bradley@cs.utexas.edu (Bradley L. Richards) (01/29/91)
As both a military officer and a computer type, let me give you one possible answer. The ethical question you raise is one I've thought about often. One of my favorite quotes, which you've no doubt heard, is "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." I believe that, with one caveat: it takes only one incompetent to force both parties into conflict. The (brief) war between Iraq and Kuwait last summer is a prime example: regardless of Kuwait's "competence," Iraq involved them in violence. So, to answer your question: while I don't generally condone violence, be it warfare or in any other form, I don't believe the current nations and cultures in the world are mature enough to avoid it. And there are occasions when it is ethically justifiable to use force to defend yourself or others against the aggressive incompetents out there. Now for my disclaimer: I've deliberately not discussed the rights and wrongs of any particular U.S. involvement, nor do I care to. That, after all, is not the point of Tim's question. Bradley
jhagen@TALOS.UUCP (Jarom Hagen) (01/29/91)
Tim Klein writes: > A recent poster pointed out that one good way for a computer programmer > to resist warfare is simply to avoid working for the military. That's like saying that a way to resist corruption in government is to not work for a company that does any buying or selling with the government. War may be bad, but working for the military doesn't make you a warmonger. Which is more humane: throwing some low-tech bombs out of a slow airplane and hoping you hit your target or launching a high-tech missle that you can guide to its target. With the weapons being used now, it is much easier to avoid killing people because most of the weapons hit the target, not some house nearby. > All the news features about the high-tech weapons being used in Iraq > have made me curious. How do those who work with military computers > justify to themselves the knowledge that they are creating weapons? Personally, I would feel very good had I been the creator of the Patriot Missle System. Here is a "weapon" that cannot kill people, only offensive missles. I am not an advocate of war, but I feel that preparing for war by creating better defenses is a commendable way of being employed. Jarom
pcg@spl27.spl.loral.com (Paul C George) (01/29/91)
While I have not directly worked on weapon's software, my 10 years in the defense industry perhaps gives me some insight. First of all, all weapons are not created equal. There are those which are defensive in nature, for example the Patriot missile or Phalanx Close In Weapons System. Work on such systems may be viewed as saving lives. Second, even for weapons that are clearly offensive in nature, one can argue that a smarter weapon also saves lives by allowing more precision (avoiding 'collateral damage') and keeping our forces out of danger. A more effective weapon may also save lives by shortening a conflict or providing a deterent. For an interesting discussion of smart weapon and information age potential, I recommend 'Davids Sling' by Mark Stiegler (Bean Books, 1988) While use of deadly force may be considered immoral, it should be remembered that as long as there are others who have weapons and are willing to use them, even peacefull people must be able to defend themselves. Pacifism is nice, but it requires cooperation. Ghandi was fortunate that the British had cultural traditions that respect such activities. The Khmer Rouge or Stalin would have handled him somewhat differently Just as in the 'guns don't kill people, people kill people' arguement, weapons may be used for good or ill (I am not dealing here with whether any recent/current military actions are in fact justified). At any rate, those who use the weapons are not those who order their use. Hence, I cannot see any problem with helping some 19 year old get out of a combat situation with his skin intact via superior firepower delivered from out of the opponent's range. The moral blame (if any) is on the politicians. To 'resist warfare' it would be more effective to influence political and military science to get beyond Clauswitzian game theory, and allow more innovative solutions (sorry, have no good solutions that don't require agreement on both sides as to 'appropriate behavior'). Finally, engineers rarely work for the military directly. They work for companies that get government contracts. These contracts may be for communications satellites, pollution monitoring equipment, and a host of other arguably beneficial products; as well as weapons. There are also in house activities in manufaturing automation, materials technology, software support environments, and the like which arguably help our country's competitiveness. Reality