Science Fiction Becomes Science Fact; or, The Next Arms Race

I recently viewed a History Channel program about the development of a new class of weapons called Directed Energy weapons. These are "Star Wars"-type laser weapons and "death rays"—extraordinarily high-power lasers that not only could kill an individual from a distance but destroy an airplane or tank or much more.

It's not clear to me why we need these awesome devices, and, as the TV program admitted, the deployment of such weapons is likely to usher in another arms race. Have we learned, yet—in thousands of years—that every new development in weaponry is matched or even exceeded by the results of countering efforts on the other side?

We must always have newer and more dreadful weapons because the Pentagon boys love their toys—and their toys are destructive. These are people who have never outgrown their boyhood fascination with blowing things up. This viewpoint was beautifully and satirically put forth in the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

I was very saddened by this TV program. These weapons are being developed in my name and, supposedly, on my behalf, and I certainly don't want them. Over the years and decades, we've had a rubber-stamp Congress that gives the Pentagon whatever they want, and Congressmen, a White House, and a public who will rationalize any new weapons, no matter how horrible, as needed for "national defense" or security. And there is the question that was raised after the development of the atomic bomb: Should scientists lend scientific research and knowledge to destructive aims? I think they should not, but it seems we always have plenty of scientists who will work on weapons with few or any qualms of conscience. As an example of their lust for advancing science while, with ivory tower aloofness, shutting their eyes to any real-world implications of their work: I learned from another TV program—no, I do not want to be perceived as having learned all I know from television—that a German Jewish scientist in the Nazi era, incredibly, allowed his research to be used in the development of the Nazis' atomic bomb.

Remember that once upon a time the United States government Executive Branch included a War Department? Instead of that more honest name, now it's euphemistically called the Defense Department, supposedly to manifest the myth that the United States only wages war as defense. (To digress a bit, to see an example or two of how that is not correct, look at how the U.S. acquired some of its territories, especially those from Spain and Mexico: it was simple conquest.)

We probably would have a more peaceable world, as has been suggested, if the world were controlled by women. Men are definitely more aggressive and more prone to war and conflict. A friend of mine has coined the lovely term "testosterone poisoning."

And this can only get worse as a generation raised on video games matures and becomes the new population of the Pentagon. They will have already been well schooled in vicious things to do to your "enemy."

Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein