Why Haven’t the Engineers Who Created the Emission-Cheating Software for VW/Audi’s Diesel Engines Been Tried in Court?
Today, Sept. 2, 2024, the former Volkswagen CEO is on trial in a German court for concealing emissions on 9 million vehicles with diesel engines when he became aware of this criminal act in 2014. Some of his lower-ranking execs have already been tried and admitted guilt, but what about the software engineers who developed the programs to hide toxic emissions during testing procedures?
Just wondering how far down the line does justice kick in?
During the Nuremberg Trials from 1945 to 1946 — and VW headquarters in Wolfsburg is only three hours north of the WWII Nazi trials — only the high-ranking officers were subject to prosecution. The lower-ranking military, prison guards, and forced labor overseers were only taking orders, after all, and when is taking orders a criminal offense?
When are the creators of evil responsible for the evil they have created? Charles Schwartz, a retired physics professor at UC Berkeley, and an anti-war, anti-nuclear activist, announced during the Star Wars nuclear missile defense program in 1983 that he would refuse to teach physics major-degree courses as a further act of non-cooperation with the arms race. Because acts of war, from the Peloponnesian War through the wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and Yemen, require the minds of skilled craftsmen, scientists, and software programmers.
Granted, polluting diesel engines are lower on the scale as a threat to human extinction than nuclear war, but what if software engineers were protected when boycotting the creation of technology that is designed to obscure physical harm and environmental regulations? What if software engineers, like physicians, were permitted like physicians to doing no harm?