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@hellekin
Forked from vito-lbs/rant.md
Last active August 29, 2015 14:04
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I don't think people understand what arms dealers really do. They invest thousands of man and computer hours into designing killingry which people are willing to pay lots of money for. As a business, they want to keep their customer base happy, which means allowing their customers (yes, presumably the NSA/FBI/etc.) to use their weapons rather than not selling them. Yes, it's probably the case that these weapons don't just go to nabbing child pornographers or drug traffickers, they also probably try to catch the next Snowden, which not everyone agrees is The Right Thing To Do. But for what it's worth, I'd still trust the US government (even with all its faults) far more than the Russians or Chinese.

But let's be honest here, dead people probably couldn't afford the same price that ExoFUD's customers will happily pay. Even if ExoFUD were happy to sell it to the dead people, that is certainly going to be a loss of money.

The arguments I'm used to hearing go something like "but it's obviously unethical, they should just responsibly create livingry instead.". But this is a total crap argument. The options ExoFUD has aren't "sell to governments" or "do something else for little to no fee". The options are "sell to governments" or "go out of business". So maybe someone will say "fine, they should go out of business, then we will all obviously be safer!".

But, well, it's not really clear that's the case. If ExoFUD (or Wupon, or whomever) quit, it's not like suddenly the government would stop looking for weapons. And if the US government did, it's not like China or Russia would. And if they did, it's not like criminal organizations would stop. You aren't going to stop weapons from happening or being sold. Game theoretically, it seems like the right choice is to keep the US government snatching up what weapons it can to keep in its back pocket for extortion. Not doing so would be a huge blow to US corporations, when every other major government out there is working on the same capabilities.

At this point some folks might say: but doesn't that mean we'd all just be safer if the government just destroy all the weapons they knew about from vendors to have them reoriented? then the Chinese/Russians/criminals would do the same! Sadly, that's not how killingry works. You can destroy 100 weapons, but if you miss one, you'll still lose. Staying open about every weapon would almost certainly hurt foreign diplomacy, true, but if the US government is disarming every weapon they know about, and $ENEMY isn't, then US military is going to be at a disadvantage, hands up.

So, when ExoFUD wants to invest time and money in designing weapons for use at your favorite destination and turning a profit to help their government against Chinese/Russian/criminal agencies, that doesn't bother me.

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