Technology for nonviolent struggle

Suppression of challenges

Military funding, military applications and the training and employment of scientists and engineers are all influences that shape science and technology to be selectively useful for military purposes. Another influence operates in a different way, by negative rather than positive reinforcement: when a development occurs that challenges military priorities, it may be subject to attack. This process is not always straightforward, so it is worth looking at a few examples. In each of these cases, military influence is one among a number of influences on science and technology.

Lucas Aerospace is a large corporation based in the UK. Much of its work is for military contracts, specifically for aircraft. In the 1970s, workers at Lucas, concerned about loss of employment from declining military orders, developed an alternative corporate plan.[25] The alternative plan included a number of products that could be produced with the facilities and skills available at Lucas, but which were designed to serve “human needs” such as mass transit or mobility of disabled people. Note that the workers distinguished “human needs” from military contracts.

The management of Lucas consistently refused to accept any of the workers’ proposals, insisting on managerial prerogatives, and rejecting even those alternatives that were projected to make a profit. This stance by Lucas management was not taken at the behest of the military, but it certainly served military ends (as well as maintaining managerial control). If initiatives such as those by the Lucas workers had been successful and imitated widely, they might have been a threat to the usual acquiescent role taken by industry in fulfilling military orders, and also a threat to the achievement of military priorities for technological development.

In the 1980s, the US National Security Agency (NSA) attempted to put controls on mathematical research in cryptography, the study of codes. Before publication, cryptography research was expected to be cleared through the NSA.[26]

In the 1990s, the NSA developed a cryptography system — including a computer chip, the “Clipper chip,” and an encryption algorithm, “Skipjack” — that would allow government agencies to read messages under certain conditions. Most computer network users strongly preferred encryption systems — of which a number were available — that could not be easily cracked by anyone. The US government banned export of encryption systems while promoting the Clipper chip. The primary stated justification for the Clipper chip was monitoring of criminals, but the role of the NSA showed the importance of military priorities. In this case, the alternative, a market of encryption systems useful for commercial or private purposes, was opposed by military interests.[27]

Another example is nuclear technology, in which military and civilian applications have long overlapped. Nuclear power, inasmuch as it is perceived to be a civilian technology, helps to legitimate nuclear technology generally, including nuclear weapons. There are many cases of critics of nuclear power — especially scientists and engineers — who have been reprimanded, transferred, harassed, slandered and dismissed.[28] Another dimension to this issue is the attack on alternatives to nuclear power, such as cutbacks on funding for solar energy.

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There are not so many examples of attacks on critics within nuclear weapons programmes, probably because few weapons scientists are in a position to dissent openly and still have any chance of retaining their jobs. Andre Sakharov in the Soviet Union was a prominent critic who was sent into internal exile as a result. In the United States, Hugh DeWitt, a theoretical physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where nuclear weapons are designed, has spoken out against government weapons policies and come under attack within the lab several times as a result. The importance of such cases is not so much their effect on the individual dissidents, but the example provided to others who might otherwise have considered speaking out themselves. Even a few cases of this sort send a strong message that it is much safer to work on the job as it is defined from above.[30] In this way, conformity to military priorities is maintained.

Countervailing influences

Military shaping of technology is not all-powerful, otherwise every technology would be oriented to military purposes and we would all be wearing combat boots and living in fallout shelters. It is worth outlining the main influences that resist or challenge military priorities for science and technology, namely civilian applications, bureaucratic interests and popular resistance.

Civilian applications