The Commit You Can't Take Back: Conscience in a Career That Builds the Future

Every engineer eventually faces a commit they're not sure they should make. I've faced a few—and walked away from work I couldn't reconcile, including offensive AI targeting in defense and pivotal moments building cryptographic and financial infrastructure where the right call cost something real. This keynote isn't a lecture on morality. It's a candid account from twenty years in the rooms where these decisions get made: defense contracts, DARPA programs, crypto and distributed finance, and now AI. We'll talk about dual-use technology—the same embedding pipeline that powers search can power surveillance—and the quiet, compounding pressure to just ship. We'll talk about what it actually costs to say "no," why "I just built the tool" stopped being a defense years ago, and how to build a career where your conscience and your craft don't have to be enemies. You write the future for a living. This is a conversation about doing it on purpose.

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