Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled the money is there to advance the field, I just wish it wasn't coming from a bunch of dickheads trying to strap guns to it.
I guess since the conventional wisdoms says pornography is the biggest catalyst for new media adoption, it shouldn't be a surprise that killing people drives the other engineering fields forward.
Reliable and secure communication technology is what enables the military to function. Without it, all the weapons technology in the world wont do you any good. So on a moral level, if you are against war you should actually find working as a researcher on communication technology more reprehensible than working on weapons. On an intuitive level I would guess that the breakdown or compromise of military communication has resulted in a greater loss of life than advances in robotics.
The reason why I'm pointing this out is that the real world isn't as simple as "a bunch of dickheads trying to strap guns to [robots]". You're making a simplification because it's convenient, but that simplification is morally inconsistent with approving of DARPA's work on the Internet. The fact that technology has a dual use is something we all have to deal with as researchers. But I don't think it helps matters by treating the issue as a binary.
Up to this point, yes. Not many robots. I suspect the next 300 years will change that ratio hugely. Networks won't kill people...bots with guns will kill people.
It's part of the researcher mindset to rationalise their (enjoyable, paid, 'important') work, otherwise it wouldn't get done. What is the likely result over the long term? Probably not something most researchers are too worried about.
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That’s not my department," says Werner von Braun.
Um, what? DARPA was funding it for a reason. How do you kill someone with a network packet? Quite simply. The packet contains "Hey, sarge, go here and kill those guys." Without modern communication you don't have a modern military.
The market is a much harsher master when it comes to fiscal accountability. Stuff doesn't get funded unless it's going to make money. Military spending is a magical well of infinite money with little accountability. You can think up any project you want and get money to do it so long as you say you're going to strap a gun on your robot, or that the decentralized communication network is really to help survive a nuke attack.
I used to work in bioinformatics and money from the typical funding sources was getting tight in the late 90s, early 00s. After 9/11, my department just recast every project as "terrorist bio-defense" and was financially refueled with defense money.
Dickheads?