Ties That Bind
Three reform-minded scholars explore the systemic influences of defense R&D on the discipline.
Engineering and War: Militarism, Ethics, Institutions, Alternatives
By Ethan Blue, Michael Levine, Dean Nieusma
Morgan & Claypool, 2014. 107 pages
When air strikes go astray in Afghanistan, victims and America’s political leaders frequently come into focus. Not so the engineers who design and develop those destructive drones. Yet engineers have always been intimately involved in the mechanics of war, developing weapons technologies as well as the communications and intelligence systems that support them. Even academic engineers who distance themselves from such endeavors may work for institutions supported by military R&D funding – think MIT, Stanford, and Berkeley. What, then, are the ethical implications for a discipline that advances warfare to the extent that engineering does?
This is the question professors Ethan Blue, Michael Levine, and Dean Nieusma pose in Engineering and War. The typical response, they write, is silence: Aside from a few ethics courses, the close relationship of engineering and militarism is seldom discussed in academic circles. Some critics have suggested that engineers’ generally conservative nature fuels a reluctance to tackle the issue. Others contend that engineers trust in a “myth of neutrality” that allows them to separate themselves from the moral implications of their products.
These authors raise a different consideration, positing that connections between engineering and war “are so pervasive, the issues so broad and entwined, that they remain somewhat hidden.” Through this work, they seek to highlight those links and inspire discussion and change. Engineers “work at the interface of the human and the technical,” helping shape our future world. As such, the book argues, they must address the ethics of warfare and its “increasingly tangled lines of accountability and responsibility.”
Part of a Morgan & Claypool lecture series on key engineering topics, this work represents the collaboration of an engineering reformer – Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Nieusma, editor of the International Journal of Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace – and University of Western Australia professors Levine, a philosopher, and Blue, a historian. All three perspectives inform the writing, notably with Chapters 2 and 3 delving into such ethical questions as the definition of a “just war,” engineers’ moral responsibilities, and what constitutes integrity. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the intensification of military involvement of U.S. engineers from the Cold War through the present. Closing chapters examine the work of reformers who question the intellectual constraints dictated by military funding at universities and engage in alternative humanitarian and community practices.
Before leaving office, President Dwight Eisenhower famously cautioned against the defense sector’s growing influence and the “grave implications” should public policy become “the captive of a technological-scientific elite.” Today, with an estimated 30 to 60 percent of engineers involved in defense research, Ike’s vision of this powerful “military-industrial-academic complex” is hard to dispute. It is not enough for a handful of practitioners to resist military projects, argue Blue, Levine, and Nieusma. The military’s deeply ingrained structural influences upon engineering need to be widely recognized – and challenged.
Notwithstanding its provocative topic, Engineering and War suffers from poor presentation. Early chapters containing textbook-dry explanations of such topics as normative ethics, proportionality, and discrimination may deter all but the most ardent student. Elsewhere, more measured discussion would be welcome. The authors accuse the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of an “endless proliferation of new military technologies [that] continues to produce its own nightmares.” Yet no effort is made to acknowledge
DARPA’s considerable societal contributions, notably in developing the precursor of the Internet. Finally, while the book aims at overview, greater specificity would help in exploring, for example, how academics could navigate institutional pressures to accept military research funding. Nonetheless, this book offers a valuable contribution that may help raise engineers’ awareness of “the many explicit and subtle forces steering engineering work towards the ends of warfare.”
Robin Tatu is Prism’s senior editorial consultant.
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