ARMS-D-Request@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU.UUCP (05/23/86)
Arms-Discussion Digest Friday, May 23, 1986 3:23PM
Volume 6, Issue 89
Today's Topics:
Rube Goldberg logic favors Star Wars
Article on Blue Cube (LONG!!!)
Article query
how to prevent human annihilation?
Two digests numbered #88 were sent out. Sorry.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 23 May 86 07:52:33 PDT (Friday)
From: Hoffman.es@Xerox.COM
Subject: Rube Goldberg logic favors Star Wars
From the 'Los Angeles Times', May 16, 1986, in a long story about the
economically struggling raisin industry around Fresno:
Ernie Bedrosian is a captain of the raisin industry. He is a vital,
volatile man of 52 years, a packer so focused on the difficult task of
selling raisins that he has even explored the implications of President
Reagan's so-called "Star Wars" laser weapons and deemed that, from a
raisin point of view, they are good.
As Bedrosian tells it, Star Wars would eliminate the need for military
bases and missile sites in countries like Italy. Elimination of these
bases in turn would eliminate the need to coddle to the Italians. The
United States could slap a steep tariff on Italian wine coming into this
country, eventually scaring off the importers and creating a bigger
market for California vintners.
If California vintners sold more wine, they could crush more Thompsons
[grapes]. Crush more Thompsons and fewer would be dried into raisins.
Fewer raisins means the glut would subside, prices would climb and the
world of raisins would be a far more profitable, and happier, place.
"And so," he said, "I'm waiting for Star Wars to come."
------------------------------
Date: Friday, 23 May 1986 13:52-EDT
From: wild%oscar at SUN.COM (Will Doherty)
To: arms-d
cc: wild%oscar at SUN.COM
Re: Article on Blue Cube (LONG!!!)
My friend Edward Hasbrouck has asked me to circulate this article to mailing
lists that may find it of interest. If you have any comments that you would
like delivered to the author, send them to me and I will forward them to him.
Will Doherty
sun!oscar!wild
MOFFETT PARK, SUNNYVALE, CA:
"STAR WARS" GROUND ZERO
BY EDWARD HASBROUCK
Moffett Park, an industrial park just north of of Hwys 237 & 101, adjacent to
Moffett Field in Sunnyvale, looks like many others throughout the San
Francisco Bay area. The barbed wire around it is typical of Silicon Valley
corporate security. Its low, monotonous sprawl of windowless and
reflective-glass prefab buildings gives little indication of its purpose or
products. The name of its true owner appears on no sign.
Its purpose is preparation for a nuclear war started by a preemptive US first
strike. Its products are first-strike nuclear missiles and the information
needed to aim a US first strike. Its spying and other operations are directed
by the National Reconnaissance Office (the largest "black" organization in the
US government) and its parent agency, the National Security Agency (the real
"Big Brother" of 1986).
On 21 April 1986 I was one of about fifty people who came to Moffett Park on
the national "Focus: Star Wars" day of No Business As Usual. I was
didsappointed that, while we made our presence felt by many workers and others
in the area, we were unable to make our motives understood by more than a few.
This article was written to accompany a report on No Business As Usual in the
Revolutionary Worker (a surprisingly non-sectarian paper which has featured
some surprisingly non-dogmatic analyses of Star Wars by once-SDS'er Clark
Kissinger). I hope that, through its circulation on electronic bulletin
boards and mailing lists, it will convey to those who work at Moffett Park
(and elsewhere in high tech and the Silicon Valley) some sense of our response
to the question so often posed of demonstrators: "But why do you come HERE?"
THE LOCKHEED D-5 MISSILE
There are two major complexes at Moffett Park: Lockheed and the "Blue Cube".
Lockheed Missiles and Space Co., Inc., is the prime contractor with the
Department of Defense for D-5 missiles. Most of the 30,000 Lockheed workers
at Moffett Park are engaged in production of these long-range, submarine-
launched missiles, each carrying multiple, independently-targeted,
Hydrogen-bomb warheads (MIRV's). D-5's are also called Trident II missiles;
they will replace Trident I missiles on present and future Trident submarines.
