[muyuu]

It's not like there's a moral high ground about not collaborating with the military. Unless you want to advantage America's adversaries, namely China, Putin's Russia and Iran's current regime. There's always this implicit, sometimes explicit, "war bad" childish political philosophy in posts like this. In reality war is a given and you have to be prepared to have the upper hand.

[beezlewax]

"War is a given" if your foreign policies dictate that outcome. It's not something always unavoidable but it isn't inevitable either.

The United States is one pretty warmongerish nation by any account.

[bluGill]

> The United States is one pretty warmongerish nation by any account.

Compared to other modern nations, but compared to history vary peaceful.

[drfloyd51]

War is bad. And our reality isn’t some unchanging truth. Our actions and choices, or apathy, help shape our reality.

It is not childish to aspire to be better.

[muyuu]

You can explain that to the Ukrainians and tell them how they shouldn't have American technical superiority like Starlink and the American AI and data in their drones to survive another day.

[drfloyd51]

I reread my comment. Nowhere did I suggest countries don’t defend themselves. Nor did I say we shouldn’t make war.

We should minimize war and try other alternatives. And maybe try diplomacy and longer term thinking. Plus governments should value the governed.

But countries and people always have the right to defend themselves from attackers as they see fit.

[muyuu]

The technology is the same technology. Case in point: the Intel gathered from the tools named in the article and any AI/ML tools trained from it.

[monegator]

the EU has demonstrated for decades that by balancing trades, equality and human rights it can prevent conflicts from happening.

Seems to me that most of our friends in the balkans that have memory of the past wars are overall pretty happy about the current state of things, and there hasn't been wars to contend Alsace-Lorraine in 80 years, is it a record already?

War is very much not a given in the civilized world

[u8080]

To be more precise, two decades, from 1999 when EU countries bombed Yugoslavia and occupied Kosovo.

[muyuu]

They also instigated and executed the coup in Libya.

[muyuu]

That's why they have a full blown war in their borders and they're powerless without American hardware and intelligence. Also they're right now scrambling to allocate huge investments in weaponry, of course late, but better than never.

[monegator]

Full blown war: putin scared that more territories will want to join the EU block. No internal wars and more countries wishing to enter the block.

Powerless without american hardware and intelligence: You wish. Big tech is spending so much lobbying our governments in fear of us leaving them for open solutions, or god forbid paying fair amount of taxes.

And regarding intelligence, we would have been so much better without the CIA & co spying our politicians and messing with our governments, aiding and sponsoring domestic right wing terrorism for the past 50 years.

[muyuu]

They're supplicants to NATO, a pathetic situation America shouldn't be striving to replicate.

[titzer]

I guess nuclear weapons were just inevitable the moment the first quarks were assembled into a proton, right?

[red-iron-pine]

if it can be used to murder people it will be.

the only reason we dont have antimatter weapons or gravity guns is because we haven't figured out how.

[titzer]

We have international treaties that ban biological and chemical weapons. Other weapons that are regulated include anti-personnel mines, cluster bombs, and blinding lasers. Expanding bullets are banned in military uses as are incendiary weapons against civilian targets.

That's the state today. Throughout history there's been a long negotiation about what weapons have been allowed in combat.

[SecretDreams]

"war is a given" =/= "we should seek out wars"