Google code of ethics on military contracts could hinder Pentagon work

Brittany De Lea
FoxBusiness.com
Originally published April 13, 2018

Google is among the frontrunners for a lucrative, multibillion dollar contract with the Pentagon, but ethical concerns among some of its employees may pose a problem.

The Defense Department’s pending cloud storage contract, known as Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), could span a decade and will likely be its largest yet – valued in the billions of dollars. The department issued draft requests for proposals to host sensitive and classified information and will likely announce the winner later this year.

While Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle are viewed as the major contenders for the job, Google’s employees have voiced concern about creating products for the U.S. government. More than 3,000 of the tech giant’s employees signed a letter, released this month, addressed to company CEO Sundar Pichai, protesting involvement in a Pentagon pilot program called Project Maven.

“We believe that Google should not be in the business of war. Therefore we ask that Project Maven be cancelled, and that Google draft, publicize and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology,” the letter, obtained by The New York Times, read.

The article is here.

America is spiritually bankrupt.

Cornel West
The Guardian
Originally published January 14, 2018

Here are two excerpts:

The distinctive features of our spiritual blackout are threefold.

First, we normalize mendacity and naturalize criminality. We make our lies look like the normal order of things. And we make our crimes look like the natural order of things. We too often say Wall Street is a good servant – rather than a bad master – of the common good. Then we look away from the criminal behavior of big banks because they are too indispensable to prosecute.

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Second, we encourage callousness and reward indifference. We make mean-spiritedness look manly and mature. And we make cold-heartedness look triumphant and victorious. In our world of the survival of the slickest and the smartest, we pave the way for raw greed and self-promotion. We make cowardice and avarice fashionable and compassion an option for losers. We prefer market-driven celebrities who thrive on glitzy spectacles and seductive brands over moral-driven exemplars who strive on with their gritty convictions and stouthearted causes.

Third, we trump the moral and spiritual dimensions of our lives and world by applauding our short-term gains and superficial successes. This immoral and brutal disposition reinforces – and, in part, is a result of – the all-encompassing commodification of a predatory capitalism, running out of control in our psyches and societies.

The opinion is here.

Pentagon perpetuates stigma of mental health counseling, study says

Gregg Zoroya
USA Today
Originally published May 5, 2016

Even as troop suicides remain at record levels, the Pentagon has failed to persuade servicemembers to seek counseling without fears that they'll damage their careers, a stinging government review concludes.

Despite six major Pentagon or independent studies from 2007 through 2014 that urged action to end the persistent stigma linked to mental health counseling, little has changed, analysts said in the April report by the Government Accountability Office.

The article is here.

U.S. Military Document Says Force-Feeding Violates Medical Ethics and International Law

Physicians for Human Rights
Press Release
Originally published January 30, 2015

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) said today that a newly public U.S. military document acknowledging that force-feeding violates medical ethics shows the unlawfulness of hunger strike practices at the detention center at Guantánamo Bay. PHR called on the U.S. government to end all policies requiring clinicians to violate professional ethics and to immediately drop charges against the Navy nurse who refused to force-feed detainees.

“This document exposes the flawed medical and legal reasoning at the heart of Guantánamo’s force-feeding policy,” said Dr. Vincent Iacopino, PHR’s senior medical advisor. “Forcing treatment on mentally competent persons constitutes ill-treatment and possibly torture and is contrary to professional ethics. There is no evidence for the government’s claim that it is diagnosing or treating suicide or self-harm. Yet the command structure orders doctors and nurses to carry out force-feeding anyway, and attempts to justify the practice on the basis of medical necessity. The Navy nurse who stood up against this contradictory and harmful policy should not be discharged.”

The entire story is here.

Ethics and the Enhanced Soldier of the Near Future

By Dave Shunk
Military Review
January-February 2015

Here are two excerpts:

The soldier of the future likely will be enhanced through neuroscience, biotechnology, nanotechnology, genetics, and drugs. According to Patrick Lin, writing in The Atlantic about the ethics of enhancing soldiers, “Soldier enhancements, through biological or technological augmentation of human capabilities, reduce warfighter risk by providing tactical advantages over the enemy.” Lin describes efforts to develop a “super-soldier” who can perform more like
a machine.

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New ethical challenges are arising from the technological developments in stem cells, genetics,
neurosciences, robotics, and information technology.  Lawrence Hinman of the Center for Ethics in
Science and Technology, University of San Diego, reports that “these developments have created ethical vacuums, situations in which our technology has outstripped our ethical framework.” This statement, although made in 2008, remains true. In fact, current military references to enhanced soldiers are very limited.

