Technology for nonviolent struggle

It is worth emphasising that military shaping of science and technology can occur even when researchers themselves do not realise that military funding or applications are influencing their work. It is always possible to debate the true purpose of any research. For example, in military research on biological agents, military scientists and administrators may perceive or portray the research as “defensive” — designed to counter biological weapons of opponents — whereas outsiders may believe the research is a prelude to (offensive) biological warfare.[11] This “ambiguity of research” is always present to some degree, since any technology can be used for a variety of purposes, though more easily for some purposes than others.

In the following example, “pure” research is taken up by the military.

I did my PhD on the theory of dense plasma — the hot, ionised gas found at the centre of the sun and red giant stars. The work involved the calculation of the spatial correlations between the electrons and atomic nuclei making up this plasma. The calculations could be done mathematically rather than on a computer, but the work was esoteric, painstaking and even a little tedious.

En route to take up a postdoctoral position in London, I stopped over at the University of California in Berkeley to visit one of my thesis examiners. He congratulated me on the thesis, and then remarked, ’My colleagues at Livermore are finding it very useful for their calculations of what happens at the centre of a hydrogen bomb explosion.’

Aware that Livermore is a design laboratory for nuclear weapons, I replied: ’Surely not! I thought of that possibility, but discarded it. My calculations are only valid for equilibrium systems. A hydrogen bomb explosion is not in equilibrium.’

’Aha!’ he said. ’Of course the Livermore group use enormous computer programs to do their non-equilibrium calculations. But they need to check these highly complex programs by means of mathematical solutions in special cases. Your calculations are playing that role.’

A feature of this example from my youthful innocence was that the nuclear weapons scientists were already using my calculations before they had been published. But the main scientific application of my thesis which I wished to see utilised, the correction of an error in existing models of the solar interior, was only adopted three or four years later.[12]

Such personal concern to avoid military uses for one’s research is not that common. Much more typical is a concern to do good science and not worry about applications. Seldom, though, is it expressed as bluntly as by a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: “What I’m designing may one day be used to kill millions of people ... I don’t care. That’s not my responsibility. I’m given an interesting technological problem and I get enjoyment out of solving it.”[13]

Militaries need to ensure that weapons systems work as desired. Therefore, they set up systems to ensure compliance to military specifications, or simply order certain products or services that fit such specifications. These specifications sometimes have an impact on “civilian” science and technology. In order to ensure that weapons systems work, the US Department of Defense enforces regulations covering certain required standards. Checks are made of standards for the volt and ohm (units for measuring electrical potential and resistance) either by auditors or, more recently, by insisting on documentation of procedures. These standards may then be used in science.[14]

The influence of military R&D on technological specifications is a more subtle influence than the direct influence on choice of technologies to produce. It is possible to delve into the intricate issues of how standards or the form of civilian technologies have been shaped by military influences. But whether such influences exist is less important than the obvious existence of weapons: technologies designed to kill or destroy. The choice to produce weapons is the key issue. Investigating subsequent influences on the form or application of related civilian technologies is an intriguing intellectual puzzle but is not central to the problem of technology in war.

Training and employment

Prior to World War II, most scientific research was carried out by individuals or small groups, with small budgets. The war and the massive military funding that accompanied and followed it led to science carried out on an industrial scale, with big funding, enormously expensive pieces of apparatus, large teams of workers, managerial systems and centralised control, with an associated dependence on wealthy patrons, usually the government. This system of “big science” is ideally designed to allow control over scientific agendas by state managers, among whom the military features prominently.[15]