Asklemmy

People protesting agains the arms industry will generally focus on the bigger problem, which is all the people being killed.

"Stop murdering people" is probably a more powerful message than "Stop wasting resources on murdering people".

Some of us have been, since the 2000's if not earlier (can't speak to that personally.)

Here's the description of Abby Martin's new film "Earth's Greatest Enemy":

Earth’s Greatest Enemy, the second feature film project by Abby Martin, is a groundbreaking anti-imperialist environmental documentary.

Exempt from international climate agreements and rarely scrutinized in mainstream reporting, the Pentagon is the world’s single largest institutional polluter—spewing carbon, contaminating water, and scarring landscapes across the globe. Combining investigative journalism, striking visuals, and stories from impacted communities, this film challenges audiences to rethink the hidden costs of a global military empire and its planetary consequences. Provocative, urgent, and eye-opening, this is a documentary that will change how you see both the military and environmentalism.

The complaints about the arms industry/the cost of war has been around since recorded history.

AI server farms has only been around for a few years.

Because for people in the imperial core, AI slop invading every part of the internet and making it viscerally worse is more visible and tangible than imperialism destroying lives and the environment (mostly) abroad.

People have protested the military industrial complex for decades and centuries. Possibly even millennia.

YOU not being aware of it is different from it not happening.

Stop the false equivalency and whataboutism.

I mean I'm also pissed about the war industry wasting our precious resources on death and destruction. I can be pissed about multiple things! The depths of my hatred for capitalism are literally limitless! It's just that the "death and destruction part" dominates my opposition of the industry.

Speak for yourself I’ve BEEN complaining about the wasted resources not to mention the evil nature of the arms industry

Because you get accused of wanting all Ukrainians to die if you oppose the mainstream narrative. And before that it was about being against freedom or something.

All mainstream media stands together to brainwash people for the military industrial complex.

I live in a Catholic country. Well, I know, countries can’t have religions. Let’s say that the élites impose the marketing and propaganda of that corporation. Every year, they block the streets with massive far-right demonstrations. People dressed as KKK wander the streets burning candles which cost thousands in manpower to clean. On the other hand, when I was younger, people would freely gather at night to have drinks in the street squares. They would litter a lot. The press used to create a great problem about the people drinking but not about the people dropping candle wax.

Pollution, as crime, is only a political concern when it’s done by the lower classes

Because war industry is an old story and killing people mostly happen in global south which is benefitting capitalist core so average liberal/conservative just see it as benefit and jobs. AI is new and trendy boogeyman and it's at home.

You know because arms industry has arms they can use to threaten and kill us

Ai is new and added on top of that. Most of us have realized we aren't gonna stop the military industrial complex unless there is a revolution

Ok let me try a different angle. I think the reason why AI is such a hotly debated topic right now is that AI is something that influences the lives of white westerners directly, while war is an abstract concept for most. To put it more bluntly, you're in contact with AI stuff every day, but there are no tanks rolling down your street (yet - but that might change soon).

Stopping or curtailing the former could viably be done through regulation in a 'liberal democracy' and is thus conceivable to libs, stopping the latter would require huge change in the management of states and their interrelations which the lib mind cannot/does not want conceive

The Military Industrial Complex has been normalized over centuries. Humanity just can't stop killing each other. It's an instinct that evolved to be helpful to survival at one point thousands of years ago but may actually mean the end of humanity soon.

AI and all of the resources it consumes have not yet been normalized to anywhere near the level of "Defense".

Give it time and average humans will care just as little about all the resources consumed by AI as they care about all the resources consumed by war. Unfortunately I seriously doubt that it will go the other way around and humans will suddenly start caring more about the resources consumed by the Military Industrial Complex. That ship has sailed...

AI is new, the military industrial complex is not.

Bombs are carefully manufactured with waste products controlled, and products blowing up today's enemies coming to kill your kids. The demands placed on a local population are moderate and can be adjusted to.

AI center sucks up water and electricity (making it expensive to local neighborhood), pollutes area surrounding it, very quick to setup so neighborhoods have no time to adjust, and product is only marketable to people who are tired of using their brain. To a local neighborhood, it's a lot closer to "wtf are we getting out of this?"

Weapons actually do something you could consider useful, burning up an acre of the Amazon to generate a sfw image of Nami from one piece isn't

Because war /arms are useful?