Engineering today has become strangely hollow. The brightest minds of a generation are not building systems to defend nations, stabilize economies, or safeguard the survival of open societies. Instead, they are designing dopamine loops—algorithms meant to keep a thumb swiping on a glowing screen. Engineering has been reduced to entertainment architecture.
This is why it feels so “overmoralizing” now. Every trivial algorithm carries moral weight precisely because it is replacing the serious work that needs to be done. Instead of building the tools that secure freedom in a dangerous century, we are building toys to distract ourselves from it.
The uncomfortable truth is that our engineering culture has been captured by short-term incentives. Investors reward what scales fast, not what endures. Young engineers are trained to optimize engagement, not resilience. Silicon Valley congratulates itself for “changing the world,” while most of its output serves the narrow purpose of capturing consumer attention and monetizing it through ads.
Meanwhile, the hard problems remain unsolved. Who is building the next generation of defense technology? Who is ensuring our societies can survive cyberattacks, pandemics, or economic collapse? Who is designing systems resilient enough to preserve freedom in the face of authoritarian aggression? Very few—and almost never the ones celebrated on magazine covers.
The moralization of engineering arises not because engineers are too concerned with ethics, but because they are not concerned enough. The great questions of this century—about survival, power, and freedom—are left unanswered while we drown in incremental updates to social media feeds.
Neutrality is a myth. To build “mindless” technology in the face of existential challenges is itself a moral decision. Choosing to ignore the defense of a free society while engineering the next addictive app is not apolitical—it is a statement of priorities. And the judgment of history will be far harsher than the applause of venture capitalists.
If engineers want to escape the charge of moralizing, the answer is not to retreat into nihilism. It is to build courageously—to choose problems that matter, to aim for technologies that endure, and to accept responsibility for the survival of the society that enables engineering in the first place.
The real scandal is not that engineering is too moralized. It’s that we’ve normalized a generation of engineers spending their lives optimizing for attention while the foundations of freedom erode around them.
The future will not be won by those who capture the most clicks. It will be won by those who have the courage to build what actually matters.
This essay draws inspiration from the writings and reflections of Alex Karp.