Sep 01, 2015 · Raytheon Corporation has been declared the final winner in a contract dispute with Littleton-based Lockheed Martin Space Systems for $700 million ..
Sept 09.2015 JOINT PACIFIC ALASKA RANGE COMPLEX, Alaska PRNewswire/ -- The U.S. Naval Research Lab and Raytheon Company (RTN) have demonstrated successful captive flights of a modular, rapid replacement architecture for electronic warfare (EW) payloads...
Sept 09.2015 JOINT PACIFIC ALASKA RANGE COMPLEX, Alaska PRNewswire/ -- The U.S. Naval Research Lab and Raytheon Company (RTN) have demonstrated successful captive flights of a modular, rapid replacement architecture for electronic warfare (EW) payloads...
Unethical human experiments that will only stimulate our enemies to
follow suit.The military and scientific leaders chartering neuroweapons research will argue that the United States is a uniquely noble country that can be trusted with such technologies, while other countries (except for a few allies) cannot. They will also argue that these technologies will save lives and that U.S. ingenuity will enable the United States to dominate other countries in a
neuroweapons race. When it is too late to turn back the clock, they will profess amazement that other countries caught up so quickly and that an initiative intended to ensure American dominance
Meanwhile, individual scientists will tell themselves that, if they don't do the research,
someone else will. Research funding will be sufficiently dominated by military grant makers that it
will cause some scientists to choose between accepting military funding or giving up their chosen
field of research. And the very real dual-use potential of these new technologies (the same brain
implant can create a robosoldier or rehabilitate a Parkinson's disease sufferer) will allow
scientists to tell themselves that they are "really" working on health technologies to improve the
human lot, and the funding just happens to come from the Pentagon.
Does it have to be this way? In spite of obvious problems controlling a field of research that
is much less capital-intensive and susceptible to international verification regimes than nuclear
weapons research, it is possible that a sustained international conversation between
neuroscientists, ethicists, and security specialists could avert the dystopian future sketched out
above.
Unfortunately, however, Moreno (p.163) quotes Michael Moodie, a former director of the Chemical
and Biological Arms Control Institute, as saying, "The attitudes of those working in the life
sciences contrast sharply with the nuclear community. Physicists since the beginning of the nuclear
age, including Albert Einstein, understood the dangers of atomic power, and the need to participate
actively in managing these risks. The life sciences sectors lag in this regard. Many neglect
thinking about the potential risks of their work."
follow suit.The military and scientific leaders chartering neuroweapons research will argue that the United States is a uniquely noble country that can be trusted with such technologies, while other countries (except for a few allies) cannot. They will also argue that these technologies will save lives and that U.S. ingenuity will enable the United States to dominate other countries in a
neuroweapons race. When it is too late to turn back the clock, they will profess amazement that other countries caught up so quickly and that an initiative intended to ensure American dominance
Meanwhile, individual scientists will tell themselves that, if they don't do the research,
someone else will. Research funding will be sufficiently dominated by military grant makers that it
will cause some scientists to choose between accepting military funding or giving up their chosen
field of research. And the very real dual-use potential of these new technologies (the same brain
implant can create a robosoldier or rehabilitate a Parkinson's disease sufferer) will allow
scientists to tell themselves that they are "really" working on health technologies to improve the
human lot, and the funding just happens to come from the Pentagon.
Does it have to be this way? In spite of obvious problems controlling a field of research that
is much less capital-intensive and susceptible to international verification regimes than nuclear
weapons research, it is possible that a sustained international conversation between
neuroscientists, ethicists, and security specialists could avert the dystopian future sketched out
above.
Unfortunately, however, Moreno (p.163) quotes Michael Moodie, a former director of the Chemical
and Biological Arms Control Institute, as saying, "The attitudes of those working in the life
sciences contrast sharply with the nuclear community. Physicists since the beginning of the nuclear
age, including Albert Einstein, understood the dangers of atomic power, and the need to participate
actively in managing these risks. The life sciences sectors lag in this regard. Many neglect
thinking about the potential risks of their work."
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