The entire article is here.

Suicide surpassed war as the military's leading cause of death

By Gregg Zoroya
USA Today
Originally published October 31, 2014

War was the leading cause of death in the military nearly every year between 2004 and 2011 until suicides became the top means of dying for troops in 2012 and 2013, according to a bar chart published this week in a monthly Pentagon medical statistical analysis journal.

The entire article is here.

Navy Nurse Faces Discipline for Actions at Guantanomo

By Kevin Gosztola
Firedoglake Blog
Originally published August 27, 2014

The first and only officer on the medical staff at Guantanamo Bay to conscientiously object to force-feeding prisoners on hunger strike has reportedly had his assignment ended. He has been sent back to Naval Health Clinic New England, his “parent command,” while an investigation is completed, which may result in discipline or a court-martial.

The Associated Press reported on August 26 that Navy Captain Maureen Pennington, who is “his commander at the network clinics, indicated, “An investigation has been conducted into his conduct while stationed at Guantanamo but it has not yet been determined if he will face any discipline.” He is “now on leave and military officials declined to provide details about him or any allegations he may face.”

The entire story is here.

Now The Military Is Going To Build Robots That Have Morals

By Patrick Tucker
Defense One
Originally posted May 13, 2014

Are robots capable of moral or ethical reasoning? It’s no longer just a question for tenured philosophy professors or Hollywood directors. This week, it’s a question being put to the United Nations.

The Office of Naval Research will award $7.5 million in grant money over five years to university researchers from Tufts, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Brown, Yale and Georgetown to explore how to build a sense of right and wrong and moral consequence into autonomous robotic systems.

The entire article is here.

Joint Chiefs' Chairman Wants Military to Rethink Ethics Training

By Julian E. Barnes
The Wall Street Journal
Originally published March 27, 2014

The military needs to rethink how it teaches character and ethics, eschew staid briefing slides and avoid disciplining subordinates via email, the nation's top uniformed officer said Thursday.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited the U.S. Naval Academy and the U.S. Military Academy this week, as part of a series of talks emphasizing the need to focus on ethics. In meetings with students, Gen. Dempsey made clear that he thinks the military talks about sexual harassment, sexual assault and ethics in a way that is too abstract.

"The issue of ethics is personal and to be persuasive, it has to be relational," Gen. Dempsey said in an interview Thursday. "It can't be an issue of abstract values; you have to bring them to life."

The entire story is here.

U.S. Military officials: New report highlights sexist climate at service academies

By Agence France-Presse
The Raw Story
Friday, January 10, 2014

Sexual assault cases have declined at two of the three US military academies but students still worry they will suffer social retaliation if they report an incident, officials said Friday.

The students also say they are reluctant to confront sexist behavior by a small number of cadets and athletes, underscoring the need for commanders to improve the climate at the academies, according to a Pentagon report.

Students believe their leaders take sexual assault seriously but “also identified peer pressure as a barrier to reporting,” said Major General Jeffrey Snow, director of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office.

The entire story is here.

Guantanamo Bay: A Medical Ethics–free Zone?

George J. Annas, J.D., M.P.H., Sondra S. Crosby, M.D., and Leonard H. Glantz, J.D.
June 12, 2013
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1306065

American physicians have not widely criticized medical policies at the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp that violate medical ethics. We believe they should. Actions violating medical ethics, taken on behalf of the government, devalue medical ethics for all physicians. The ongoing hunger strike at Guantanamo by as many as 100 of the 166 remaining prisoners presents a stark challenge to the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) to resist the temptation to use military physicians to “break” the strike through force-feeding.

President Barack Obama has publicly commented on the hunger strike twice. On April 26, he said, “I don't want these individuals [on hunger strike] to die.” In a May 23 speech on terrorism, the President said, “Look at our current situation, where we are force-feeding detainees who are . . . on a hunger strike. . . . Is this who we are? . . . Is that the America we want to leave our children? Our sense of justice is stronger than that.” How should physicians respond? That force-feeding of mentally competent hunger strikers violates basic medical ethics principles is not in serious dispute. Similarly, the Constitution Project's bipartisan Task Force on Detainee Treatment concluded in April that “forced feeding of detainees [at Guantanamo] is a form of abuse that must end” and urged the government to “adopt standards of care, policies, and procedures regarding detainees engaged in hunger strikes that are in keeping with established medical professional ethical and care standards.” Nevertheless, the DOD has sent about 40 additional medical personnel to help force-feed the hunger strikers.

