[Verdex]

I've got mixed feelings. I would be interested in hearing the whole story first. The "hey, I can program the trains to break if we're not the ones to run maintenance, should I do that?" or the "yeah, I guess I could make the trains break if we're not the ones to run maintenance" are both pretty clearly unethical.

However, the "yeah, sure I can add in a GPS locator module" and the "yeah, I can add analytics that reports when the train is in a maintenance hanger" and the "the catastrophic program halt code module used in cases of extreme failure is located here, but why do you want to know that?" all seem less than unethical.

Theoretically you only need one unethical line of code, so how it got there, I think, is pretty important to know before passing ultimate judgement.

EDIT:

Of course for something like train control software, you really should have a process or at the very least responsible engineers that would notice a middle manager with limited technical skills asking suspicious questions and then pushing up a PR that is self approved.

I would be more than willing to entertain an ethical debate along those lines. Although, like I said, I think it's important to understand the whole story because the specifics really do make a difference.