[mikeash]

Then you’ve superficially answered the literal questions without actually getting at the underlying point.

The point is this: if I help them, how can I ensure that this help goes towards things like preventing other countries from obtaining nuclear weapons, and not blowing up weddings?

[killjoywashere]

It's offense vs defense, and in this situation, those are highly separable domains.

Concretely, blowing up weddings is a failure of guidance systems, that's an offensive problem. Those are avionics and fire control problems, not network security problems. Avionics and fire control are highly specialized domains. You don't accidently write some code that helps with those problems. They have their own languages, their own compilers, their own chip architectures. The developers work in places you hear about on the History channel, like China Lake.

Conversely, the defensive work of improving the network security that protects the plans and software for offensive systems, including those avionics and fire control software repositories, is good for everyone not just the rabid dogs of the DoD.