> The questions are how much resistance is there in the labor force, and how does that impact the ability to recruit talent?
Easy: Give potential employees similar salaries to MAMAA companies, and a similar amount of freedom and independence (at least in the ways in which it is possible at a defense company) as it existed in the early days of Google and Facebook, and I think a lot of potential employees (though of course not all, but this is not necessary) will "forget" their initial moral objections and go for the money. :-)
Wasn't DARPA kinda close to that idea ( I am honestly not sure, but it seemed like a lot of interesting stuff came from there )?
Still, a person who knows what he/she is building can likely predict how it is going to be used. Would I want to be responsible for popularizing portable black hole generators?
> Still, a person who knows what he/she is building can likely predict how it is going to be used. Would I want to be responsible for popularizing portable black hole generators?
You just developed an insanely small part of this machinery. Compartmentalization of the work appeases the mind a lot. :-(
If you still have bad feelings, there exists the charity-industrial complex: donate some decent paycheck to give a poor, starving child a better life - something that you could not have done if you hadn't accepted the well-paid defense contract.
"Compartmentalization of the work appeases the mind a lot."
Definitely. When I worked at a aerospace co some of the young engineers had internal conflicts they rationalized away by saying "we aren't building bombs." No, they were just building the targeting systems. Pointing the gun but someone else pulling the trigger. So it's all good.
Easy: Give potential employees similar salaries to MAMAA companies, and a similar amount of freedom and independence (at least in the ways in which it is possible at a defense company) as it existed in the early days of Google and Facebook, and I think a lot of potential employees (though of course not all, but this is not necessary) will "forget" their initial moral objections and go for the money. :-)