By The Tartan Editorial Board
The Editorial Board went on a garden path conversation this week, centered around one simple question: Is it immoral to work for a defense company?
In short, we have no answer nor opinion on the matter. “Good job Editorial Board!” we hear you saying. “Good job for answering the tough questions with a definitive shoulder-shrug.” And while you, hypothetical reader, are perhaps being a bit too unforgiving to us (we’re trying really hard guys), we ask you to pause for a moment and answer the question yourself. Is working for a defense company an immoral act? This question opens a proverbial can of worms too large to cover in one article (and certainly too large for our hour-long EdBoard meeting), but let’s trudge through the worms nonetheless.
There undeniably exists a negative connotation to the idea of working for a defense company. People crack jokes at the idea. We’ve all certainly heard the implication that doing so is “selling out” to the military-industrial complex. Yet, we all know that it happens. People get jobs where jobs are offered, and for many, a defense company provides a stable, well-paying source of income where you get to apply your skills in an engaging environment.
In fact, the defense applications of science and engineering are ubiquitous; any improvements to a technology or scientific theory almost certainly possesses a use case for our military. This question of morality not only implicates those working for defense companies, it implicates anybody making technology anywhere.
Perhaps this conversation’s tendency toward humor is our way to avoid making a serious moral appraisal of the situation. Because the truth is, you don’t need a job at Lockheed to benefit from their products. Maybe you won’t be buying an APY-9 Radar for your E-2D Hawkeye anytime soon, but the global economy isn’t that simple: We enjoy a bounty of cheap products and our government wields the most expensive military in the world. Those two things are deeply intertwined, distant though they may seem. No single missile is the reason you can fill your car up anywhere in America for under $5 per gallon, but on some level I think we understand how those things are related.
Does this mean you are a hypocrite for challenging the military industrial complex? Do you have to be entirely opted out of global capitalism to criticize anything? We hope not, because it would be hard to leave America. (Most of our friends live there, for instance.) Requiring complete moral faultlessness to criticize the world is an unreasonable bar to set, yet we shouldn’t use this fact to be uncritical of ourselves.
Now, of course, there’s no benefit to languishing in your own complicity in the unjust systems you benefit from (which, assuming you are reading this on Carnegie Mellon’s campus or on a computer, you do almost certainly benefit from). Following this line of thinking too closely leads to nihilism, but not following it enough makes you glib and unthoughtful.
This is why we don’t have an answer to the initial question. To condemn the morality of working for Lockheed (or any similar company) is, in some sense, to condemn ourselves. The only thing we ask you to do is to honestly think about the question, “Is it immoral to work for a defense company?” Don’t dismiss the question because it’s judgemental or hypocritical, and don’t linger on the question because you want to feel exempt from moral responsibility. Think about it, and think about what your answer says about you.
Author’s note: On Feb. 12, the EdBoard made an oblique reference to “a certain 112 professor,” followed by a comment on our classroom device-usage policy. Happen that it would, Professor Kosbie read that article and brought it up in lecture, much to the joy of an EdBoard author (who felt an unparalleled rush of power upon realizing they were, to some extent, personally and singularly responsible for the 15-minute classroom activity about multitasking which followed).
The 112-enrolled members of the EdBoard (there are three of us!) felt it necessary to clarify our position which, admittedly, was vague and went unelaborated. Our “mixed feelings” pertain specifically to the decision to call out students for using devices; as effective a tool as it might be, our negative feelings on this practice comes from us being rather unaccustomed to college professors talking to students in that way.
In the scope of the EdBoard’s broader thesis, which centered around the attributes that we believe produce a quality lecture, we wish for Professor Kosbie to know that his enthusiasm and attention to his students’ learning experience are as high-quality as any student could ask for. Carpe diem, et cetera. Now, back to the program.
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