Is there any evidence that IBM knew that it was enabling genocide? It was selling to Germany, certainly. But the US didn't officially enter the war until Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
Also, the Nazis weren't just collecting data on Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, etc. They collected data on everyone. It was arguably essential for resource management for the war effort.
Bear in mind that the resources the Nazis were managing included shells made by slaves from Auschwitz and soap made from people killed in Birkenau. There’s no dividing line between the Nazi war machine and their atrocities.
But if IBM sold the gear long enough before it was clear that the Nazis were doing that, IBM arguably isn't at fault. And if they did, they are.
Notwithstanding Edwin Black's IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation, it's my understanding that all suits against IBM over this have been dismissed or withdrawn.
There was not much difference between optimising bombing runs over tokyo (in terms of "target damage" per "input dollar" say) and other war crimes for the people affected, what's your point? Sure I guess operations research is a war crime?
Having read IBM and the Holocaust, I'm not convinced that IBM actually had a clear idea of how the machines would be used until quite late in the war effort, at least until well after 1941.
Yeah but as far as corporate image risk goes, what are the odds that one of your clients will be invaded by two countries 10 years later, and that the ONE (of typically several) political party that approved your contract will be relevant at all?
PRETTY SLIM
You never know what a political party is going to actually do. You could attend all the furthest spectrum events and hear some twisted things and not expect any of it to actually happen.
Its not a factor.
"Oh I'm not going to take this lucrative government contract because one political party is disenfranchising 0.75% of the population and my time machine says they are going to make concentration camps, and two countries are going to invade them and leak all the state secrets and onlookers on the ... internet (was ist dis?)... are going to vilify us"
I suspect the OP is saying that there is no room for neutrality in genocide. That an "absence of decided views" over the extermination of a race is not actually a viable position for any human being to take.
Meanwhile, in the course of history, humans regularly engage in mass slaughter of humans.
We could say indifference to genocide is not viable, because it ought not be viable. But that has its problems: if we convince each other that we are incapable of evil, perhaps we won’t be vigilant enough to see the signs in time.
No middle ground.