I was taking annual mandated training at work the other day. Like, you know, watch the video, try not to snooze when you fall asleep, and then answer a very basic question or two at then end. One of the videos was about ethics. I work for a government contractor and ethics is a big deal.
But it was boring and I started noodling on my phone. I looked up my employer’s Wikipedia page. And wouldn’t you know it, they mentioned that my employer was responsible for running a disinformation campaign in the Philippines during the pandemic, at the request of the American government, trying to convince people that the vaccine was bad for them because it was from China. There are very likely to be people who refused the vaccine and died because of the lies of my employer, and I was learning this literally while an ethics video played on my computer screen.
This came to light only because my employer had, according to a government report, “sloppy tradecraft” and failed to sufficiently cover their tracks.
Welcome to the military industrial complex bud. That blood isnt just on your employer’s hands, it’s on yours too. There’s a reason anybody with a soul who gets into defense contracting eventually turns to either alcoholism or activism.
Edit: re-read this and it came off a bit hostile, which wasn’t my intention. For reference I’m somebody who has burned through millions of dollars of air force r&d budget in my career, had some realizations about what the MIC actually is and what it actually does, had a complete mental breakdown doing nothing but pot and therapy for a year, and now I’m trying to convince immigration lawyers in my area to hire me as a paralegal on my handful of hard science degrees and my experience making radar fail. If you think it might be helpful to chat with somebody a few years further along on realizing that they did evil for their employer and coping with that/trying to make a change, my dms are open