The ethics standard regarding physician involvement in hunger strikes was probably best articulated by the World Medical Association (WMA) in its Declaration of Malta on Hunger Strikers. Created after World War II, the WMA comprises medical societies from almost 100 countries. Despite its checkered history, its process, transparency, and composition give it credibility regarding international medical ethics, and its statement on hunger strikers is widely considered authoritative.

The entire article is here.

Thanks to Gary Schoener for this lead.

Perspectives on Suicide in the Army National Guard

By James Griffith & Mark Vaitkus
Armed Forces & Society published online 22 February 2013

Abstract

Suicides in the US military were observed rising in 2004, most notably in the Army and Marine Corps, and particularly, in the Army National Guard (ARNG). Alarmed, Army leaders and researchers have offered various explanations and prescriptions, often lacking any evidence. In the present study, three data sets were used to examine evidence for various perspectives on suicide—dispositional risk, social
cognitive, stressor-strain, and social cultural/institutional, each having different emphases on relevant explanatory variables and underlying mechanisms of suicide. Primary risk factors associated with having committed suicide among the 2007–2010 ARNG suicide cases were age (young), gender (male), and race (white), supporting the dispositional risk perspective on suicide. Some evidence supported the stressor-strain perspective in that postdeployment loss of a significant other and a
major life change showed statistically significant, yet weaker associations with increased suicide intentions. Implications of results are discussed for future research and preventive strategies.

Here is part of the discussion:

Military-related variables, including having been deployed and combat exposure, showed little relationship to suicide. These findings are consistent with analyses of the active component Army suicides. US Army Public Health Command has consistently reported suicide cases as occurring disproportionally among males, Caucasians, younger in age (eighteen to twenty-four years), and often having an untreated behavioral condition and/or substance abuse.

The entire journal article is here.

Army, Navy suicides at record high

By Gregg Zoroya
USA Today
Originally published on November 19, 2012


With six weeks left in the year, the Army and Navy are already reporting record numbers of suicides, with the Air Force and Marine Corps close to doing the same, making 2012 the worst year for military suicides since careful tracking began in 2001.

The deaths are now occurring at a rate faster than one per day. On Nov. 11, confirmed or suspected suicides among active-duty forces across the military reached 323, surpassing the Pentagon's previous high of 310 suicides set in 2009.

Of that total, the Army accounted for 168, surpassing its high last year of 165; 53 sailors took their own lives, one more than last year.

The Air Force and Marine Corps are only a few deaths from record numbers. Fifty-six airmen had committed suicide as of Nov. 11, short of the 60 in 2010. There have been 46 suicides among Marines, whose worst year was 2009 with 52.

The entire story is here.

Anthropologists Approve Ethics Code

By Scott Jaschik
Inside Higher Ed
Originally published November 7, 2012

After five years of study, the American Anthropological Association has adopted a new code of ethics. In a vote of members, 93 percent approved of the statement, which shifts away from a legal-type list of specific prohibitions (a characteristic of past codes) and stresses general principles.

As a discipline, anthropology has at times been divided over ethics, with many in the field feeling shame over early work in the field that was used to promote imperialism and with more recent debate over whether it is appropriate for anthropologists to work with the U.S. military. But debate over the new code (as is reflected in the overwhelming vote to approve it) was not as intense as discussions in recent years over very specific questions, such as whether anthropologists should work to help American efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The entire story is here.

Mental health disorders among troops increased 65 percent since 2000

By Rebecca Ruiz
msnbc.com
Originally published July 12, 2012

Mental health disorders in active-duty troops increased 65 percent since 2000, according to a report released this week by the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center.

The report looked at a 12-year period between 2000 and 2011 and found that more than 936,000 service members had been diagnosed with at least one mental disorder. Of those diagnoses, about 85 percent were cases of adjustment disorders, depression, alcohol abuse and anxiety, among other conditions.

Between 2003 and 2008, the rate of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) increased nearly sixfold; by 2011, there were more than 100,000 diagnoses. The report, however, did not evaluate mental disorders in relationship to deployments.

The entire story is here.

