Rogue One: an "engineering ethics" case-study disguised as a Star Wars movie [SPOILERS]

In a society buffeted by technological change, the discipline of "engineering ethics" raises some of our most significant and difficult-to-answer questions: from last year's Moral Character of Cryptographic Work to the Neveragain.tech pledge not to enable trumpism's ethnic cleansing mission (a pledge in the tradition of the 1943 firebombing of the Amsterdam Municipal Register to keep it out of Nazi hands) to the war on general purpose computing, with its many tendrils, from 3D printed guns to creation of legal weapons at standards bodies -- and because science fiction reflects present-day social questions, we've now got a Star Wars movie that's all about "engineering ethics" (spoilers after the jump). (more…)