Lockheed's D-5 missile, like most other tools of nuclear (or any) war, is
itself evidence of the wars for which it is intended. The sole advantage of
Trident II over Trident I missiles (and, for the most part, of Tridents over
earlier US nuclear submarines) is their ability to be used in a US first
strike. The D-5 is the first missile ever built or deployed (by the US or the
USSR) capable of launching a large enough warhead from a submarine with
sufficient accuracy to destroy "hardened" military and strategic targets.
"They will have 'a counterforce capbility, even a preemptive capability,'
Richard DeLauer, the Under-Secretary of Defense, said [in] 1981." <ref. 8, p.
130> Its greater range will reduce the warning given targets deep within the
USSR from the 20-30 minute flight time of intercontinental ballistic missiles
(ICBM's) to the 5-10 minute flight of missiles launched from offshore
submarines (SLBM's). <ref. 8, p. 132>
These capabilities do not deter nuclear war. Deterrence depends on the
ability to retaliate -- mutual assured destruction. A Trident submarine
commander, with Trident I missiles, already controls the 3rd-largest nuclear
force in the world, a force greater than the entire US nuclear arsenal in the
early 1950's (when it was considered adequate to dominate the world). If a
single Trident sub survived a Soviet first strike, destruction of all
significant Soviet population centers would be assured.
By threatening the Soviet ability to retaliate against a US attack, D-5's
provoke the USSR to adopt a policy of launch-on-warning (at best) or of
preemptive first strike (at worst). If US war plans (contained in the Single
Integrated Operational Plan, or SIOP) were in fact based on deterrence, the
D-5 would be worse than useless. The priority put on its deployment is part
of the priority put in the SIOP on a US first strike. "If there is a nuclear
war, the United States will be the one to start it," an Air Force strategist
who has worked on the SIOP told me." <ref. 8, p. 107>
Many military workers say they build, maintain, and operate nuclear (and
other) weapons "so that they will never be used". Such rationalizations do
not apply to inherently offensive weapons like the D-5 missiles built by
Lockheed at Moffett Park. They are built to be used, and they are useful only
in a US first strike. Those who work to build them -- whether they like it or
not, whether they choose their jobs or not -- are working not to defend the
USA but to "conquer" the USSR with a preemptive US nuclear attack.
Because the Trident submarines and missiles are among the most destabilizing
weapons systems ever deployed, they are opposed by people throughout the world
who struggle for survival. Those who work against the construction of Trident
II missiles at Moffett Park join those who have been working against the
Trident shipyard in Groton, CT, since the first US nuclear submarines were
built there in the late 1950's; those who work against the Trident component
and missile-tube factory at Quonset Point, RI; those who have been working
against the Trident bases at Bangor, WA, and King's Bay, GA, since those sites
were chosen; those who have blocked the "White Train" that carries nuclear
warheads to those bases from Amarillo, TX; those who work against the purchase
of Tridents by the UK and their deployment at a base in Scotland; and those
who have tried to disarm Trident subs, missiles, and missile tubes, to "beat
swords into plowshares".
THE BLUE CUBE
In one corner of Moffett Park, surrounded by satellite antennae, is a square,
five-story building known as the "Blue Cube". The Blue Cube controls,
maintains in orbit, and processes data received from military spy satellites;
it is the operations center of the National Reconnaissance Office. <ref. 1, p.
263>
According to Daniel F. Ford, former excutive director of the Union of
Concerned Scientists, the Blue Cube is "the Air Force's main satellite ground
control center.... It would be one of the likely targets for Soviet attack, or
sabotage, in the opening phase of a nuclear war. Unclassified Pentagon
testimony before Congress in March 1983 mentioned the exact site of that
ground station when it referred to US strategic connectivity as 'dependent on
the single satellite control facility (SCF) located at Sunnyvale, California.'
(The facility is euphemistically designated the 'Satellite Test Center.')...
In some cases, a high level of redundancy is built into the strategic command
system, with a large number of backup facilities and alternate means for
carrying out critical tasks.... The Sunnyvale facility is one of the obvious
weak links....