here rears its ugly head. If you wish to work on advanced software in a networked unix environment or with the luxury of fast equipment & tools (like news), you end up with an aerospace company. The commercial world requires a very limited supply of computer scientists. Working in that world is great if you like accounting, inventory, and networking applications, heavily tilted towards COBOL. In addition, much of the more technical work is in small firms which poorly survive economic downturns. Therefor if you want some job security (i.e. keeping your wife & kids housed, clothed, and fed), you can hedge your bets with a larger firm. They also provide you with a larger variety of work (assuming you prefer development to software maintenance). As a closing note, I might point out that some people are not purely mercenary and do have moral scruples. Even working in the industry I have a choice of projects and Companies. For example I considered the offer by Logicon to work on the targeting system for our ICBMs & bombers to be beyond the pale. I can also work inside to guide a firm towards selecting contracts that are more conductive to peace, or which have applications that can help people at large. Paul George
smith@SCTC.COM (Rick Smith) (01/30/91)
Tim Klein asks: >.... How do those who work with military computers justify to themselves > the knowledge that they are creating weapons? So, maybe I *won't* title this "Confessions of a former Weapons Manufacturer Employee"... :-) But frankly, it's hard to tell what your question *really* is. I assume you are saying, "It must be distasteful to work on weapon systems, since the systems involve death and destruction. Why do you do it anyway? Do you know and care about the implications of what you're doing?" Personally, I think it *is* distasteful to work on such systems, but my distaste has more to do with the bureaucracy of my former employer and the Alice-in-Wonderland world of defense procurement: where they seem to do everything in their power to prevent you from doing things right. > When I graduated from college, I did not consider career opportunities in > military organizations because I didn't want to be in a business whose > objectives involved killing people. I think that most happy, successful workers at defense contractors are people with military experience or at least a higher level of respect for the military than you show. People whose leanings are primarily pacifistic aren't going to be happy with such work. I expect that for most people the justification, as it were, for working on weapon systems is similar to justifications people have for working in the military or law enforcement. Not all people "approve" of such work, and some people even assert that it's all unnecesary. Not everyone believes that. It's a free country, as they say. I used to work for FMC, Naval Systems Division, Minneapolis. Just before the USS Vincennes shot down that Airbus, they were engaging Iranian gunboats with their 5" Mk45 guns built by FMC/NSD. The SM2 missiles that took out the Airbus were fired using a Mk26 launcher, also built by FMC/NSD. Every Thursday morning, a small group of protesters would assemble outside our building, carrying signs objecting to the work we did there. As I told a friend there, "It doesn't hurt to have someone reminding us that we aren't just building toasters." I know that almost every time I saw them I thought about what I was doing and its real meaning. The actual work on weapon systems can be fascinating and demanding -- you can't ask for better technical challenges. The balancing of cost versus capabilitiy, and even life versus death makes it stimulating, at least when there's funded work to do. The only problem is that you don't really know if you did things right until the equipment gets tested in actual use: live combat, destroying property, killing people. But I don't think anyone in the defense community "wants" war, despite contrary opinions by outsiders. War means friends threatened at least, possibly maimed, maybe killed. And all that nice equipment gets ripped up, too, stuff that people spent years designing and building. The satisfaction of a "successful test" isn't enough for anyone to want war. Personally, I feel more like, "Thank god the Patriot system got built and works even better than planned," rather than "It sure is nice to test the system against live missiles." When those SM2 missiles took out that Airbus, there was some bitter satisfaction that the Mk26 launchers worked, but nobody craved so costly a test. I'll be interested to see how FMC's Bradley fighting vehicles do, since the press has had so much fun lambasting them over the past several years. But I'm mostly praying that the conflict folds up before that bloody encounter takes place. Rick.
