The Betterment of the Human Condition? (3)

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The Betterment of the Human Condition? (Part III)

Expected and Intentional Harm

It would be nice to think that this last category is empty. Unfortunately it is not. Here is one example of engineering in the third category -- the rack. There are a class of similar devices -- the thumbscrews, the strappado, the iron maiden -- most of them crude, but still requiring a degree of engineering expertise. For example, there is a certain minimum mechanical advantage needed between the lever arm and the windlass of a rack in order that the operator should be able to dislocate the subject's joints without unduly straining himself, and there would have been specialists in rack design whose job it was to know this.

I would like to look particularly carefully at one illustration, this picture of a `pear'. The closed pear is inserted in the mouth -- or some other orifice -- of the subject. Turning the screw then forces the three segments of the pear to spread apart, crushing and rupturing the surrounding flesh.

You will notice that the pear is skilfully made -- the handle, for example, is ornamentally carved. The person who made it must have been a craftsman, must have thought about what he was doing.

If we think about the torture that the pear was designed to inflict, we would probably describe it as `bestial' or `mindless'. But it was neither of those things. It was devised, not by an unthinking beast, but by a man who was exercising care, craftsmanship and deliberation.

These devices strike us as being both horrible and somehow quaint -- the sort of things we might see as tourists at the Tower of London, for example. Torture engineering has made great progress since those days. It now belongs more to the field of electrical engineering than mechanical engineering. This, for example, is a hand-cranked machine for applying electric shocks to prisoners under interrogation. This example comes from Turkey.

The use of electricity as an instrument of torture is relatively new. Neither the Gestapo nor the KGB seem to have used it systematically. The first widespread use, of machines like this Turkish example, seems to have been by the French in the period 1945 to 1960, when they were trying to retain colonial control over Algeria. Hand-cranked dynamos, originally used for starting cars and running field telephones, were used to administer electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body. The French also used these techniques in Vietnam. When the Americans took over from the French in Vietnam, they continued to use these methods: US Marines sent to Vietnam stated repeatedly and independently that they were trained to use field telephones -- the TP 3-12 -- for interrogation in Camp Pendelton in the 1960's.

And here we have a more recent scene -- you'll recognise it as being Abu Ghraib in Iraq -- where American interrogators are again using electric shock, or the threat of electric shock.

One supposed motive for the adoption of electricity as a new method of torture is that it leaves few identifiable signs. Therefore, it is the ideal choice for torturers who are concerned about their public image. The Gestapo never tried very hard to present itself as a democratic, caring organization, so they had no reason to conceal the fact that their victims had been tortured. But for a government that wants to present a sympathetic image to its citizens and to the rest of the world, electric torture is the way to go.

And this is an electric baton, designed to administer shocks of up to 40,000 volts. This example comes from China; it was smuggled out by a Tibetan prisoner, Palden Gyatso, who had been tortured by it.

Something to notice about this baton: whereas any goon can beat people up, designing an instrument like this requires skill and training. Specifically, it requires the training that you will be taking over the next four years, training as an electrical engineer. If there were no electrical engineers, such devices would not exist.

I believe this example was actually made in China; however, it is a copy of a British design. There are at least five British engineering companies, including Royal Ordnance and its parent company, British Aerospace, who design and build such batons. This is not a small category; Royal Ordnance sales manager Philip Morris admitted that British Aerospace has supplied 8,000 such batons to Saudi Arabia. Another company, SDMS Security Products of Chelsea, London, offered to supply 300 such weapons to Zaire. British Aerospace has also supplied 10,000 electro-shock shields and 5,000 shock batons to Lebanon; another British company, IFECLT Technical Plastics, has supplied Lebanon with 15,000 electro-shock units. And these aren't disposable items; each baton is of rugged construction, designed to be used many times. Saudi Arabia is just one customer; Amnesty International considers that more than half the world's governments practice torture on a regular basis. Of course, the engineering work is not necessarily done in the country where the device is used. I've mentioned that the UK is one exporter of such devices. The United States is another; one of the less-publicised policy changes in the USA in 1980 when Reagan came to power was the lifting of export restrictions on certain classes of electrical interrogation equipment.

Specifically, between September 1991 and December 1993, the US Commerce Department approved over 350 export licenses under commodity category 0A82C. This category, in the words of the Export Admininstration Regulations, includes ``thumbscrews; shackles; and specially designed instruments of torture''. The total value of US exports in this category was more than $27 million. Another export category, 0A84C, includes ``electric shock batons, cattle prods, shotguns and shells''. France, China and Russia are the other major exporters.

As part of the `war against terror', some politicians in the United States have recommended sending suspects seized in the States to other countries for interrogation. For example, in June 2003, West Virginia Senator John D. Rockefeller recommended that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed be sent overseas for torture. More recently, we have the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was kidnapped by the United States -- or possibly handed over by the RCMP -- and sent to Syria, where he was tortured for a year. We thus have the interesting situation that torture equipment designed and built in the USA could be used on behalf of the US in other countries.

