SC member @tomberek works for Anduril

[cafkafk]

@tomberek

but I thought that reflecting the truth was the best course of action and updated it on the day I started

Not reacting to everything else I may agree or disagree with. I just want to say that I think this is a good action and you did the right thing by standing by it.

I think that the start of transparency is to openly communicate your affiliation, and it does make a much stronger case that you’re genuinely believing that your employment is morally defensible that you’re willing to stand by it.

It’s actually a disservice to that moral conviction that this change in your employeer was treated as some sort of voldemort that couldn’t be mentioned by others in governance IMO. Reading your statement for the SC election:

I have been in both the military as well as part of founding a defense startup; then I left that world behind a few years ago. This gives me a unique perspective and experience of the better part of two decades with the industry. I am familiar with where there are true moral hazards and where they are FUD or driven by inexperience. I have been in the situation where difficult decisions had to be made, and also when a moral choice took precedence, regardless of the personal cost. If we are going to deal with the reality that such companies are part of the Nix user base, I have the experience to identify the relevant issues and ensure they are addressed.

The people that voted for you likely knew your stance, and find your actions congruent with it.

---

So… as a member of the Steering Committee, and someone affected by this issue, don’t you find that the lack of clear and open communication about your role dilutes your messages credibility?

The broader response to this incident seems to be “who cares?” and a disdain for the drama.

Isn’t that a very convenient way to dismiss the valid concern that the only one on stage at the NixCon panel for governance that dares to actually say who your new employer was was Gabriella?

Also, surely you agree (given you were transparent on your linkedin) that this wasn’t a secret at all? And that treating it as one is weird?

---

And I’m honestly perplexed that all the people in governance keeps saying “but who cares”? I get that you all trust each other, but you’re also accountable to the rest of us that don’t have this insider information, and the way there is a tendency to skirt just telling the truth directly makes your actions look very suspicious. That’s not a community issue, that’s an issue with the governance.

I’m myself aware of several “secret” governance issue that have been deemed as "too sensitive to point out to the wider community. And what I wish was that you all realized that you:

1. Can trust the wider community and don’t need to hoard info and do impression management at all times.
2. That you’re all repeating the same mistakes as previous governance, failing to actually be transparent and treating the community at large as an annoying, unruly, and unreasonable mob.
3. That all the previous failing governance made the same mistake of calling any inconvenient truths or valid criticisms drama as a way to avoid responsibility for their mistakes instead of owning up to them.

[garamond]

conflict of interest: I work at Anduril
All opinions and statements are my own and do NOT represent my employer or any other groups I am a part of.

Declarative Governance

The SC is governed by documents that are declarative. There are clear rules for how the SC must act. There are asks in the above thread to make imperative changes nix governance. That’s not how governance works generally (AFAIK) and it’s not how governance works here.

I would encourage people here to be the change they want to see. If you want accountability for CoI information for SC members, codify it. If you want to ban particular companies or industries as sponsors or otherwise, codify it. If things are not codified we run into issues like this, where users expect one thing but the SC/Foundation/Team/whoever is not required to take the expected action and has no way to know the expected action is actually expected.

If you want things to happen, make them happen and make them declarative.

Ethics

I’m happy to have conversations on the ethics of the Military Industrial Complex and working on autonomous weapons in another thread (this thread is not about ethics). I am interested in having good faith discussion around ethics as they are something I take very seriously and constantly re-evaluate on my own and with the people around me in real life.

New SC Page

@winter

We’ve added a team page to the website, which includes CoI info.

Thank you for this. A SC page is good to have, I had to find current SC members via the group here on discourse when I was looking earlier. Glad that there’s a page and this feels like a reasonable place to contain CoI info in my opinion.

I imagine there could be an automation setup to automatically make a post in this ‘meta’ (or another) category when a PR is merged that changes that page, for those interested in discourse notifications on updated CoI info.

