Article
BAMOS
Jun 2020
15
Arms companies and our science
Opportunities carrying profound moral questions
Ewan Short
Contact: shorte1@student.unimelb.edu.au
Introduction
Military competition is a potent driver of scientific growth, and
military institutions play a major role in many fields of science,
including our own. In the 1950s, military institutions funded
the development of the first numerical weather prediction
(NWP) systems in both the US and Sweden. Today, meteorology
and oceanography hold an important place in the research
and operations of Australian military institutions, with similar
relationships in most other developed nations.
The ethical complexities of such relationships have provoked
a rich scientific tradition of open moral reflection on the
connections between science and warfare. Following World
War II, members of the Manhattan Project founded the
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, an organisation dedicated to
publicly reflecting on the dangers posed by nuclear weapons.
Similarly, John Von Neumann, a giant of 20th century science
and key architect of the early NWP efforts in the US, publicly
expressed anxieties about the potential "climatic warfare" that
the emerging weather and climate sciences could empower, an
anxiety that has proven not entirely unfounded.
This reflective tradition remains urgently relevant if Australian
scientists are to understand the new and complex roles
commercial arms manufacturers like Boeing, Raytheon and
Lockheed Martin now play in Australia’s scientific, military
and educational institutions, as well as in our field specifically.
Lockheed Martin provide an informative case study, although
the issues discussed here are not unique to them.
Lockheed are a US arms and technology company with a
particularly significant presence in Australian science. The
company produce technologies like NOAA’s geostationary
weather satellite and NASA's upcoming spaceborne carbon
cycle monitoring instrument; they also manufacture
oceanographic and meteorological instruments, and are
expanding into technologies like tidal energy. Furthermore,
Lockheed are the lead corporate sponsor of the American
Meteorological Society (AMS), a relationship AMOS may seek to
replicate. The opportunities their Australian presence provides
our community are therefore significant.
However, Lockheed also produce weapons deployed in
controversial conflicts like that in Yemen.
In 2018, a Lockheed smart bomb was used in the Saudi bombing
of a Yemeni schoolbus, which killed 40 children and 11 adults.
This and similar incidents provoked legislative contests in both
the US and the UK over arms sales to participants in the Yemen
conflict, and a 2019 report from the United Nations expert
panel on Yemen noted that countries including the US, UK,
France and Iran "may be held responsible for providing aid or
assistance for the commission of international law violations".
Lockheed’s place in our science therefore carries profound
ethical and reputational risk, and should thus demand solemn
moral reflection from all involved.
My own attempts to understand and discuss these issues have
been deeply distressing, disorienting, and demotivating. This
has prompted reflection on a series of questions: are Australian
science students, myself included, intellectually prepared to
consider the position of their field in Australian and global
society? If not, is it desirable to require or encourage science
students to engage with other fields, like ethics, politics or law?
If so, can this be done in a way consistent with core scientific
values?