"The Consolidated Space Operations Center now being constructed near Colorada
Springs... will be a backup to the vulnerable Satellite Control Facility in
Sunnyvale, CA. Its role as a backup is... questioned.... Something surely
needs to be done to avoid the catastrophic effects of a Soviet attack, or an
earthquake, that could disable the main control center for US military
satellites. Colorado Springs, though, is just as easy a target as Sunnyvale,
and having two vulnerable facilities instead of one does not greatly increase
protection against Soviet dismemberment of the satellite control system....
"The apparent 'defects' in US retaliatory capability, in this context, are a
by-product of the military's unstated reliance on the major first-strike
option it has always included in the SIOP.... Shoddy arrangements have been
tolerated, Desmond Ball [head of the Strategic and Defense Studies Centre of
the Australian National University] said, because 'down inside, they don't
really believe that this stuff's going to be of any use' in the type of war
the US would end up fighting. The Strategic Air Command simply does not plan
to be in a retaliatory mode, and if US leaders want to push the button first,
they do not need to use... such devices.... The military has no interest in
limited options and prefers, if it has to fight, to launch a major first
strike." <ref. 8, pp. 64-65, 234-235>
The Blue Cube's ostensible raison d'etre is to give early warning of a nuclear
attack on the US and to target a retaliatory attack (based on which Soviet
missiles had already been launched, etc.). It could not possibly do either.
Its function, location, and vulnerability (above ground, thin-walled,
unshielded against blast, radiation, or electromagnetic pulse (EMP)) are as
well known to the USSR as to US war planners. Both know that the first
explosion of a nuclear attack on the US would probably be a submarine-launched
airburst over Sunnyvale. The EMP from such an explosion would instantly
destroy all semiconductor circuitry in the Blue Cube (and for hundreds of
miles around), blinding all US satellites before any land-based missiles were
launched. <timeline, ref. 51> The Blue Cube is Ground Zero.
(Although there are perhaps half a dozen critical points for a first strike
against US command control, communications, and intelligence (C3I), most are
either "hardened" or inland where it would be harder and take longer for
submarine-launched missiles to reach them undetected.)
Although there has been much talk of Soviet "satellite-killing" experiments,
there would be no need to destroy the satellites themselves. Even if raw data
from satellite sensors could somehow be received elsewhere, no sense could be
made of it without the Blue Cube's computers. The National Reconnnaissance
Office is a branch of the National Security Agency, and the NSA is
acknowledged to have "the largest and most advanced computers available to any
bureaucracy in the world" <ref. 4, p. 60>. The computational requirements for
real-time analysis of signals from satellites continuously transmitting images
of the earth's surface with a resolution of 10 cm <ref. 9, p. 40> are vast.
Most NRO attempts to decentralize its data processing have failed. <ref. 8, p.
71>, and Star Wars systems will require even larger and more centralized
"battle-management" computers <ref. 10>.
The Blue Cube won't exist once World War III begins, and it won't help the US
retaliate. "'It is inconceivable to me that if the Russians were going to
start a war, they'd not start by knocking out the early warning sites,' one of
the Pentagon's leading experts on command-system design told me. 'If I were
going to do it, that's how I'd do it,' a NORAD general said." <ref. 8, p. 67>
(One implication of the vulnerability of communications is that for the US to
be able to retaliate -- as it says it will -- it must already have delegated
authority to use nuclear weapons to battlefield commanders who it knows will
be isolated by the first strike. "According to... Raymond Tate -- a former
Deputy Director of the NSA -- '...The codes and devices are set up to allow
that.'" <ref. 8, p. 143> There are many US fingers on many buttons.)
The real role of the Blue Cube -- and NRO satellites -- is to identify and
locate the targets of a disabling US first strike on the USSR. "As a member
of one of the [Department of Defense] connectivity review groups noted,
'Official policy suggests we're moving toward long-range war fighting. But in
reality we're moving toward first strike.'" <ref. 8, p. 130>
This strategy is reflected in the characteristics of many of the NRO
satellites currently operated by the Blue Cube. They are intended for
targeting and surveillance; their few defensive and warning capabilities are
largely incidental.
KH-11 ("Keyhole") satellites transmit live photos, but they pass over the
Soviet Union only intermittently; an attack could be launched while they were
on the other side of the Earth (or obscured by clouds). Their high-resolution
photos are, however, essential for the US to aim a first strike accurately and
with confidence that it hasn't overlooked any sites from which the Soviets
could retaliate. When a KH-11 was reported to have exploded on launch from
Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA, 18 April 1986, it was considered a setback to
US "strategic interests". Possible delay in US ability to target a first
strike was considered more significant than the KH-11's cost (half a billion
dollars or more).
