Before reading the article I saw the title and turned to my partner to discuss the ethics of engineering. I mentioned that the State is largely powerless without the technical prowess of engineers and that one of the key aspects of engineering is designing and building the machines that make <i>machines</i>.<p>Gavin the bread-maker might be good enough to build an individual tank through trial and error, but one tank isn't enough and a collection of hobbyists isn't enough to arm the State with a worthy arsenal. The hobbyist can build one or a few things, but it takes an engineer to build many. They are force-multipliers.<p>The discussion turned to game theory. I mentioned that perhaps Chartered Engineers should have something like the hippocratic oath, where they would collectively refuse to design things from casinos to war-machines - anything that has the potential to harm society. My partner, who has a background in history and law, suggested it was futile as the State would simply hold them to ransom, either for their family's lives or their own, guaranteeing cooperation from a considerable number.<p>She then suggested that a way of getting around these issues would be to design very subtle flaws, weaknesses or exploits that could only be known by an engineer intimately involved in the project. Funnily enough, that was exactly what the article focussed on: <i>After Krennic captures him, Galen later tells his daughter Jyn that he had a choice: he could have continued abstaining, and let someone else build the Death Star, or he could dive deep into the project, become indispensable to it, and find a way to stop it. He chooses to dive deep, and succeeds in building a subtle flaw in the Death Star design. Then 15 years later, he sends a messenger to the Rebellion informing them of the weapon’s existence, power and most importantly, its fatal flaw.</i>