China

Tech people: Rant about egregious things that China and Russia does (political, freedom, basic human rights, etc.)

Also tech people: Vehemently oppose helping the US DoD with their highly-sought after skills, sign online petitions, protest and/or quit their high-paying jobs at <insert tech company that provides value to US DoD>.

Serious question for these tech people: What are you exactly doing to help solve the issues you've ranted about?

I'd like to hear thoughtful responses that are not the typical fallacies (e.g. ad hominem, ad populum, straw man, etc.)

I think it's a vocal minority that promotes those ideas and the rest follow because it's career suicide to go against it. I'm quite patriotic but not quite brave enough to go against the grain at this time.

How is the DoD going to help with China and Russia? We're not going to invade them.

If you're referring to the NSA or CIA they're both organizations that ignore the US constitution so there's great reasons to not work for them.

> We're not going to invade them.

So, that is your opinion. The whole point of having a credible option to use violence, is that one is willing to use it. Otherwise, there is no credibility in the threat, which defeats the entire purpose of peace and security that is backed by the potential use of violence. In that sense, if one misses a court ordered appearance, one shouldn't be surprised to see law enforcement knocking on one's doorstep with the threat of violence for legal non-compliance.

Do black hat cyber attacks constitute an "invasion"? If you say no, then that's what Russia / China is banking on, because they're doing it, and betting that the US won't resort to conventional military use of force in retaliation. Since there's no real threat of painful retaliation, they can continue hacking away with no consequence then?

If you say yes, then you're saying that the US should respond to cyber attacks with conventional military use of force, tanks, planes, boots on ground, etc. because you see cyber attacks as no different than a conventional attack by those countries.

Regardless, the US needs more cyber security professionals and other technical professionals (e.g. machine learning etc.) to help with the defense against these actors, but that's hard to do with all this backlash from techies.

So what are you suggesting then? that tech workers leave "high paying jobs" to work for the DoD? To what end? Exert military force against China? I'm not sure thats the right course of action, even though the 21st century almost certainly will see escalating conflict between USA and China.

Rather than the DoD, i could see what you mean if instead we were talking about other federal and local departments of trade, labor, environmental policies, etc. Exerting soft power instead of hard, military force. NGOs with a focus of international labor organizing might be applicable too.

Doesnt excuse it either way but do you believe the USA and its intelligence agencies doesnt conduct similar black hat cyber actions in China / Russia? That status quo is simply what modern espionage looks like and doesnt constitute hard military action until it crosses lines it has yet to (shutting down a power grid, for ex).

To build on my other response, perhaps intead of being a China warhawk, which could be the most devastating and destructive war in history if escalated to nuclear war, how about instead we revist things like permenant normalized trade relations with china? How about we invest in local high tech skilled and automation assisted manufacturing such as can be found in south korea? there are many other options besides hard military force and to rush to that is immature and dangerous.

> So what are you suggesting then? that tech workers leave "high paying jobs" to work for the DoD

No. Have you not heard about the tech workers who voluntarily quit their civilian day jobs in protest of their employer, because their employer was working (or planning to work) with the DoD?

So in my original question, I was inquiring what people were actually doing to positively impact the world in the direction they want it to go (preferably, objectively measurable results), because I know everyone here has opinions about what someone else should do.

I personally have turned down offers such as this with regards to the NYPD so I am familiar. I didnt understand your original point, thought you were saying people should quit high paying tech jobs TO go work for the DoD. Sorry for the confusion.