ENGINEERINGBODIES OF WAR

This course examines 21st-century technologies of war and asks: What is the edge of ethical engineering? Students will critically examine U.S. Military technologies including robotic exoskeletons, military robots, neural prosthetics and networking (brain warfare), biometric scanning, and UAVs (drone warfare). Soldiers from the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, and U.S. Marine Corps branches will join class sessions along with guest speakers to discuss the role of new technologies and robotic warfare during their service in Iraq and Afghanistan and the future of technologies.  Students will produce a final course project that may be submitted as an essay, multimedia project, or applied technology that engages with the ethical questions posed in the class. Each project will be designed over the course of the semester in direct collaboration with a U.S. Military former or active-duty soldier to produce a theoretical, technical, or performative final project. 

Practically, the course poses a design challenge: If the U.S. Military is primarily concerned with engineering “technologies of war,” is there an opportunity for engineers, such as ITP graduates, to engineer “technologies of peace?” What design and function would such “technologies of peace” play and can they intervene in an increasingly militarized U.S. society where Google owns military robotic companies and Apple iPhones are used to detonate bombs throughout the Middle East? Students will produce a final project that may be submitted as an essay, project blueprint or prototype, or applied technology that engages with the ethical dilemmas posed in the class.

Theoretically, the course explores the ethics of engineering 21st-century technologies of war, particularly U.S. Department of Defense technologies that are often developed in handshake with consumer technology (e.g. ARPANET, GPS, ENIAC, CALO Project (i.e. Suri), onion (Tor) routing, and UAV’s (drones). In the United States, government, university, and private institutions all collaborate to “look for new weapons” through coordinated engineering and R&D programs. Significantly, these weapons often focus on the human body as the site of military innovation, including the design of technologies that seek to transform the material and physiological bounds of the human body itself through technology. The course thus inquires:  What are the ethics of enhancing or replacing human bodies in culture and labor through military-derived technologies?