Graphic by Gabriel Currie
I help make things that kill people. A lot of people. I don’t really think about it most days. I think about traffic on the 405, and that new vegan taco place in the atrium. But sometimes, you just have to think about it.
I don’t consider myself a bad person. I’m human. I sin, then attend Sunday mass. Every Wednesday night, I pray the rosary. With each bead, I ask God to forgive me for my sins. Last week, I asked Him to forgive me for turning in the blueprints for the new-and-improved “Daisy Cutter.” Still, I feel odd smiling, knowing I have a Lockheed Martin employee parking sticker on my car.
Today, we had our mandatory “Moral Positioning in Modern Conflict” training. The guy who was leading it had the calm, empty eyes of a hostage negotiator and this light blue polo on. He used a lot of words like “patriot” and “horizon” and “legacy.” All of them were foam packing peanuts filling the box where a soul might be.
Afterwards, I stood in the lunch line for tacos, behind two guys from Logistics who were deep in argument. Not about work, but….Dungeons and Dragons?
“You can’t just fireball the goblin village, Craig.”
“It’s efficient, and they’re evil!”
“But what if they’re just like…protecting their caves or something? Why not get into goblin culture so you can assimilate and then destroy them from the inside out? Like that one CIA mission in Pakistan we worked on. Think of the optics.”
The other guy shrugged. “Yeah. I guess I should acknowledge I’m torching their ancestral lands before I do it.”
“Oh, that’s not…”
The two walked off.
I got my food and sat alone, watching the atrium fountain nobody ever turns on. Their conversation bounced around my skull, mixing with the seminar’s foam peanuts.
Culture. Ancestral Lands. Optics.
A set of considerations that would make an ugly decision seem…righteous. I’d never really thought about my work as “righteous.”
I mean, we’re not barbarians. We have mandatory unconscious bias training, and gender-neutral bathrooms, and a pronoun field in our email signatures. We are, on paper, a profoundly ethical organization.
So why does my work feel like a sin?
I pictured the Daisy Cutter as a Fireball spell. Blunt and… culturally insensitive.
“EUREKA!”
The murmur of the atrium quieted, and a dozen sets of eyes bored into me.
“Sorry,” I whispered, and I hastened back to my desk.
I opened a new file.
PROJECT: OPERATIONALIZING D.I.E. IN PRODUCT ENGAGEMENTS
- Initiative 1: Diverse Payloads. A low-yield smart bomb that broadcasts a land acknowledgment in the local dialect before detonation.
- Initiative 2: Inclusive Post-Strike Narratives. Rebranding “scorched earth” as “land rejuvenation preparation.” Highlighting phosphorus benefits for future soil.
- Initiative 3: Equity in Blast Radius. Algorithmic review of target sites to ensure our effects do not disproportionately impact marginalized community structures.
- Motto Idea: “Liberty is to D.I.E for!”
It was so sensible. I could feel the wrongness in my chest—the one I counted off with rosary beads—beginning to unknot. This was the answer. Apply the company’s own morality to the product. Solve the moral problem with a procedural solution—
No.
A cold washed over me. I leaned towards my computer.
This isn’t enough.
There’s another truth I must face in this life: in this world, it is by my hand, by my equations, that women and children die by the thousands, that villages become craters, and the sound of our success is a silence that rings for generations.
D.I.E. is not enough.
It’s a good start, but Lockheed Martin needs to set the gold standard, and be the most compassionate, thoughtful, and culturally-aware force for obliteration the world has ever seen. Not just a land acknowledgment—a full, sincere apology, vetted by community leaders (where available). We need culturally sensitive bombs. Red and gold for China. Ones to match Russia’s Trikolor. Black, red, and green for Afghanistan.
When the bombs are dropped and detonated, we’ll have memorial plaques, manufactured by us, ready for post-conflict installation. We’ll fund the museums that will one day house the artifacts we didn’t vaporize, and create a victim’s family outreach program.
We need to be diverse, inclusive, and equitable in our destruction.
As I typed up an email to my boss about my brave new idea, my head filled with a static thrum. I could go to confession this Saturday, clean my heart for Sunday mass. Hold the hand of the priest in the booth.
Tell me of your sins, son.
None, Father.
A quiet laugh, old and tired. That’s not how this works—
I never said I’d found a way out of the darkness, Father. I’ve simply designed a better light to see by.
And the gnawing feeling?
Gone.
