taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (08/06/86)
This message is from Alfred Beebe <BEEBE@venera.isi.edu> and was received on Tue Aug 5 15:48:09 1986 Dear Dave, A friend sent me a forward of your message. I don't have the time to go to great lengths at the moment, but I did quit working at Hughes Missile Systems Group about 3 years ago because I began grappling with the issue of the larger significance of what I was doing as opposed to the nitty gritty technical details. The key psychological aspect of my situation at Hughes was the pronounced isolation, mostly self-imposed, which kept me from sharing my thoughts and feelings with co-workers. The upshot was I locked up in self-debate and wallowed in a kind of paralysis of initiative which kept me there a year or two more than I needed to be. I came to that work from teaching and a degree in pure math and I very much wanted to learn a new field in applied math. So it was very hard to come to the conclusion that in spite of any progress in learning a new field, the primary significance of my work was that I was creating a missile. I began questioning the entire social framework of technical work and began to take the view that most technical people were no more than pawns in someone else's technical agenda. That technical agenda was largely dictated by major social institutions like governments and companies and much less by "pure scientific" criteria like the pursuit of knowledge. In the summer of 1983 several of us started Aerospace Engineers/ Workers for Social Responsibility in Los Angeles. Our main purpose was mutual support and outreach to other people in military technical work who were concerned about similar issues. If you're in the San Francisco area you're probably familiar with the Center for Economic Conversion (Joel Yudken, a former Lockeed (?) engineer is there) and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (Severo Ornstein, Gary Chapman and others). And there are of course others around the country. AE/WSR's current project is to put together a survey of technical workers in military work to get a profile of their motivations for doing the work and their social, political and ethical attitudes. One of our primary goals is simply to promote discussion of the issues. Good luck with your discussion group.
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (08/06/86)
This article is from Alfred Beebe <BEEBE@venera.isi.edu> and was received on Tue Aug 5 18:01:24 1986 I'm going to disappear from the net Aug. 15 - taking a teaching job at the U. of Maryland and maybe rousing some of the rabble in the East. Did MSG ever give you pause for thought? I worked on AMRAAM from 79 to 83 doing tactical radar software development. I wonder if we ever met? One thing I would like to see among technical people who have these concerns is a change of attitude where they would feel free to watchdog their companies or organizations and make noise inside and out about what they saw as unethical uses of technology and manpower. It has been said that the scientific community is presently constructing the machine that will bring the next holocaust - global - but nobody seems to blink an eye. What does everyone have on their minds? [Note: "MSG" is the Hughes Aircraft Missile Systems Group, where I worked for a summer. Alfred also worked for the same group. Of course, since the group actually has about 1600 employees, I don't think we met. Also, the comments Alfred makes on internal monitoring are true! There are a number of people I know that complain to their friends about waste, poor design, and so on, but never seem to complain to the people that could make a difference - MANAGEMENT. More anecdotes on demand about that... --Dave]
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor) (08/14/86)
This article is from sun!llewelyn!clt@hplabs.HP.COM (Charlie Tierney)
and was received on Wed Aug 13 16:55:03 1986
[slightly reformatted]
Dave,
I used to work at Raytheon Missile Systems Division (MSD) from (I think) 80-81.
I had a good job, doing radar simulation for a surface to air missile
engineering group. The system was purely defensive in nature.
But after 7-8 months, I began having nightmares. These got progressively
worse as I continued work. And eventually it dawned on me that some part of
me did not want to have *anything* to do with killing other people. No
matter if it was "defensive" or not.
I lasted 13 months before I resigned. My resignation was based solely on
my moral dilemma. Raytheon is a good place to work.
Why do people work for the Defense Establishment?
1.) The work is often very interesting, I think a lot of the best
engineers simply put on their moral blinders in the morning and are
able to live with it.
2.) Many older engineers are from the pre-Vietnam "We must defend our
freedom from the USSR" mindset. I am not knocking this belief, just
saying it exists.
3.) It is often the only place where you are working with high budget,
truly state of the art processes, etc. (Other places: Xerox PARC,
HP Labs, Bell Labs, IBM Research, etc.)
4.) The younger engineers often take defense jobs as resume builders.
Charles Tierney