By Chuck Gallagher — Business Ethics Keynote Speaker and Trainer
TL;DR: A recent IEEE Technology and Society Magazine editorial by Ketra Schmitt asks whether researchers can ethically engage in defense-related work, given that global defense spending now sits at roughly $2.4 trillion and the Doomsday Clock has been held at 90 seconds to midnight since January 2023. Chuck Gallagher, business ethics keynote speaker, argues that refusing to participate is not a clean ethical position — when the people most committed to ethics walk out of the room, the room does not become more ethical, it becomes less.
Norbert Wiener helped build the anti-aircraft targeting systems that shaped a generation of cybernetics research, and then he spent the rest of his career refusing to take a dollar of military money. He paid for that decision in career and reputation. I respect the integrity behind it. But I want to ask the question that Ketra Schmitt asked in her January 2025 editorial in IEEE Technology and Society Magazine: what happens to the field when the most ethically serious researchers do exactly what Wiener did and walk away?
Schmitt frames the choice plainly. Worldwide defense spending sits at roughly $2.4 trillion, with the United States spending around $900 billion in raw dollars and Ukraine leading the world by percentage of GDP. The Doomsday Clock, maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, has been held at 90 seconds to midnight since January 2023 — the closest it has ever been. Into that environment she poses the central question: can you be ethical and pursue defense research? Her answer is yes, and I want to push it further.
When ethical people leave the room, the room does not become more ethical
As a business ethics keynote speaker, I have spent more than two decades watching organizations make the same mistake in different uniforms. Whether the setting is a defense contractor, a hospital system, or a public accounting firm, the people who care most about doing the right thing often reach a point where they decide the environment is too compromised to participate in honestly. They quit. They opt out. They take a cleaner job. And then everyone is surprised when the culture they left behind gets worse. I have argued at ChuckGallagher.com that ethical absence is itself an ethical choice — and it almost always produces a worse outcome than ethical engagement would have produced.
Schmitt makes the same point about defense research, and the math is harder to ignore there. If a researcher with formal training in ethics, legal frameworks, and social implications declines to consult on autonomous weapons because the topic feels morally compromising, the program does not pause. The contract is awarded. The system is built. The decisions about discrimination, proportionality, and human oversight get made by people who were never trained to ask those questions. The field does not become more ethical when its conscience leaves. It becomes a room full of engineers, defense agency program managers, and procurement officers — many of them decent people, but very few of them trained to argue with a four-star general about just-war theory.
Is the engineer who oversells a weapon system telling a lie?
One of the most interesting pieces in the IEEE special issue Schmitt edits comes from C.L. Tracy, who studies what he calls the social construction of hype in weapons design — specifically in the context of U.S. hypersonic missile development. Tracy argues that engineers have a duty to inform policymakers accurately about what these systems can and cannot do, and that failure to push back against optimistic performance claims is itself an ethical failure. I would go further. When an engineer signs off on capability claims they know to be inflated, that is not technical exuberance. It is misrepresentation. And when misrepresentation feeds budget decisions, treaty negotiations, and ultimately the question of whether a weapon gets used in combat, the consequences are not abstract.
I have written extensively about defense contracting ethics — about defective pricing, cybersecurity compliance theater, and the structural pressure that turns honest professionals into people who write “we’re fine” on a status report when they know the truth is closer to “we’re nowhere near fine.” The hype problem Tracy describes is the same pattern at higher altitude. People do not wake up one morning and decide to deceive the Department of Defense. They make a series of small choices, each one defended as reasonable in the moment, until they find themselves on the wrong side of a False Claims Act case or a Senate hearing.
What should leaders inside defense and dual-use organizations actually do?
