[chrissnell]

What? I am a US Army Reserve officer and I've served my country for the last ten years while working in tech. I've been in the technology industry for 25 years and have been in management and am currently a principal engineer for a large SFBA company. My military service is what I did one weekend a month and has no connection to my tech job, other than providing me with people leadership experience that readily translated into my day job.

I even served in a PSYOP unit for a few of those years. My fellow soldiers were cops, school teachers, software developers, construction workers, and PhD students. Just a bunch of young people that loved their country and wanted to help out while making a little extra money on the weekends.

You will find current and former military at virtually every sizable tech company. We're not here as part of some covert government plan to subvert the industry. We are here because you can't support a family on the $300-500 a month that you get from reserve duty. We're just a slice of the nation and no different than you.

[robert_foss]

Clearly there can be a conflict of interest when working for international tech firms. If Russian PSYOPS reservists were heading up an American division of Twitter, surely people would be screaming bloody murder (and with good cause).

[ratacat]

This really hit the nail on the head I think

[ANPEQ-1]

If the partnership between tech and the US government were as tight as you might think, we wouldn't be losing so badly on the information warfare front.

The fact is that the United States has such a massive bureaucracy between itself private innovation. If we had anyone dual-employed in both government and the private sector, they're in the latter because they can'd do anything useful for the former.

[AaronFriel]

Yes, but did you ever have a conflict of interest between your two positions? As other people are pointing out, psyops (generally speaking) involves tweaking public opinion in ways that favor the government. This person also happened to have editorial control and influence on Twitter.

If he were just a developer, it might be different, no?

[chrissnell]

Your argument is logical but if you had served in the military (at least the US military...can't speak for others), it's laughable.

The day-to-day of the average reservist's military (even a senior officer!) is mind-numingly boring and not important in the big picture. In a MISO unit (the new US Army name for PSYOP), an officer's day is spent planning training events and doing simulations of what their job might be "downrange" in wartime.

We're not scheming on ways to infiltrate our civilian employers--we're too busy trying to get hold of the lazy DoD civilian at Fort Bumblefuck with the full voicemail to get our training area allocated for the mandatory annual trip to the rifle range in November.

Now, is it possible that if we went into full-scale conflict with Iran and the Middle East was on fire that the UK and US might call upon this Twitter exec/reserve officer to help out? Sure. But, it would be above-the-board. He would get orders to active duty and turn in his Twitter laptop before heading off to spend the next year and a half at a military installation advising on Middle East info campaigns. This happens all the time and happened to a lot of us during OIF and OEF. The whole reason for existence of the reserve forces is to leverage critical knowledge learned in the civilian sector.

[AaronFriel]

You seem to be suggesting that we should just ignore conflict of interest concerns when the military is involved?

Most jobs involve large periods of mind-numbingly boring work that's not important to the big picture. The problem is the small, sometimes minute, fraction of time spent where the work is important to the big picture and there is a conflict of interest.

[corodra]

So, do you believe the general public should create a list of past government employed individuals and ban them from accessing the job market? That completely has no chance, what so ever, to have any negative repercussions in time. But draws the line to solve the problem you're having. Then no one with a conflicting interest from the gov can persuade their opinion into the public through private enterprise means.

[AaronFriel]

No, the issue here is that there's a concurrent conflict of interest where the same person has two jobs where it's clear they may need to recuse themselves from certain decisions.

I haven't said anything at all about:

1. banning 2. all 3. past government employees 4. from all jobs

Those were all generalizations you added.

I am talking about the need to:

1. scope recusals or avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest 2. For some jobs 3. For current government employees who have concurrent roles in which their interests could be misaligned 4. For some jobs where such a conflict of interest can occur

I hope you understand that some people might be frustrated with you when you turn a rather minimalist position into this maximalist nightmare that even past government employees should be considered unemployable.

[corodra]

Aye, but you also need to set a limit on such ideas. It's very easy for something like that to run away. Because you make it seem like a psyops reservist is out to persuade the public to goose step around. What if the ilks of Twitter bring those people in specifically to combat misinformation because that's what they're good at? Someone in that position is like a hammer. A hammer can be used to create or destroy. It's generally the company's responsibility to figure that out.

Moonlighting is a dangerous thing to regulate. It starts to impede on personal freedoms. Until social media is regulated as a public sphere, there's really no bearing for anyone to make judgement who work there with either current or past employment.

Oh, also, I hope you understand that other people's opinion of me don't affect me. The same as my opinion of you shouldn't concern you either.

[ptero]

IANAL. Clearly reservists are an important group that I did not cleanly address. I originally meant full time employment.

> My military service is what I did one weekend a month and has no connection to my tech job, other than providing me with people leadership experience that readily translated into my day job.

This, to me, is a key distinction. What you describe is similar to a second job some folks hold -- no problem for 99.9% of the population, but starts drawing much more scrutiny when people climb into senior management at either job. IANAL. Just my 2c.

[jackvalentine]

> We're just a slice of the nation and no different than you.

I don't want to be a dick to you because I should take you at your word in the absence of evidence otherwise. I think the issue here is you're paid by and subject to a military hierarchy with all the baggage that entails - that makes you different.