No it’s okay. I completely understand the sentiment and it’s the reason I tried my damnedest to avoid defense entirely in my job search, but with my skillset and the absolute cutthroat competitiveness of the space exploration industry, I had to broaden my search eventually. A lot of people that design the death machines also have similar reservations (I have met some that think explosions and death are cool but they are the minority…), but it’s usually those far outside the industry that hold such vitriol to those that work in the military industrial complex.

The problem isn’t the people, it’s the system and I try to remind people that when I see them attack me or others for working in defense (hopefully I can transfer out to space flight soon). Be mad at your representatives and politicians for voting for the ever expanding defense budget. Be mad at the CEOs and shareholder boards that push war for their war profiteering. Be mad at capitalism that forces the labourers into jobs they’d rather not have. Don’t be mad at the 23 year old fresh engineering grad that couldn’t land the job at NASA and Raytheon handed them a fat check to pay their loans back with.