If you are running an engineering team inside a defense contractor, a research lab with dual-use technology, or a university program that takes federal funding, you are inside Schmitt’s question whether you want to be or not. The honest path is not to pretend the ethical complexity is not there. It is to build a culture where people are expected to raise the hard questions early, where dissent is treated as information rather than insubordination, and where the duty to inform is treated as seriously as the duty to deliver. As an AI ethics speaker and author, I would add that this is going to get harder, not easier. The integration of AI into targeting, intelligence, and autonomous systems is moving faster than the ethical frameworks meant to govern it. The researchers best equipped to provide the strongest critique are exactly the ones most tempted to walk away. The cost of that walking away is going to be measured in lives.
Schmitt closes her piece with the observation that the intensified uncertainty of this historical moment underscores the importance of expert-driven decision-making. As a business ethics keynote speaker, I would put it more bluntly. The researcher who refuses to engage with defense work because the topic offends their conscience is making a choice. That choice has consequences. And those consequences fall on people who never had the privilege of choosing to opt out.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it ethical to do defense research?
Yes, according to Ketra Schmitt’s January 2025 editorial in IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, and I agree. Schmitt argues that with global defense spending at roughly $2.4 trillion and the Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight, the absence of ethically trained researchers makes defense decisions worse, not better. The ethical question is not whether to engage but how to engage with intellectual honesty and a willingness to challenge inflated claims.
What is the duty to inform in weapons engineering?
The duty to inform, as articulated by C.L. Tracy in the December 2024 IEEE Technology and Society Magazine special issue on defense, is the engineer’s ethical obligation to give policymakers an accurate picture of what a weapon system can and cannot do. Tracy specifically studies U.S. hypersonic missile development and what he calls the social construction of hype. The duty is breached when engineers allow optimistic performance claims to go unchallenged because pushing back is professionally costly.
Why did Norbert Wiener refuse military research funding?
Norbert Wiener, often called the father of cybernetics, did foundational work on anti-aircraft targeting systems during World War II and later refused all military-funded research as a matter of conscience. His decision cost him career opportunities and reputation among defense-funded peers. Schmitt cites Wiener as a model of one possible ethical response, while arguing that the field needs people of similar moral seriousness to remain engaged rather than withdraw.
How does business ethics apply to defense contractors and research?
The same ethical patterns I see across industries — pressure to overpromise, silence in the face of bad news, and the slow normalization of misrepresentation — show up in defense contracting in higher-stakes form. As a business ethics keynote speaker, I have argued that defense contractor failures around defective pricing, cybersecurity compliance, and capability claims are leadership and culture failures, not technical ones. The fix is the same as in any industry: build a culture where speaking up early is rewarded and inflated claims are challenged before they reach a customer or a Senate committee.
What is the Doomsday Clock and why does it matter to this debate?
The Doomsday Clock is a symbolic measurement maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists representing how close humanity is to global catastrophe, primarily nuclear war. As of January 2023 it was set at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest setting in its history, and it has remained there. Schmitt cites it to argue that the current security environment makes ethical engagement with defense research more urgent, not less, because the cost of getting these decisions wrong has rarely been higher.
Join the Conversation
I am genuinely interested in how readers think about this. If you work inside a defense contractor, a research lab, or a university program with federal funding, where is your line? Have you ever walked away from work that crossed it, and what happened next? Share your experience in the comments. Your honest reflection is more valuable than a hundred polished think-pieces — and it sets up the questions below, which are worth sitting with even after you close this tab.
Five Questions for Further Thought and Consideration
- If you withdraw from a defense or dual-use project on ethical grounds, who replaces you in the room, and is that person more or less likely to raise the concerns you would have raised?
- When was the last time you challenged an inflated capability claim in a proposal, briefing, or status report — and what did the response tell you about your organization’s culture around the duty to inform?
- Are the bright lines you draw about defense work the result of careful moral reasoning, or are they inherited reflexes from your professional community that you have never actually tested?
- If a $2.4 trillion industry is going to operate either way, where does your training, expertise, or moral seriousness do the most good — by engaging it from the inside or by criticizing it from the outside?
- What would have to be true about your organization for you to feel safe raising a serious ethical objection to a contract, a system, or a capability claim — and what is the gap between that and where you actually work today?
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