From the atomic bomb to artificial intelligence used in military targeting systems, the technology we design harbors very real, material consequences for people globally. As one case study, this talk examines the history of napalm—an incendiary weapon used across US wars in the Pacific, Korea, and Vietnam—to discuss how technological innovation shaped escalating forms of war and violence wrought by US imperialism. Such technological and military power in asymmetrical geopolitical relations poses a litany of problems concerning international human rights, the protection of civilian persons, and the complicity of corporations and academic researchers within the military-industrial complex. This talk will examine how anti-war movements surrounding napalm—both at the grassroots level and within the United Nations—organized around differing methods of combating the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, ranging from arms control to full-scale abolition and demilitarization. These movements, as I argue, reveal that the organized opposition to weapons proliferation is deeply connected to anti-imperial and anti-racist social movements of the era, from the Black Power and Asian American movements to the Third World Liberation Front across university campuses that continue to reverberate in the contemporary moment. Ultimately, this talk demonstrates how racial and tech justice intersect in organizing against war.
