Erm. Serving your country does not equal to serving the government. Often the government in place actually has an active role in destroying the country or making it worse. Look at the NSA - are the NSA folks really serving their country or their goverment first ?
Saying, "Help the monied interests who control governments." doesn't sound as convincing.
Serving your country/honour/helping the group are rhetorical tools used convince people to sacrifice themselves (their human capital, and sometimes their bodies) for this group.
Governments are extremely powerful (obviously), and part of that power comes from co-opting people. A metaphor can be seen in the Matrix. To quote Morpheus:
> The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.
The hacker culture is being co-opted wholesale. Technology is powerful—both as an economic driver and a competitive advantage against other groups—, so it's not unexpected that the human capital which are tech savvy are targeted.
People can't be forced to do anything—unless they break the law at which point they will have the full force of law brought down upon them, with no mercy applied (if members of the gov choose!). As such, people with skills need to be convinced to work with government, and that's where the rhetorical tools are implemented.
When you read comments about how governments help the people they preside over, you're reading the grass-roots propaganda from those which Morpheus talks of. The businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters, coders!
Do as you like, but it's important to know the message conveyed in the blog post is from a member of the business-class who has been fully co-opted, and doesn't follow the very advice he gives! And why would he? It's much more profitable (in the board sense of the word) to use his platform as a tool of marketing and persuasion for said establishment—I.e. getting others to make sacrifices, so those with control can live with impunity and in-group-largess (with the cost borne by society).
18F/USDS doesn't really work on the military industrial complex, but civil applications like social welfare. The beneficiaries of USDS's work are, for example, poor people who can get benefits more efficiently. In that sense it is "serving your country" like AmeriCorps or Habitat for Humanity or becoming a social worker. So yes, U.S. Cyber Command will use the same rhetoric and you shouldn't believe it, but this isn't that.
Erm. Serving your country does not equal to serving the government. Often the government in place actually has an active role in destroying the country or making it worse. Look at the NSA - are the NSA folks really serving their country or their goverment first ?