Good piece, I have been following such developments from a distance for some time, and in fact I won a journalism award for a piece I composed four years ago on this subject. One begins to understand if not approve the actions of moralistic atomic traitors like Ted Hall who gave away atomic secrets because they sincerely believed that no one nation should command such power. Unless one believes that the intentions of the current and future conservative administrations in Washington are wholly benign in the developing world, one cannot but shudder to contemplate Robocop writ large. For those for whom the power motive is paramount the thought of such weapons systems must be as intoxicating as a blast of methamphetamine. For not only can military omniscience provide the basis for annihilating force projection against foreign insurgents, it can offer the means of utterly neutralizing principled political opposition at home. That such technology will not be used in that matter is hardly certain in the light of recent NSA abuses. There is however, some reason to believe that the nation may be roused from this particular wet dream before reaching climax. The manufacture of semiconductors has already fled abroad to nations not disposed to favor such an expansion of U.S. military capabilities, and increasingly the design of semiconductors is fleeing to the same places. The relatively small size of the U.S. engineering community compared to those of certain Asian nations might also work against such a profound military asymmetry ultimately occurring. In other words, the U.S. might be losing the technology base to support such a grand scheme. Imagine if a Dominion Theology regime ascended to power in Washington and thought to utilize armies of Golem against the infidel. The ironies are profound. Daniel Sweeney Weblog at: http://weblog.warpspeed.com ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]