Pentagon Chief Orders Review of Mental Diagnoses

By Donna Cassata
ABCNews.com
Originally published June 13, 2012

Under questioning from a Senate panel on Wednesday, Panetta disclosed that he had asked the Air Force and Navy, which includes the Marine Corps, to follow the lead of the Army in launching an independent study of how it evaluates soldiers with possible post-traumatic stress disorder. Panetta's answer marked the first time that the Pentagon chief had said publicly that he had requested the review by all the services.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta

The Army review was prompted in part by reports that the forensic psychiatry unit at Madigan Army Medical Center at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state may have reversed PTSD diagnoses based on the expense of providing care and benefits to members of the military. In recent years, the number of PTSD and traumatic brain injury cases has increased significantly as the Iraq war drew to a close after nearly a decade and the Afghanistan conflict enters its second decade.

Th entire story is here.

Mental problems top illness for GIs

By Sig Christenson
San Antonio Express-News
Originally published May 19, 2012

More active-duty troops were hospitalized for mental illnesses last year than any other major malady, a new military report says.

The Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center said 21,735 troops from the services were admitted to hospitals because of mental problems, up dramatically from previous years.

Most were men, with mental disorders the leading cause of hospitalizations for soldiers and Marines — the services that have carried the greatest burden in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hospitalization rates for all causes among active-duty troops were up during the past decade, with one in every 15 troops treated, but mental-illness admissions grew 50 percent over the past five years.

The entire story is here.

Army to Review Its Handling of Psychiatric Evaluations

By James Dao
The New York Times
Originally published on May 16, 2012

The Army said Wednesday that it had ordered a service-wide review of how its doctors diagnose psychiatric disorders, indicating that complaints about unfair diagnoses at a sprawling base in Washington State have been echoed on installations around the country.

The review, announced jointly by the Army secretary, John M. McHugh, and chief of staff, Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, will focus on whether consistent and accurate diagnoses are being issued by the disability evaluation system, which determines whether injured soldiers are fit to remain on duty.

Concerns about the system emerged last fall after soldiers at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Tacoma told Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat of Washington, that their diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder had been changed by doctors at Madigan Army Medical Center to lesser conditions. The soldiers asserted that the changes were done to save the Army money.

The entire story is here.

Military's increased use of medications under fire

Army has seen eightfold increase since 2005
by Kim Murphy
The Los Angeles Times
Originally published April 8, 2012

U.S. Air Force pilot Patrick Burke’s day started in the cockpit of a B-1B bomber near the Persian Gulf and proceeded across nine time zones as he ferried the aircraft home to South Dakota.

Every four hours during the 19-hour flight, Burke swallowed a tablet of Dexedrine, the prescribed amphetamine known as “go pills.” After landing, he went out for dinner and drinks with a fellow crewman. They were driving back to Ellsworth Air Force Base when Burke began striking his friend in the head.

“Jack Bauer told me this was going to happen – you guys are trying to kidnap me!” he yelled, as if he were a character in the TV show “24.”

When the woman giving them a lift pulled the car over, Burke leaped on her and wrestled her to the ground. “Me and my platoon are looking for terrorists,” he told her before grabbing her keys, driving away and crashing into a guardrail.

Burke was charged with auto theft, drunken driving and two counts of assault. But in October, a court-martial judge found the young lieutenant not guilty “by reason of lack of mental responsibility” – the almost unprecedented equivalent, at least in modern-day military courts, of an insanity acquittal.

The entire story is here.

Suicides Highlight Failures of Veterans' Support System

By Aaron Glanz
The New York Times
Originally published March 24, 2012

Francis Guilfoyle, a 55-year-old homeless veteran, drove his 1985 Toyota Camry to the Department of Veterans Affairs campus in Menlo Park early in the morning of Dec. 3, took a stepladder and a rope out of the car, threw the rope over a tree limb and hanged himself.

It was an hour before his body was cut down, according to the county coroner's report.

"When I saw him, my heart just sank," said Dennis Robinson, 51, a formerly homeless Army veteran who discovered Mr. Guilfoyle's body.

"This is supposed to be a safe place where a vet can get help. Something failed him."

Mr. Guilfoyle's death is one of a series of recent suicides by veterans who live in the jurisdiction of the Department of Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System.

The Palo Alto V.A. is one of the agency's elite campuses, home to the Congressionally chartered National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

The poor record of the Department of Veterans Affairs in decreasing the high suicide rate of veterans has already emerged as a major issue for policy makers and the judiciary.

On Wednesday, the V.A. Inspector General in Washington released the results of a nine-month investigation into the May 2010 death of another veteran, William Hamilton.

The report said social workers at the department in Palo Alto made "no attempt" to ensure that Hamilton, a mentally ill 26-year-old who served in Iraq, was hospitalized at a department facility in the days before he killed himself by stepping in front of a train in Modesto.

The story is here.