waah@milton.u.washington.edu (scott machaffie) (01/31/91)
Jarom Hagen writes: > Personally, I would feel very good had I been the creator of the Patriot > Missile System. Here is a "weapon" that cannot kill people, only offensive > missiles. The Patriot system can also be used to shoot down incoming planes, I believe. Thus, it can kill people. Scott MacHaffie
jerry@doc.ksu.ksu.edu (Jerry J. Anderson) (01/31/91)
Tim Klein asks: > How do those who work with military computers justify to themselves the > knowledge that they are creating weapons? You might as well ask how anyone can be a cop - how do cops justify to themselves the knowledge that they arrest people and sometimes even kill people? Or how can anyone be a doctor and cut people open? Or how can anyone work for a bank and forclose on a farmer's mortgage? These are not great analogies, I'll admit. But there are times when it is right to arrest or shoot people, to cut them open, and to forclose on their family farms. Likewise, there are times when it is right to wage war. I don't mean to say I unequivocally support the Gulf War. But the only guarantee of peace with freedom is a good army. Would the world be a better place if we were carpet-bombing Baghdad with B-52s full of dumb bombs? Would the world be a better place if our F-177-A Nighthawk stealth fighters were not able to destroy Scud missiles in their stores? Would we as a nation be better off if there were no spy satellites to help us find the Scuds, or to help us verify nuclear peace treaties? Jerry J. Anderson
thom@dewey.soe.Berkeley.EDU (Thom Gillespie) (02/01/91)
I thought the original design of the Patriot was to shoot down planes and it was a software rewrite to go after missles. My guess is that when we count the bodies for this war we'll find that even with our smart (ouch) technology that we killed just as many people: military and civilian as in any previous war. Thom Gillespie
steve@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Steve Cassidy) (02/01/91)
Jerry Anderson asks: > Would the world be a better place if we were carpet-bombing Baghdad with > B-52s full of dumb bombs? Would the world be a better place if our F-177-A > Nighthawk stealth fighters were not able to destroy Scud missiles in their > stores? Would we as a nation be better off if there were no spy satellites > to help us find the Scuds, or to help us verify nuclear peace treaties? The world might be a better place if there were no Scud missiles to blow up in the first place; if we didn't know how to make nuclear bombs, we wouldn't need nuclear peace treaties. We are involved in a spiralling need to make new weapons to defend ourselves from the old weapons we were selling last year. Perhaps the only way out is to jump out and say no, I won't build any smarter bombs. Perhaps we can't get out now. But these questions don't just fall in the lap of computer people, and I'm not sure that computer people have any more responsibility to work or not to work on these projects for moral reasons. In the end, I think it is a matter of changing the attitudes of our governments that spending on defence is not a good investment (here in NZ, it isn't really a problem, the government doesn't spend any money on anything :-). Then we might slow the spiral down and start spending our time working out neat ways of keeping each other alive, and happy. Steve Cassidy
eugene@nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya) (02/01/91)
Thom Gillespie writes: > My guess is that when we count the bodies for this war we'll find > that even with our smart (ouch) technology that we killed just as > many people, military and civilian, as in any previous war. You have part (less than half) of the equation of the outcome of war. Another part is how many casualities you received inflicting their casualities (are our losses high or low?). Yet another part is are the material losses, and a fourth part are the "less than whole" humans who will forever be in VA hospitals. When I was younger (7-8) my Dad, a member of the American Legion from WWII, used to visit VA hospitals (and take me) to visit those lonely vets. I remember paper poppies: red and green things. The US civilian population will largely ignore these soldiers 15 years after this war. The US civilian population will "get on with its life." Most people don't realize this except vets and career military. That is the tragedy. We have not seen half of smart weapons of this war. In the end, it's the grunt on the ground who wins it (if one can really call that winning, I do not). Is a war game simulator/trainer like JANUS violent? One news release had S.H. in his bunker, there was a workstation showing a map of Iraq in the background. Could anyone ID what type of workstation that was? Dare anyone? (for fear that that company might lose business?) How many XXX computers (US) are in use in their battle fields? Are people in the US using computers to inflict harm on Arab-Americans? e. nobuo miya
