I would imagine if it isn't illegal its a very bad idea not to. But regardless, I would bet large amounts of money that you would never get any flack for doing anything for the government. If I went on X, Threads, Bluesky, TikTok and said "Hey I am a software engineer selling awesome new technology to the government and military!" I am going to get Americans attacking me for supporting Trump / ICE / FBI whatever the current issue of the day is. If I did the same on Douyin or Weibo the response would be able making China strong, and there would be no criticism of that choice.

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cmrdporcupine 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Sure, but the difference is that while the Chinese state is measurably awful on all sorts of human rights things within their own borders... they're not currently dropping bombs on foreign cities, starving a neighbour of critical petroleum shipments, or heavily funding an ally to slowly exterminate a population.

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fc417fc802 2 hours ago | parent [-]

What point are you trying to make here? Are government abuses somehow inherently better or worse depending on where they happen?

Do you imagine an invasion of Taiwan won't involve dropping bombs?

I feel like we should be able to agree that providing authoritarian regimes with high tech tools is immoral in the general case.

	▲	cmrdporcupine 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		My point is as a non-American I feel no allegiance to either state, and current events don't make me sympathetic to the geo-political aims of the USA. So I don't see a strong moral case for this tech being an especial purvey of either party. If you'd asked me two years ago my answer might have been different. And to the original point, yeah, I would feel entirely justified in the critique of engineers in providing tools to the US defense apparatus at this point. At least the Chinese shops are giving their weights away for free, and not demanding that any government ban the rest.