Why I won't do defence work

Quite a large proportion of embedded firmware jobs are in the defence industry. I won't be a part of that and here's why.

There's a practical problem and a moral problem. The practical problem is not knowing who the products will be used by, when, and for what purpose. As usual, the BBC comedy show Yes Minister has more truths in it than official statements and procedures.

Jim Hacker - "So there's no real control over who the arms go to in the end?"

Sir Humphrey Appleby - "Oh indeed there is - the dealer has to provide and end-user certificate which is a signature acceptable to Her Majesty's government that the ultimate customer is in fact an approved user."

Jim Hacker - "Is that that a real guarantee? I mean would you be surprised for instance if a British aircraft carrier turned up in the Central African Republic?"

Sir Humphrey Appleby - "Well I for one Minister would be very surprised - it's a thousand miles inland"

Jim Hacker - "Yes, you know what I mean. What about smaller weapons?"

Sir Humphrey Appleby - "Well it's virtually impossible, there's stringent security, rigorous inspection procedures, meticulous scrutiny..."

Jim Hacker - "You mean it's all a facade?"

Even when an end-user can be confirmed, the geo-political situation changes over time and those groups who were acceptable at the time and bought these products, can later become combatants against us.

Unfortunately the tone has to shift at this point from comedy to tragedy.

There's no better way to express the moral problem than to quote the great Dr Jacob Bronowski in his 1974 Parkinson interview (relevant section starts at 45:00)

Now you ask the question, what about the scientists, after all, what about the chaps who actually invented the gas that they were using at Auschwitz and so on.

One is faced, at many moments in one's life, between loyalties which are not compatible. One is faced with a question of loyalty to one's country as opposed to loyalty to one's religion. Think of all the Roman Catholics who were tortured to death in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, who were constantly faced by that. Spies are faced by questions of loyalty to some faith or the like. During the war, many scientists were faced with a very simple and brutal question, which is - Do I feel about the civilization in which I work, strongly enough, to do anything to resist the Nazi threat, to make a bomb first? And we all felt yes about that, all of us, and I had no doubt, that all of us would do that again. We felt quite certain, that to allow what was then going on in Central Europe, what we had seen films of in Poland and Russia, to become normal over the world, was something which we must resist by all technical means which we possessed, that we would be traitors to the intelligence we had been provided for, to turn round and say to Mr Winston Churchill, "I know you want the bomb but you are a warmonger, I am a peaceful man, I would rather go to jail". I think that an individual can say that, but I don't think that you can blame an individual who says, "No I can't say that".

The questions arise about what happens when other people make up their minds to drop the bomb, because I don't have to tell you that no scientist was asked about dropping the bomb. And those who knew it was going to be dropped, Szilard, Wigner, the people who signed the Wigner memorandum, they were very much against it. They said that dropping the bomb at that stage in the war was a mistake. But you see they wouldn't have felt that if it had been a crucial question of dropping it on Berlin at an earlier stage of the war, if we had been threatened by it.

These are terrible dilemmas, but you see this is what morality is about, this what being a human being is about. You are faced with questions of value to which there are no numerical answers. Never think that you can write down an equation at the end of which you can say in a satisfactory tone of voice, that's fine, I have now proved that loyalty to my county is more important than loyalty to the scientific tradition. No no, that's always got to be a personal choice.

There are conflicts in the world, some of which I feel strongly about, some of which it is much better for the world if one side wins rather than another. But do any of them put me in the position of having to chose one value over another, one loyalty over another such that I should feel a need to contribute to any destructive act? 

No, not now, and hopefully not in the future. We are lucky that we are not facing an existential threat of the nature or magnitude that Dr Bronowski describes above, so we do not need to make that terrible choice, we do not need to add to the stockpiles of dangerous items in the world.

[Both clips copyright BBC]