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.[29]
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
This is undoubtedly the greatest influence, covering as it does influences from a host of other factors from basic needs such as food and housing to commerce and culture (including art). Civilian interest groups, including corporations, governments and consumers, usually want technologies to serve their immediate purposes. In capitalist societies, cost in the market is a key consideration. This explains, for example, why most industries are not designed to withstand a military attack. (Only in a few countries, such as Iraq, Sweden and Switzerland, are some factories built underground or otherwise designed with military threats in mind.) In most countries, there are few stockpiles of food, goods or strategic minerals beyond what is dictated by the search for profits. Most road and rail systems are designed primarily for civilian purposes.
Military influences do have some influences on all these areas, but civilian influences are usually much greater. Military influence on technology is greatest in areas where there is little civilian interest, such as missiles.
Bureaucratic Interests
Within the military and within military industries, officers, soldiers, managers and workers have jobs, status, authority, routines, standard ways of thinking, and emotional commitments. In other words, the current way of doing things is a way of life. Changes in technology also introduce the prospect of social changes. These social changes are likely to be welcomed by some and opposed by others, in ways that don’t necessarily correlate with military efficiency. In other words, vested interests within various bureaucracies constitute one influence on technological development.
Sometimes the main vested interest can be called conservatism, since it manifests itself as resistance to new technologies. For example, around 1900, when the new method of continuous-aim firing from ships was proposed, bureaucrats within the US Navy at first ignored and then did everything possible to discredit the method and delay its introduction, in spite of the fact that it was vastly superior to the existing method. The reason for the resistance was that the new method entailed changes in the organisation of tasks on board: it changed the arrangements in naval society.[31]
The introduction of the machine gun provides another example of military conservatism. It was vastly more effective than rifles and, because of this, threatened to make obsolete the traditional training and tactics based on beliefs in the importance of courage and quality of troops. Plentiful evidence was available of the superiority of the machine gun in various colonial wars, but these victories were attributed to white superiority over native peoples rather than to technological superiority. As a result, the implications of the machine gun for warfare were not grasped and integrated into military organisations and planning until well into World War I, when the suicidal implications of infantry attacks on positions defended by machine guns eventually became clear. Even in this situation, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were killed before commanders were willing to recognise the failure of standard methods.[32]
Another example is the US-produced M-16 rifle, which was the result of prolonged bureaucratic manipulation. Another rifle had been developed, the AR-15, which attained a high reputation among soldiers. However, Eugene Stoner, the designer of the AR-15, worked outside the Army’s arsenal system, and thus this rifle was a threat to the bureaucratic status quo. The AR-15 was subject to numerous design changes imposed by rigid specifications, many of which were irrelevant to practical conditions, such as performing in freezing temperatures. The design changes led to the M-16, which was much heavier, inconvenient and failure-prone, and led to more deaths in action. Soldiers who were aware of the problems with the M-16 wrote to their parents who in turn put pressure on Congress. As a result, the sabotage of the AR-15 was exposed in hearings of Congress.[33]
25.
Hilary Wainwright and Dave Elliott,
27.
Lance J. Hoffman (ed.),
28.
Leslie J. Freeman,
29.
Daniel M. Berman and John T. O’Connor,
30.
Brian Martin, “Suppression of dissent in science,”
31.
Elting E. Morison,
33.
James Fallows, “The American Army and the M-16 rifle,” in Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman (eds.),