Lockheed 467 satellites also provide only intermittent coverage, and are in
any case intended for signals intelligence (SIGINT) -- intercepting
communications -- rather than photography. Since most Soviet strategic
communications are carried by land lines rather than radio, a Soviet attack
might not be preceded or accompanied by any unusual broadcasts detectable by
SIGINT satellites, even the "Rhyolite" which hovers continually over the USSR
or the "Aquacades" which are to replace it when either Titan 34D or space
shuttle launches resume.
The satellites most likely to warn of Soviet missile launches are those of the
Defense Support Program (DSP) which use infrared telescopes to detect the heat
of the rocket flames. "Hundreds of millions of dollars have gone into
development of new early warning satellites, and almost three billion dollars
will will be spent to deploy them as replacements for the three DSP satellites
now in orbit.... Advanced DSP satellites... are scheduled to be deployed over
the next few years using the manned space shuttle. The launching of
intelligence satellites has been slated as one of the shuttle's primary
missions...
"The new early warning satellites... will have more sophisticated sensors....
The new models will not scan the Soviet missile fields a few times per minute
but will stare uninterruptedly at each Soviet missile silo. Current
satellites can identify the general area from which missiles are launched, but
not the individual silos. For warning purposes, this makes little difference.
All that counts is that the Soviet launches be quickly detected. However, in
the new offensive Pentagon nuclear strategy, the more refined data from the
advanced DSP satellites plays a key role." <ref. 8, pp. 201, 202>
Knowing exact launch sites is the first step toward knowing exact missile
trajectories and aiming Star Wars anti-ballistic-missile (ABM) weapons. This
new ability of Advanced DSP satellites will be especially useful in focusing a
limited Star Wars ABM system on the "ragged retaliation" from only a few silos
following a US first strike. Most other parts of an ABM system are in the
early stages of research. ADSP satellites will be the first operational
components of a Star Wars ABM system, and in controlling them the Blue Cube
will be the first operational Star Wars facility.
WHO RUNS THE BLUE CUBE?
Although the Blue Cube is officially the "Sunnyvale Air Force Station" and its
costs "are secretly hidden in the classified budget for the Air Force, which
serves as a cover for the NRO", its real owner is the National Security
Agency. "Once the satellite achieves orbit, responsibility for both the
operation of the ground collection stations and their costs is assumed by the
NSA, although actual control of the spacecraft is retained by the NRO through
its operations center in Sunnyvale." <ref. 1, p. 263>
The National Security Agency is "the nation's largest intelligence agency"
<ref. 14, p. 29>. It has about 50,000 direct employees; a similar number of
military employees are assigned to NSA listening posts. Its budget is several
billion dollars a year, ten times larger than that of the CIA and over 90% of
the total US budget for spying. <ref. 1, p. 17>
The National Reconnaissance Office, whose operations are centered at the Blue
Cube, runs the US spy satellite program. The NRO pioneered the militarization
of space and has probably received more Star Wars funding than any other
organization. The space shuttle was designed specifically to launch NRO
satellites, and NASA "is in fact a minor user and not the driver" of the space
shuttle. <Hans Mark, quoted in ref. 6, p. 10> NRO requirements have dominated
NASA research since former NSA director and Air Force General Lew Allen, Jr.,
was put in charge of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. <ref. 6, p. 8>
Even before Star Wars the NRO had a budget several times larger than the NSA.
Including the NRO and civilian contractors (such as those who build the
satellites) the Director of the NSA probably controls several hundred thousand
people and several tens of billions of dollars a year. <ref. 3, p. 124>
Details are hard to come by. The NSA is exempt from the Freedom of Information
Act; all information concerning the NSA, its budget, or its employees is
classified (the majority of all US classified material is produced and
destroyed within the NSA); and the NSA actively suppresses public information
about itself (after the only book about the NSA was published, NSA agents
removed the sources it refered to from the shelves of public libraries,
classified them, and locked them in safes). "Similar to the NSA during the
early 1950's, the NRO is considered a 'black' agency, one whose very existence
is denied by the government." <ref. 1, p. 243>
The scope of NSA spying is both vast and threatening. "No law has ever been
enacted preventing the NSA from engaging in any activity. There are only laws
to prevent the release of any information about the Agency." <ref. 1, pp.
