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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

rshowalter - 05:35pm Aug 28, 2001 EST (#8211 of 8214)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

From Envisioning Information by Eward R. Tufte, p. 50

" We thrive in information-thick worlds because of our marvelous and everyday capacities to select, edit, single out, structure, highlight, group, pair, merge, harmonize, synthesize, focus, organize, condense, reduce, boil down, choose, categorize, classify, list, abstract, scan, look into, idealize, isolate, discriminate, distinguish, screen, pidgeonhole, pick over, sort, integrate, blend, inspect, filter, lump, skip, smooth, chunk, average, approximate, cluster, aggregate, outline, summarize, itemize, review, dip into, flip through, browse, glance into, leaf through, skim, refine, enumerate, glean, synopsize, winnow the wheat from the chaff, and separate the sheep from the goats."

Since so many ways of seeing and connecting to information are possible, how are people to agree?

Especially when people have different basic beliefs, different interests, and come from different backgrounds and assumptions, both intellectual and emotional?

At one level, people will NEVER agree about everything on any complex subject such as missile defense, and it would be both unrealistic and inhuman to ask them to, or force them to.

At the same time, different people, with different views, have to cooperate in ways that fit human and practical realities, and it often works. It happens because, in areas where accomodation occurs, there are common bodies of fact , that people may feel differently about, but about which they agree in operational terms. So that people can be "reading from the same page" -- and with the pages objectively right.

We need some islands of technical fact to be determined, beyond reasonable doubt, or in a clear context.

We need those "islands" to be clear, at a level beyond politics - - at a level where people with very different interests and feelings can refer to "the same page" - and a page including points that can be both widely understood, and widely trusted.

Unless we can get these "islands of technical fact" we're very unlikely to reach good decisions. And the human stakes, and the stakes for the whole world, are high enough that we need good decisions.

Moreover these facts have to be understandable to, and persuasive to, the people actually involved , with the ways of thinking they actually have, the interests they actually have, the feelings that they actually have, and the level of knowledge and attention that they can actually bring to bear.

It isn't possible to get "everything" that clear on a complex subject -- or even most things. But getting a few key things clear would help a lot.

rshowalter - 06:07pm Aug 28, 2001 EST (#8212 of 8214)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

There was a wonderful illustration in the paper on page A9, along with Crude Weapons Cited As Achilles Heel in Missile Plan http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/27/international/27MISS.html shown in multimedia.

It uses words and pictures very well, though it might have used a few more words, some pointers, and more physical space before the eye, as an illustration for a jury.

Without the pictures, the illustration section reads:

Warhead: Sailing, Weaving, and Bobbing: The Pentagon's antimissile program is wrestling with how to have interceptors destroy primative enemy warheads that tumble through space.

STABILIZED An advanced warhead is spin stabilized like a top to maintain its orientation as it moves forward. Sensors see a steady light.

( Line of pictures here.)

Tumbling A primative, tumbling warhead can slip sideways, end over end, or numerous other ways. Sensors see a twinkling light.

( Line of pictures here. )

The pictures add a LOT -- especially for someone not initially persuaded, or someone who needs to remember, of someone who needs to get confident enough with the ideas involved to ACT on them.

It seems to me that many of the key arguments about missile defense are not getting through because they aren't being well enough explained - ideally with words, pictures, and ways of illustrating proportion together.

rshowalter - 06:15pm Aug 28, 2001 EST (#8213 of 8214)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Some of the standards that have evolved in technical presentations to juries are worth remembering -- and some are shown by example on this web site. http://www.exhibit-services.com/ .

People sometimes act as if they think "this thing has been fully explained" when the exposition, which may be perfect in some limited sense, as far as it goes, would never be considered sufficient before a jury, with real stakes.

There are real stakes on missile defense, and on the whole framework of military balances missile defense depends on politically.

How wonderful it would be if the key points related to The Coyle Report , which is practically unreadable to most people, could be clarified and illustrated to such clear standards!

It would be good to illustrate some of the technical arguments connected to lasar weapons, too. The viability of these lasar weapons is crucial to the military viability of the weaponization of space, which motivates so much that the Bush administration is proposing.

MD7136 rshowalter 7/17/01 12:05pm ... MD7137 rshowalter 7/17/01 12:08pm
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