I wonder if in a few years, there'll be heads of Google paraphrasing the old skit "You know, in hindsight, allowing autonomous AI drones to carry fusion bombs was a bad move, but for that one quarter we really earned a lot of shareholder value"
I don't know the author, but I do know that it's very much possible to work for organizations whose values and ethics are extremely compromised, and to mindfully participate in their work because you can also do a lot of good for a lot of people while you're there.
It's a complicated cost/benefit tradeoff: are the opportunities for world-improvement available with the resources of an ethically compromised organization worth the world-damage done by your participation (either your presence alone lending legitimacy/size to the org, or by work you may be called upon to do that directly or indirectly does harm)?
If you think there is a simple answer to that, you're wrong.
Like, sure, a lot of people delude themselves into thinking they're not doing harm because they like money or hate change. That's bad, and separate from what I'm describing above: that you can work for a deeply flawed org and accept the cost of your participation in those flaws in return for benefits that you can others can achieve with the resources offered by that same flawed org.
Not only that but his outrage is narrowly focused on contemporary US politics. Billions of people access food, shelter, medicine, education, etc, only by the rapidly diminishing leverage their labor provides (or doesn't provide) them. These people presumably never so much as picked up a book, or evenly briefly entertained a thought about a person outside their own immediate social circle.
Those topics aren't on-topic for the essay. I've taken a pledge to donate at least 10% of my money to charity / impactful giving. A good sum of my donations have targeted high-impact opportunities to improve life for people in third-world countries.
That's commendable, but I do think it emphasizes my point. If you have such ethical concerns, why develop powerful technology on behalf of shareholders whose identities and intentions are unknown to you? Activation engineering has obvious malicious uses and I can distinctly remember the sense of dread I felt when 'relaxed and expansive' went viral. I believe the 'good AI' future faces political obstacles, but perhaps you take an accelerationist view that technical solutions will pave the way. Given your politics, I wonder if an interview on a show like a Ralph Nader Radio Hour could help you connect with likeminded people from different backgrounds. Best of luck