18-19> "With unknown billions of Federal dollars, the agency purchases the
most sophisticated communications and computer equipment in the world....
Every day, in almost every area,... systems and procedures are being
adopted... that make it easier for the NSA to dominate American society should
it ever decide such action is necessary." <ref. 4, p. 67>
The "cloak and dagger" spying of the CIA has been largely replaced by the
NSA's electronic intelligence gathering (freeing CIA agents for plainclothes
war). A former employee of both the NSA and the CIA described the CIA as
"morally principled" in comparison to the NSA, and said the greatest threat to
freedom in the US was the increasing use by the FBI and other domestic police
of technology developed by the NSA for use abroad.
The NSA's attitude toward the public is that of Big Brother. It is even more
desperate to prevent anyone else from keeping secrets than to keep its own
secrets. When IBM researchers developed a computer code the NSA didn't think
it could break, the agency intervened to prevent it from being adopted as a
national standard. <ref. 7, pp. 424-427; ref. 1, pp. 433-440> A 1984 Reagan
directive gave the NSA responsibility for security of all "private computer
systems processing 'unclassified but sensitive information that could
adversely affect national security.'" The NSA is now using this authority to
expand its eavesdropping power: "The new algorithms will be buried in
computer chips manufactured to NSA specifications and encapsulated so that any
effort to read the code... would destroy the chip. 'I don't think that the
people using the code would even know the algorithm,' said Edward Zeitler,
manager of information systems security at the Security Pacific National Bank
in California. 'We probably couldn't break our own codes.'... 'It will give
the NSA much freer access to data then the agency has today,' said Robert H.
Courtney, a former data security specialist at IBM who now runs a private
security consulting service. 'You could interpret it as an effort to increase
security, or you could interpret it as a power play.'" <ref. 14, pp. 29, 32>
The NSA is only supposed to spy on foreigners. But it has always spied on US
citizens, and its right to do so has been upheld by the Federal courts. <ref.
4, p. 60>. NSA headquarters has a major receive-only node in the US phone
system: phone company computers can route calls to the NSA without the need to
install any "bugs" or hardware. <ref. 1, p. 228-230> NSA research currently
focuses on automated voice transcription systems to search these calls (as it
already searchs all telegrams, telexes, and computer messages) for key words
or phrases, eliminating the need for human monitors. "Because of the towering
barrier of secrecy that surrounds the NSA, determining whether the agency
actually has developed such an ability simply is not possible. But from the
experiments we know have been conducted by AT&T and other groups, it is not
unreasonable to assume that the NSA has such equipment to monitor some
telephone calls." <ref. 3, p. 254> If they don't yet, they will soon.
In 1983 NSA agents (possibly including some in the Blue Cube) listened
silently as the USSR shot down a Korean airliner (which may itself have been
on an NSA mission) <ref. 5>. When President Reagan denied that the NSA could
have warned the pilot, two former NSA workers accused him of "a major efort...
to bewilder the public concerning the capabilities of... the NSA.... We
believe that the entire sweep of events... was meticulously monitored and
analyzed instantaneously by US intelliogence.... We find the inference made by
President reagan... to be unbelievable and contrary to NSA policy." <Tom
Bernard and T. Edward Eskelson, quoted in ref. 5, pp. 43, 111, 130-131>
After the April 1986 bombing of Libya, Reagan claimed to know of "direct
orders of the Libyan regime. On March 25,... orders were sent from Tripoli
from to the Libyan People's Bureau in East Berlin... On April 4, the People's
Bureau alerted Tripoli that the attack would be carried out the following
morning. The next day they reported back to Tripoli.... Our evidence is
direct [and] precise." <"Transcript of Address By Reagan on Libya", ref. 13,
p. 7> As the New York Times reported, "The Administration has not divulged
how it came into possession of this information. But the US extensively
monitors radio transmissions and telephone calls to Libya and has the
capability to break codes." <Bernard Gwertzman, "US Says Libyans Around World
Are Plotting to Attack Americans", ref. 13, p. 6>
The NSA has always spied on foreign embassies, and its headquarters is
"ideally located" to intercept microwave transmissions between other countries
embassies in Washington and their consulates and UN missions in New York.
