Ever since I was young I was fairly divided on the subject. I've dealt with some highschool students affected by the downed aircraft MH17 and that lead to lots of grief among students. It usually lead to strong anti-war sentiments but some also felt a need to "do" something with it.

If no one works on defence systems then all the things we have could become jeopardized, perhaps not this week but in 5 years. Therefore I can reconcile the idea of working for defence related r&d. I also know that these sentiments are used by unscrupulous individuals to gain influence, but I don't feel like we should let that cause a divide between people with a strong moral compass and those without, since we'd be worse off if there was no one in a position of power to make moral decisions. That requires people to judge work based on it's content instead of the domain. It also requires workforce to have enough collective pressure to stall immoral defence (or rather attack) systems.

Automated decisionmaking tools throw a wrench into this because it brings us steps closer to mass deployment of questionable and potentially unhinged munitions. If laws mandated human-in-the-loop systems it would be a better outcome.

No one should apologize for feeling conflicted while giving an issue considerable thought. Constantly reassessing your position based on the changing nature of the world should be encouraged to be the default approach.("Constantly" within reason of course).

I can imagine some Americans making a decision based on the threat of other authortarian states and being left completely bewildered when they have to grapple with the notion that their government may be the bigger threat to their own security.

> If no one works on defence systems then all the things we have could become jeopardized, perhaps not this week but in 5 years. Therefore I can reconcile the idea of working for defence related r&d.

I am not saying this line of thinking is completely absurd. But I think every individual considering this should reflect a lot. (1) Is your country using its ""defense"" systems wisely? (2) Won't the technology be replicated by adversaries anyways? (3) etc..

Overall, the number of people and resources spent on Weapons R&D is probably significantly more than people working on things like diplomacy, ethics, or activism for international human rights (assuming human rights violations are the only legitimate reason for war).

It's significantly safer for individual nations and humanity as a whole if we're not all armed to the teeth constantly on the brink of large conflict, and instead are more or less ethically aligned, all respect basic human rights, and respect other nations.

> If no one works on defense systems then all the things we have could become jeopardized

The reality is that the US government has not historically been engaged in defense. They have been engaged in offense. If you live in the united states and work on "defense," you are working on offense. If even if you are designing something like missile interceptors, they have historically been used primarily to protect US assets in wars that the US started.

> If no one works on defence systems then all the things we have could become jeopardized, perhaps not this week but in 5 years

All the things we have are jeopardized because those systems are actually attack systems and were just used to start a war. We will be lucky if it wont grow into WWIII.

And I just read an article about how those defense systems are used to bomb hospitals with double tap tactic - meaning you bomb rescuers when they come. Literally the first day of that no-defense war, they were used to bomb a school. And before that, they were used to execute fishermen and maybe smugglers with no judicial review. Just to make someone feel manly.