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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?

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lchic - 07:57am Oct 3, 2002 EST (# 4736 of 4740)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

Cold War - Lewis Lapham 2002Aug7

Lapham: After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was the talk in the United States that we could now reduce our defence spending which is, as you know, three hundred or possibly by now, four hundred billion dollars a year and there would be what was then called a “peace dividend”. This idea was received with alarm by the Pentagon and by the defence industries and so they had to come up with some sort of rationale for the continued spending at the same levels as had been in place since the... throughout the cold war – and that is where we now... that’s what drives our strategy.

Byrne: Money. You’re saying that’s the endgame?

Lapham: Money, yes. It is the endgame. I mean, Jefferson put it very neatly as long ago as 1809... he said “money, not morality is the principle of commercial nations”. And we are a commercial nation and money is our principle

http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/stories/s642788.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

??????? So WHO gets the MONEY!

And who pays taxes - but doesn't get 'the money'!

Latham would approve were a move made to produce 'green' product to enhance the well being of the world.

PS - there's no real return on weapons!

lchic - 08:01am Oct 3, 2002 EST (# 4737 of 4740)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

"" Quantum cryptography keys encoded in photons of light have been transmitted more than 23 kilometres through air, British researchers have announced. They say the breakthrough is an important step towards a global communications system that is completely secure.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992875

Not 'completely' surely no!

lchic - 08:03am Oct 3, 2002 EST (# 4738 of 4740)
~~~~ It got understood and exposed ~~~~

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rshow55 - 09:06am Oct 3, 2002 EST (# 4739 of 4740)
Can we do a better job of finding truth? YES. Click "rshow55" for some things Lchic and I have done and worked for on this thread.

4571 includes this:

To give a sense of my sense of my situation and my problems - here's a sheet I've given to some people over the last few weeks . . .

4572 rshow55 9/26/02 5:15pm sets out that sheet, also referred to in http://talk.guardian.co.uk/WebX?14@@.ee7a163/346 It includes this:

"On July 14th, 7:24 pm I asked this on the Missile Defense board – and the matter has been much discussed.

" " 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? rshow55 7/14/02 7:24pm

"It isn't possible yet. Assurances given me verbally by CIA, if they were really clear and checkable, would meet that need. But they are not clearly checkable, and not in writing. I need to get from an unusable verbal assurance from CIA that "CIA has no interest in any of my material" to an assurance, in writing, or checkable otherwise, that I can actually use.

. . .

Links to CIA and my security problems, this thread: 3774-3779 rshow55 8/17/02 5:58pm rshow55 8/17/02 5:58pm

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