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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 - 01:04pm Mar 4, 2001 EST (#826 of 828)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Quite apart from risks due to the indefensibility of LARGE and COMPLICATED phone links, and new issues such as voice simulation, especially when hardware interventions and internet attacks are combined, and apart from other risks, the porosity of our "information defenses" is immense.

This is so partly because the old strategy of burying information in plain sight is far less useful than it was with computer assisted searching techniques that could never have been anticipated even a decade ago.

A great deal of nuclear information, including a great deal of the most important, was declassified many years ago, on the grounds that people could never put the important pieces together. Putting pieces together is far easier than it used to be.

New technologies put completely new demands on people who wish to conceal information - and make our nuclear systems far less secure than the designers, forty years ago, could have anticipated. LOCATING DEVICES GAIN IN POPULARITY BUT RAISE PRIVACY CONCERNS ..... by Simon Romero is an example today.

To see MANY other examples, see the PRIVACY IN THE DIGITAL AGE collection in Technology http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/reference/index-privacy.html

Our nuclear weapons controls aren't "just a little bit vulnerable."

They are vulnerable, and obsolete beyond redemption, and they should be retired. They aren't protecting us. They are, in Bob Kerrey's words,

"the single greatest threat to our survival." Armed to Excess.. by Bob Kerrey .. Op. Ed. March 2, 2001 .

armel7 - 03:04pm Mar 4, 2001 EST (#827 of 828)
Science/Health Forums Host

rshowalter, I admire your prolific posts, but you might want to take a breather until we get some fresh blood in here...

You rhost,
Michael Scott Armel

rshowalter - 03:22pm Mar 4, 2001 EST (#828 of 828)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

Yes sir !

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