arms-d@ucbvax.ARPA (06/21/85)
From: The Arms-D Moderator (Harold Ancell) <ARMS-D@MIT-MC.ARPA> Arms-Discussion Digest Volume 3 : Issue 47 Today's Topics: Media Reality Neutron Weapons & Nuclear Winter SDI in June "Atlantic" Walker Spy Case SDI Commentary in The Wall Street Journal Star Wars and the Scientists ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 18 Jun 85 9:11:44 EDT From: Jeff Miller AMSTE-TOI 4675 <jmiller@apg-1> Subject: Media Reality I realize this topic is a bit off the defense track....but not completely...... I sincerely pray that by the time this comes out on a digest, the hostage crisis in Lebanon is peacefully concluded. Something going on in the media is disturbing me as this incident unfolds. We are presented with a central figure, one Nahbi Behri, who is presented as something of a hero, struggling to work out a compromise to get our people out safely, making statements that if only the US does what the hijackers want, he can guarantee the hostages' safety. He is our "best hope", the "key" to saving our countrymen. He seems reasonable, wears a coat and tie. He is portrayed as an "honest broker." What no one is pointing out to the great masses of TV viewers who absorb verbatim without reflection, is that this guy himself, directing his Amal militia- the strongest in Beirut- is holding our people hostage, threatening their lives. For Christs sake, he is a terrorist. He took them away from the 3 original hijackers. He holds them at a secret prison to prevent any rescue attempt. He has put men around the airport to thwart any rescue of the crew still on the plane. If the US can't force Israel to release their countrymen, he says he and his thousands-strong Syrian backed army "will have no choice" but to turn the hostages back over to 3 hijackers! This man is threatening by such statements to kill our people. Yet despite his glaringly obvious direct involvement, the media has the public waiting breathlessly for his next sage and humanitarian words and deeds. He must be respectable... he is a government minister. Of course everyone understands it is a government where position is gained by naked power resting on ruthless private armies of cutthroats, murder supercedes the vote in succession, where in fact the government is merely a forum for members to attract publicity for their respective groups because it surely doesn't govern. Unfortunately, most Americans are hard-put to point out Lebanon on the map, know that there are a bunch of people there always fighting, and it often involves Israel and those other Arabs. Their main sources of fact (10%) and impression (90%) are Dan and Peter and Tom. The impression of a terrorist as a responsible government minister is being pushed 25 times a day on all 3 networks. Nahbi Behri is a thug, trying to cloak himself with respectability in his post in a government that can best be described as a zoo. He not only "holds the key", he holds the hostages....and therefore should not be further dignified. J.MILLER ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Jun 85 09:35:47 EDT From: Herb Lin <LIN@MIT-MC.ARPA> Subject: Neutron Weapons & Nuclear Winter To: ihnp4!watmath!looking!brad@UCB-VAX.ARPA It has been suggested that we dismantle our city-aimed nuclear weapons because their use would destroy us with nuclear winter. It is worth settling this issue. U.S targeting doctrine has excluded "population per se" for the last 10-15 years. No weapon is aimed at a city with the intent of destroying the city. Of course, many militarily significant targets are located within cities, but once you realize that, you see how hard it is to get target planners to aim their weapons somewhere else. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 18 Jun 85 09:37:58 EDT From: Herb Lin <LIN@MIT-MC.ARPA> Subject: SDI in June "Atlantic" To: riddle%zotz.UTEXAS@UT-SALLY.ARPA Entitled "The 'Star Wars' Defense Won't Compute" and authored by Jonathan Jacky of UW, the article struck me as a well-written introduction to the SDI, computer reliability and even a tad of what AI is all about, aimed at non-CS types. Any comments? The article convolutes discussion of the Strategic Defense Initiative and the Strategic Computing Initiative rather badly. (That wasn't his fault -- his editors munged the article.) ------------------------------ Date: 18 Jun 85 11:50 EDT From: dca-pgs @ DDN1.ARPA Subject: Walker Spy Case What I really find puzzling about this case is whatever it was that motivated the Walker "extended family". Given that cash may be a motivator at high enough levels, there didn't seem to be that much cash involved. Bobby Inman was on ABC LateNight a few nights back and raised some interesting points. He felt that the motivator wasn't so much money or ideology (in fact, he didn't think ideology played any part), but ego, coupled with a touch of crank-caller's nihilist escapism. (Paraphrase mine.) Basically, the Walker spy ring consisted of low-to-mid-level technicians and bureaucrats (Walker's brother was an ex O-4), who may been bored with their occupations and themselves, and could be convinced to betray the US. A skilled recruiter would never put it in those terms, though... So most people I know are bored with their jobs at least part of the time. Big deal. What is an effective way to prevent working stiffs with clearances from turning traitor? The DoD has announced a bunch of security-tightening measures, none of which appear to have anything to do with the Walker phenomenon (though they were in response to it) and none of which would have caught the Walkers. -Pat Sullivan DCEC, Reston, VA. PS - Another thing: The FBI did spot Walker picking up a $35K brown-bag cash drop in 1970. Why on earth didn't