>Are these researchers soley focused on their next grant only, do they live in another world? Or do they sometimes pause and think about the ethics of their research?
Should we not do any third party security testing or vulnerability detection either?
Ignorance is not a solution to a potential problem but simply means you won't know about it until it's far too late.
Nice funding scheme you have here. Develop a threat, write it up as if you're researching it for prevention. The more you work on it, the bigger the threat will get, the more money you can ask for to research "prevention" in the future. This is literally how a lot of this sort of research works.
It's a digital arms race. You can't prevent it from happening by condeming those who are participating. These unfolding events are merely organic consequences to overarching dysfunction within society.
Seems like a convoluted way to secure research funding. If you don't care who you hurt it would probably be simpler to just go work for a defense contractor and drop the publication pretense altogether.
Should we not do any third party security testing or vulnerability detection either?
Ignorance is not a solution to a potential problem but simply means you won't know about it until it's far too late.