One issue we have is that economic pressures underly everything, including ethics. Ethics are often malleable depending on what someone needs to survive and given different situations with resource constraints, people are ultimately more willing to bend ethics.

Now, there’s often limits to some flexibility and lines some simply will not cross, but survival and self preservation tends to take precedent and push those limits. E.g., I can’t imagine ever resorting to cannibalism but Flight 571 with the passengers stranded in the Andes makes a good case for me bending that line. I’d be a lot more willing to work for some scam or in high interest loans for example before resorting to cannibalism to feed myself and I think most people would.

If we assure basic survival at a reasonable level, you might find far less engineers willing to work in any of these spaces. It boils down to what alternatives they have and just how firm they are on some ethical line in the sand. We’d pretty much improve the world all around I’d say. Our economic system doesn’t want that though, it wants to be able to apply this level of pressure on people and so do those who are highly successful who leverage their wealth as power. As such I don’t see how that will ever change, you’ll always have someone doing terrible things depending on who is the most desperate.

There are even engineers with such concerns working in these firms. They might figure that the missile is getting built no matter if they work there or not, so they might as well take the job offer.