I think you could generalize the OP's point to extend past children and still consider their question. I think you're focusing on the children part and ignoring the point.
Plus you're not "utilizing children" in the way you would with child labor. This is more "children are doing things, could we utilize this natural behavior to improve our society?" That's no exploitive of children unless you pressure them into hacking. It's also reasonable that we consider children are less likely to be severely punished because kids are, in fact, pretty dumb (which does not mean they also aren't pretty smart. Context matters ;)
Anyways, that's all besides the point of OP's question:
Can we see hackers as a valuable tool for society? Since they put pressure on corporations to improve their security. Whereas when nation state hackers do similar things it is all kept quiet and so the knowledge of what needs to be fixed is less wide spread.
I think yes. As an analogy I think hackers in this way can be seen like a virus and the human immune system. Low exposures and in healthy systems allows the body to develop antibodies and fight off bigger attacks and/or when the body is weaker. But too much and the host is permanently damaged. But no viruses and the immune system becomes weak and fragile too.
Personally, I think if we want to get the former immunity boosting we should be promoting ways for people to hack on systems in non-malicious ways. Bug bounty programs. Clear paths to responsible disclosure. All that jazz. Accidents will happen and some will go too far, but intent does matter. But we also hear on HN about how people have found vulns, reported it, and the response is to sue the person disclosing for hacking. Even if this is exclusively untrue (lol), if it is widely believed then what incentive does someone have to report a vuln if they find it? Because they sure have incentives to do malicious things with that information.
I'm big on morals and sticking to them. But at the same time I don't think we can have a functional society where people's only incentive to do the right thing is that warm and fuzzy feeling inside, especially when there are incentives to do the wrong thing. Maybe we should reward good behavior instead of bad behavior...
Plus you're not "utilizing children" in the way you would with child labor. This is more "children are doing things, could we utilize this natural behavior to improve our society?" That's no exploitive of children unless you pressure them into hacking. It's also reasonable that we consider children are less likely to be severely punished because kids are, in fact, pretty dumb (which does not mean they also aren't pretty smart. Context matters ;)
Anyways, that's all besides the point of OP's question:
I think yes. As an analogy I think hackers in this way can be seen like a virus and the human immune system. Low exposures and in healthy systems allows the body to develop antibodies and fight off bigger attacks and/or when the body is weaker. But too much and the host is permanently damaged. But no viruses and the immune system becomes weak and fragile too.Personally, I think if we want to get the former immunity boosting we should be promoting ways for people to hack on systems in non-malicious ways. Bug bounty programs. Clear paths to responsible disclosure. All that jazz. Accidents will happen and some will go too far, but intent does matter. But we also hear on HN about how people have found vulns, reported it, and the response is to sue the person disclosing for hacking. Even if this is exclusively untrue (lol), if it is widely believed then what incentive does someone have to report a vuln if they find it? Because they sure have incentives to do malicious things with that information.
I'm big on morals and sticking to them. But at the same time I don't think we can have a functional society where people's only incentive to do the right thing is that warm and fuzzy feeling inside, especially when there are incentives to do the wrong thing. Maybe we should reward good behavior instead of bad behavior...