[aerodexis]

The "we must do it or someone else will" logic is pernicious and dehumanizes both the enemy and the supposed good-guy. I cannot count how many times it's been used after the first couple answers to "why are we doing this?" fall flat.

I remember talking to someone who worked on quantum computing explain how interesting the domain was, and at the very end he concluded with "if the Chinese figure this out before we do, then it's all over".