UARC: Uncomfortable at any scale.

I think ethics necessarily plays in any discussion about developing weapons systems. It necessarily plays a part when the government uses its authority to classify information. And I think it plays a part when you are considering blurring the goals of two organizations as important as education and the military.

I can understand the desire for the DoD to want to improve its ability to do its job, but I have to agree with opponents when they worry about the effects such research will have when it's placed in our public university. Furthermore, I'm personally uncomfortable with the amount to which military ends are driving America's economy and foreign policy. I don't think that we should be spending more time researching with towards such ends. I don't think that the current balance is right in America when it comes to violence as opposed to other means of affecting change. America is and has been in the arms business for many years now, but we are also a world power that is called upon to act as an important mediator of conflicts on the international scale.

The UARC is a part of that mechanism that drives us as a nation to engage the world with weapons instead of diplomacy, and that should be looked at as well. This is happening at a personal scale because it's happening at my University, but it's also happening at the largest human scale that's imaginable, and I'm not comfortable with it at either one.