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Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

rshow55 - 12:43pm May 20, 2002 EST (#2326 of 2336)

Great references. Choices can be set out clearly -- and clearly explained. A lot of "spin" positions would look as fraudulent as they are if those illustrations were in place.

You can't set up a sane database, with workable usages - within the secrecy usages in place. For that, you need openness -- at least on 95% of the stuff now classified. Moynihan, and many others over the years have said so.

We need to know how "Our Man in Arizona" did reasonable things, and how the current system defeated him. And feel as well as know. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/19/opinion/19DOWD.html So we can do better.

We have too many "failures to imagine" and we need to be clearer on how imaginative good judgement works. And feel clearer about it. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/19/opinion/19FRIE.html So we can do better.

The logic of the secrecy system effectively prohibits intelligent or pro-active responses. Lies that are believed for any reason do the same thing.

We need to be clearer about how "collecting the dots" and "connecting the dots" works for human beings. And better at it.

It seems to me that progress is being made.

Safire: The Williams Memo http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/20/opinion/20SAFI.html shows the paralysis of patterns of secrecy that make our government much less than the sum of its parts.

I'm going slowly -- preparing for a meeting referred to in MD2278 rshow55 5/18/02 1:18pm

" if I could get an official response on the classification status of information known to me, that would be progress.

"So far as I can see now, it would be progress, to get the official situation clarified , whatever the official position was.

"Whatever the restrictions were, if I knew them, and could communicate them to others on a basis that made those other people feel safe relying on them, I could deal with them.

rshow55 - 05:43pm May 20, 2002 EST (#2327 of 2336)

Had a good meeting. I feel the person I talked to understood the situation, and what I was asking for about the questions just above - and could and would proceed through proper channels, in ways I did not know how to do myself.

A key issue we discussed, in terms of rshow55 5/18/02 1:18pm and especially MD2116-2117 rshow55 5/9/02 9:34am was this:

Could things be arranged so that I could talk to ______, or some other professional, on technical matters, in a way so that I had reasonable confidence, and _________ had reasonable confidence, that, whatever other problems we might have, our conversation did not violate US national security laws?

There could be a number of people or organizations in the blank, among them Theodore Postol, the physicist and Noam Chomsky, the linguist-mathematician, of MIT.

I feel that this has to be possible.

Though sometimes the system works imperfectly, as the case of the Williams memo shows.

In that meeting, I felt that I was acting in good faith, as best I could, and felt the other man was, as well.

I'm washed out - and some technical things I'd hoped to explain today will have to be finished tomorrow.

rshow55 - 07:35pm May 20, 2002 EST (#2328 of 2336)

MD170-175 rshow55 3/3/02 7:48pm

Just a thought for a happy ending, based on the pattern in How a Story is Shaped http://www.fortunecity.com/lavendar/ducksoup/555/storyshape.html

We have to "tell stories" that can be remembered, can be understood, and that tell the truth in ways that matter. Including logical and quantitative ways that matter.

manjumicha2001 - 09:52pm May 20, 2002 EST (#2329 of 2336)

rshow

Congraturations for the meeting ! It is a shame that you were hindered from pursuing your interests through duress or otherwise.......it is very un-American thing to happen to someone of your caliber (especially for trying to help the government)

Hope this is the beginning of the "unshackling" process...

Btw, your discourse on information management at the level of the national intelligence apparatus is very much timely in light of what has been apparent for many decades: that is, the problem facing political decision makers in the US has NOT been the lack of raw data but the failure or inability to analyze such data into a manageable and coherent set of information that can be used in the political decision making at the higest levels of the government.

lchic - 11:50pm May 20, 2002 EST (#2330 of 2336)

The 'locked-box' approach works for neither information searching, nor assured pensions :)

lchic - 12:09am May 21, 2002 EST (#2331 of 2336)

Nash on logic:

"... but in the end it is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logic can be found .. "

^{Nobel acceptance speech 1994 John NASH}

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