🚀 go-pugleaf

This article is from Michael C. Berch <mcb%lll-tis-b.ARPA@lll-tis-gw.ARPA>
 and was received on Tue Aug 12 12:03:19 1986
 

Dave Taylor and John Gilmore's articles about the ethics of doing
defense work caused me to think about why I do what I do, and how I
feel about it.  It is important to me to do things that I consider
socially useful, which is one reason I gave up practicing law three
years ago to return full-time to computer science.

The ethical questions that Dave and John pose are real, and I will
attempt to answer them in this public forum in a straightforward
manner. While I do not claim to speak for others who are currently
involved in defense work, I would not be surprised to learn that others
share my opinions; perhaps more than one would expect.

To put the summary first -- I do not consider it unethical or immoral
to do defense work, nor do I find it a contradiction that one can be an
informed, moral, peace-loving person and also work on terrible
weapons.  I am not a weapons scientist; most of the work I'm currently
engaged in is for rather non-lethal military applications like office
automation, records processing, networking, C3I, and so forth.
Nevertheless, it does have applications for both tactical and strategic
weapons systems, and our project provides some support in those areas
as well.  So I do not propose to hide behind the idea that I am merely
plugging in disk drives instead of building bombs; I agree that doing
the former may support the latter, and hope to explain why this is
consistent with my goals and how I view the way my work may affect
society.

1. Building weapons does not necessarily mean making war.

It seems to me that there are only two consistent points of view about
maintaining a military: either you accept the necessity of defending
your country (or planet, state, village, whatever) from those who mean
to do it harm, or you are a pacifist who does not condone the use of
violence, even in self defense. I am comfortable with people of either 
persuasion, since they are internally consistent, non-hypocritical 
philosophies based on solid values.

I personally believe in the necessity for defense, and base my belief
on the lengthy history of human conflict, and the pragmatic observation
that there are forces in the world that desire to destroy our way of
life, our property, or our lives. (Please do not think that I am some
kind of raving right-wing militarist; I'm not, and I've spent a good
deal of time in my life opposing unjust wars and military adventures
and aid to totalitarian dictatorships and the like.)

>From this postulate I derive the necessity of building weapons for
defense. There are those who accept the necessity of defense but refuse
to have anything to do with it PERSONALLY on "moral" grounds; I find
this irritating and hypocritical, like meat-eaters who don't mind
seeing packaged cold cuts but do not condone the existence of
slaughterhouses.

2. Weapons are tools.

Weapons are tools, and like other tools are capable of being used
rightly or wrongly. A handgun in the possession of a police officer
patrolling a crime-ridden area or held by a homeowner defending his/her
home are (to me) "right" uses. The SAME handgun in the possession of a
criminal is a "wrong" use. Is it therefore "right" or "wrong" to be
involved in the manufacture or distribution of handguns?

In my mind, this same analogy applies to the more terrifying weapons of
war. I firmly believe that if this nation had not developed nuclear
weapons during/after WWII, and the Soviets had, this particular
dialogue could not be taking place, and that many of us (if in fact we
had been born at all) would currently be inside Soviet gulags, given
our penchant for free thinking and expression.

3. Nuclear weapons and stability.

Nuclear weapons, like handguns, are often accused of having the single
purpose of killing humans. This is not true: a much more important
purpose of both is coercion. Coercion by threat of force is not
pleasant to me; nevertheless the superpowers of the world have engaged
in a standoff for nearly forty years based on the threat of mutual
destruction (MAD). There is significant reason to believe that
notwithstanding the massive expenditures (and resultant economic
displacement) caused by the US-USSR arms race, it has probably
prevented the occurrence of a major war for global domination for the
last 40 years (with massive loss of life resulting), and is likely to
do so for the indefinite future.

The key to avoiding a nuclear war is stability. Whatever the drawbacks
of the current MAD situation, it is relatively stable, even taking into
consideration nuclear third parties and others. There are various ways
to stop an arms race: unilateral disarmament, multilateral disarmament,
demonstration of clear superiority, and mutual or unilateral development 
of a defensive capability. All except unilateral disarmament (which I 
consider unwise) depend on the continuation of a weapons research, 
development, and testing program. The last depends on continued research 
into a defensive capability such as SDI.

4. Scientific workers as ethical forces in the defense industry.

Whatever your opinions about my analysis of the nature of weapons and
defense technology, there is a further point that I would like to bring
up: the necessity of having ethical, "good" people in the defense
industry. While I consider technology (including weapons) to be
neutral, that does not mean that I endorse every (or even most)
military actions -- far from it! I believe that it is the
responsibility of scientific workers (who are the most highly educated,
and probably most intelligent people, in the defense industry) to take
positions about warfare, defense policy, and the use of weapons.

I've found the weapons and defense scientists that I've worked with to
be a highly thoughtful, moral, and ethical group of people, well
informed about public policy, arms control, critical technologies, and
the like. They are as horrified as I am at the idea of nuclear war, and
hope, through a strong R&D program, to maintain stability so that a
nuclear war can never occur.

If you decline military-related projects on a "moral" basis, remember
that the consequence of this is that the work might be done by others
who are of less high purpose. Would you rather the DOE, DOD, CIA, and
NSA were staffed by "good" people, or just whomever the agencies could
hire after all the "good" people refused to get involved? Think about it.

Comments welcomed.

Michael C. Berch 
ARPA: mcb@lll-tis-b.ARPA 
UUCP: {ihnp4,dual,sun}!lll-lcc!styx!mcb

The opinions above are solely those of the author, and should not be
attributed to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory nor Control Data
Corporation, to whom the author is a non-employee consultant.