Microwave Pain Ray Keeps Frost From Killing Crops 278
An anonymous reader writes "Philip K. Dick's novella Project Plowshare was set in a world where deadly new weapons are 'plowshared' into consumer products. A few years after that book was set, defense giant Raytheon is spinning its raygun-like Active Denial System from a weapon into an agricultural tool to prevent frost from damaging citrus and grape crops."
Re:why do people work for Raytheon? (Score:5, Insightful)
why do people work for Raytheon? What sequence of moral thoughts goes through their heads?
Because they're also producing agricultural tools perhaps? Say it's for the money if you want, but results are results.
Okay, so the agricultural application is a recent development. And the military-industrial complex is full of greed. But if your question is whether anyone at all can work for a defense contractor with a clear conscience, there are—believe it or not—still people who hold onto the hope that the American military is in fact capable of bringing about more freedom and democracy in the world, no matter how poorly it may have been used recently. Just because you don't see it that way doesn't make them wrong. Not to mention, there are also people with enough knowledge of history to understand that, even if defending our home soil from invasion by a conventional foreign military is a farfetched idea right now, the only reason it stays that way is because our military is so damned powerful.
("To turns swords into ploughshares" is cynical nonsense, of course - why really? Is it just the money?)
Attempting to metaphorically turn swords to plowshares is uncynical, almost by definition. Or are you saying they're disingenuous when they say that?
Re:why do people work for Raytheon? (Score:5, Insightful)
On behalf of the rest of the world; please don't bring us any more "freedom" and "democracy".
Because they aren't idealistic hippies? (Score:5, Insightful)
It may shock you to learn but plenty of people are perfectly ok with the idea of developing weapons. They understand that human history is fraught with wars, and that things often go badly for the losers of those wars, sometimes they are completely wiped out even. Thus they are fine with the idea that we ought to have the very best weapons for our own military. They understand that even if the US did give up all armaments, the rest of the world would not.
People work for Raytheon because it is a place where you can do interesting engineering, and they aren't troubled by the fact that it has military applications.
While you can certainly say the world would be a better place if humans stopped fighting, you are naive if you think that Raytheon stopping the development of armaments would lead to that.
Re:Because they aren't idealistic hippies? (Score:1, Insightful)
This answer is inadequate, and can be used to justify the production of weaponry for any regime from Ancient Greek Democracy to Hitler's Nazism. "Well, look at what has happened in the past - we must be strong or we'll be crushed!" is the mantra of every abusive government.
You can pretend that what your government actually does with the weaponry is not my department [youtube.com], but you're bright enough to see your link in the causal chain of events. So unless you're exercising wilful intellectual dishonesty your brain has at some point justified the ends. What I want to understand is: what is the moral framework which has enabled you to justify the ends? And what was the argument leading to your conclusion?
FWIW, my personal experience working with specific ex-Raython people is that they were simply racist, believing in the supreme importance of their culture (not even a white man's burden) and domination by the Anglo-Saxon "indigenous" of their nation. But it surely doesn't come down to that for all weapons contractor employees.
Re:why do people work for Raytheon? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Because they aren't idealistic hippies? (Score:5, Insightful)
Godwin's Law: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." Once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress.
Reductio ad Hitlerum, also argumentum ad Hitlerum, (dog Latin for "reduction to Hitler" or "argument to Hitler," respectively) is an ad hominem or ad misericordiam argument, and is an informal fallacy. Engaging in this fallacy is sometimes known as playing the Nazi card, by analogy to playing the race card.
Re:why do people work for Raytheon? (Score:4, Insightful)
What sequence of moral thoughts goes through their heads?
"Non-lethal weapon are better than lethal weapons".
"Let's give violent resolution of conflicts a non-lethal possibility".
I'm idealistic (Score:2, Insightful)
After looking at the body of a dead girl, slaughtered for the crime of going to school, I decided that wasn't happening to my daughters while I'm alive. The idealist bullshit here is nice, and I bought into it until I realized that the consequences would be slavery. Literally. War is a disgusting, brutal thing, but I now know why it's worth it.
Re:why do people work for Raytheon? (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you just going by the Slashdot article summary, or are you actually aware of what Raytheon builds? No-one who applied to work at Raytheon assuming that they build peacemaking equipment to reduce the suffering of war would be given a job - it'd be a classic case of showing a lack of interest in your employer at interview.
