hashes to spot malware. Review contributions and be wary of binary blobs that may have hidden use cases.
Mostly this is just sound engineering. It means doing your job well, which is not always the same as doing the job the shareholders asked for. They invested so they could have leverage, so ask yourself ahead of time if those are the same kinds of levers that police states want to pull. Shoot them down in the design phase if possible, sabotage them after the fact if necessary.
If someone blocks traffic because of [topic], I don't think "gee maybe we are overly-dependent on oil", but the reverse. Most people are the same.
If I see someone defiling a public space, I am more accepting to more authoritative means to restore order.
If someone cuts ties with me because of their political beliefs, I am further convinced they are part of a cult. Because that's essentially what cults advocate for.
You can believe what you want, but you should not be deluded to think you're changing anyone's mind by behaving this way.
This is a toddler’s logic.
> Of course you can avoid politics. Just be a good person. Vote for who you think is the best candidate at the time. And move on with your life.
This has got to be one of the most naive takes I have ever seen on this subject.
Has it never occurred to you that often times being a good person means engaging in “politics”?
Stallman was right again
https://www.azquotes.com/quote/755239
That said, they are both compatible, you can refuse to do something, and make efforts so that nobody does it.
But I think the the latter is the actual core security model of our society, and refusals aren't really effective to the point that I wouldn't worry much about it and just focus on compartimentalizing and executing on my duties. Isn't it theoretically possible that upper management divides duties so that engineers cannot accurately judge the ethical correctness of the task and the overall mission? As an individual you don't have the right tools to make such an evaluation. You can be pushed to investigate further, but the moment you do so, you cease your role as an engineer and put your citizen hat on.
Correct, and the lessons in the CIA's very own Simple Sabotage Field Manual are still as helpful as when they were written.
Yes, but it’s still the case that you didn’t do it. You cannot directly control the actions of others, just your own. Do that, at least.
Getting other people to also not do it is the rest of the political act. It’ll never be the case that nobody’s willing to perform an act, but if all the people who are doing so under duress stop, at the very least it helps one identify the proper size and shape of one’s political coalition and the power therein.
And, yes, people have bills. That’s what we mean by politics. We’re 50 years behind the curve on building the capacity to act in their own interest or on their own beliefs; that’s no reason not to start now.
This is not about technologies (after all, an authoritarian government will use many existing technologies, from the car to the computer), but about powers granted to a government, that could be used differently by the next party/majority in power.
The answer to that is to not grant government too much power in the first place.
Of course, this is often a contentious point for leftists, since they do want to grant government a lot of power in the first place; they're just concerned that the exact same powers will then be used by a different political side in a way that bothers a different category of people.
Or we could stop all tech development. But it is not going to happen.
“If war is not impossible, then every advance in scientific technique in an advance in mass murder”
As true today as then
You can replace war with “police state” and it’s the same message.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GzTlTVaYDtk
see war on drugs and more
No, but they were extremely happy to hop over to France and realize that we kept lists that indirectly listed jews. Actions have consequences that we may not be able to predict.
Don't create gradients you don't have dams for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
I fully agree with your base perspective, that the main focus should be on preventing authoritarians from coming to power in the first place.
I also agree with your final point, that the government doesn't need tech to lean on a person.
We disagree in the middle, on how tech that makes evil orders of magnitude easier might be a contributing factor and might enable the government to lean on many more people than it would otherwise.
We also never seem to accept this answer for other forms of tech. Should we ban encryption because it makes it easier for terrorists to hide? Should your phone run ever photo you take through a CSAM database to catch preditors? Should we ban 3d printers because someone might print gun parts? For some reason we understand that people motivated enough to commit crimes will find a way to do it. This is much truer when it comes to the actions of the state than it is for individuals. I'm never going to learn to smith parts for a gun, but I could figure out 3d printing pretty easily. If the state wants me dead or in jail, I don't think the Flock cameras are that meaningful.
There is obviously a spectrum here, but none of these companies are inherintly evil, the people working at these companies aren't either.
The evil ones are committing the crimes.
I agree with you on our obscene debt and our obsession with "conflicts" around the world, but I'd argue we're seeing the mass reduction of state employees and it's just making everything worse (eg massive deregulation and the destruction of checks and balances).
No, what I would argue with, is if you want an org to laser focused, GET THEM TO DO THAT. Making them smaller doesn't reduce the focus, it could perversely, cause them to 100x their automation into all the areas you don't want them. Don't try and control an autonomous system by its second order effects.
I don’t belong to one, but it is sort of annoying to not be able to vote in the “primary elections” (where the parties pick their candidates). My state has a strong partisan lean so this is the only election that actually matters here. Oh well.
For example, I just voted in the Minnesota primaries. Ours are open primaries, so you don't need to register with any party and the ballot has every party on it. Though, it spoils your ballot to vote in multiple parties' primaries. So you gotta choose, but you do that privately.
[0] https://ballotpedia.org/Primary_election_types_by_state
Now that the red pedophiles are in charge instead of the blue ones, he changes his tune.
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This is one of those things that make for great post title and gets you all riled up at first but when you think about it, it's really shallow.
Most civic databases can be abused by any sufficiently authoritarian government. A homeless shelter's records may contain exactly the sort of information that could be used to get "undesirables" off the street. But those same records are useful for coordinating beds, outreach, medical care, etc. Surely the conclusion isn't that the shelter shouldn't keep records.
It seems much more useful to focus on limiting what gets collected, who gets access to it, and how long it can be retained. In other words, boring things like data-minimisation and retention laws. Somewhat amusingly, that gets you pretty close to the sort of principles behind GDPR, which isn't exactly universally loved around here.
I don't really disagree with the blog post's moral intuition. What bothers me is the emphasis on individual moral choices by the people building these systems. I've seen plenty of my peers happily work for companies that have spent the last twenty years building exactly this kind of technology, there will always be someone willing to build it. That's not an argument for abandoning personal ethics, but it is an argument against treating personal ethics as any form of serious societal safeguard. "good engineers should refuse to build them" means nothing.