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> CMU and its robotics program is intimately associated with the US Department of Defense Is this not the case with all the major R1 institutions? Walt Rostow
by gumby 3y ago
> CMU and its robotics program is intimately associated with the US Department of Defense
Is this not the case with all the major R1 institutions?
Walt Rostow may no longer be deciding on troop levels from his office in the MIT Economics department (that cause MIT to "divest" its overtly military work into figleaf organizations) but still, after that, ARPA (later DARPA) poured hundreds of millions into the institution.
They basically paid for my education there and I am not a US citizen and never worked on anything military-related, either while in school or since.
- nightpool 3y agoI can't really speak for many other institutions. I know plenty of robotics labs that are doing completely civilian work under NSF grants, grants from corporations, some civilian manufacturing and automation work through the national labs, etc. And even among those institutions working on DARPA-funded projects, not every institution has NREC right down the street working on autonomy systems for ground combat vehicles: https://www.nrec.ri.cmu.edu/solutions/defense/other-projects/black-knight.html https://www.nrec.ri.cmu.edu/solutions/defense/other-projects.... The research done by students at CMU directly makes these types of weapons platforms possible, and vice versa. It's certainly true that many, many universities are deeply embedded with the DoD, defense contractors, and other weapons manufacturer ecosystems. Certainly CMU isn't exceptional here. But I think it's very important to keep in mind the reality of these programs when they come up in the news, like this article, which is why I left the link to how "the other side" sees these types of research programs.