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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?

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rshowalter - 02:48pm Feb 28, 2001 EST (#799 of 802)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Gretchen Morgenstern described some interesting circumstances and approaches to settling differences of opionion - when it really matters.

New Economy: Investors Finally Consider Internet Companies' Shaky Math... NYT - Feb 26, 2001

..... "the days of blind-faith shipping (to dot.coms) are over, Mr. Wallis said. Vendors are curtailing shipments and limiting their financial risk by demanding complete or partial security from their customers.

"Vendors worry about Internet companies' lack of tangible assets.

".... dot-coms are very shallow where assets are concerned, so it is hard to figure out whether there is any equity in the business."

"Ravi Suria, a convertible bond analyst . . . published a report predicting that Amazon.com would face a creditor squeeze later this year. . . . .

"When the report came out, Amazon spokesmen called it "silly and chock full of errors." But last week, The Washington Post, citing unidentified sources, reported that certain suppliers to Amazon.com were growing concerned about the company's finances. Jeffrey P. Bezos, the company's chairman, was quoted in the article saying that Amazon had never been in better shape.

"The difference of opinion between the analysts strikes at the heart of whether Internet companies are still operating, as they did during the mania for their stocks, under a more forgiving set of financial standards (than other businesses). And it is the subject of a meeting on Wednesday in New York sponsored by the New York Society of Securities Analysts. The forum, Amazon.com: Responsibility for Investment Information, will feature investors and analysts discussing this question: How will the real-world credit managers employed by Amazon's suppliers make the decisions that count? A representative from Amazon has been invited to the meeting. The company did not return a phone call inquiring whether it would send someone.

...

"The world economy has been going through changes which will probably prove to be much greater than those of the Industrial Revolution," Mr. Lutin said. "Nobody's really sure what old rules still work and what new rules might apply. And that makes it harder to distinguish fantasy from reality."

"Reality has already set in where Internet stocks are concerned, of course. ..But with vendors making crucial credit decisions about the Internet companies they supply goods to, a bigger dose of reality will very likely set in fast.

"Mr. Wallis of the Credit Research Foundation said that during the mania for Internet stocks, credit managers felt perplexed: "They were sitting there scratching their heads saying, `What are we missing? Obviously the investment community sees something we don't see that makes it viable to take a risk.' But we never really came to an answer."

"The answer has now become clearer. What investors were seeing in Internet companies was never really there at all."

rshowalter - 02:50pm Feb 28, 2001 EST (#800 of 802)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

How about looking at nuclear weapons arrangments, strategy, tactics, and controls in the same spirit?

Both our nuclear systems and our strategies were designed during the Eisenhower administration, on the basis of assumptions that made sense then.

Do these arrangements make sense now? Are the "fail safe" controls built into the system fail-safe in the early 21st century? Are the assumptions about human response to threat on which the system rests correct now? A forum, which might be a forum on the internet, where responsible people were under effective public pressure to publically answer clear questions, might show that much of what we've been assuming, risking the safety of the world on, and spending both money and moral capital on, are ugly, and ineffective, and terribly dangerous.

Because of security issues, some matters might not be discussable in public. But in such cases, people with security clearance could be asked to go and investigate the issues involved. There are very many people with the clearances needed.

We might find that a great deal that we'd been trusting "wasn't really there at all."

We might find that a major reason for the secrecy of our nuclear arrangements was the need to conceal circumstances so unsatisfactory to ordinary people that they could not bear the light of day.

Or good witnesses, with the proper security clearances and experiences, might be convinced that arrangements and plans, now subject to question were reasonable.

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