> Department of War Directory – This year the students had access to a Department of War Directory – essentially a phonebook of ~5,700 names of “Who buys in the Dept of War?” The directory includes a tutorial on how the DoW buys and the various acquisition and funding processes and programs that exist for startups. It provides details on how to sell to the DoW and where the Program Acquistion Officers (PAEs) fit into that process.
Literally teaching people how to make money selling misery and violence. No mention of how the tech involved can be used to constrain states, stop wars, establish justice, identify war crimes and restore victims, nothing. I thought we were beyond this in 2026.
Have you been asleep for the last 4–8 years? We aren't even 'beyond this' compared to where we were 15 years ago. In case you haven't noticed, the US has been going backward for years: Americans fundamentally don't give a shit about anything except maximizing GDP, regardless of cost - and in fact, some sectors thrive on that externalized 'cost.' I've noticed your sentiment a few times on HN lately and I'm befuddled every time, like what in your life makes you think we are beyond this kind of thing?
I've been thinking about this question for a couple of days.
I think that, for the purposes of your analysis - that "the US has been going backward for years", it's important to make two observations:
a) This sentiment is precisely what has fueled Trumpism in the first place. If we just change which things we long for in the good old days, but keep the same timeline pessimism about what we've lost and why, it seems to me that we're likely to cycle around the fear/greed/predation we see, objection to which enjoys consensus (albeit with tribal labels perhaps). I don't have a strong sense of whether the US has been going backward, because I'm not sure it's possible for it to have (or to have had) a particular discrete direction in the first place. I don't long for what we've lost.
b) Let's look at POTUS approval. Of the single simple (perhaps oversimple, I don't know) metrics we might use to assess the narrative that "Americans fundamentally don't give a shit", it's a pretty good one. At some future point, the US government will wash away into history as they all eventually do, and the POTUS approval rating will be (and likely will already have been approximately) zero. The historic lows we're seeing in this area now are, to me, cause for enormous optimism. We have more and more inroads toward consensus regarding the illegitimacy of this institution. We are finding ourselves in agreement that the power vested in this office is invested poorly.
None of this is to deny that I'm nonplussed about the status quo. The murder of over a hundred children with a single tomahawk missile is probably the most horrific of any crime committed by an American in my lifetime, and it's not at all obvious how even to stand in the service of justice in its regard.
But what I do see, and what I do observe that everyone around me seems to see, is that we are accelerating toward novelty, leaving the lifeboats that brought us from the great ships of the industry and agriculture to these shores, and figuring out who we are.
In the past six months or so, I have begun to feel, for the first time since our fiddler Kuba Hejhal - one of the best on earth IMO, and I know some HNers had the privilege to see him on stage and perhaps have their lives changed in some small way for it - left this world by his own hand, that I can write and play optimistically about the evolution I see.
So I can't say that I have a single answer that can satisfy your critique, let alone convert your position to mine, but I thank you for noticing my sentiment, and I hope that we are all open to our minds changing as the records and shows and codebases flow.
War is where the money is. The government of this country has decided that you make money by going to war and you don't make money by not going to war. It's also decided that having money is mandatory. So if you want to succeed you'll go to war.
you may not even appreciate how accurate this is because it seems so simple but it’s exactly true
The moment you say “I’m not going to spend my time doing war” (in my case anymore) you are persona non grata to capitalism
What we need is peaceful, sober deprecation of this institution, and in particular, decommissioning of the nuclear arsenal. And there's no good reason that can't start today.
Knowing this it is rather hypocritical to call the department which is tasked with undertaking offensive actions the 'Department of Defen[cs]e'. It actually seems to come straight out of 1984 where the propaganda department is called the Ministry of Truth. Better call it for what it is - and what it used to be called - which is the Department of War.
Nope, hard pass. I’ll use the real names and people can understand me just fine.
If they insist, I have little desire to continue the conversation.
sex instead of 'gender'
illegal instead of 'undocumented'
mother instead of 'gestating person' or 'birthing person'
homeless instead of 'unhoused person'
criminal instead of 'justice-involved person'
paedophile instead of 'minor-attracted person'
prostitute instead of 'sex worker'
...and whatever other neologisms happen to be pushed by activists, politicos and the media. If there is a good existing term which is replaced for no valid reason I use the existing term. If there is a good reason to replace it - which is rare - I use the new term.
If they insist I do continue the conversation using the correct - existing - terms. The other side often shows little desire to continue the conversation which I find odd given that they generally wouldn't have had any problems using those terms a decade ago.
But this program appears to just treat war like it's some perfectly normal thing, rather than the most undesirable aspect of humanity which we're hoping to finally bring to an end so can we enjoy an age of peace amidst the internet.
This page literally presents war as if it's a profit vector rather than a societal ill - something that antiwar activists have been claiming is the actual impetus for most conflicts in the world, only to be called conspiracy theorists in response.
It's just totally nauseating.
So while, in the abstract, preventing people from being killed by drone swarms is a great idea, it's tainted from the get-go if the solution is just to make more money by having bigger killing machines, rather than preventing people from wanting/needing to drone swarm other people from the outset.
Stanford and SV have always had deep defense ties. Palmer Luckey and Palantir etc are just the latest iteration of this.
The DoD doesn't get to neglect relationships with a community for decades and then talk of how much in common they have with each other. It's nonsense and transparently manipulative.
