A ban is definitely a good idea but I think we should have something else as well. We need developers to agree, as human beings rather than law-abiding citizens, not to build these things. Don't apply for those jobs regardless of how well they pay. If your company starts projects in that market, leave and find something else. Understand that you are not building things to 'protect peace' or 'bring democracy' to people. Using your tech skills to create things to kill people is a dickish thing to do.
There are only 18.5 million developers in the world[1]; getting a consensus not to be evil shouldn't be beyond us.
> Don't apply for those jobs regardless of how well they pay. If your company starts projects in that market, leave and find something else.
You make that sound so trivial.
I don't have the moral qualms you refer to, but after spending almost 10 years at a defense contractor I wanted out. I couldn't get the time of day from anyone outside the government contracting world. In fact, I'm still in it (albeit at a really small software research house). To make it worse, the embedded sensors and controls stuff I really want to be working on (NLP was a desperation move) hardly has any demand outside of the industry. Even the general embedded stuff is really, really hard to translate well enough to not get shitcanned at the resume screen stage.
You want to help engineers get out of work they find reprehensible or morally dubious? Hire them. Put your money where your mouth is an hire them. I see these "stop doing that work" sentiments all over these type of threads and find it infuriating in the face of how we seem to get treated when we try to get out.
At best, you will constrain the supply of developers willing to work on such projects and thereby drive up the price of such projects.
You won't be able to prevent them from being built. Some people are simply patriotic enough to believe that by working on such a project they are helping their country. (They're not entirely wrong.)
Others, seeing the offered money for such development being raised will be willing to work on such projects. Imagine if those positions paid $1MM USD per year. You'd have all the developers you could possibly need applying and while we don't currently, there's little doubt in my mind that we'd be willing to pay that amount to defend our country. (Witness the billions being frittered away on DHS/TSA.)
Weapons yield power to the person who controls them. At least nuclear weapons require a refinery process that's difficult. Still, North Korea has managed to limp along for as long as it has at least in part to a strong suspicion they have nuclear capabilities.
A very scary thought is how much power a private entity (individual or corporation) could gain with a relatively low amount of money. I'm not certain a "truce" by engineers is enough. It only takes 1 to break it. In fact, even if there was a law... it's still only going to take one.
Personally, I think we need technological check and balances as much as we need political checks and balances.
There are only 18.5 million developers in the world[1]; getting a consensus not to be evil shouldn't be beyond us.
[1] http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/european-technology/there-a...