Not the PLA either... 
Made a new account to hopefully minimize self-doxing, but here's some background. I haven't lived with him in 10 years and I left the country 4 years ago. We don't really talk all that often, but he had messaged me with some questions about photography and then brought it up.
I said something like "I'm sure you're aware I don't have a very fond opinion of the military". He said "I'm not too enthused with the idea either, but I need the security and discipline that it will provide while I try to find something to dedicate myself to and I've been in this dead end job for about 2 years and my soul is decaying".
I told him he can come live with me, that it's easy to get a 1 year visa and I'd happily pay for flights and I have a spare room. He said he'd think about it but "needs physical activity and more friends and connection in general". I tried to explain that I go climbing multiple days a week, volunteer for search and rescue, and play board games with friends every week that he'd be able to hang out with.
I get the impression though that he thinks visiting would just be putting his problems on hold for a year; maybe he's right about that, but I think living somewhere other than our shit hometown would give him a lot of perspective on the world and help him maybe realize that what he actually needs is a community of some kind. I don't want him to make a huge fucking mistake because he feels hopeless and gets pressured into it by our conservative step dad or some recruiter or whatever.
I also briefly tried explaining some issues with the US military, but it's a bit hard to undo decades of american "education" in one conversation. He said "my moral code is also not nearly as strong as yours, and I have very little strong feelings toward very much at all outside of just trying to be a good person". I assume he reached out to me because he's having some doubts.
Anyway I tried to make it super clear that if he wanted to come live with me or if he wanted to do a work visa somewhere else I'd pay flights and anything else and help in any way I can; I'm not rich, but I have a small emergency savings.
I think I've heard there are organizations of leftist / anti-imperialist veterans? Maybe one of them has information I could send him. Any advice or ideas would be appreciated.
All I will say is this.
Let's ignore for a moment, the policies and morals of imperialism, and just address the situation purely from a self-interested perspective.
The army isn't 'just another job', it is a four year contract, literally signing away 4 years of your life to, for most people, do a dead-end job that you would do in civilian life for significantly less pay, under management structures created by the most authoritarian people in the world, where power and its exercise is literally the only thing that matters.
Want to go to college while in the military? Too bad, only so many can go and you aren't friends with the military administrator who makes that decision (unless he thinks he can hack the marines, they get to do college in the service). The reason for that is that the modern military is very top heavy, and they always need more grunts to do grunt work. If he is lucky he might just get to be a mechanic, where he will still be in a daily battle with administrators to get basic supplies, because of military contractor graft, and still won't be qualified to work on civilian cars when he gets out. But more likely he will essentially be a truck driver/loader, a job that he could do in the U.S. economy for quite a bit of money, CDLs are always in demand. Every path the military for the non-degreed and unconnected is either an exaggeration, or there is a civilian equivalent that isn't that difficult to break into if you have access to a technical college.
Morr than anything, joining the military without a very specific plan and connections is just placing a hold on your life, to be restarted with some horrific stress injury and maybe even some PTSD. It is one of the only options available that pretty much immediately eliminates four years of your life with basically no ability to pivot to something else. It is an arresting of choice, not an expansion of it.