YC: Requests for Startups

>New defense technology

If you want to build machines that kill people, you should at least be willing to say it clearly. If it makes you uncomfortable to talk about, maybe that should tell you something. And it's not a very good excuse to argue that you didn't build a weapon, you just built something that makes it easier to use weapons.

Arms races are not the way. The biggest threat to the West isn't somebody else's weapons, it's that Indonesia's elections today went to a candidate who doesn't want to align with the West, relations with India are increasingly strained, and even Brazil and Turkey are starting to lean out. Geopolitics is politics, and politics requires appeal. Our brand image is significantly worse than two decades ago, as far as I can see.

If the West can't gain allies on friendly terms and maintains power through the development of ever-more advanced military technology, then what kind of world have we built, exactly?

It's extremely disappointing to see this.

Countries need to defend themselves, and sometimes defend their allies, and not having had to defend yourself in the recent past does not mean you won't need to defend yourself in the near future. Having a robust, capable network of defensive technologies requires a lot of investment and a lot of people, and decades to build. You can't spin up a national defense overnight. The difference between defensive technology and offensive technology is very, very blurry even among people extremely familiar with the topic, which 99% of us here are not.

Pretending any of these objective truths are wrong is folly and ignores a dozen millennia of human history.

There will always be individuals/organizations/countries that don't the "the West" as an ally. Some subset of that will be outwardly hostile to Western ideology, and some subset of that will be willing and able to use violence as a means to their end. The fact that some Western countries have impressive militaries doesn't somehow mean they should stop investing in that technology.

> If you want to build machines that kill people, you should at least be willing to say it clearly.

Well maybe that's not at all what they're saying.

Perhaps you could share what you consider the least extreme version of "building machines that kill people." Building missiles - OK yeah obviously. Improving satellites which are used for information gathering which could be used for missions where people are killed? Does that fall within "building machines that kill people?" What is the mildest example of something that constitutes "building machines that kill people?"

It’s funny how morally bankrupt you are. It’s wrong to spend on defense but you want us to smile and embrace autocracy? If India assassinates our citizens you want us to smile and hug them?

People making returns for YC are now directly funding future startups which will be used to facilitate genocides.

Sad day for YC.