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Starwars, AI and quantum computing
Conant to Reporters Commitee for Freedom of the Press
Psyops and the press
'Psychotronic' mind games
From the earliest days of the Cold War, a panel of the 'best and the brightest' in the scientific world has advised the Pentagon on classified weapons development. Though the Pentagon has plenty of technical input, these fellows on the Jason committee analyzed and brainstormed in the most esoteric areas of weapons planning. Their value is most recently underscored by a report on bioterrorism that predates Sept. 11.
But, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- better known by the sinister-sounding acronym DARPA -- has fired the Jasonites.
The White House would say nothing on DARPA's decision to cease funding Jason, but a Pentagon spokeswoman, Jan Walker, said that in the past 'they looked at things like submarine detection, things that were very heavily physics oriented.' But since then, Walker said, information technology has become much more important and Jason has failed to adapt.
However, Steven Block, a Jason member and biological sciences professor at Stanford, sees DARPA's claims as a smokescreen intended to cover an attempt at instituting political patronage at Jason. DARPA had tried to appoint two Silicon Valley executives and a Washington insider with an engineering degree to tha panel, it was reported.
The question immediately arises as to whether this dispute has anything to do with the Pentagon's missile interceptor program, which recently supposedly passed another key test.
That most recent successful midcourse interception, which was reported March 16, 2002, has been challenged as a fatally flawed experiment. It does little good to succeed against plausible countermeasures if it is well-known that a particular countermeasure can't be defeated. That countermeasure is a midcourse system of balloon decoys that are FUNDAMENTALLY indistinguishable from the adversary warhead.
Some might think that such a concern is being raised by overly-abstract-minded physicists who simply need a smart engineer and some advanced information technology experts to overcome this problem.
No scientist worth his salt is likely to say there aren't very serious concerns with regard to the missile interceptor program. Yet it is obvious that a vested interest, with the fervent backing of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is gung-ho for this program. It is easy to imagine Rumsfeld thinking Jason might be more sympathetic if the panelists included some sharp complexity-information types.
Of course, this hypothesis may not be accurate. But it seems odd that, during a 'war on terror,' the Pentagon would be so politically willful as to get rid of what has long been regarded as a strong asset. What kind of political tussle could cause that? Certainly the missile interceptor program could.
Subject: Press freedom
Text:
Hello,
Thought you might be interested in these ConantNews pages:
http://angelfire.com/az3/nfold/freepress.html
http://angelfire.com/az3/nfold/psyops.html
http://angelfire.com/az3/nfold/jason.html
Simply by forwarding this letter to others, you are doing your bit for freedom of the press.