by Eli Kintisch
Meet the Carnegie Mellon University robotics scientist who has weaned himself off military money—who says that colleagues are quietly contemplating the same decision:
[Illah] Nourbakhsh resolved to refuse all military money and choose to work only on the most positive research work he could find. "I wanted to feel I was working on something with immediate social-positive impact, rather than something neutral that could be used for good or ill later…I want to be able to say I've done some good in the world...It is hard to get millions from any other source, plus you have a far better chance of winning DARPA grants than others."
In the last few years, Nourbakhsh has noticed a change. While no one really cared about his refusal of Pentagon money when he was a graduate student, he is starting to make waves as a professor.
He tells how several colleagues have quietly come up to him to say, "We are watching you. If you pull this off for several years, we may well do the same." He ends our talk by saying, "I'm a guinea pig and that makes me more firmly resolved to prove that it's possible."
I adore such a scientist. It might be difficult, but I believe that it is worth it.
On the other hand, loosely speaking, I believe that it looks like a game. We need a certain portion of people who follow the same trend. In that point, the payoff to reject military money will be equal to the payoff to accept it. If the portion of military rejecting people increases after that, the payoff for this option will be more and the state of rejecting military money becomes an attracting equilibrium in the system. There will be a positive feedback and more and more people will tend to reject this kind of money.
There's more to the military-industrial complex than DARPA -- it's either hypocritical or tragically naive to think you can be at CMU without furthering that cycle. If Nourbakhsh really wants to get away from money that leads to US weapons, he should get a job abroad. Of course, if he wants to make a difference & get his stuff written up in Science, he would be better staying at CMU.
I know entire (significant) departments that have turned down all military funding in Europe. There are probably even whole universities that have done so, maybe even in the US. I encourage Science to look a little harder into this.