Hello Hexbears!
I am acquaintances with a student who has a very likely lead on a software development position with a major military equipment manufacturer. He is VERY excited about this. Now, I don’t know him too well but we are close enough to have a conversation and I would like to try to prevent him from going down this path. Especially considering he has other, less blood-soaked leads. His politics are unclear but from what I can gather he is vaguely progressive/berniecrat-ish, possibly sympathetic to the Palestinian cause but that’s not 100% confirmed.
I have an idea of how I’m going to talk to him about this but I’m looking to see if anyone here has any experience regarding what is or is not effective in conversations like these.
Disorganized rambling
Ok so I’m being vague about what company this is specifically for OPSEC reasons but from what I gather its pretty unambiguous that he would be contributing to the development of guided bombs, police surveillance, and networked weapons systems. Of course he has not actually said any of this. To him, the soon-to-be college grad its a high-paying job with some degree of prestige in a shitty labor market. The banality of evil in the imperial core I guess.
Mmmm ok I am in college in STEM fields and this has come up pretty often with my classmates. I’m pretty happy that most of them have been very uncomfortable working for the MIC, not a single one of them has been excited at all about these kind of job opportunities, even the more conservative ones are grossed out. We would be making the physical equipment though not the software so that might make a difference in how they perceive it.
Everyone has seen what our weapons do and if this person still wants to go contribute to that then idk what you can say to them that’s going to change their mind.
I would probably just bring up the morality of working at such a company and go from there. If they actually listen you might be able to have a bigger conversation but if they deflect (well someone is going to do the job ect ect) then they don’t care.