We can only hope they don't wake from the illusion and spend this money right away by hiring each other and get occupied. God forbid they realize that money is actually their own time and effort, and this guy just tricked them into building something for him in exchange for the opportunity (money) of them working for themselves at another time.
As inequality grows, it only becomes more evident. Workers can safely cut the billionaire middle man.
Yes, at the end of the day the lucky laborers now hold a fresh piece of paper on their hands. While Mr. Bezos enjoys his real world tangible object, the laborers will discover that their work isn't done yet. Because their money is only worth if they themselves work for each other once again, otherwise it is just worthless paper.
Lets speculate a little bit for argument sake. Take this with a grain of salt because I am not a specialist, just a information hoarder.
Lets put miniaturization aside and focus on another aspects, which i judge will be more critical.
The warhead must survive mechanical stress of launch and reentry, and thermal stress at reentry. The question is: can it be designed only with computers and public knowledge? They could build small hypersonic wind tunnel to collect data and simulate the rest.
So what is the point of all this? If done by Ukrainians, what military objective does is accomplish?
Are we supposed to track down the people responsible for the Tomahawk cruise missile program as well? I mean, this piece does not make any sense to me. There is a difference between the people that make weapons and those that use them.
It’s the people who program the missiles. People who knowingly attack power infrastructure in a cold country (my parents spent 12 hours without the power today). People who make mistakes that make missiles struck residential buildings. Investigators said he contacted them and they were completely nonchalant about the result of their work. He used the term “banality of evil”.
I find it hard to blame the Russians doing this especially much. At least I’d have to blame the developers of the hellfire missile and reaper drone just as much.
Are you Russian yourself? "Especially much" seems like literal translation from Russian ("особо много"). This would explain intentional stupidity.
Developers of the weapons may say they do not want to hit civilian targets. These people know full well what they are doing. They are pure inexcusable evil.
I’m Dutch. Not sure if there’s any overlap in the language, but I think it’s a term I only use in English.
You have to be at least some level of patriotic to work on weapons systems, so it’s more likely they’ll call it regrettable that it’s sometimes necessary to use against civilians and call it a day.
The reason I say I don’t blame them in particular is because I can see the appeal of working on things that blow shit up. Even better if you believe they’re your enemies (would I have issues making weapons that drive the Russians out of Ukraine?).
It’s because I have faith in my government. And as ridiculous and caused by propaganda as it may be, that is likely the same for the Russians.
From my perspective they’re evil, but I doubt they see themselves that way.
It's not a matter of blame. In this situation, everyone contributing to the war effort is a target. Israeli covert operations have repeatedly conducted targeted killings against key civilian employees in the Iranian defense industry. Nothing personal, just degrading an adversary's capabilities.
The people who make missiles are complicit, and are partially responsible for the deaths that result from them. And yes, that raises awkward questions about the military industrial complex, and about other countries and people who are also doing it.
But it's basic cause and effect, some people built a missile, some people ordered its use, some people launched it at the target. All of them bear some portion of the responsibility for the end result, any other conclusion is not entirely honest.
There are international laws regulating war, and the fact is that Russia toke great pleasure into violating each single one of them. Systematically. Deliberately. All while telling lies and jokes to inflict the greatest pain possible to the population. It is an spectacle absolutely hideous.
And now they wonder why aren't attracting any international sympathy lately
Exactly. The people remote controlling drones into civilians in Ukraine should be held accountable, just like the people that killed civilians with hellfire missiles in Afghanistan should be held accountable.
As a german I'd also like to see the german politicians and officials that enabled these operations from german territory persecuted.
> The people remote controlling drones into civilians in Ukraine should be held accountable, just like the people that killed civilians with hellfire missiles in Afghanistan should be held accountable
Typical civilian deaths in Afghanistan would be e.g. families living with high ranking enemy combatants, totally incomparable with Russian forces bombing shopping malls in Ukraine.
At least the US cares enough to have a man in the loop when killing with their drones. Chair force killers actually have to watch and pull the trigger, not like the Russian missile programmers remotely destroying city block sized targets.