they follow it up *or* question him *or* suspend his clearance just for "suspicious activities"? Sounds like someone really dropped the ball. ------------------------------ Date: Wed 19 Jun 85 12:02:41-PDT From: DANTE@EDWARDS-2060.ARPA Subject: SDI [Note from the Moderator: I thought that the commentary by Greg Fossedal that is the subject of this message was sufficiently good and important that I have included it as the next (and last) message. - Harold ] Does everyone agree with the June 14 column in the Wall Street Journal on the SDI debate? I have been waiting for some critique here. The basic thrust of the column is that there is "an emerging consensus that Star Wars is scientifically viable." Opposition from scientists "stems from something other than the laws of physics." The scientists who have now actually looked at the feasibility were silent in the beginning because they "didn't know enough about it to comment." The arguments of the critics have been essentially destroyed by careful analysis till now even critics acknowledge, like Hans Bethe, that "the dispute isn't primarily scientific". Nobel laureates whose opposition was used to lend weight to the idea that SDI is science fiction now state things like: "I don't know anything about the Soviet ABM program or our missiles or theirs. I just have the sense of too many weapons up there, and we should keep them out of space if we can." The article was more specific than my brief summary indicates, but I do think I have reproduced the flavor above. Do readers of ARMS-D agree that the critics have been routed in confusion on the technical front, SDI is possible, and the discussion is now wholly political? Mike ------------------------------ Subject: "Star Wars and the Scientists" by Gregory A. Fossedal Supporters and critics alike were taken aback recently when James Fletcher, the former head of the space program, assessed the Star Wars defense idea in an article in Issues in Science and Technology. His conclusion: The U.S. can defend, in the 1990s, between 90% and 99% of its "population and infrastructure," with more exotic technologies providing a "near perfect" system shielding 99% or more of our people from an all-out nuclear attack. Head of a 1983 panel that evaluated Star Wars technologies, Mr. Fletcher has the respect of supporters and oppenents alike. Mr. Fletcher is part of a broad emergence--in some cases a shift--in thinking among scientists since Ronald Reagan called for a defense to make nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." Of course, when one says "scientists," one means chiefly theoretical physists at MIT or Cornell. The typical Boeing engineer or applied-electronics man in Silicon Valley--who probaly has more expertise in this area than, say, Carl Sagan--supported Star Wars all along. Two scientists who generally support strategic offensive programs, but had initial doubts about defense, are Reagan adviser George Keyworth, and Dartmouth physicist Robert Jastrow. In 1982, defending the administration's "dense pack" plan for MX, Mr. Keyworth told reporters even a limited defense plan was unfeasible until the 21th century. In a New York Times column, he attacked notions of "abandoning mutual assured destruction for a posture of mutial assurred survival." Today he is the White House point man on defense. Mr. Jastrow, too, came to Star Wars via the Reagan buildup, which he defended in a March 1983 article for Commentary. Mr. Jastrow had questions about strategic defense after the program was assailed by leading scientists. Then he began to check their calculations "on my own and with the help of colleagues." Last spring he attacked those critics in Commentary. Yet he talked only of a research program, and voiced doubts about such technologies as the "smart rock" or hit-to-kill missile suggested by the High Frontier lobbying group and successfully tested last June. Now, he says a smart rock defense could block 90% or more of a Soviet attack and should be started now. Pans Before Analysis Other substantial supporters abound but simply are not mentioned: Fred Seitz, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, and Bill Nierenberg, director of the Scripps Institute for Oceanography and the head of Jason's panel that debates key issues of defense science for the government. Then there are the heroic young entrepreneurs--Lowel Wood, Gregory Canavan and others--who are carrying out the actual research on Star Wars. One reason we have heard little from these men is that they have not been talkative. Richard Garwin and Mr. Sagan were quoted days after the Reagan Star Wars speech panning the idea--before they could possibly have given it thorough analysis. By contrast, Mr. Seitz syays, "I didn't know enough about it to comment ... I was interested way back in the 1960's, when we were only talking about a very limited defense.... With Mr. Reagan's idea we're really talking about something much bigger that I hadn't studied." After briefings at Los Alamos and Livermore, Mr. Seitz concluded, "We have moved ahead since then. We ought to go all-out." Mr. Nierenberg says: "The fact that Garwin says something won't work is very little evidence. Historically scientists are the worst at predicting scientific advances," he says, citing experts who ruled out the airplane, the intercontinental missle and, of course, the nuclear bomb that Mr. Reagan would try to make obsolete. To their credit, Star Wars critics have made major concessions. The most famous of these is on the "constellation issue," i.e., the question of how many satellites it would take to knock down a given Soviet attack. Office walls in the Pentagon now sport a chart detailing how, over time, Mr. Garwin