The military is a major driver of technological, world-changing innovations which, like the Internet, often have unpredictable dual uses and widespread civilian impact (?blowback?). Ethical and policy concerns arising from such technologies, therefore, are not limited to military affairs, but can have great implications for society at large as well. This paper will focus on two technology areas making headlines at present: human enhancement technologies and robotics, representing both biological and technological upgrades to the military. The concerns we will (...) raise are about (1) the unintended effects that these technologies could have on society and (2) the possibly self-defeating nature of these military programs in making war itself more, rather than less likely to occur. Given that society also can influence military programs (e.g., through civil protests) it is important for the military to attend to such concerns. (shrink)

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 have generated a number of responses by philosophers, perhaps the most controversial of which has been Ted Honderich’s book After the Terror. There Honderich inquires into the question of American responsibility for the events of September 11, 2001. Honderich argues that due to our acts of both commission and omission, we Americans bear partialresponsibility for the terrorist atrocities committed on that day. In this paper, I shall take issue with Honderich’s argument and propose (...) an alternative to it based on the concept of blowback. (shrink)

In Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, Chalmers Johnson offers a prescient analysis of the dangers presented by an unchecked U.S. military-industrial complex and the likely consequences of American interventionism abroad. Blowback’s prescience is revealed by the fact that Johnson predicted escalating terrorist attacks on the United States and its citizens prior to the tragedies of September 11, 2001. He goes on to predict the likely decline and ultimate collapse of what he describes as the “American (...) Empire,” largely as a result of the socio-economic consequences of hyper-militarism and growing anti-American sentiment resulting, at least in part, from America’s aggressive militarism and persistent socio-economic meddling abroad. In this paper, I attempt to formulate the “consequences of American empire” as the fruit of what some Buddhists have termed “collective karma”. A proper analysis of collective karma will, I contend, illuminate the role of America’s military and economic imperialism as causal antecedents of “Blowback,” and will also help us grasp the degree to which American citizens unknowingly (or unthinkingly) support the U.S. military-industrial complex that virtually ensures resentment, hostility, and, ultimately, the collapse of the “empire” – and, with that collapse, the reaping of the bitter fruit of our collective karma. (shrink)

Political persuasion can express moral respect. In this article, however, I rely on two psychological assumptions to argue that political persuasion is prima facie disrespectful: (1) that we maintain our political beliefs largely for non-epistemic, personal reasons and (2) that our political beliefs are connected to our epistemic esteem. Given those assumptions, a persuader can either ignore the relevant personal reasons, explicitly address them, or implicitly address them. Ignoring those reasons, I argue, constitutes prima facie insensitivity. Explicitly addressing them constitutes (...) a form of prima facie incivility. Finally, implicitly addressing them covertly treats those personal reasons as psychological puppet strings, constituting prima facie objectionable manipulation. This prima facie insensitivity, incivility, and manipulation are each prima facie failures of respect, either for the persuadee’s rationality or for their agency. Political persuasion can sometimes be all-things-considered justified, but these moral hazards can produce reasonable guilt, resentment, and blowback. (shrink)

Although the push to get universities to accumulate IP by commercializing their scientific research was a conscious movement, dealing with the blowback in the form of contracts over the transfer of research tools and inputs, called materials transfer agreements (MTAs), was greeted by universities as an afterthought. Faculty often regarded them as an irritant, and TTOs were not much more welcoming. One reason universities could initially ignore the obvious connection between the pursuit of patents and the prior promulgation of (...) MTAs was a legalistic distinction made between intellectual property and contract law, which of course is of direct concern to a lawyer, but should be less compelling for anyone trying to understand the big picture surrounding the commercialization of academic science. However, as a subset of scientists were increasingly drawn into the commercial sphere, they tended to attach MTAs to research inputs requested by other academics; and this began a tidal wave of MTAs which shows no sign of abating. Furthermore, many IP-related restrictions have been loaded into individual MTAs, including the stipulation that the existence and content of MTAs themselves be treated as secret and proprietary. The paper closes by looking at recent arguments that the growth of MTAs has not actually harmed the research process, and rejects them. (shrink)

