Brian Martin - Technology for Nonviolent Struggle

By the time students are ready to begin their research apprenticeship, they have imbibed the current scientific world view. Research then involves a certain breaking down of the textbook picture of science, exploring areas where answers are less predictable and encouraging limited challenges to orthodoxy.

Although scientific training promotes conventional orientations to science, a few individuals come through their education with unorthodox perspectives. However, it is most difficult to develop a career at variance with standard views, because there are few jobs that allow this. Most jobs in government and industry are for applied research and development, or in pure research very obviously related to applied areas. Researchers in government agriculture departments might study transport of chemicals in soils. Chemical companies are likely to employ researchers to develop more effective pesticides. University researchers typically have more freedom, but they often rely on industry or government for grants to obtain equipment and technical support. Setting off in a research direction divergent from the standard one is not an easy road.

The military influence comes in at this level. The military provides jobs for a vast number of scientists and engineers, perhaps one quarter or even one half worldwide. Although a few military-funded scientists are able to do “pure research,” it is in areas of potential interest to the military, such as theoretical nuclear physics rather than sustainable agriculture.

The social location of most scientists and engineers who are not employed directly by the military is still quite convenient for military purposes. Most university and industry scientists and engineers are highly specialised in their training and work: they cannot readily switch from mechanical engineering to microbiology or vice versa. They are generally well-paid, see themselves as professionals and work among peers. As a group of workers who are mainly highly specialised, professionally oriented employees, most scientists and engineers are receptive to doing work where there is ample funding. They are trained and employed as technicians, namely to solve technical puzzles, and not to explore in depth who benefits and loses from their work. The funded research has to be in their field, so that their specialised skills can be brought to bear; it has to be sufficiently well funded, in keeping with their professional status; and it has to be recognised as acceptable by their peers.

The military can take advantage of this situation. Much military R&D requires highly specialised skills. The military has plenty of money to pay for research. Finally, military funding is acceptable to a good proportion of scientists and engineers. Most corporations are happy to have military funding, and so are most universities. [16] . On university-military links, see Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Vol. 502, March 1989; David Dickson, The New Politics of Science (New York: Pantheon, 1984), chapter 3; Jonathan Feldman, Universities in the Business of Repression: The Academic-Military-Industrial Complex and Central America (Boston: South End Press, 1989); Daniel S. Greenberg, The Politics of Pure Science (New York: New American Library, 1971); Stuart W. Leslie, The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Christopher Simpson (ed.), Universities and Empire: Money and Politics in the Social Sciences During the Cold War (New York: New Press, 1998); Clark Thomborson, “Role of military funding in academic computer science,” in David Bellin and Gary Chapman (eds.), Computers in Battle — Will They Work? (Boston: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987), pp. 283-296. Most scientists and engineers are happy to accept whatever funding is available. There are also some who actively solicit military support, proposing projects that will appeal to military funders. [17] . Bruno Vitale, “Scientists as military hustlers,” in Issues in Radical Science (London: Free Association Books, 1985), pp. 73-87.

Occasionally, though, there is opposition by scientists to military research. The most prominent case concerned the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), otherwise known as “star wars,” promoted by the US government. SDI was announced in 1983 during a massive mobilisation of the peace movement, and was clearly an attempt to undermine opposition to US government and military agendas. Thousands of scientists, seeing SDI as a continuation of the arms race, refused to seek or accept funding for SDI projects. [18] . David Cortright, Peace Works: The Citizen’s Role in Ending the Cold War (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), pp. 179-186; Steve Nadis, “After the boycott: how scientists are stopping SDI,” Science for the People , No. 20, January-February 1988, pp. 21-26.

However, this was an exceptional case, and even so there were plenty of scientists who were quite willing to take money for SDI, often with the rationalisation that they would use the money for their own research purposes. Critics saw SDI as both technically infeasible and militarily provocative. Many of those who signed the pledge against receiving SDI funding were not opposed to military funding for research in areas not related to SDI; indeed, many were seeking or in receipt of military funding.

As noted, SDI was an exception, linked to the strong antinuclear popular sentiment at the time. In most cases, there is no attempt at a boycott, and only a minority of scientists refuse military largesse on an individual level. For example, the cream of western physicists joined the Manhattan Project during World War II to produce the first nuclear weapons — of course with the honourable motivation of defeating an evil enemy — and there has been no shortage of scientists to produce hydrogen bombs, antipersonnel weapons and instruments of torture. When the Nazis took power in Germany in the 1930s, there was very little political resistance from the German physics community even though top scientists were dismissed and pressured to emigrate. [19] . Alan D. Beyerchen, Scientists under Hitler: Politics and the Physics Community in the Third Reich (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977). I thank Mary Cawte for mentioning this reference.

Groups that might challenge military priorities in a fundamental fashion, such as peace movements, some churches, some trade unions and some political movements, seldom have the resources to fund scientific research, much less large-scale technological development. The technically trained labour force is mainly available to those groups that can afford to pay for it. The military is in an excellent position to do so. Even when scientists and engineers are working for industry and universities, or are unemployed, they provide a reserve labour force of experts of potential value for military purposes. [20] . On scientists as a reserve labour force see Chandra Mukerji, A Fragile Power: Scientists and the State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).

Technology is shaped in various ways by systems of belief, or ideology to use another expression. At a basic level, it is necessary for a considerable number of people to believe in their society’s superiority in order to justify killing members of other societies, either in defending against attack or in launching one. Underlying the existence of the military is the assumption that it is legitimate to use technology to defend a society by force, including these days mass killing of enemy soldiers and civilians. Technology is a means to achieve a widely shared aim.

Belief systems do not arise out of thin air. Education systems, cultural traditions, enforcement of ideological orthodoxy and a host of other mechanisms are involved. How beliefs influence technological development, and vice versa, is often hard to figure out. This topic is far too big to deal with fully here, so a few examples will have to suffice.