Comment by amoss

In a different place a long time ago we were approached by a company that wanted a collaboration. They had a very specific project in mind, with requirements already set. It was a humanitarian project to "find earthquake survivors". If you read the requirements in a very positive way it was an ethically clean project.

But the company is a major defense contractor and it was very unusual for them to be involved in humanitarian work. So it made sense to question the requirements after a less generous reading. Detecting mostly occluded humans in a highly cluttered and destroyed urban environment has other use cases. They got as far as "highlighting the survivors with a laser designator" before I started to ask some very pointed questions and start discussing the ethical considerations of us helping to build a system to kill people.

I was asked to leave.

After that meeting the potential collaboration was rejected and it never came up again. The company continued shopping around other places to get help building their "earthquake rescue system".

Never get distracted. Always question the purpose of work. Consider ethics.

Getting another job can be a pain. Living with knowing what you helped to build would be much harder.