<ref. 1, p. 229; see also pp. 461-467> But it would cause a diplomatic crisis
for Reagan to admit that the US routinely violates the supposed sanctity of
privileged diplomatic communications. Such an admission would be comparable
to an admission that the US breaks into and copies the contents of sealed
diplomatic pouches.
As usual, the government is more interested in keeping such activities
officially classified "secret" than in actually keeping them secret from the
public. The power to define what is and is not known (and thus what can and
cannot be talked about), is central to the government's ability to control
both the media and public debate. This tactic succeeded for a surprisingly
long time in suppressing discussion of the "covert" war on Nicaragua. Its
ultimate expression is the "black" programs which cannot be questioned because
the government does not admit they exist, and the largest of these is the NRO.
<For more on "secrecy" as thought control see ref. 12, especially p. 139>
Reagan's allegations are dubious and unsubstantiated. He may simply be lying,
and his "evidence" may be nonexistent, fabricated, or distorted. But the most
favorable (to Reagan) interpretation of his statement is that the NSA has once
again allowed hundreds of people to be killed or wounded rather than risk
exposing itself and its activities by sounding a warning!
This is the NSA's record: a record of compulsive secrecy, calculated
irresponsibility, and callous disregard for human life. Based on this record
we are supposed to trust the NSA -- acting in complete secrecy, completely
without accountability -- to operate both our existing system for early
warning of nuclear war and any future Star Wars system for "nuclear defense".
I do not trust them (nor should you) and I will not entrust my life to them.
If we are to live, we must take life in our own hands (as millions of us have
done by resisting draft registration and preventing the draft). If we are to
gain power, we must empower ourselves. If there is to be disarmament, we must
disarm the governments.
They won't listen to reason,
They won't be bound by votes,
The governments must be stopped from launching World War III,
No matter what it takes!
NSA/NRO/LOCKHEED FACILITIES IN THE BAY AREA
Air Force Space Command Liason Office, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett
Field, Mountain View (NRO/NSA liason) -- 408-967-3056
Air Force Satellite Test Center, Sunnyvale Air Force Station, 1080 Lockheed
Way, Sunnyvale (the "Blue Cube"; NRO Operations Center) -- 408-745-3000
Air Force Plant Representative Office, Lockheed Missiles and Space Co., Inc.,
1111 Lockheed Way, Sunnyvale -- 408-742-4321
Army Intelligence Command, Counterintelligence-Signal Security Support
Battalion, 902nd Military Intelligence Group, Presidio of San Francisco (NSA
listening post) -- 415-561-4742
Lockheed Missiles and Space Co., Inc., 1111 Lockheed Way, Moffett Park,
Sunnyvale (D-5/Trident II missiles) -- 408-742-5605 (public relations),
408-742-6688 (news bureau)
Lockheed Missiles and Space Co., Inc., Palo Alto Research Laboratory, 3251
Hanover, Stanford Industrial Park, Palo Alto -- 415-424-2000
National Security Agency, Alameda Naval Air Station (resident agency)
National Security Agency, Two Rock Ranch, Sonoma County (listening post)
Naval Plant Representative Office, Lockheed Missiles and Space Co., Inc., 1111
Lockheed Way, Sunnyvale (Trident II missiles) -- 408-742-6562
SOURCES ON THE NSA/NRO/BLUE CUBE AND LOCKHEED D-5
<1> James Bamford, The Puzzle Palace: A Report on America's Most Secret
Agency (Houghton Mifflin, 1982; revised and expanded ed., Penguin Books, 1983)
<2> Paul Bracken, The Command and Control of Nuclear Forces (Yale University
Press, 1983)
<3> David Burnham, The Rise of the Computer State (Random House, 1984)
<4> David Burnham, "The Silent Power of the N.S.A.", The New York Times
Magazine, 27 March 1983
<5> Oliver Clubb, KAL Flight 007: The Hidden Story (Permanent Press, 1985)
<6> D. S. Crafts, "NASA's Military Payload", East Bay Express, 4 April 1986
<7> Katharine Davis Fishman, The Computer Establishment (Harper & Row, 1981)
<8> Daniel Ford, The Button: The Pentagon's Command and Control System --
Does It Work? (Simon and Schuster, 1985)
