During the Cold War, if one showed up in one of the weedout classes for EE, you got the "look to your left & right. One of you will not survive this process" le

During the Cold War, if one showed up in one of the weedout classes for EE, you got the "look to your left & right. One of you will not survive this process" lecture. EE was very seriously a defense discipline and the values-pyramid was feeding bodies into the Military Industrial Complex. I imagine that is part of it.