[fa.arms-d] Arms-Discussion Digest V3 #47

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.

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[End of ARMS-D Digest]