Are you aware of who Raytheon contracts to and for what purposes their clients buy those tools, or are you assuming that all its clients fight wars for defensive purposes and with the aim to create a minimum of suffering?
Raytheon isn't staffed by idiots, and, "well, they don't really know what's going on," isn't an answer. Because they know what's going on, I want to understand how they justify their employment. Everyone so far has come out with one of the extremes:
Is that all?
Re:Two types of people... (Score:3, Insightful)
Thinking that one is doing good is often just clever self-delusion, unfortunately.
My co-workers, friends and most everyone I encounter seem to think that I am a peace-loving type. I go out in the woods and camp, take pictures of beaches and flowers, write about my feelings. I've opposed certain wars and capital punishment for various reasons.... Yet, I don't oppose them on any philosophical grounds. Quite the contrary, actually. I think wars are necessary. I think having the biggest and most horrifyingly destructive weapons does more to maintain peace than anything else.
I have weapons, but they are kept locked and hidden and would be useless in a defense situation. I have them because it's an almost zen-like experience to trek out to the range at 5AM in the morning. On shooting days I do not drink coffee, do not get angry at people who cut me off in traffic, do not let rage creep in. Any of these things would mean that I would miss my target (and those rounds are expensive). But many people assume that I'm some 2nd Amendment prepper type because I have these weapons.
I oppose capital punishment because it is not meted out evenly to all the convicted. The moment that we have mandatory punishments for those capital offenses, I will support quick and immediate execution of those convicted. I don't believe in extenuating circumstances because that's too often abused so that money buys leniency.
People are not so black and white as one would assume. They rarely have any guiding principles. They are a lot like our political parties. There's no guiding principle, maybe except for political expediency. It is a political trick to make people believe they are fundamentally different from others so that they can get your vote.
Re:why do people work for Raytheon? (Score:5, Insightful)
You might not realize this, but very few people in the US still seem to have an issue with greed (or sloth and gluttony, for that matter). No, the real issue people tend to have with the military-industrial complex tends to be the whole killing people for money (again, very few people in the US seem to per se have an issue with the military killing people). The fact that "killing people" has changed to "defrosting oranges" doesn't really change the amorality of it, any more than the various unethical WW2 German and Japanese medical experiments being collected and used by Allied doctors after the war (fruit of the poison tree and all). In short, that's why there's a question of morality in this instance.
Yea, um, you don't bring freedom and democracy with a gun any more than you bring religion with a sword. That is, while it might eventually have that effect, you do so only through amoral means and potentially leaving a multi-generational grudge against its foundation which is likely to eventually unshackle people from that imposed following/belief once they become enlightened to just what was done to make so many people follow along. If there does exist any real long-standing system of belief that can and should be followed, subjugating people to follow it isn't the way for that system to exist. Of course, I like how you use the word "freedom" instead of liberty. Considering one of the main tenets of liberty is a lack of outside coercion, it'd be clear why we couldn't spread that through force even if we wanted to.
That'd be a point, if that's what we were developing the technology for. But, clearly this sort of technology is more a "what if" of technology in that regard; if it came down to defending the border, I'm pretty sure the military would prefer killing the armed invaders, not merely causing them pain. So, instead, the technology seems only well suited for other military and non-military applications, directed at unarmed civilians (this agricultural benefit seems in the same scope of university researchers who claim just about anything they do, no matter how mundane, has military application). In short, yes conceptually a need for a military is prudent. But, unless a person has joined the military or defense contracting in some fashion with the mind to change the military towards that just end, then simply riding along with the colossus with some lofty ideals rings quite hollow. Those who are working for change, though, I can see being, if not with a clear conscience, at least with one that's a lot less murky than those who would first excuse the military or defense contractors' actions and only perhaps later acknowledging that in a very limited circumstance, those actions might have been not entirely warranted.
Re:Because they aren't idealistic hippies? (Score:2, Insightful)
Thanks for making the effort to explain.
How about drawing the line somewhere you might consider manageable? Or, if you're not sure what you can manage, try somewhere almost arbitrary. Then adjust over time to accommodate your life without becoming totally uncaring.
I am reminded (frequently) of the story about the boy throwing washed up sea creatures back into the sea. An old man approaches him and mockingly remarks, "You'll never save them all, you know."
"Yes," he replies, "But I've saved that one. And that one. And that one."
The world doesn't run because it's full of superheroes destroying villains, though the worst people try to paint it that way because it causes others to lose hope and become uncaring and cynical. The world runs because enough people are fairly balanced.
