If the problem with bought army commissions is that they turned out to be incompetent for actually leading people into battle, but that the corresponding scenario in software is "are you conscious enough to feed things into ChatGPT", and their GitHub portfolio shows that they are, and then they are, where is the problem? Are we just invoking the spectre of fallen comrades in battle as an emotional plea?

> where is the problem?

Honestly, if you have to ask then you'll probably not understand the answer, but here's some related questions to ponder. What's the problem with having money in politics as much as possible? What's the problem with eliminating all leadership with relevant domain-expertise, replacing it with people who know how to "play the game"? What's the problem with class-based societies in general? What's the problem with ignoring all fundamentals, denying expertise can even exist, and just full on embracing superficial optics everywhere? We've been in the fuck-around phase for a while now, but we're moving closer to the find-out phase.

> Are we just invoking the spectre of fallen comrades in battle as an emotional plea?

No. The emotional plea would be that IT and SWE actually created upward mobility for a lot of talented people who otherwise would not have been able to buy their way into the American middle class without, for example, joining the army to risk death for the benefit of elites. It will be sad to see backwards movement on that for sure, but we don't even need to invoke this argument.

The more rational argument is simply that meritocracy works better than classism. Even if you're fine with feeding people into the meat grinder on the off chance you get some personal glory, it's not just bad for the victims, it's bad for general morale, the army, the country involved, etc. Substitute these words with money/markets/shareholders/industry or whatever if it helps you to understand.