Well, that didn't take long. Next article starts off:
Vast government contracts have corrupted the American university system, turning off the fountainhead of unfettered ideas and scientific discovery. Multibillion-dollar federal R&D budgets have replaced the solitary inventor with veritable armies of scientists and engineers in laboratories across the country. Public policy itself has become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
2005? Try 1961. The paragraph above was taken with only minor changes from President Dwight Eisenhower's famous farewell address.
Things have only gotten worse in 44 years.
I'll bite, who is the solitary inventor to which he refers? Edison? The Napoleon of Invention? Giant lab with tons of associates, many, many of whom invented a lot of the things that bear Edison's name. Browning? Genius designer, but again, an army of technicians supporting & contributing to the initial ideas put forward. Mauser, Ford, Salk, Stoner, Gates... All the same story. Um, hello, technology and science are so vast that the day when one guy could master ALL of the topics necessary to create a new gun, or a new drug, metallurgy, chemistry, physics, to name a few, are simply beyond the single human mind. It's got bupkis to do with EVIILLL CORPORATIONS or EVIIILLL GOVERNMENT PLOTS (same people that want to increase the size of government, just so we're clear).
And what's all the fear about? Nanotechnology. Yep. Something that doesn't work, at all, yet, is scary. We get to hear how $20 billion a year is spent by the military on R&D (that's about 5% of the military budget of $400 billion which is about 18% of the total Federal budget of $2,130, figures from NYT). Yep, 5% of the budget is spent on trying to get new weapons systems off the ground. If I knew it was that little, I'd complain more. Of course of that, only $50 million (only, ha!) or .01% of the total military budget is being spent on this effort. Anyway, it just goes downhill. The stuff being developed is supposed to be defensive only, but scary little statements like this get tossed in:
If a revolutionary ultra-light nanofabricated material can stop today's bullets, why not use this same material to make tomorrow's bullets?
Um, because it doesn't work that way? Where are the kevlar bullets? Zero? None?
Need some pain and a couple of laughs? Go and read it.
1 comment:
I fail to see most of this as having any relation to being scary. The advance in armor and weaponry is going to be there whether you like it or not. Being at the lead of the development is better than being behing.
He also makes some simple mistakes about some of the technology. His statements about superhuman reflexes and strength are misguided. No matter how fast the suit can move doesn't make it possible for a soldier to move that fast inside of it. Joints and muscles have a limit, as does the human organism overall. I'll give a simple present day example. The F-16 may be capable of acceleration and turning that is superhuman, but the pilot commonly will blackout if he tries to use that ability.
I also got a giggle that he has a problem with the circular logic of weapons development. Dude, that is how all technology works. By his reasoning we'd all be working with commodore64s right now. Why develop a new one when this can do all that we need at the time of development. It's especially true in the military that once a technology is deployed, it is soon out of date. You can only depend on that edge in technology for so long.
The NanoBiotech argument has some scariness too it, though he doesn't go much into the bioweapons discussion. I don't see an argument though about reasoning for not trying to provide protections. That seems week on his part. Just because we choose not to use such things doesn't mean an enemy will not. Attempting to be prepared may actually save lives in the future.
I think the article is interesting, but shows a lack of realism. Just think about what was said about the first uses of blackpowder and the gun. I'm certain similar conversations occurred. In fact, if you look at the history of Japan, you'll see a perfect example of that fear of change causing a reaction which limited use of guns solely to the shogun.
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