Re:why do people work for Raytheon? (Score:4, Insightful)
In my experience, there are a lot more of us defense contractors on slashdot than the angry anti-raytheon guy would like to admit. Anytime I post anything related to intelligence or military operations, I'm pleasantly surprised at the amount of quality discussion that ensues (rebutting the tin-foil hat, dirty hippie, libertard majority that linger around here).
Re:why do people work for Raytheon? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's set the basis for discussion.
First, can you agree that "war" - with all its ugliness, misery, and violence - is sometimes a moral and justifiable course of action? You don't have to agree that it always is, or even that it "frequently" is - but if we can't agree that some use of military force is morally justified, then we have no basis for discussion, and I'll call you a smelly treehugging hippie, you can call me a dirty miltaristic ape, and we can stop the conversation right there.
If we can agree that sometimes war is justifiable, then let's back up and consider a couple wars that we can probably consider to be justified - the NATO involvement in the Kosovo war, and the UN involvement in Operation Desert Storm back in the early 90's. Both of these involved HEAVY multilateral diplomacy from NATO & the UN, and in both cases, diplomacy failed. I don't want to bring the current conflicts in Afghanistan & Iraq into this because both are fraught with politics far beyond the scope of whether or not the conflict there is justifiable, and I've no wish to sit here engaging in "Bush Lied People Died" / "Freedom Fries for Patriots" bumper-sticker-level bullshit soundbites - it's counterproductive, and neither side is capable of being objective about it.
So, diplomacy failed in Kosovo & Kuwait, and regrettably, the only course left was to deploy military forces in order to end the fighting in Kosovo & to restore Kuwaiti sovereignty. In other words - American, Canadian, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, British, Irish, French, German, Belgian, Spanish etc (name a country if yours was involved and isn't on this list - it's not an exhaustive list by any means) boys and girls were going to be fed into a meat grinder in order to accomplish the goals that diplomacy had failed to achieve. This is a horrible decision, and should never be made lightly and without long, sober thought.
Now, is where we're going to diverge I suspect. In a case like that, where young men and women are being deployed into a warzone on behalf of me and/or the rightfully elected government of my country, I consider it my absolute moral imperative to provide those young men and women with the best weapons and defensive tools my mind can create for them, in the hopes that every single one of them will come home to their families and other loved ones safely. If that means they're facing down people with machetes and rocks with an M-60 and a Blackhawk helicopter, I don't give a shit about the force imbalance there - if the citizens of the country that we're facing were too poor or too immoral to provide their own young men and women with better weapons, that's not my problem - they're not acting on the behalf of my government, they're not acting on behalf of me, and if it were up to me, they'd lay down those rocks and machetes, make nice, and let all of the young men and women from MY country come home.
Asking an 18 year old from New Orleans (or Galway, or Beijing, or Moscow, or... name our city) to charge a hardened bunker full of Serbs with nothing to lose, using nothing but a pistol and a folding knife because we've "abandoned defense research" is immoral. Suggesting that telling a group of 18 year olds pinned down in a deadly ambush that "sorry, we don't have any A-10's available to provide close air support because we've abandoned defense research and engaged in arms limitation treaties, looks like your toast kids" is fucking monstrous, and should be considered a war crime on the part of the military those young men and women belong to.
What it boils down to is this: if war is occasionally, unfortunately, justifiable & necessary, then you prepare to prosecute that war as hard, deadly, and effectively as you can. That means it is moral to develop new weapons in the service of that aim, and that it is immoral to not protect and arm your troops as well as you can afford & design. If you are willing to ask someone to fight and die for your country in the military, you owe it to
Re:Because they aren't idealistic hippies? (Score:3, Insightful)
You seem to believe that creating tools is morally the same as using them.
If I create a network diagnostic tool am I responsible for someone else using it to steal passwords?
If I work at the electric company am I morally responsible if the state uses the power I helped produce to kill an innocent man in the electric chair or a child sticks a fork into the socket?
If I work at an auto company am I morally responsible for the deaths caused by drunk drivers?
If I work at a weapons company am I morally responsible for the deaths caused by drunk politicians?
If I work in theoretical physics and do some calculations on neutron absorbtion am I responsible when that research gets used by someone else to build a bomb which someone else again uses to destroy a city?
If so do I also get goodness points when a diplomat uses other weapons built as a result of the same calculations as a threat to convince someone on the other side of the table to not invade another country and kill millions?
