I'm not aware of any specific recent controversy, but the core concept of autonomous military equipment is extremely controversial. Bloomberg called them "Tech's Most Controversial Startup" a few years ago: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-10-03/tech-s-mo...
Palmer Luckey and Peter Thiel themselves are also quite controversial political actors.
By controversial you mean that they are conservative. I'm not aware of anything they've done that is particularly controversial; furthermore, if the standard for controversial is that a person has donated money to political candidates and organizations that would make a huge portion of big tech figures controversial.
No that is not what I mean, I don't consider "being conservative" or donating money to any candidate to be controversial. For Palmer Luckey I'm referring to him personally holding a multi-million-dollar fundraiser for Donald Trump, and for Peter Thiel I'm referring to his opposition to democracy and women and poor people voting, among other things.
Running a fundraiser for Trump is not controversial even probably to plenty of liberals, and if you are referring to Thiel's 2009 essay, that is a very uncharitable and biased summary of what he is saying.
It is an incredibly straightforward reading of what he wrote. "Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible." He was 42 years old when he wrote that.
He is welcome to apologize or publicly state that he no longer believes this, and he has done that for other past controversial statements. Since he has not done so, we should conclude that he still holds this belief and acts accordingly.
I found the particular text of the sponsorship tweet rather shocking. "Software-defined conflicts" is a callously buzzy way to describe events involving mass loss of life.
People who push back on technology used at the border make little sense to me. Using technology frees up other resources to process migrants more quickly through the abused asylum process. That means they are in detention for less time, they get court cases quicker, and get asylum or removal quicker.
Surely you can imagine some consistent viewpoints that a person could have here, such as "it can be a good thing when someone is able to escape a terrible situation in their current country even if they don't meet the rules for being granted asylum"?
I can see how people empathize with that but on the flip side I've known plenty of immigrants who went through the process the right way, waited months or years, gone through naturalization process and did the same to get get their families here.
They, along with others still in line feel cheated by the people entering illegally / abusing the asylum claim systems. If you're escaping a bad situation in a central or southern American country, and then pass through 4-5 countries to get here, you're not seeking asylum, you're an economic migrant no different from immigrants from India, China, etc all seeking a better life.
No other developed country would or should allow people to illegally enter and skip the legal process.
That's just hazing bullshit, "I went through this misery so you must, too!". You fix it by making the legal route less awful, not by intentionally inflicting even more suffering.
It won't be politically possible to change much of anything about the legal immigration system until we stop the ~200K[1] of people illegally coming across the border every month.
The minute you announce some kind of concession for people already here (which would most definitely be part of a broader immigration reform bill) then the floodgates will open with people trying to make it in before the effective date.
Are you a US citizen making this statement? If you are, then you don’t know the scale of social spending that you will be hit with if that legal route for that comes to pass.
Either way, I can’t see any progress on immigration reform. It’s not happening, unless the flow at the border stops or reduces significantly.
Current US border policy is in no way designed to minimize hyperthermia related suffering. For instance, there are nonprofits that install water stations in the desert to minimize migrant deaths. CBP agents regularly vandalize these to prevent their use [0]. They also keep captured migrants in crowded outdoor cages and in facilities without meaningful AC during the hottest months.
I never suggested otherwise. Ideally zero people would be crossing this border illegally and then there would be no deaths, right?
We should do everything possible to discourage this crossing. Adequate surveillance is a large part of that.
If you are legitimately seeking asylum you can just walk up to any border crossing station and not risk your life.
Edit: As far as the condition that we keep captured criminals in, I would wager a good bet that they're comparably better than the appallingly horrific conditions of South American jails.
Imo large parts of the southwest and CA benefit immensely from immigrant labor. Both in time-savings and $ (outsourcing upkeep, housework, child-care) which allow their population to consume more and pursue other opportunities.
Also, would people pay 50% more, double or triple for fruit picked by Americans, meat packed by
, those huge gardens and front yards maintained by, houses built by Americans. I think Florida and Texas after storms start to hint at what night be to come.
> Imo large parts of the southwest and CA benefit immensely from immigrant labor.
I don't see anyone arguing against immigration here. We are arguing against illegal immigration / obvious abuse of the asylum system.
If we can close the obvious holes in our border that are letting 200k people through a month, I'm very much in favor of granting more work visas to immigrants and starting the naturalization process.
If you want the law to reflect the economic reality, by all means engage with your local politicians.
I know people with a tree farm business in Texas who only hire illegals because every single citizen they've tried to hire cut their pinky off the second week on the job and filed for disability.
I don't disagree with your argument one bit but illegal is illegal. If somebody is going to break our laws to come here what expectation should I have that they're going to respect our laws once they're here? Criminals should be treated like criminals in a functioning society.
If the economic benefits are worth it to you, change the law. Don't subvert its enforcement. You can't stand up shouting about Trump and a Jan 6th insurrection and also turn a blind eye to illegal immigration in the same breath.
Look, I don't want to get into a discussion of whether the current laws are proper. HN isn't the place for that. I'm just saying that pretending border surveillance is a way to keep immigrants safe from the desert is pure moral fiction.
I said that you would know that there are people there and they might be or about to be in serious danger. What you do with that information afterwards is an entirely separate conversation.
If it is in your power to have this information and you neglect to, that is highly immoral. If we're going to have this border policy then it is our responsibility to know the effects of that policy. Surveillance of this crossing where hundreds of people die every year is a moral imperative.
People are posting in this thread suggesting that having autonomous surveillance here is akin to pointing weapons at people. The suggestion is hyperbole and ridiculous.
What's really disheartening here is that the people that don't like our border policy would rather we turn a blind eye here guaranteeing that these deaths continue and in greater numbers.
Palmer Luckey and Peter Thiel themselves are also quite controversial political actors.