>The focus should be on national defense, aid during disasters, and responding to the legitimate requests of sovereign, democratic nations to come to their defense (e.g. helping Ukraine fight off the Russian invasion).
Carving out the particular military engagements your company deems less than justified sounds nice but isn't workable in practice. You have to swallow the whole pill if you want to sell to the DoD.
nickdothutton
Better to have smart bombs than dumb ones. Or rather, better to have 1 smart bomb than 1000 dumb ones spread across an entire city in order to pick off the particular building, vehicle, or person you want.
show comments
Qem
> With that in mind, it seems Red Hat, owned by IBM, is desperately trying to scrub a certain white paper from the internet. Titled “Compress the kill cycle with Red Hat Device Edge”, the 2024 white paper details how Red Hat’s products and technologies can make it easier and faster to, well, kill people.
"I give permission to IBM, its customers, partners, and minions, to use JSLint for evil."
show comments
neilv
Besides external PR, does anyone know how this affects internal morale?
Some of the earlier Red Hat people I knew would not be OK with working on weapons systems even under the most legitimate circumstances. And they'd be much more opposed to collaborating with fascist regimes. And I think horrified by the idea of shoveling AI slop and grifter hype into life&death decisions.
Of course the tech industry makeup has changed (overall culture transitioning from hacker idealists, to finance bros), and some IBM-ification of Red Hat has has also happened. But I'd like to think Red Hat still attracts a more principled pool of talent than FAANG.
show comments
frumplestlatz
> With things like the genocide in Gaza ...
Population: ~2,050,000
Density: 15,455.8/sq mi
Words have meaning, and their emotional force derives from that meaning. The knowing misuse of a term like “genocide” for its emotional force is manipulative sophistry.
philipwhiuk
I dunno that 'removes from their website' is sufficient for 'trying to erase from the Internet'
Can we rename this "RedHat removes paper from website on using their software to 'shrink the kill-chain'"
show comments
yomismoaqui
So the hat is red because of all that blood?
gameofliferetro
Was this written by an Iranian propaganda machine?
show comments
SoftTalker
> I don’t think there’s something inherently wrong with working together with your nation’s military or defense companies, but that all hinges on what, exactly, said military is doing and how those defense companies’ products are being used. The focus should be on national defense, aid during disasters, and responding to the legitimate requests of sovereign, democratic nations to come to their defense
The core purpose of a military is to destroy things and kill people, and the world is controlled by the people who can do that better than others. You can put all the "defense" and "disaster aid" lipstick on that you like but that doesn't change what they train for and what their real purpose is.
https://web.archive.org/web/20260402155236/https://www.redha...
Archive URL to original paper
>The focus should be on national defense, aid during disasters, and responding to the legitimate requests of sovereign, democratic nations to come to their defense (e.g. helping Ukraine fight off the Russian invasion).
Carving out the particular military engagements your company deems less than justified sounds nice but isn't workable in practice. You have to swallow the whole pill if you want to sell to the DoD.
Better to have smart bombs than dumb ones. Or rather, better to have 1 smart bomb than 1000 dumb ones spread across an entire city in order to pick off the particular building, vehicle, or person you want.
> With that in mind, it seems Red Hat, owned by IBM, is desperately trying to scrub a certain white paper from the internet. Titled “Compress the kill cycle with Red Hat Device Edge”, the 2024 white paper details how Red Hat’s products and technologies can make it easier and faster to, well, kill people.
It appears IBM learned no lessons after WWII: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
That book will need a sequel soon.
who let the Streisand effect out of its cage!?
"I give permission to IBM, its customers, partners, and minions, to use JSLint for evil."
Besides external PR, does anyone know how this affects internal morale?
Some of the earlier Red Hat people I knew would not be OK with working on weapons systems even under the most legitimate circumstances. And they'd be much more opposed to collaborating with fascist regimes. And I think horrified by the idea of shoveling AI slop and grifter hype into life&death decisions.
Of course the tech industry makeup has changed (overall culture transitioning from hacker idealists, to finance bros), and some IBM-ification of Red Hat has has also happened. But I'd like to think Red Hat still attracts a more principled pool of talent than FAANG.
> With things like the genocide in Gaza ...
Population: ~2,050,000
Density: 15,455.8/sq mi
Words have meaning, and their emotional force derives from that meaning. The knowing misuse of a term like “genocide” for its emotional force is manipulative sophistry.
I dunno that 'removes from their website' is sufficient for 'trying to erase from the Internet'
Can we rename this "RedHat removes paper from website on using their software to 'shrink the kill-chain'"
So the hat is red because of all that blood?
Was this written by an Iranian propaganda machine?
> I don’t think there’s something inherently wrong with working together with your nation’s military or defense companies, but that all hinges on what, exactly, said military is doing and how those defense companies’ products are being used. The focus should be on national defense, aid during disasters, and responding to the legitimate requests of sovereign, democratic nations to come to their defense
The core purpose of a military is to destroy things and kill people, and the world is controlled by the people who can do that better than others. You can put all the "defense" and "disaster aid" lipstick on that you like but that doesn't change what they train for and what their real purpose is.