thom@SOE.Berkeley.Edu (Thom Gillespie) (02/05/91)
e. nobuo miya writes: > How many XXX computers (US) are in use in their battle fields? Are > people in the US using computers to inflict harm on Arab-Americans? I don't know about 'inflicting' harm on Arab-Americans but is there anyone who doesn't believe that we might herd them up, ala the Japanese in WW2. I think that computers have the potential to 'inflict' a little harm on a lot of people outside of the military arena. I think there are a lot of Israeli peace folks who could never have imagined locking up the entire Palestinian population for all but 4 hours since the war broke out -- but this seems to be a fact of life in Israel. This was from the interviews last night on NPR with the Palestinian and the Israeli -wierd things happen in war, huh? Thinking the unthinkable ... early Thom Gillespie
thom@dewey.soe.Berkeley.EDU (Thom Gillespie) (02/05/91)
Stephen Joseph Smith conveys a number of statistics about the population of Iraq, the people killed in World War II, and so on. I have no idea what this response to my posting means! I can't find any 'facts' in this response -- just meaningless data. The propaganda our government has been putting on the tube visually suggests that the 'smart' bomb, computer guided, will somehow result in less civilian death then in the past. Looking at the pictures of Basra on NBC leads me to believe either we don't have a lot of smart bombs or we just forgot to use them on Basra so we 'carpet' bombed and the result is that a city with a former population of 1.5 milion is either all dead or running around Iraq searching for a way out of the madness. Where would you be Steve in the midst of this sort of bombardment? Sitting in a basement reading the Information Please Almanac to reach the mathematical conclusion that you won't die? Or would your fear be assuaged by the reality that when possible the angels flying above would when possible use 'smart' bombs? How many video tapes do you think the military have which show their 'smart' bombs doing an 'opps'! Have you seen them show us any mistakes where they razed a mosque or 2 by accident? We see what the American government wants us to see. We see the Nintendo-ization of the Middle East. Computers make us feel good because they are intelligent, and they follow rules, and computers are 'very' american... and somehow the death and distruction we cause with our computer guided warfare is more humane than the nasty 'gas' that the Iraqis use. If we count just the bodies on the ground todate, what has killed more? Gas or 'smart' bombs? What will kill more? We poured Naplam and Phosphorous all over villages in VietNam, was that as bad as gas? And then there is the ultimate computer weapon, the Nuke. We are talking a lot about that one lately. Think maybe our government is trying to get us used to 'the idea'? Maybe we have a 'smart' nuke. I hope so. Steve, there are a lot of dead bodies in Iraq today and there will be more tomorrow. And in the end there will be as many as in any war past. The one thing about technology is that we are able to kill more faster -- not less! Thom
dnadler@ncrsoph.sophia.ncr.fr (Dave Nadler) (02/05/91)
Does anyone have any _facts_ about percentage of computer scientists working for "military" vs "commercial"(i.e. non-military) companies? NCR has 1700 "computer scientists" (programmers, system analysts, project leaders, communications specialists, software engineers, and other CS-related jobs). DEC, IBM, Xerox, and some big telephone company whose name escapes me :) have more (a lot more?) "computer scientists". And a relatively small percentage of these people work on COBOL. Except for the 1700 CS people @ NCR, I'm only guessing at other numbers. So, I ask if anyone knows of some numbers to support or refute Paul's opinion. How about a past ACM or Datamation survey? I find it hard to believe that job security and interesting work can be found only within a "defense" company. Dave Nadler
isr@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Michael S. Schechter) (02/05/91)
Paul George writes: > Reality here rears its ugly head. If you wish to work on advanced > software in a networked unix environment or with the luxury of fast > equipment & tools (like news), you end up with an aerospace company. There is always working for university reasearchers, some of whom have equipment and techniques only 1-2 years behind mil-ind. This of course, generally means working for 30-50% of your industry worth. But then, I consider it worth it to simultaneously stay away from both COBOL and weapons and still have my toys. Various other fields such as factory robotics and oh, automotive instrument control, thing like that still get you reasonable 'toys' without being defence-oriented. Mike S.
