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Agreed. And in this particular case, they're not even transporting weapons, right? I don't see this as being too different than a paper products company supplying notebooks to the military.



In this case they're not doing anything for the military. This payload was a commercial communication satellite.

SpaceX has only done a small handful of DoD/NRO missions.


...and in each of those cases, they were not weapons.


Just the devices used to choose targets. It seems like splitting hairs when you effectively don’t build guns, you just build gunsights to use a metaphor. Note that I’m in favor of supporting the military, but I’m not in favor of pretending that support however it comes about doesn’t ultimately connect to killing people.


I mean, GPS, too, right? I think you've exaggerated the definition to well beyond reason.


While GPS can be used to target bombs, it can also be used to target many other things, like cameras and airplanes and helicopters and containerships and taxi rides. Simply because GPS is useful in war does not make it a weapon of war.

Spy satellites don't help industry or commerce or transport or safety or medicine. They solely help those who kill hundreds of people for a living.

Spy satellites, due to their very restricted scope of usefulness (and to whom they are made useful), are weapons of war. We'd be having a different discussion entirely if their outputs were livestreamed to the whole planet (like the GPS signals are). Those that run them don't permit that, because then they wouldn't be quite as useful for committing lots of murders.


Yes, GPS too. It is after all what puts the “smart” in bombs. Again, this is something I broadly support, but I’m not in denial about it.




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