THE IRON TRIANGLE: TECHNOLOGY, STRATEGY, ETHICS, AND THE FUTURE OF KILLING MACHINES
By Jacob Scott May 8, 2019
Strategic leaders have wrestled with the use of various types of weapons and their employment throughout history. The crossbow, cannons, snipers, landmines, submarines, bombers, and many other weapons provoked episodes of moral reflection and angst. The U.S. developed nuclear weapons despite the significant moral concerns those weapons raised, and then employed them – a decision that remains controversial to this day.
Early in the Cold War, General Omar Bradley, then Chief of Staff of the Army, delivered an Armistice Day speech in Boston, Massachusetts on November 10, 1948. In his address, he drew attention to the tension inherent in developing and possessing the weapons of devastating destruction that had brought World War II to a close:
With the monstrous weapons man already has, humanity is in danger of being trapped in this world by its moral adolescents. Our knowledge of science has clearly outstripped our capacity to control it. We have many men of science; too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount… The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/articles/laws-are-just-weapons/
