Without giving too many details in order to avoid doxxing myself more than I already have on the grad, I’m an engineering student and have recently gotten an opportunity to get involved in advanced laboratory research projects. This will, in theory, look amazing for grad school, and that graduate degree will, in theory, allow me to move to China fairly quickly and put my talents to use building socialism overseas. Problem is, as somewhat of a flex of their laboratory connections, the department chair informed me that sometimes, the lab does work for Washington DC.
Now, we’re not building missiles or anything, but naturally, I had my apprehensions when this was mentioned. I continued with the interview as though I hadn’t heard it and the opportunity very quickly became a very real offer to work in some high level dream tech. Real sci-fi shit. However, of course, I still have my concerns. I honestly don’t know what the Marxist position is to take on this. Obviously if they ask me to do something horrific, I’m going to decline, but I don’t really know what it could entail.
I’m not sure how to answer this. I can only say that I don’t think personal integrity and core values are sacrificed in fell swoops, individually or collectively, rather than by degrees. It’s not easy to justify abandoning a sincerely held core belief to ourselves, but we can justify compromising, degree by degree, because it’s "not much and this thing over here takes precedence.
Think of it like this. Prior to WW2 many scientists and engineers were from Germany or worked in Germany. They then fled from it and helped other nations defeat it. Keep your head down. Buy a used laptop. Don’t ever connect it to the internet. Put a basic Linux distro on it with full disk encryption. When you get home after working on things open up a text file. Date it, title it, and write a journal entry. Write down details you think might be important. Then close it up securely and shut it down again. DO NOT do anything that could put you at risk, but keep personal records. Learn. and then leave. When you get to China be happy. And maybe that laptop gets accidentally left open on the desk of a CPC official unencrypted. oops.
Comrade, I’d never do such a thing on a laptop…
I’d do it on a Milk V Jupiter whenever Whonix finally gets support for RISC-V.
hey, even better.
I honestly don’t know what the Marxist position is to take on this.
The devil is very much in the details, which you shouldn’t give us. All I can say is that a Marxist position wouldn’t be framed in (overly-)moralistic terms.
Obviously if they ask me to do something horrific, I’m going to decline, but I don’t really know what it could entail.
Probably you’ll know if they’re asking you to do work that’s beyond the pale. Possibly you won’t know, but if I were in your shoes, I wouldn’t lose much sleep over it.
I would be thinking more about what work could disqualify you from moving to China, and offhand I can’t think of any.
Get your ass in the silent hill tunnels with me and do some blue collar marxist labor getting turned into grist by an 1800s freight elevator. (/s)
I call driving the forklift
almost everything is funded by some nefarious entity in academia… that’s where the money is.
join them and pass confidential information to socialist states.
/jk unless…
You’d be hard pressed to find an engineering opportunity in academia that doesn’t have state connections to some degree. Most likely your tuition is directly being invested into these same companies. I think it really depends on what your designing and your willingness to design it. How culpable do you want to be in this yk? How directly do you want your labor to contribute to it.
Honestly it sounds like they probably just receive grants or something like that, I would go for it. If it helps you towards a better life in China and isn’t that insidious (it doesn’t sound like it to me at least) then you’d probably be kicking yourself later in the future if you don’t take it. If it really sucks, can you opt out/quit? Bc you don’t have to list every job or internship or whatever you’ve had to future employers. I worked a stupid job before when I was younger but I just don’t list it. Anyways, whatever decision you make, I’m sure you’ll consider the whole situation and make the right decision
Take the job and learn. As individuals the best we can do is to develop our skills and understanding of the world. I would probably say no to working for the MIC but otherwise it is just isolationism and it will do you no good. We need smart, educated and skilled comrades in all fields, I hope you have a good time and learn a lot!
Then take what you learned to china especially any state secrets you may have learned about amerikkka
They like having those labs in the DMV (District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia) area because the United States likes having STEM stuff probably because it is in close proximity to government facilities. The government likes to outsource government work to contractors and some contractors operating in and out of government facilities.
I would assume laboratories in the DMV area are more likely to get federal funding to continue their scientific efforts due to their close proximity to government facilities as well.
United States government pops out a lot of research and not all of it is evil, plenty of it is normal and mundane.
