YC: Requests for Startups

Jared Friedman and Gustaf Alströmer want to make it easier to kill other human beings, and turn a profit while doing it. Shame on them and anyone else who works on "defense technology."

> I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut (p. 19)

In your opinion, should we not have any defense technology?

This sort of blanket condemnation of war is ridiculous. Statecraft, even in the modern day, revolves around what each country's power projection capabilities are. To say that nobody should participate in building defense technologies is to say that we should cede a significant amount of leverage when it comes to international diplomacy.

There's probably some middle ground between no defense tech whatsoever, and trillion dollar illegal wars and genocides.

Every American - and the rest of the world too - is paying that very real debt. We're all paying the opportunity cost too, and the societal cost. It will be paid for generations, and many of the true costs are incalculable.

Some very few people are making a tonne of money, and here, YC is saying they want a piece of that. I feel like they're not getting dragged enough for it tbh.

Right this moment the US is being investigated by the world's highest court for complicity in genocide. And YC is openly asking to invest in companies that directly enable and support such action.

> There's probably some middle ground between no defense tech whatsoever, and trillion dollar illegal wars and genocides.

There is obviously middle ground. Which is why categorically condemning defense spending is indefensible.

What are you referring to as genocide?

> Which is why categorically condemning defense spending is indefensible.

That doesn't actually follow.

> What are you referring to as genocide?

Take your pick.

>> Which is why categorically condemning defense spending is indefensible.

>That doesn't actually follow.

It does. If some defense is OK, then some defense spending is OK. In order to categorically reject defense spending as the original commenter did, then you must categorically reject defense.

> Take your pick.

Of what?

I don't like working on killing machines either. But we shouldn't forget that the internet and basically all of computation originated out of defense research. That might be good or bad, but arguably the field was more innovative when that was the funding source than it is today.

> “All of modern high tech has the US Department of Defense to thank at its core, because this is where the money came from to be able to develop a lot of what is driving the technology that we’re using today,” said Leslie Berlin, historian for the Silicon Valley Archives at Stanford University. https://archive.ph/PY5sT

You can believe in a world without conflict if you want. It'll serve you well right up until the time you get put up against the wall and killed by someone who doesn't share your beliefs.

> I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres

I do believe the majority of humans involved with massacres are not doing so by choice.

Sorry, but I don't think this comparison really makes sense. Yes, duh, there's military research and a lot of things come out of it, especially because they have huge budgets for funding all sorts of research.

But the topic here is both about private companies, not some research fund and it's explicitly about creating products (not doing research) for military use.

Things like DARPA are even more complex, because in a way, intentionally or not it is used by the US to have essentially government funded research and infrastructure development while bypassing the whole "but that's communism!" discussion and also simply not having to publicly discuss it other than "let's raise military spending!".

So in other words what you say makes sense and I agree, but it might not necessarily apply here. Like your quote states this is about money for research coming from the US DoD, not about private capital investors wanting to make money by telling you to do R&D for the military.

>It'll serve you well right up until the time you get put up against the wall and killed by someone who doesn't share your beliefs.

Better be killed by someone with your belief? Or being sent to war by someone with your belief?

Or is that the whole "defend our values" bullshit all over again? Personally I'd much prefer a whole country to surrender, than even one human being killed.

For thousands of years borders have moved, tyrants and light towers of freedoms have ruled, but what really brought misery was war, not who happens to be the country's leader in a certain point of time. Yes, there have been to occasional ethnic cleansing, but it rarely (ever?) was that another country instilled the hatred just by moving a border. Anti-semitism was widespread in Europe, if it wasn't it would have been much harder for the Nazis to have concentration camps even in Poland.

A government taking over a population needs to also take care of the population and rarely does it work out to just control by force. It didn't even work for East Germany.

And while speculation I wonder what would happen if a country like Nazi Germany was or Russia today would take over the large parts of the world without much resistance. I think the outcome would either be that the countries split up, or are reasonably independent (think special zones in China) or there would be reforms bringing values of the occupied country.

But regardless of all of that hypothetical stuff, that might as well be completely wrong, the idea that values are defended or spread by military means is ridiculous, as is the idea that any values or things like freedom depend on the existence of individual countries. The idea that it's worth to die for them is just as dumb as the idea to die for a god. It's just propaganda and romanticism. At the end of the day it always boils down to send a ton of young people to their death, and when they actually end up in a situation where they actually see eye to eye they oftentimes realize how ridiculous they is and actually for the most parts, for the part where values really matter they would be best friends in another world. That's why history is filled with lethal enemies having a good time together at the fronts until some form of governments comes along and tells people to kill each other again. Things like the Christmas truce of 1914 happen then. And while with drones, and such this becomes harder, look about how all the drone fighters get mental diseases, and all the still mentally sane veterans end up becoming anti-war.

In a non-war environment, and on surrender people rarely get put up against the wall.

Does that mean you have no right to defend yourself? No, of course not. But the reality is that the outcome of "the bad guys winning" momentarily, might be less bad than millions of dead people, an industry fueled by arms manufacturing, a situation where generations might grow up learning to hate another country, ethnicity, etc. Because even if you technically win the war, look what Iraq brought us. Racism against Arabs, White People, hate of countries, religions, curtailing of freedoms that were claimed to be defended (on both sides actually), huge amount of propaganda material on all sides, renewed hatred in the area, spread of radicalism on both sides.

And then there's people arguing that it is all okay, because it brought technological progress.

Yes, it's not a black and white thing, it depends on circumstances, etc., but the idea that somehow "beliefs", "values", etc. are being defended is just ridiculous and means you are gullible. I mean look at how much lying there is always from all sides, how the fronts always happens to be around areas where the rich and powerful want to get resources from, how people that actually live freedoms are the first criminalized. Any values that might be worth defending die with war.

And looking at the US in particular. The US has two major borders with Canada and Mexico. Also they speak the world's language, they make the world's movie. You really think that there's someone coming from outside, does something that has never been successfully done before and do a land invasion under such geographical conditions, probably doesn't even speak your language too well, but still magically take your beliefs? Yup, then you're very gullible.

It doesn't matter if you believe in a world without conflict here. The idea that your beliefs are being protected by a startup producing military products is just outrageously ridiculous, regardless how you twist and turn it.

If military was about beliefs, East Germany/fall of the Berlin wall and reunification, the current situation of Palestine, the IRA, the outcome of American Inexpedience, etc. would never happen, because of the involved strong military. And regarding "being put at the wall". That did happen in France, but while you might hold any opinion on France in WW2, I think whatever the outcome of more military defense I am pretty sure more people would have been "put at the wall". Oh and as we all know they all became Germans and only the US made them French again.

The only belief you might fight for in military conflict between two countries is that the border should be in a certain way for some amount of time. Most beliefs that people talk about you kill as soon as you kill someone, enemy or not. And what you create is hatred. So yeah, if you belief that's your goal and worth developing weapons for, go ahead and do so.

Every war kills millions of people, ask the people in China, Korea, phillipines, Cambodia, Myanmar if they were ok with Japanese occupation murder of millions and enslavement and rape of their women. Your argument makes no sense, don’t defend your country cause nothing bad happens. It’s been proven time and time again , bad stuff happens. When someone has a gun at your daughters head let’s see if you didn’t wish you have better defenses