Per my section above on declarative governance I think changes in CoI, disclosure timing, etc should be codified to reduce confusion. @nyanbinary I’d appreciate the opportunity to work with you to draft up a change, if you are interested.

[JasonYundt]

@Corbin

This is a conflation of morals and ethics. Morality is about following rules when making choices. They are a sort of cultural gauge for expected behavior. Building weapon systems does not put people first; it does not entail working on Nix projects for the public benefit; it does not entail excellence in software; it actively reduces the diversity of the community; it does not inspire trust; it clearly does not bring prestige to the employer. In that sense, Tom is not meeting the behavioral expectations of the community.

I disagree with this analysis, but I’m reluctant to explain why I disagree with this analysis. If I were to state why I disagree with this analysis, then I think that would be a high chance that I’ll end up arguing with other people in this thread, and I think that there would be a low chance that such an argument would result in anyone changing their minds. I’m not very good at persuading people via arguing, and I’m not very good at being persuaded by arguments. Also, if such an argument were to change someone’s mind, then I’m not so sure that it would be worth the effort to do so.

That being said, I do want to make it clear that Tom is indeed meeting my behavioral expectations. Tom definitely is not meeting the behavioral expectations of everyone in the community, but he is meeting my behavioral expectations, and (in my opinion) he is meeting the bar set by the people come first value.

I want to make that clear because the sentence “In that sense, Tom is not meeting the behavioral expectations of the community.” makes it sound like the community in general agrees that behavioral expectations not being met. It is possible that the community in general agrees that behavioral expectations are not being met, but it’s also possible that a significant portion of the community disagrees.

@Corbin

In contrast, what specifically would you say non-Tom posters have done in this thread to violate those cultural expectations?

I would like to ask a slightly different question. The original quote was:

@crertel

Also, if you fully quote that value, it doesn’t look like Tom’s done anything wrong–and it actually makes a lot of posters here look like they haven’t exactly done anything right:

What are some examples of posters here not exactly doing anything right when it comes to the people come first value? For the purposes of my question, it doesn’t matter if the poster is Tom or non-Tom, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a full-on violation or something less than a violation (I feel like “violation” is kind of a strong word).

[normalcea]

I believe you’re misinterpreting the term Military Industrial Complex (MIC) to mean military industry or arms manufacturing.

The origin of the term MIC comes from former US president Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address President Dwight D. Eisenhower's Farewell Address (1961) | National Archives

"A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. . . . American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. . . . This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. . . .Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

Also see (emphasis mine) Military-industrial complex | Definition, Elements, Influence, & Facts | Britannica

military-industrial complex, network of individuals and institutions involved in the production of weapons and military technologies. The military-industrial complex in a country typically attempts to marshal political support for continued or increased military spending by the national government.

Anduril is MIC because, as I’ve shown by my citations, it regularly lobbies the federal government of the US to obtain contracts and is deeply tied with the executive admin. Anduril markets itself as a company willing to break rules and skirt through regulations in order to deliver. It also benefits as a venture-capital based market firm from the instability and militarization of the US-Mexico border.

but but but this person works for a company that is unapologetically pro-American interests and therefore is unethical because of their company

Declaring Anduril as “pro-American interest” is dismissive. What interests are we speaking of: who is the “defense industry” defending its people from? By using your framing, you can now argue that every US-based IT firm is corrupt in some way, dismissing the entire discussion as moot. This isn’t helpful in assuaging people’s opinions surrounding this.

Also tomberek was hired for the “Principal Software Engineer” position which is a high-level leadership role that oversees the design of products and makes major architectural/technical decisions. This isn’t an internship or a junior level position, but a career culminating move. It’s their decision to make, but that doesn’t mean it can’t have repercussions elsewhere just because we want to protect his feelings.

To summarize: MIC refers to an undemocratic network of individuals and organizations that influence the political economy of a society to drive up weapons spending regardless of the merit and need for them. Obviously this intersects with the capitalist mode of production and the US geopolitical position in the world which only heightens the contradiction between it and the position of being a SC member for the international Nix community.

