cramer@kontron.UUCP (08/16/86)
From the August 1986 _Defense_Electronics_, p. 24: However, not everyone shares such an optimistic view of SDI's potential for generating commercial business. At a recent Washington press conference staged by organizers of an academic boycott of SDI, a scientist connected with the Electromagnetic Systems Lab at M.I.T. was quoted as saying, "SDI has no civil applications," and "SDI caused the deficit; as SDI spending increases, so too will the deficit. All of the funding for SDI comes out of the deficit." Is this quote accurate? Does anyone know who said this? If so, I would be curious to know who. This would seem to be someone with little knowledge of the SDI budget or the Federal Government's deficit problems. To say "SDI caused the deficit" is rather like saying "Farm price supports caused the deficit". In part, yes. Everything that costs money contributes to the deficit. But only a part. Is there someone with Electromagnetic Systems Lab who actually thinks that SDI is a major part of the deficit? It's $3x10^9, out of a budget deficit in the $2 x 10^11 area. You could make as strong a case for pure research and educational subsidies "causing" the deficit. It's statements like the ones above that are why the "technical arguments" against SDI sound shaky -- it seems clear that political reasons are the principal ones for the moral indignation expressed by some scientists against SDI. Clayton E. Cramer -------