[em3rgent0rdr]

> "Google's engineers are mass protesting"

~12 Google employees resigned. Out of ~4,000 signers to the petition. Out of ~74,000 total employees. A drop in the bucket. Clearly the vast majority of google employees don't care, rationalize away, or excuse the fact that they work for the military industrial complex.

[soperj]

You also work for the Military Industrial Complex if you live in the U.S and contribute taxes.

[d0lph]

More like coerced, there is no option.

[soperj]

Vote for someone else? If people actually care, and it seems a great number do, it is possible to actually do something.

[assblaster]

Defense of the United States is required by the US Constitution. Defense requires military spending. Military spending is money given to the military itself as well as arms produced by non military companies and contractors.

The military industrial complex is, essentially, a mandatory relationship, though with significant problems leading to inefficiency and poor management decisions.

The way to fix this is through reform. It could be argued that the election of a private citizen with no government experience however significant experience in the private sector is evidence of actual voting in for change in the military leadership. Whether this translates to actual long term efficiency is yet to be seen.

[marnett]

The MIC and Intelligence apparatus are here to stay. They are overwhelmingly bipartisan. It would be "Anti-American" to not avow complete support.

[d0lph]

Not in a two party system. Voting for anyone that deviates from the status quo is throwing away your vote.

[SahAssar]

It's throwing away your vote until it isn't. As recent as 1992 a third candidate got above 18%, and led in the polls just a few months before the election.

Either way, voting for reformist candidates (for either way you support) in senate, house and local elections goes a long way.

[d0lph]

The US's last third party president was George Washington.

[kerng]

Some employees raising concerns is something, compared to noone raising concerns I'd say. It shows difference in openess and culture between the two organizations.

[notheguyouthink]

Hard to say what that culture is exactly, though. It could simply be a culture where the employees feel safe enough to express concern with the company. Ie, both employee groups have the same numbers of people who care about ethics, but one group feels more able to express those concerns.

[RealityVoid]

I think your comment is a little bit unfair seeing as only a very very small subset of those ~74.000 employees work for the "military industrial complex" and even that on a subset of the problem that is not directly aimed at killing people.

[adventured]

People like to say that because of the military industry complex having a small role in the funding of research that Sergey Brin was part of while he was at Stanford. Back in reality, the government has had its hands all over funding programs like that since the 1940s and it amounts to nothing more than routine government sponsorship of science & research, which all nations do.

[dao-]

I don't understand how you're trying to spin this. If you only want to look at the people working directly on military projects (a restriction that I'm not sure makes sense in the first place), the number of people who signed the petition and resigned from Google will also go down. How exactly does this back Bobbleoxs' comment?

[RealityVoid]

I think saying I want to "spin" something implies I have some sort of ulterior motive for doing so and only care about projecting am image, not about the truth. I can assure you, that is not so, I simply think Google, overall, has managed to be a good influence on the world. I might be wrong, but my opinion comes from honest belief. Assuming otherwise poisons the conversation.

What I was trying to highlight is that the rapport between the involvement in military research and the amount of revolt stemming from it is quite small, ergo the reaction is not quite a drop in the bucket but quite strong, looking at what prompted it.

[giancarlostoro]

How big is that team doing that contract though? Did half of the team resign? That'd be the numbers I'd be more interested in knowing about, or are these random employees?

[glogla]

I mean, if they were people with strong ethics who don't want to do harm, they probably wouldn't be working for Google in the first place.

[Steltek]

That's quite a leap to equate "okay with killing people" to "working at Google".

[epanchin]

5.6% of staff signed a petition and 1.6% resigned.

In comparison, the largest petition in the US was 4.6 million signatures, a mere 1.8% of the working age population.

[rdtsc]

> 1.6% resigned.

So more than 1 in 100 of Google's employees resigned because of the contract? That doesn't seem right, do you have a source for that. That would be huge news. Was it 1% of one particular department only?

[tossaway1]

0.016%, not 1.6%

[doktrin]

>> ~12 Google employees resigned. Out of ~4,000 signers to the petition. Out of ~74,000 total employees.

> 5.6% of staff signed a petition and 1.6% resigned.

1.6% would be almost 12,000, not 12. I'm not familiar with this case but a quick search corroborated that it was a dozen employees that walked out.

[nightcracker]

1.6% of 74000 is approx 1200, not 12000.

[doktrin]

Actually it's 120

[Fnoord]

74000 * 1,6 / 100 = 1184

[kvartz]

Google's AI research team is 3490 people according to (https://ai.google/research/people) While I couldn't find any info on who left. Assuming it was high paid AI researchers/engineers, it puts number of employees resigned in a perspective.