Most online platforms are becoming increasingly algorithmically personalized. The question is if these practices are simply satisfying users preferences or if something is lost in this process. This article focuses on how to reconcile the personalization with the importance of being able to share cultural objects - including fiction – with others. In analyzing two concrete personalization examples from the streaming giant Netflix, several tendencies are observed. One is to isolate users and sometimes entirely eliminate shared world aspects. Another tendency (...) is to blur the boundary between shared cultural objects and personalized content, which can be misleading and disorienting. A further tendency is for personalization algorithms to be optimized to deceptively prey on desires for content that mirrors one’s own lived experience. Some specific - often minority targeting -“clickbait” practices received public blowback. These practices show disregard both for honest labeling and for our desires to have access and representation in a shared world. The article concludes that personalization tendencies are moving towards increasingly isolating and disorienting interfaces, but that platforms could be redesigned to support better social world orientation. (shrink)

More than a decade of disparate but intense international corporate effort has been lavished on the development of a wide variety of driverless car technologies. The failure of that effort, beyond the most modest of roadway topologies and dynamics, carries serious implications for success of AI systems on Clausewitz landscapes of fog, friction, and skilled adversarial agency. Matters of AI-driven control system stability and suitability are subtle, technically complex, and relentlessly challenging. Political and military discussions of these issues have been (...) blind-sided by self-interested salesmen of the technology and are dangerously simplistic. A central threat is that, after considerable further investment, AI-driven weapons and related systems will, like driverless cars confronting chaotic, rapidly-changing environments, simply not work reliably in real combat, causing not only mission failure, but massive levels of civilian ‘collateral damage’ and consequent blowback. Currently available [Active Driver Assistance] systems are not capable of sustained vehicle operation without constant driver supervision; it is imperative the driver maintain situational awareness at all times. — American Automobile Association (2022)...AI-enabledC4ISR\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathbf {C^{4}ISR}$$\end{document}cannot help dissipate the fog of war.Fog-of-war — Col. Guilong Yan (2020) Happiness is having a stupid enemy. — Dr. D.N. Wallace (1981). (shrink)

Chapter 4 continues the probe of monstrosity by querying our species’ own self-aggrandizement into an unsustainable planetary presence alongside the kindred counter-response we are provoking from the biosphere, loosely figured as “climate-crisis.” But here the crisis is perhaps better composed in language as “comeuppance”—at once a re-action and rebalancing. The trek begins with a summary invocation of monster theory—especially in the work of Steven Engler, arguing for an interpretive rather than representational approach to the study of monsters that does not (...) so much cast the monster figures found in older cultures around the globe as “figurations” for something else (race, sex, excess, transgression) but rather takes those emblems seriously in context and focuses on delineating the way the figures “signify” in that context. But in this exploration the approach will invert the scholarly gaze to ask questions about what is lost when monsters are reduced merely to objects of study (much less cinematic entertainment) and the actual capacity for “feeling” monstrosity, so carefully kept alive in more indigenous cultures, is shriveled in modern arrogance into mere fascination with “the other.” Again, the supposition here is that human monstrosity on the planet in terms of our numbers and environmental impact is today quite real and indeed outsized—as is the blowback occasioned in response. But what is missing is the communally mediated emotionality necessary to perceive such. The chapter works with a triad of theorists running from African American scholar Charles Long’s mobilization of Rudolf Otto’s Mysterium Tremendum et fascinans, through Potawatomi biologist Robin Kimmerer’s characterization of the cannibalistic Anishinaabe Windigo apparition, to Lakota lawyer-theologian Vine Deloria’s invocation of a dread Land Presence—each of the three differentially marking out experiences of monstrous “hauntings” engendering trepidation and demanding respect. Together the three diagnose what could prove to be a fatal incapacity in modern global culture to wrestle with monstrosity as a real spiritual/material eventuality and with the ecoreciprocity and sense of limitation it more readily inculcates in cultures that still narrate the danger of excess as a central trope in their collective sensibility. (shrink)

AI weapons and space war must be more transparently and responsively regulated by nuclear surety regulatory regimes that embrace audit by foreign technical teams. Head-of-state and head-of-military hotlines between adversary states are keys to last resort diplomatic paths from war. Meddling in the politics of other countries induces blowback, terrorism, war. Many states do not meddle in the politics of other states; all states should commit to never doing so, especially not by violent means like assassinations, plotting coups, arming (...) insurgents. Respecting democracy development by never interfering in another country’s elections is in the long-run national interests of states. (shrink)

This chapter analyzes the morality of President Obama’s policies of rendition, military commissions, and indefinite detention in regard to the Guantanamo Bay detainees. It also examines the effects of intervention and resulting blowback, looking specifically at the case of Yemen and the Saleh government.