HackerTube.dev

Good Will Hunting | 'NSA' (HD) - Matt Damon | MIRAMAX

Miramax · 2.4M views · 2015-02-26 · 3:01

Open on YouTube ↗

If playback is restricted in your region, try opening the original video. Use Mark watched to add it to your marked videos.

Overview

The Good Will Hunting scene in which Will explains to NSA recruiters why he would not work for them. It is a monologue on the ethics of national security work.

On Hacker News

Brought up whenever NSA recruiting and hiring comes up, as a favorite scene capturing ethical objections to that work.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2018–2023

Topics

Search by tags

What people said

heyoni · 2023-02 · Reference

> I don't think that enabling capricious air strikes is the kind of work that is going to allay most people's ethical concerns. Seriously for a second I was like, maybe the NSA isn't such a bad idea anymore. They're out there making Ghidra and other open source tools so that's nice. And then I read this and immediately thought of that monologue from Good Will Hunting: [VIDEO] That's gonna be a no from me dawg.

Read the original HN comment ↗
beckman466 · 2021-09 · Reference

...and then also things like Y Combinator being one of the recruitment arms for this US empire (alongside all the US universities like Stanford, MIT, etc.) - luring technologists and scientists from other countries in, in order to capture and monopolize new advances and adding these innovations to the US portfolio as part of the supposedly neutral US-led 'intellectual property' regime (WIPO, TRIPS, etc.) [1]. Of course this is nothing new. This is one of my favorite scenes in Good Will Hunting: [VIDEO] I am against any system that aims to make knowledge artificially scarce and monopolizes parts of our collective human inheritance (all of humanity's scientific and technological discoveries). I am for new systems which respect both our world's 1) actual material scarcity (natural resources, human labor, etc.) and 2) it's immaterial abundance (any knowledge/resources that can be replicated by (digital) technology). [1] Against Rentier Capitalism: David Graeber, Michael Hudson & Guy Standing: [LINK]

Read the original HN comment ↗
patriotism404 · 2018-12 · Reference

Say I'm working at NSA and somebody puts a code on my desk, something no one else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it, maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels are hiding. Fifteen hundred people that I never met, never had no problem with, get killed. Now the politicians are sayin', "Oh, send in the Marines to secure the area" 'cause they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot. Just like it wasn't them when their number got called, 'cause they were all pullin' a tour in the National Guard. [VIDEO] the divide between silicon valley and washington is that not everyone views the world in adversarial us-versus-them terms. washington needs more bridge building than bomb dropping, physical and cyber.

Read the original HN comment ↗

Sources

Video by Miramax, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

Views, duration and playback status refresh separately from the published catalog. When an update fails, existing data remains visible.

Selection checks
  • SaaS & AI candidates: Topic keywords do not match
  • Editor-approved picks: Editorial review is required

Rule matches identify candidates. They do not guarantee video quality or financial results.

About the library and its sources