>Typical civilian deaths in Afghanistan would be e.g. families living with high ranking enemy combatants, totally incomparable with Russian forces bombing shopping malls in Ukraine.
This is propaganda, they often kill indiscriminately, and often kill based on extremely flimsy intel. They later try to explain it with 'there was an enemy combatant there', but provide no evidence of that. It's the same crap the Israelis do.
The US has bombed multiple wedding parties, where there were no enemy combatants anywhere nearby. They killed 30 civillians in one instance, in an area which had been abandoned by enemy forces for months!
> Typical civilian deaths in Afghanistan would be e.g. families living with high ranking enemy combatants, totally incomparable with Russian forces bombing shopping malls in Ukraine.
Except that that that's not true. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]
Let's be clear, what's happening in Ukraine is abhorrent,
but let's also not pretend that the west cares a lot less and even actively participates in atrocities when the victims are not as white.
Those weren't build from the goodness of somebodies heart, but because the CIA realised that they can't win a war against combatants which they themselves created a constant supply of by blowing up their loved ones.
Also, nobody ever argued that they are exactly the same, but both should be dragged in front of the Hague nevertheless. It matters little to the dead, injured, and loved ones, wether it happened to terrorise (as Russia does in Ukraine, or the US did in latin America and Iran) or because of apathy towards dehumanised people (as with the USA, UK, Germany, e.t.c. in Iraq and Afghanistan).
> Those weren't build from the goodness of somebodies heart, but because the CIA realised that they can't win a war against combatants which they themselves created a constant supply of by blowing up their loved ones.
Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is still doing the right thing, anything that reduces collateral damage is good.
I'd also generalize that "people" remotely controlling armies should be held accountable.
Since you're a german: I was reading hard to comeby chronicles and memoirs from before WW2 and there was this fact: russians and germans were close friends, people from military missions were calling each other brothers. This was frowned upon by the government... So, I'm saying, humans are generally peaceful and friendly, but are being manipulated. :(
I mean this is not the context to have this discussion, but yes, if another country operated like the US does, we would call many of it's actions "war crimes" and discussing the relative complicity of the "civilians" that make the missiles.
If you work on anything even distantly military related, it's a risk you take as part of the job. If your country loses any war/power struggle, the new incoming government will punish you for being involved in the military of the old government fighting against the incomers.
In a context of war crimes trial, it made all the sense.
If a missile is programmed to fall in a maternity full of pregnant women, they are necessary accomplices of a massive assassination. They could be lied about it the first couple of times. After nine full months of terrorism, "we didn't knew the consequences of our actions" is not reasonable
This whole theme is sort incompatible with movies. Most people like to relate to the characters in the plot. The "genius guy" does something we can't understand has very little appeal as a story.
Same thing goes for mathematics that is too "deep". Most people could not care less about prime numbers. Yes, they drive important cryptographic procedures. But we care about cryptography. We care that the message gets to its destination "safely". If its done using prime numbers, imaginary numbers, geometric numbers or fantasy numbers, it does not matter.
See I disagree. They tend to live very interesting lives, not because of their achievement, but I suspect their achievements and how interesting their life is is inextricably intertwined. They tend to not fit in convention very well and live at odds with society in a not too dissimilar way to say a Bob Dylan or Jim Morrison, but without the music and poetry. You’re right of course that folks like to watch movies about people they are aware of and understand their contribution. But I’d also point out that society overall is a lot better educated than in the past, more people than ever would find scientists and mathematicians and engineers easier to identify with and would understand their contribution than ever before - and those people also control an incredible amount of the available disposable income.
I think the real issue is the producers and directors and business folks in the film industry are not in that camp. They’re more likely to make a biography of Robin Williams than Paul Dirac, and they decide what gets made.
Or perhaps words are the byproduct of the real thing. Consider the moments where your mind just click and solves something. You find it hard to map words to what happened. Or when you judge a situation to be dangerous, you just kind of know it, and then you map your gut feeling into words so you can explain to someone.
Perhaps "intelligence" is the process that enables these leaps between islands of words.
As inequality grows, it only becomes more evident. Workers can safely cut the billionaire middle man.