If I work in bio-research and develop some handy new restriction enzyme which later gets used to develop bioweapons is that my fault?
Do I get any positive score if those same weapons pressure the other side in some conflict into not using their own?
If I work as an engineer designing microwave emmiters am I responsible for the pain suffered by people who get mazered while protesting?
If I sabotaged the same design instead and it didn't work in the field would I somehow escape moral responsibility for the extra deaths as the crowd is instead beaten down by more traditional means?
Re:why do people work for Raytheon? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well your question is provocative, implying that it is morally wrong to work in defense. I merely posit that your view point is more out of the mainstream than the slashdot community thinks, based on how many of us willingly work in defense with none of the moral anguish you are implying.
Re:why do people work for Raytheon? (Score:5, Insightful)
Very true. It worked wonders for the Europeans when they conquered South America.
While a lot of military expansion certainly did happen under Islamic leadership, it really isn't the largest religion in the world. Not even close.
Islam has somewhere between 1.1 and 1.3 billion followers. Christianity somewhere between 2.1 and 2.3 billion. But nice try though.
North and South America is close to exclusively Christian. Most of sub-Saharan African is as well.
India is 80% Hindu and a "paltry" 140 million Muslims. China has somewhere between 20 and 100 million. Even the "massive population" in the middle east only amounts to about 346 million people, and not all of them are Muslim. Hell, the largest population of Muslims in any one country is in Indonesia, where some 88% of its 230 million inhabitants are Muslim (202 million).
By comparison the US of A counts between 58 and 82% Christians (179 to 253 million). In the EU it's about 75% (some 375 million).
So yeah ... we, the people in the West, are certainly under siege by a religious army that far outnumbers our own numbers. I mean - we barely have a two to one advantage. That's so unfair.
Islam may get a lot of airtime in our media, but then again - so did (not really in a)-balloon-boy, Michael Jacksons death, Janet Jackson's nipple and Miss (OMG, same-sex marriage is like so gay, ya-know) America. And while quite a lot of that attention is negative, because some idiots are blowing themselves up, stoning women and otherwise behaving like idiots, why should we judge all of them by the behaviour of a few loud idiots?
How would people in the US feel, if the rest of the world judged them, by the behaviour of a small minority of their idiots? Wait ... you already know what that's like, and they keep telling us that it's unfair to judge them in that way.
Re:I'm idealistic (Score:1, Insightful)
Also, while a death of a girl is a terrible thing, one must also contemplate how forceful invasions increases radicalism in any country. Or, to put it in an more emotional context, for every girl killed for trying to go to school, there will be another child who thinks such an act was necessary or even moral because the hatred of the U.S increased his/her parents fundamentalism. And if history has taught us anything, it's that the fundamentalists usually win.
Re:Ice (Score:3, Insightful)
I think you're both partially right. I don't think the goal is to "blast the crops with enough microwaves to cook them," I think the point is "warm the plants & fruit/vegetables a few degrees so that frost doesn't accumulate on them. In other words, put out enough radiation to keep your oranges & trees at a comfortable 50 degrees ("or even room temperature-ish"), even if the air gets down to 30 degrees. The point isn't to bombard them with microwaves until they're cooked, it's to warm the plant just enough to keep frost from forming on the leaves and fruit.
I doubt that this thing is bombarding the crops all night with high intensity microwaves, it's probably got temperature sensors tied to it, to cycle the microwave emitter on and off just enough to keep the plants in their "optimal" temperature range.
Re:why do people work for Raytheon? (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone who claims that isn't too familiar with tyranny.
Re:why do people work for Raytheon? (Score:3, Insightful)
You are asking that somebody justify taking a job in the defense industry based on morality. I can only guess you suggest that means it is inherently immoral, otherwise you wouldn't be seeking justification.
I can justify it on two grounds. The world needs a defense industry and it is a lucrative and rewarding career. I could just as easily design training for banking, government, insurance, but defense pays better than all of those, and there is nothing immoral about the industry.
Re:why do people work for Raytheon? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not disagreeing that war is sometimes necessary if your aim is to prevent even greater human suffering.
I would question the nature of involvement in Kosovo and Kuwait. 20th century Kuwait, like Israel, is an artificial construction of British retreat designed to maintain regional resource and military control. Historically governed from Basra with a degree of autonomy, it was defended by Britain from the Ottoman Empire having gained total control of Iraq. Yet when that Empire fell and Britain took the baton, it held on to both but kept them governed separately. Blah independence, Blah naval control of Persian gulf, blah oil, you know the rest. We used our might to separate the two because it was in our interest, then we used our might to keep them separate - perhaps this is moral, but it's not a question without contention.