duerr@motcid.UUCP (Michael L. Duerr) (02/07/91)
> Paul George writes: > Reality here rears its ugly head. If you wish to work on advanced > software in a networked unix environment or with the luxury of fast > equipment & tools (like news), you end up with an aerospace company. My current work in telecomm is more advanced than anything I did for the military. Many weapons programs require extended temperature range or radiation proof hardware, which tends to limit you to technology that is in other respects several years old. Try getting a 100 MHz Hi-rel SPARC, or a rad-hard DSP56116! I think the opportunity to work in a heavily capitalized, hi-tech environment may often correlate with the size of a company - aerospace being large almost by definition - and with the type of product. The highest manufacturing technology, in fact, is probably in Japanese consumer electronics. For programmers, if you really want to deal with Military Software QA, MIL documentation, and so on, then the Military is the place. But remember, the first Unix came from a commercial site, as did the first networked Unix, the first SQL, and I believe the first real-time extensions to Yourdan-Demarco methodology. The DOD was the first to create Ada, for whatever that is worth. For high tech in anything but airframe design and RF communications, I'd take civilian any day. Most program managers for weapons and intelligence programs are unwilling to take a chance on anything that is not tried and true, especially in todays environment of fixed price development. The customer often will shy away as well, usually due to perceived schedule and technical risk for anything new. Having switched from Military to Commercial, I have NO plans to ever go back. I just regret not having jumped sooner. Michael
yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) (02/09/91)
Michael Schechter responds to Paul George by writing: > There is always working for university reasearchers, some of whom > have equipment and techniques only 1-2 years behind mil-ind. Actually, top research universities tend to have computer equipment at least as current as top defense labs and considerably more current than the average defense contractor. This is from my experience as a undergrad at CMU, a grad student here at Rochester, and summer jobs at Hughes Research Labs (a top defense lab, IMHO) and McDonnell-Douglas (a typical defense contractor, again IMHO). So, if you want to avoid working for a defense company, you can do so and still have access to advanced technology. However, I disagree with the premise that started this thread. Unless you're either a pure pacifist ("There should be no military -- if it comes to war we should die rather than kill.") or a pure anarchist ("There should be no government -- citizens should defend themselves with their own privately-owned weapons or should hire mercenaries."), it seems inconsistent to believe that it's wrong to design weapons for the military. I can respect the pacifist and anarchist positions, but I can't understand someone who says "We need a military, but they shouldn't have sophisticated weapons." Brian Yamauchi
thom@dewey.soe.Berkeley.EDU (Thom Gillespie) (02/12/91)
I'm not sure what started this thread at all, but I don't think the question is whether it is 'wrong to design weapons for the military.' I think the question is whether we should spend any of our lifetime designing tools which kill life. The people of the United States of America have spent more time, money, and effort designing and building for destruction than any people in the history of the world. Why have so many spent so much of their lives designing death? Why was Dresden fire bombed beyond belief? Why wasn't the atomic bomb dropped in the sea just off Tokyo? What purpose did Viet Nam serve? What purpose does Iraq serve? Is there a qualitative or ethical difference between Iraqs chemical weapons and the the phosphorus and napalm we dropped on VietNam and the fuel bombs we want to drop on Iraq? Are the designers of the 'smart' weapons better people than the designers of napalm or phosphorus? Are the dead happier? Are fewer people dying as our technology improves? Is this a useful use of our time on this planet? Can we think of a more life affirming way of spending our lives here? Stripped of all rationalizing you come down to a decision to spend your lifetime destroying life? Why? Thom Gillespie
jonathan@geop.ubc.ca (Jonathan Thornburg) (02/19/91)
