Long time ago I worked for a company that I learned was selling it's software to help target people …

I've also quit a job where the products I was working were meant to be deployed to CBP to hunt down immigrants. It's a nice gesture, but it won't stop these companies. They just hired someone else without an ethical backbone, and continued the project like nothing happened. Tech leadership is rotten to the core, and that can't be fixed by individuals making a stand.

At a technical level, I don't believe they're specifically working on targeting anyone. They're providing a general-purpose API that Palantir is presumably using to build the target-finding software. I imagine that's why the implementation got so far along before this blew up. Someone at Anthropic talked with someone at Palantir and they had a "you did what? Did you read the contract terms" moment, and that was after it went into production.

Normally I'd agree with this sentiment, but I'm having a hard time feeling bad we took out the Ayatollah. You know, what with him killing tens of thousands of Iranians who demanded reform. I didn't care one bit for him doing that.

I too quit a job that made a significant pivot to weapons R&D. It was a hard move, and honestly I still haven't recovered from it. I don't regret the decision in the slightest though. One aspect that sticks with me was the sheer excitement of a lot of people in the room, engineers excited to be working on new problems. I believe many didn't consider the consequences of their labor. As a worker it can take time for it to sink in that the products you are actively working on are being used for immoral/unethical purposes. I've also noticed a perceived weakness when expressing these types of views to colleagues, responses either masked by apathy or just direct justified destruction of lives along patriotic or ideological lines. Its worth bringing up these stories whenever appropriate I believe, people sometimes _need_ a jolt even if the probability of success are low.