(Shrug) Like it or not (and I don't), that's how wars will be fought from now on. Somebody has to build the weapons.

paulg loves that site's owner because stopping the "woke mind virus" is worth it for him

Principles are important, but not I'll-post-on-a-platform-with-less-clout-potential important.

I ask this with sincere curiosity - what does his current place of residence have to do with his message that programmers should avoid companies building infrastructure for the police state?

I don't understand your objections. It seems like if anything his place of residence would give him first hand experience of why you don't want to live under a police state.

It’s not illegal to encrypt backups in the UK and the country does not come close to meeting any generally accepted definition of a “police state”. There is currently a lot of anti-UK hype in certain online spaces (including HN) which wildly exaggerates various real problems (such as the UK government’s attacks on data privacy) to the extent where people end up with a wholly false picture of what life in the UK is like.

Consider that PG could live more or less where he likes (leaving aside any private personal circumstances of his, which I know nothing about). If he chooses to live in the UK, that may suggest that it’s not actually as bad over here as you imagine.

Based on your other comments in this thread, you seem to be more annoyed by alarmist news stories about the UK than you are by ICE throwing people with no criminal records into Salvadorian jails without trial. I’d question your media consumption choices if ‘UK’ makes you think ‘police state’ and yet current events in the US appear wholly unconcerning. What’s that you were saying about flooding the zone?

The UK has real problems (as do many other countries), but these deserve substantive discussion, not repetitions of lazy tropes from the nameless one’s Twitter feed.

Jail (with due process) is still better than freaking El Salvador.