and the Union of Concerned Scientists (the chief lobby against Star Wars) have reduced their original estimate of 2,400 satellites, to counter the present Soviet force, to fewer than 100. The plunging line is know as "the Garwin curve." Then there is the "square root law" derived by Mr. Canavan. This asserts that as the Soviets expanded their missle force by, say, a factor of four, the U.S. can meet that threat by expanding its defense only, by, roughly, the square root of four--or two. The intuitive proposition is that there are economies of scale in knocking down Soviet attacks, as in most other enterprises. Mr. Canavan started with papers by Star Wars critics, corrected for some flawed modeling, and derived the square-root low. If he is right, Star Wars defenses would be ruinously expensive not for the U.S., but for anyone who tried to counter then with an offensive buildup. Still widely reguarded as a scientist, even by Star Wars supporters, is Hans Bethe. Mr. Bethe now concedes his coleagues were wrong in a number of initial arguments. "We were wrong" on constellation size, Mr. bethe wrote me last fall. Now, after receiving the briefings Mr. Seitz has, Mr. Bethe concedes the group was probably wrong about the lethality of the X-ray laser that might be used to zap nuclear missiles. Wrong on the weight of potential components that must be lifted into space. Wrong about potential power output by certain kinds of lasers. And wrong to dismiss smart rocks with a few paragraphs: Mr. Bethe syays this is probably "the Best" approach to defense for the forseeable future. Has the evidence changed Mr. Bethe's mind? We talked in Cornell recently. He said, "You know what I think." Well, yes--but at least it is clear that what he thinks stems from something other than the laws of physics. In a letter to the New York Times June 11, he raises no specific technical flaw with Star Wars. Instead he restates the obvious--that a defense must be survivable--and goes on to offer his view of the test ban treaty, Geneva negotiations, and "arms race in space." In other words, his objections are more strategic in character than scientific. Some who voice no opinion on Star Wars are now critical of colleagues who have dragged science down to a partisan level. Nobel winner Arno Penzias of Bell Labs declined to sign a recent attack on Star Wars issued by the Union of Concerned Scientists. He says UCS materials are "more rhetoric than science." Mr. Penzias agrees with many UCS stands but dislikes its tactics. "Once you take a scientific issue and look at it as a battle you're going to win, you no longer have the right to call yourself a scientist. "I don't like signing something like that unless I have studied it," he told me this week. "People pay too much attention to Nobel Laureates who have little expertise in what they're signing." Robert Wilson, who shared the Nobel prize with Mr. Penzias for detecting a radiation cloud that supports the "Big Bang" theory of the universe, did sign the UCS letter. But, he says, "I don't know anything about the Soviet ABM program or our missles or theirs. I just have the sense of too many weapons up there, and we should keep them out of space, if we can." On the technical side, by contrast, Mr. Wilson says, "I'm sure we can make some kind of defense work.... Star Wars is sound and moving ahead fast technically, but we need to be careful in approach.... I'm mostly concerned about all those nuclear weapons." And if we build up defense? "Oh, that would be a good idea." Many colleagues still respect the critics--particularly Mr. Bether--as scientists. "They've acknowledged it" when they make technical errors, says Jonathan Katz, who participated in a National Academy study of nuclear winter. "Bethe is a great scientist. But the debate is over the assumptions you make about the Soviets, and the criterion you use to judge a defense: How selective does it have to be? There's really no scientific question ... it's a strategic and political judgement." Mr. Nierenberg says the critics have "deliberately obscured" that distinction. Mr. Seitz goes further and says the whole debate, to this point, "has done a great damage to science" and laments that "too many of us have be afraid to speak out." Who Should Speak? Mr. Bethe told me sven months ago that "the dispute isn't primarily scientific," since the key issues now resolve around such political- strategic questions as how the Soviets will react. The debate, Harvard's Ashton Carter told The Economist recently, should be over the utility of less than perfect defenses, which Mr. Carter agrees are plausible. Even such imperfect defenses, Mr. Carter wrote last year, could render nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete"--if they can knock down nculear weapons for less money than it costs the Soviets (or Libya, China, Syria ...) to build them. Yet this is what Star Wars supporters have said all along. Is there now a technical consensus? Should the debate be handed over to politicians, journalists and generals, to the exclusion of physicists? Hardly. If anything, scientsts have played too little a role--because they have squandered their efforts on issues where they truly have no knowledge. While issuing dictums on the ABM Treay, Soviet foreign policy, and so on, scientists have left specific scientific points unanswered. And the journalists have let them. Probably, the press should spend less time with the "political scientists" both for and against Star Wars. And a little more time talking to the people, such as Messrs. Fletcher and Canavan, who haven't said much about Star Wars--because they have been too busy actually studing it. ------------------------------ [End of ARMS-D Digest]