[nyanbinary]

To add on are we going get transparency on the SC members stepping down early from their 2-year term? Like what happened?

EDIT: Actually I’m just going to make a new post about this topic.

EDIT 2: Done at Question About Steering Committee Future

[Corbin]

@JasonYundt

@Corbin

This is a conflation of morals and ethics. Morality is about following rules when making choices. They are a sort of cultural gauge for expected behavior. Building weapon systems does not put people first; it does not entail working on Nix projects for the public benefit; it does not entail excellence in software; it actively reduces the diversity of the community; it does not inspire trust; it clearly does not bring prestige to the employer. In that sense, Tom is not meeting the behavioral expectations of the community.

It is possible that the community in general agrees that behavioral expectations are not being met, but it’s also possible that a significant portion of the community disagrees.

Ah, I see the issue. This isn’t about whether individual humans personally vote on Tom’s behavior. Rather, the community values are already established by a community process, and what we are doing is gauging the degree to which Tom has adhered to those values. By Aumann’s Agreement, we can only disagree here if we either disagree on how modus ponens and logic works, or if we disagree on the premises. Here are those premises again:

• Building weapon systems does not put people first. This follows because weapon systems kill people.
• Building weapon systems does not entail working on Nix projects for the public benefit. Indeed, it doesn’t entail working with Nix at all.
• Building weapon systems does not entail excellence in software. A famous example taught in software-engineering courses concerns the Patriot missile failure, whose root cause was incorrect software and faulty preconditions.
• Building weapon systems actively reduces the diversity of the community. As noted earlier in this thread, maintainers are leaving the project, which statistically reduces diversity; additionally, weapon systems reduce population, which also statistically reduces diversity.
• Building weapon systems does not inspire trust. In general, a weapon makes one into a danger to themselves and everybody around them; folks tend not to trust danger.
• Building weapon systems does not bring prestige to one’s employer. To this day, folks still have sour opinions over anybody who profited from selling cars, computers, soft drinks, clothing, or cars to the Nazis.

If you agree with any of these preconditions, then by modus ponens you ought to agree that building weapons systems is not congruent with Nix community values. I happen to agree with all of them, but that’s merely the strongest such stance; a weaker stance should also find Tom’s behavior lacking.

[bme]

@Corbin

Building weapon systems does not put people first. This follows because weapon systems kill people.

Not building weapons systems does not put people first. This follows because if you are physically weak you will be subject to the tyranny of the physically strong who do not need a weapons system to kill you.

@Corbin

Building weapon systems does not entail working on Nix projects for the public benefit. Indeed, it doesn’t entail working with Nix at all.

It doesn’t also prevent working on nix projects which benefit the public, so this seems like a pointless thing to point out. My job doesn’t require me to produce anything of value to the public, should I not participate?

@Corbin

Building weapon systems actively reduces the diversity of the community. As noted earlier in this thread, maintainers are leaving the project, which statistically reduces diversity; additionally, weapon systems reduce population, which also statistically reduces diversity.

The people leaving are reducing the diversity of the community by insisting apparently with no sense of irony that a completely non-diverse and strictly homogeneous approach to a range of topics is a prerequisite to their participation in the community.

Not having kids reduces the population, I am in trouble for not increasing the population? If weapons systems make sure they kill a broad range of individuals, such that diversity is maintained is that cool?

@Corbin

Building weapon systems does not inspire trust. In general, a weapon makes one into a danger to themselves and everybody around them; folks tend not to trust danger.

Citation needed.

@Corbin

Building weapon systems does not bring prestige to one’s employer. To this day, folks still have sour opinions over anybody who profited from selling cars, computers, soft drinks, clothing, or cars to the Nazis.

To this day there are plenty of people extremely grateful for the efforts of people who supplied the war machine that defeated the Nazi’s. This doesn’t say anything about the rights or wrongs of building weapons, only what you chose to do with them.