<9> David Hafemeister, Joseph J. Romm, and Kosta Tsipis, "The Verification of
Compliance With Arms-Control Agreements", Scientific American, March 1985
<10> Herbert Lin, "The Development of Software for Ballistic-Missile Defense",
Scientific American, December 1985
<11> Robert Lindsey, The Falcon and the Snowman
<12> Howard Morland, The Secret That Exploded (Random House, 1981)
<13> The New York Times, 15 April 1986
<14> David E. Sanger, "Computer Code Shift Expected", The New York Times, 15
April 1986
<15> John Steinbruner, "Launch Under Attack", Scientific American, January 1984
SOURCES ON SOVIET "STAR WARS" AND "BLACK" PROGRAMS
<16> Zhores A. Medvedev, Nuclear Disaster in the Urals (W.W. Norton, 1979;
revised and expanded ed., Random House, 1980)
<17> James E. Oberg, Red Star in Orbit (Random House, 1981)
PREVIOUS REVOLUTIONARY WORKER ARTICLES ON STAR WARS AND FIRST STRIKE
<18> Clark Kissinger, "The Compulsion for Mass Murder -- First Strike and the
Military Realities of Nuclear War", Part I, Revolutionary Worker #294, 22
February 1985; Part II, Revolutionary Worker #295, 1 March 1985
<19> Clark Kissinger, "High Tech Armageddon: Star Wars and the US First-Strike
Strategy", Part I, Revolutionary Worker #350, 7 April 1986; Part II,
Revolutionary Worker #351, 14 April 1986
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Edward Hasbrouck (415-824-8562) participated in the No Business As Usual focus
on Star Wars in Sunnyvale and Stanford, CA. He an anarcho-pacifist and an
editor of the draft resistance newspaper Resistance News (published by the
National Resistance Committee, P.O. Box 42488, San Francisco, CA 94142). He
is proud of his convictions, which include refusing to register for the draft,
hugging, trespassing, and posting handbills without permission.
------------------------------
Date: 1986 May 23 11:08:56 PST (=GMT-8hr)
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM%IMSSS@SU-AI.ARPA>
Subject:how to prevent human annihilation?
Here's another provocative message to help get us started again after the lull.
Should the Human race survive and should we work toward its survival?
Assuming both "yes" answers, what method of preventing human
annihilation is most likely to succeed, i.e. how best to survive? Do
we need to totally eliminate all forms of conflict, or all forms of
armed conflict, or all major wars, or just eliminate thermonuclear
weapons, or maybe keep the weapons but assure stability of MADness so
they never get used? What methods do we use? Do we intellectually work
out arms control treaties and methods and then try to get our
proposals accepted by nations, or do we brainwash the world's
population so everyone is peaceful and treaties aren't needed, or do
we divert everyone's energy into playing a simulation game instead of
waging war, or do we put everyone on drugs, or do we give up on
trying to control war on Earth and instead escape into space to
survive there after Earth has been rendered lifeless? Or should we use
a variety of methods such as escaping to space just in case while
continuing to reduce weaponry and stabilize MAD while setting up some
kind of defense? Can we afford to spend money on so many different
major projects? Can we afford not to?
Are some people already doing the right thing and we need to join
them, or is everyone doing ineffective things and we need to start new
projects different from what other people are already doing? Should
only people "in the know" be working toward survival (lest we mortal
citizens mess things up by our misguided efforts) or should everyone
on the net be working too? Should we all join in one effort, or should
we let a thousand flowers bloom? (Which method best avoids stepping on
each other's toes?) Should we work towards survival of everyone
uniformly, or only survival of "western democracies" or other elite?
By the way, Thursday evening at Stanford there was a debate on this
kind of issue, but I didn't learn of it until Wednesday when I already
had something scheduled for Thursday evening, so I couldn't attend.
Did anybody on this discussion group attend and could said person
report what happened and what information/ideas came across?
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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