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by ben_w 359 days ago
It's very easy to mistake one's own government for the good guys.

20 or so years ago, my degree's optionally-mandatory* industrial placement year had me interviewing at Lockheed Martin.

I didn't get it, and in retrospect, given what is now coming to light about UK misbehaviour in Iraq**, I'm glad I didn't.

Unfortunately, I don't know what to do about this, as you're correct about the world we live in.

* tax thing

** https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/12/uk-veterans-allege-...
1 comments
ponector 359 days ago
It's easy to identify who is a evil country and who is a victim in Russo-Ukrainian war.

Who is bombing civilians? Shelling cities with inaccurate old missiles? Which cities are destroyed to the ground?

Russian state is pure evil, even worse than Iran.

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TeMPOraL 359 days ago
In context of working on military hardware, it's more complex than that. Name whichever state you consider evil, there are good chances they've recently received or bought weapons from a state you don't consider evil. Name whichever state you consider good, there are good chances they sold their weapons to parties you find questionable.

You may build tech that helps the good defenders defeat the forces of the stronger, evil attacker, but 5 years down the line, you may discover that same tech is now used to blow up hospitals and refugee convoys - and it doesn't take your country being on the wrong side of a war, it just takes the usual international politics.

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ben_w 359 days ago
If only the majority of the Russian resident population could see that, they would stop Putin.

Propaganda, and arresting dissenters, makes it difficult for the *average* Russian to realise anything is wrong.

But even in free nations, people like to think their soldiers are heroes rather than villains, and reports of crimes are covered up or brushed aside.

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fennecbutt 355 days ago
Pretty sure a good many of them know exactly what's going on.
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ben_w 355 days ago
"A good many" is how many, exactly?

UK had a few million protest against the second Iraq war, and still didn't stop it. Do you think the percentage is higher or lower in Russia, with all its propaganda?

Worse, in the context of "picture myself working on something like this and sleeping well at night", consider sub-group modifiers: how many people in the UK resigned from defence companies due to agreement with the anti-Iraq-war protests?

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