[ed: respondents, please try to keep on the track of computers/technology and society. The discussion of pacifism vs other solutions to world problems is exceptionally interesting, but not appropriate for this discussion forum. Thanks greatly! -- Dave Taylor] In a recent comp.society posting, Tim Klein asked about the ethics of working on military computing projects. He said he choose not to consider career opportunities in military organizations to avoid this sort of work. In particular, he said: > ... one good way for a computer programmer to resist warfare is simply > to avoid working for the military... I ask this in all sincerity -- this > is not meant as a flame, and I hope responces to this question will be > kept on a mature level. This is a very prescient and telling point. I agree 100% (with both of the portions of the posting I quoted). I'd like to extend this point, to cover all computer science (hereinafter "CS") research & development ("R&D"). Here I mean almost all academic CS research, AT&T Bell Labs CS stuff, the large industrial concerns like Xerox PARC, IBM Research, DEC Western Research Labs, etc. I think that if you agree with the quoted statement above, you probably shouldn't persue a career in CS R&D at all, even in a "non-military" facility. What I'm asserting here is that, given the state of the world today (I'm talking about things smoothed over decade-long time spans; this year's mideast war isn't relevant here), *most* new R&D in CS stands a good chance of being used to kill people within not very many years. If you don't want to be a party to that, it seems to me that you are forced to not do CS R&D. This topic has a strong personal angle with me -- about 10 years ago I decided to leave CS for this reason, and move to physics. As an undergraduate I took concurrent programs in Math, Physics, and CS because I was fascinated by all three. I knew I wanted to go on to grad school and a career in academia, but was undecided between the three subject areas. Math had been my first love as a child, but Physics and most recently CS had also been fascinating throughout my undergraduate career. I had worked as a research assistant on a CS prof's research project for several summers. After finding out that (at the time, this was in the early 1980s) DARPA contributed around 80% (I'm fuzzy on the exact figure, but this is(was) the right ballpark) of the academic CS funding in the US, and thinking a lot about the ultimate uses which would be made of new developments I would be researching, I decided I didn't want "my ideas are now being used to kill people" on my conscience, and hence I didn't want to go to grad school (& hence a career) in CS. After a series of coincidences which aren't relevant here, I ended up in theoretical physics. I'm now just finishing a Ph.D thesis in numerical general relativity, working towards a numerical simulation of what happens when two black holes collide. I'm well aware of the long and sad history of physics (and indeed all) R&D being used for nefarious ends, notably mass murder, but I think that with physics (as with most other non-CS fields) one can, with care, choose subfields that will probably not find military application for a long time to come. In contrast, in CS, except for *very* theoretical work that borders into pure mathematics, this seems a lot harder. In my current field there's enough computing (numerical solution of coupled nonlinear elliptic-hyperbolic PDEs) to satisfy my fascination with CS. There remain quasi-CS areas nearby which I'm very concious of military interest and involvement in, and which I thus try to avoid, but the scope for research is so vast that's not a great restriction. I can't say what I'd do if this (vast scope for research which I feel is non-military and will stay that way for a long time) weren't the case. And yes, to answer the question I'm sure 256 people will ask, I'm well aware of the ethical dilemmas posed by absolute pacifism vs armed neutrality vs Pax Romanica vs the Holocaust vs ... . I'm uncertain about my position in such a matter "when the chips are down". A very relevant historical account of (successful) absolute pacifism in occupied France in 1942-5 given in Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed Philip P. Hallie Harper & Row (New York), 1979 DS 135 F85 C453 1979 Jonathan Thornburg
martin@titan.tsd.arlut.utexas.edu (Tracy Martin) (03/01/91)
The American military, in cooperation with our friends of the Coalition, has freed the people of Kuwait from the unspeakable horrors and terrorism of life under the conquering Iraqii Army. The ground war took 100 hours, with an amazing low casuality rate amoung American and Coalition troops. These troops were our brothers and sisters, and American technology played a big role in reducing the loss of life. Thats why my life's work as a computer scientist has been in research and development for military technology..... Tracy C Martin
jangr@microsoft.UUCP (Jan Gray) (03/05/91)
Tracy Martin writes: > ... The ground war took 100 hours, with an amazing low casuality rate > among American and Coalition troops...That's why my life's work as a > computer scientist has been in research and development for military > technology..... I have heard various estimates of Iraqi casualties, ranging from from 50,000 to 400,000 troops dead or wounded. They were people too. Some of these troops were evil, vicious killers; but some were regular folks like you and I but with the misfortune of being born in Iraq and being inducted into the Iraqi army. Do you feel any regret in dedicating your life's work to weapons systems that ended their lives, and widowed and orphaned their families? Jan Gray