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WMD:
Given ingenuity's capacity to ease the availability of WMD, must we, at some point, surrender or move beyond individual liberty, freedom, dignity, and privacy?
If so, by what worthy means may we forestall or mitigate such a move?
Perspectives of Will tend to venture and compete at or across those niches and levels where they intuit or feel that they are reasonably safe and potent. To the extent ordinary Americans come of nature or culture not to see fit to want to preserve the American way of life, then why should those who compete at highest levels of wealth and power see fit to spend time or energy trying to preserve for us that for which we ourselves are unwilling to work, fight, or make necessary sacrifices? Of American style freedom and dignity: We must use them, or they will be ratcheted beyond our reach, up to levels that will use them.
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Snippets from http://www.newsmax.com/navrozov/drexler_nanotechnology/2008/09/05/128018.html:
Future Wars Will Be Waged With Nano-Weapons
Friday, September 5, 2008 8:39 AM
By: Lev Navrozov
....
The epigraph to “Engines of Destruction,” taken from Sir William Perry and dated by 1640, says, "Nor do I doubt if the most formidable armies ever heere [sic] upon earth is a sort of soldiers who for their smallness are not visible."
To compare the size of Drexler’s “nano-soldiers” with that of microbes? The unit of molecular nanotechnology is a molecule. Drexler proceeded from the fact that a molecule contains space, which can be filled, thus converting the molecule into a mobile computer and God knows what else. Yet compared with a molecule, a microbe is a giant: Even before Drexler’s studies, one nanocentimeter meant one billionth of a centimeter.
All this may seem miraculous in 2008 just as firearms seemed miraculous in 1646. Yet the new epoch has come: The future world war will be a war of nano-weapons, not of firearms.
....
In a totalitarian country, its owners can allocate as much funds into a military project as is necessary in their opinion to win the crucial war. In a free country today, the decision depends on the electoral majority, on the media, explaining to the majority what should be done, and on the top-level bureaucracy, some of whose members take into consideration their own interests first and foremost.
From what I have seen in the United States in the last decade, the chances of the free world surviving in a modern world war (that is, the war of nano-weapons, not of firearms) requires strong minds, not the attempts to assure men of genius like Drexler that the engines of destruction are just figments of their imagination because they sound militaristic to Congress.
Snippets from http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?secid=1501&status=article&id=305507242693066&secure=1&show=1&rss=1:
The Importance Of Age And Experience
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted Friday, September 05, 2008 4:20 PM PT
....
In his memoirs, an older, far wiser Truman said:
"I had learned from my negotiations with the intransigent Russian diplomats there was only one way to avoid a third world war, and that was to lead from strength. We had to re-arm ourselves and our allies, at the same time deal with the Russians in a manner they could never interpret as weakness.
"Within our own nation I had seen many well-meaning groups who campaigned for 'peace at any price' while apologizing for the aggressive acts of the Russians as merely a reflection of Russian reaction to our own tough policy. Many respectable Americans espoused such ideas without realizing the danger to which they were subjecting our national security and the freedoms for which we had fought so hard.
"Some honest, well-meaning agitators for peace with Russia at any price found in Henry Wallace a spokesman for their point of view. He consistently maintained I was too tough in dealing with the Soviets and peace could be obtained if I were more conciliatory in our approach.
"The Henry Wallace movement provided a front for the communists to infiltrate the political life of the nation and spread confusion. Without conscious knowledge of many members of the New Progressive party, the Reds were working swiftly and skillfully to gain control of the nominating (political) convention and dominate party committees and the platform.
"Wallace himself seemed to have been transformed into a mystic with a zeal that verged on fanaticism, was apparently unaware of the purposes to which the communists were putting his 'progressive' movement. I always felt he was an honest man and a faithful public servant but that he simply did not understand what was happening.
"I knew from personal experience with the Russians that Wallace's idealistic notion and dream of appeasement was futile and if allowed to materialize, it would be tragic. I had learned that the Russians understood only force. Wallace did not think this was true, but he did not have the experience with the Soviets that had been mine."
....
Truman was little known when he became FDR's vice president, and he didn't have a college education. But in addition to being older, he had years of real-world management experience. He had joined the National Guard in 1905 and was an artillery captain in World War I. He'd been a farmer, a businessman and a business owner, including the owner of one business that failed. He'd also been a judge and a U.S. senator for 10 years.
During World War II, he worked closely with President Roosevelt, giving him the qualifications to make tough, competent decisions and judgments in an extremely dangerous period for America. At the time, he was greatly underappreciated, with a popularity rating of only 24%. But now he is considered one of our 10 best presidents.
http://www.newsmax.com/navrozov/china_domination/2008/09/18/132200.html:
The dictators of China want to conquer the world — not because they are evil or cruel — but because this is the only way for them to stay in power, and power in a totalitarian society is more valuable than any money.
Any weakening of power may lead to the extermination of the dictators themselves — possibly in a way no less horrible than the way in which they had been exterminating their “internal enemies.”
WMD:
Snippets from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178456456654879.html:
Putin Is Ruining Russia's Economy
By GARRY KASPAROV
....
If there is anything an authoritarian leader cannot abide, it's a power vacuum on his borders.
Dictatorial power demands to expand into every available space. Establishing effective penalties will require great political will, especially in Europe. There Mr. Putin has defenders like Silvio Berlusconi, who boasted last week about how he prevented the EU from levying sanctions against Russia over its actions in Georgia. The Kremlin also has many influential employees, including former EU leaders Gerhardt Schroeder of Germany and Paavo Lipponen of Finland, who both took plum positions with the Russian energy giant Gazprom immediately after leaving office.
With their reliable business partners in the West, the Kremlin has opened up a lucrative market for what could be called democracy offsets. In exchange for oil and gas from Russia, they provide democratic credentials and pretend Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev are elected officials rather than mafia bosses.
WMD:
Snippet from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/business/21gret.html?em:
Stop pretending that the $62 trillion market for credit default swaps does not need regulatory oversight. Warren E. Buffett was not engaging in hyperbole when he called these things financial weapons of mass destruction.
WMD:
Snippets from http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/sep/29/us-urged-to-go-on-offense-in-cyberwar/:
One issue that analysts highlight is the difficulty in determining the origins of cyber-attacks, which often are launched using "bot-nets" of compromised computers owned by innocent users anywhere on the planet.
The issue was raised earlier this month in two House hearings in which lawmakers heard testimony from members of a bipartisan, blue-ribbon panel - the Commission on Cyber Security for the 44th Presidency.
"We have a tremendous amount of trouble determining attribution ... where an attack actually came from, who was responsible, who might have been behind that computer. And we have a very, very long way to go on that," commission member Paul Kurtz, a former White House cybersecurity official, told the House intelligence committee.
"Until we start to get clarity in that piece, it's going to be very difficult to contemplate the military option, of responding appropriately," Mr. Kurtz added.
Another issue raised at the hearings was that, in order for any offensive capacity to be a deterrent for adversaries, it would have to be made public, whereas the U.S. military's cyberwar capacities are largely classified.
See: http://www.newsmax.com/kessler/obama_intelligence_danger/2008/10/16/141080.html.
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