You will recall how we traced the industrial revolution, and saw how the development of technology has led to better health and more efficient food production. The same technologies lead to greater efficiencies in other areas; the technology of mass production will allow us to make any device cheaper and in larger numbers. The electric baton, for example, is a mass-produced item. In a previous lecture, we discussed statistics, such as per capita food production, that might give us an idea of whether technology was making the world better or worse overall. Another statistic it might be interesting to look at would be the number of torture devices per 1,000 of the population. We would have to evaluate this worldwide, since, as we've seen, both torture instruments and their victims can easily be moved across national borders. I suggest that this number has increased over the twentieth century -- a rack, or a `pear', is a craftsman-made item, whereas the batons and stun guns we've seen are efficiently mass-produced.

We have been discussing the class of engineering problems in which an explicit design criterion is the infliction of suffering. This is a large enough class that it should have a name; for this lecture, I will call it `cruelty engineering'.

Designing torture equipment is one type of cruelty engineering, but not the most common type. Much military engineering falls into the same category. One example would be napalm. This is a quotation from an American pilot, paying tribute to the industrial chemists at Dow who developed napalm: ``We sure are pleased with those backroom boys at Dow. The original product wasn't so hot -- if the natives were quick they could scrape it off. So the boys started adding polystyrene -- now it sticks like treacle to a blanket. But then if the natives jumped under water it stopped burning, so they started adding white phosphorous so's to make it burn better. It'll even burn underwater now. And just one drop is enough, it'll keep on burning right down to the bone so they die anyway from phosphorous poisoning.''

A second example would be the development of the flechettes used in cluster bombs, again developed during the Vietnam conflict. Social scientists, studying the psychology of the Vietnamese population, had come up with a simple observation: to sap the resistance of a bombed population, it is much more effective to wound than to kill: a seriously wounded person will not produce anything himself, and will moreover consume resources that could otherwise feed the able-bodied. So the problem is now an engineering one: how can we most effectively wound without killing? Mechanical engineers fired projectiles of different shapes and sizes into pigs for weeks, collecting raw data. The answer they came up with was a flechette-- a little barbed arrowhead. And the engineers borrowed an idea from nature. A porcupine quill, caught in the flesh, will work its way further in of its own accord. Under the microsope, we see it has a pattern of overlapping scales that act like tiny barbs. Similar scales were etched onto the flechettes. These flechettes were loaded into cluster bombs and dropped in great numbers. At first they were gratifyingly effective; those wounded might eventually die, but they would linger on in great discomfort for many months before this. Then a problem arose; in some cases, the flechettes were being located by X-ray and removed. But our technology was more than a match for this. Materials engineers were sent for, and they at once recommended a plastic, mechanically strong and transparent to X-ray. Tests on further generations of pigs perfected the design.

A third example might be the neutron bomb. This is a type of atomic bomb. Most modern atomic bombs consist of a small sphere of plutonium, which is compressed to supercritical mass by carefully made explosive lenses. The radiation from the fissioning plutonium triggers fusion in a surrounding mass of lithium deuteride, which in turn releases a shower of neutrons. In normal atomic weapons, these neutrons are absorbed by a blanket of uranium₂₃₈, which in turn fissions to release energy. In a neutron bomb, the outer uranium blanket is omitted, so the explosive power is reduced. Thus there is less damage to property. However, the shower of neutrons will kill any living things in the area by radiation damage.

A fourth, more prosaic, example is bullet design. Recall that the distinctive feature of cruelty engineering is that the infliction of harm on human beings is an explicit design goal. and one can trace how particular features of the design contribute to this goal. So there exists a family of techniques for increasing the damage done by bullets: the alternatives include a deformable bullet, a fragmenting bullet, and a tumbling bullet. (Research on this topic is generally reported as `Effects of Projectile Weapons on Gelatin Targets', gelatin having properties similar to those of flesh.)

A fifth example is the design of landmines. These are supposedly part of military engineering, but most of the victims of mines are actually civilians, and about 50% of all victims are children. As with the other examples we have been examining, the design of landmines involves specific design requirements targetted at increasing damage -- for example, the ``Bouncing Betty'' landmine contains a small initial explosive charge that shoots it out of the ground to about waist level before the main charge explodes.

More details on mines are provided in this link to a talk given by Mines Action Canada.

In the earlier part of this course, I mentioned that the laws of engineering are local, that is, they are specific to a particular time and a particular culture. One of the distinctive features of engineering in our culture is that it contains the techniques for making Black Talon bullets and Bouncing Betty mines.

Now, with bullet design, we enter a grey area. Some military applications clearly fall under our definition of cruelty engineering. But do all military applications belong here? What about an anti-tank missile, for example? If your target is riding around in a tank, chances are he's not an innocent bystander. Or how about a missile defence system? Surely shooting down missiles to defend cities is a benign engineering application?

This is a complex question, and for that reason I will be inviting two other faculty members, Dr John Bird and Dr Glenn Chapman, to present their views next week. My own view is that , while building an anti-tank missile is less morally repugnant than designing a thumbscrew, there are some reasons to oppose any involvement in military research.