To briefly reinforce some of your points:
I consider it my absolute moral imperative to provide those young men and women with the best weapons and defensive tools my mind can create for them
For them.
That means it is moral to develop new weapons in the service of that aim
In the service of that aim.
Yes, we can go on into arguments that governments will sometimes misuse their military, and that governments will sometimes involve us in conflicts that are NOT justifiable and moral.
But what if our Western governments are currently almost exclusively involving themselves in offensive wars for the protection of special interests? What if it's not the pathological exception, but the norm? Do you then argue, "Well, it's still moral, because while all these weapons of effective destruction are mostly being used to kill immorally, they could also be used to kill morally"?
using nothing but a pistol and a folding knife because we've "abandoned defense research" is immoral.
False dichotomy. Are you quite sure that Raytheon is producing weaponry which is appropriate for quick, effective and minimally cruel destruction of an offensive force, rather than weaponry optimised for effective long-term oppression? You don't just research how best to kill, you research how best to kill in a particular context.
"sorry, we don't have any A-10's available to provide close air support because we've abandoned defense research and engaged in arms limitation treaties, looks like your toast kids"
Why not just double funding to the military? Why not require criminals to act as human shields? Why not pre-emptively nuke every country which looks at you wrongly, just to ensure that all American and British soldiers' lives are kept intact?
Military volunteers should be aware of the risks, and should be aware that military management is a resource allocation and diplomacy problem as much as it is a problem of technological development. Military volunteers should be aware that one option is to simply nuke Iraq and Afghanistan and start again from scratch, and that this might reduce the chance that they're gunned down by the enemy. But this would not be appropriate from a diplomatic or humanitarian point of view.
Finally, I do find it difficult to understand why people have such a respect for the lives of their own military vs the lives of civilians in an enemy country. Is the aim of war to defend our country against invaders (so why Kosovo?)? To defend peaceful traders against tyrants? To reduce human suffering? To protect our interests home and abroad?
Re:why do people work for Raytheon? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, you could argue that Kuwait was a construct of the western powers after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, but if you want to argue that, then you must also concede that modern Iraq is primarily a result of that same process. In which case, Iraq had no more "right" to Kuwait than anybody else. We can argue the merits of carving up the Ottoman Empire after world war 1 ad nauseam, and point out how it laid the groundwork for much of the conflict in the present middle east, but you can't say "Kuwait was historically governed by Basra" without also conceding that modern day Iraq, which encompassed modern day Basra, had very little resemblance to the Basra that used to govern Kuwait.
Then it is up to us to elect wiser politicians and stop this trend, and demand more emphasis on diplomacy. As I noted in my final sentence, "it is also your moral responsibility to ensure that your government does not misuse those tools for immoral ends." I am not saying diplomacy is irrelevant or useless by any means, it should always be the first, and most heavily used "weapon" in international relations. That governments will use weapons of war immorally is not an issue with the weapons of war themselves - it is an issue with the governments being elected. I'm not saying the way things are is perfect, and that no changes or further regulation are needed.
Because there are practical limits to the size and amount of money you can spend on your military without running the rest of your country into the ground.
Because it would be immoral to force someone to give their life in defense of something they have not volunteered to serve.
Because a war that wants to have a claim at being "justifiable" should make serious (reasonable) attempts to limit the deaths of non-combatants and limit collateral damage.
Because they are *my* military. I - through my lawfully elected government - am asking them to put their lives in grave danger on my behalf, and am asking them to walk a tremendously fine line - do violence to those who oppose them and their mission, and do little-or-no harm to those who are peaceful non-combatants. Yes, civilians are killed during a war. It is unfortunate, and I am sorry for all of those civilians who are killed. But if you look at the development of weaponry you're decrying the development of, huge amounts of development - smart bombs, camera-equipped drones, night vision advancements, laser-guided and satellite-guided cruise missiles - all of this is aimed at *precision* - being able to strike *exactly* at the target you wish to, while minimizing damage to surrounding people & infrastructure.
I would say that a legitimate, justifiable, moral war could be fought on any of these grounds. Defending your country against invaders is certainly reasonable; protecting traders against tyrants is simply a subset of "protecting our interests at home and abroad," and I believe that these are also legitimate aims of war where diplomacy and regulation have failed. And reducing human suffering is also a le