Suicide and Technology for War (Scholars Award)

自20世纪以来，自杀式战争在世界范围内占据了重要的地位，这是9/11后世界的一个及时的话题。在国际范围比较，这个项目探讨工程伦理的国土安全。在任何处于战争状态的国家，在看似不合理的事情上采取行动可能是合理的，自杀式任务就是这种现象的一个关键例子。为了保卫国土而进行的自杀式战争，虽然是针对敌军的，但首先需要牺牲人类，因此引发的伦理问题远远超过技术问题。该项目着眼于两个以自杀为战争形式的国家的工程社区，旨在回答一系列相互关联的问题：(1)工程师如何以及为什么支持有组织的自杀式袭击以保卫国土？(2)和平时期的道德敏感性是如何降低到支持这种邪恶但必要的绝望行为的？(3)战争中的社会以什么代价（对谁）从一个给定的工程项目中受益？(4)作为国防可接受的技术，自杀的可接受成本是多少？项目成果将用于制作教育材料、公开演讲和流行媒体的出版物。这个项目用历史的方法来分析从1914年到1961年这段时间，在这段时间里，第一次世界大战、第二次世界大战和冷战都提升了爱国主义自我牺牲的重要性。对这些材料进行批判性分析，可以对社会实践和技术维度进行一系列比较，通过这些比较，不同的国家通过积极塑造国土防御自杀的概念，创造了他们各自版本的空中自杀战。大众文学、海报、政府出版物等都被用来揭示空中自杀战形成的社会技术背景，以及这种情况在不同社会背景下的差异。总的来说，这个项目有助于工程伦理、技术史和科学技术研究方面的学术研究。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Suicide warfare—a timely topic in post-9/11 world— has occupied important space around the world, especially since the twentieth century. Internationally comparative in scope, this project explores the ethics of engineering for homeland security. In any country at war, it may be rational to act in what appears to be an irrational matter, and suicide missions are a key instance of this phenomenon. Suicide warfare for homeland defense, albeit against enemy forces, first requires human sacrifice, thus raising far more ethical issues than technological ones. Focusing on engineering communities in two nations that used suicide as a form or warfare, the project aims to answer a set of inter-related questions: (1) How and why did engineers support organized suicide attacks for homeland defense? (2) How was the moral sensitivity of peacetime reduced to support the desperate act as evil but necessary? (3) At what cost (and to whom) does society in war benefit from a given engineering project? and, (4) What are the acceptable costs of suicide as a technology acceptable for national defense? Project results will be used to create educational materials, public presentations, and publications in popular outlets.This project uses historical methods to analyze the period from 1914 to 1961, during which World War I, World War II, and the Cold War each elevated the importance of patriotic self-sacrifice for national causes. Critical analyses of these materials enable a series of comparisons of social practices and technological dimensions by which different nations created their versions of suicide warfare in the air by actively shaping the notions of suicide for homeland defense. Popular literature, posters, government publications, and more are used to uncover the socio-technological context in which suicide warfare in the air took shape, and how and why this differed across social contexts. Overall, this project contributes to scholarship on engineering ethics, the history of technology, and Science and Technology Studies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.