Let me make it clear that I am not arguing for pacifism. I personally would be willing to join the armed forces if Canada were to be invaded. But choosing to be a soldier and confront your enemy on the battlefield is a very different thing from sitting in a cubicle in Toronto and designing devices to harm faceless strangers.

We have to be realistic about our choices. We've seen that weapons developed here are sold around the world. So you don't know where or for what purpose the devices you develop will be used. The scientists who worked on the Manhattan project were -- perhaps naively -- surprised to find that once they'd given the bomb to Truman, their opinions on how or whether to use it were of no further interest. And once you've made the choice to work for British Aerospace, for example, do you think you'll be able to say ``No'' when your manager asks you to design the control cicrcuits for an electric baton?

So far I have talked about the consequences of military research for society. Doing military research also has an effect on science, which I would now like to discuss.

Science is said to be value-free, and in a sense this is true. But it is also true that the scientific method itself embodies certain values, and these values are what attract many of us to science. In particular, science is democratic and international. What do I mean by democratic? For example, I could be an Associate Professor at a prestigious Canadian university, and you could be a mere student, but if we publish rival theories of heat transfer, the issue will ultimately be decided by experiment and deduction, not by authority. By `international', I mean that a physicist in China practices the same physics as a physicist in London; an advance for one is an advance for both. This is the ideal; the practice sometimes falls short of the ideal, but the ideal is part of science. And it is this ideal which is responsible for the success of science; for, looked at historically, science does seem to be the one thing that we, humanity, have become good at. And I believe this is because the ground rules of science allow all humanity to cooperate in the creation and transmission of knowledge.

Military research seems to me destructive of this ideal, and in two ways. Firstly, the need for secrecy in military research is entirely antithetical to the spirit of science. Secrecy makes workers in the same field overseas into deadly enemies, rather than colleagues. Their advance becomes our loss.

Secondly, and more seriously, secrecy weakens the peer review mechanism, which is at the heart of science. It is easy, very easy, to deceive yourself about the results of an experiment. Even an experienced scientist, working in a familiar field, can lead herself to see in experimental results the pattern she wants to see. This is why no new knowledge is accepted into science without critical examination and testing by the community of scholars in that field. Remember the case of cold fusion, twelve years ago. How many people reported successfully repeating the Pons and Fleischman experiment before the results were shown to be in error? Wishful thinking has tremendous power, even over the trained mind.

Suppose you are working in a classified field. You discover the equivalent of cold fusion -- let's say, you discover how to build an X-ray laser. You write a paper on your results. Only a few dozen people in the country have clearance to see it; some of them are your technical peers, you've often met them at conferences. If your results are correct, billions of dollars will go into X-ray laser research. Everyone involved on the military side of the field -- which includes the reviewers -- can expect much more generous funding. Of course, the reviewers are all scientists, and will try to be objective -- but they're only human.

We don't need to speculate on what would happen in this scenario; it's already happened. Instrumentation artifacts on the first X-ray laser tests were misinterpreted as evidence of success. Lowell Woods and Edward Teller, the director and director emeritus of Star Wars research at Lawrence Livermore National Labs, presented the artificial results as genuine, and used their positions to silence scientists inside the Labs who tried to release the truth. How many smaller cases have gone undetected, we have no way of knowing. By way of excuse for the scientists and engineers involved, we may suppose that, after you've spent the day planning for a war that may kill billions, shifting a data point one-third of an inch no longer seems so serious a crime.

Not all research done for military purposes is classified. When funding research at universities, the U.S. Department of Defence suggested the following guideline: it may be unnecessary for all the research to be classified. The professor in charge of the work can get a security clearance, but the students working for him can be assigned to non-sensitive areas. Think about the consequences of this: the professor must ensure that his students don't get a sense of the broader picture; to serve his military clients successfully, he must do the exact reverse of what he should do as an educator. Example: study of particle beam damage, ostensibly as part of a study for travel to Mars, actually as part of SDI.

I would like to finish by telling you another piece of history. This is a story that is told by Ovid in the third book of his Tristia, and is also mentioned by Dante in the Inferno. It comes from Sicily in the sixth century BC, about three hundred years before Archimedes, and is set, not in Syracuse, but in the nearby city of Acragas. Acragas was ruled by a tyrant of unusual cruelty, by the name of Phalaris. One day Phalaris was approached by an enterprising engineer from Athens, a man called Perillus, who, as we'll see, can claim to be one of the first cruelty engineers. Perillus had an invention that he thought would appeal to King Phalaris: a hollow brass bull, into which a prisoner could be locked. A fire would then be kindled under the bull and the prisoner slowly roasted to death. However, Perillus had cunningly designed the bull's throat so that the prisoner's screams would be transmuted into a sound like the bellowing of a bull.

Phalaris was indeed delighted by this ingenious mechanism, and, to test it out, Perillus was seized by his guards, thrust inside the bull, and roasted alive.

The moral of the story for would-be cruelty engineers is evident. However, the story does not end there. Phalaris kept the bull, and used it on a regular basis, until, some years later, he was overthrown by one Telemachus, who put him to death by roasting him in the bull.

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