It's things like this that make me think all engineers need more training on the social consequences of the tools they build. This is an extreme case and I hope most engineers would look at this and understand how awful & damaging it could be; but given our influence on the world nowadays (as a class, if not always as individuals) we really need to be much more aware of what we're doing and how it affects people.
I agree, but I don’t think education will end up solving the problem. Somewhere out there, there is a sociopathic engineer that will make antisocial choices anyway. Software is so easy to copy that it proliferates too easily.
If a mechanical engineer creates some evil weapon, say a gun that shoots frozen mercury slugs (just to make up a ridiculous example), we don’t really have to worry about the proliferation of cryogenic weapons. When a software engineer pushes some questionable program’s source to github it’s game over.