Conference noted::sf

    I don't buy Pournelle's books and I wish I didn't pay federal taxes.
    
    Ray

    In the sixties, long before he wrote SF, Pournelle co-authored a book 
    called "The Strategy of Technology", which claimed that the US
    should focus on better instead of more weapons, since that was
    where we had an advantage over the Soviets.  So he's been
    involved with military policy for a long time.  
    
    I hadn't heard the claim about writing the Star Wars speech,  but
    it's conceivable. That whole program was started with such little
    input from the scientific community that I wouldn't be surprised
    if an SF author wriggled in.  
    
    About $30 billion has been spent on Star Wars so far, with no
    results.  That's more money than was spent on all computer
    research over the same period.  Thanks, Jerry.
    
    /jlr

    
    
    Wouldn't be the first time I heard someone state that Star Wars
    defeated the Evil Empire.  However, politically speaking, I'm not sure
    that I care for the statement that they have been "defeated".
    
    H-

Re: .2

I don't know how you figure that. There's a lot of computer research that's 
happened either directly or indirectly due to Star Wars. Most of the parallel 
processing stuff wouldn't be out of the lab if it wasn't for these types of 
applications and design requirements that drove it to actually be used. I
used to work for Symbolics in Cambridge with Draper, Thinking Machines, 
Lincoln Labs, Mitre, etc as customers. I've heard enough customer requirements 
to know that you don't need 1024 processors to write paychecks. Read the WSJ
and see who is the first customer listed in all the articles about the "latest, 
greatest, and fastest" new machines. It isn't an MIS department driving the 
industry.

    
    Yeah, but...
    
    It isn't necessarily only Star Wars technology that drives the need for
    high capacity computing. I can think of several applications for
    fast computing that the Three Letter Acronyms might find useful--
    for example, weather forcasting and cryptography--that don't 
    involve Star Wars.

True. But they don't get listed in the WSJ. Los Alamos, JPL, Prime Contractors,
and think tanks are generally the ones pushing the technology. Hey, if we can't 
get congress and the general public excited about space and new technology, at 
least we get it as spinoffs of military spending. (sorry, I know this isn't the 
file for preaching/discussing this) The TLAs will continue soaking up as much 
as they need to do what they perseive needs to be done. Likewise, since this is 
covert usage, they really can't actively drive the commercial market.

I'll drop back into the background and enjoy the book reviews 8^)

One other thing that came to mind was all the neural net and robot vision work 
currently being done under DARPA grants/funding

    
    In discussions of SDI over the years I've seen many references to
    something called "The High Frontier" -- was this a document or a
    concept or what? Is there a single author?
    
    JP

    This does tie in, though, with the Niven/Pournelle novel "Footfall",
    which had a _lot_ of SDI type weapons used in it. 
    
    Take the aliens out of this novel and it could have been written by Tom
    Clancy. 
    
    - Russ

    re:.8
    
    "something called "The High Frontier" -- was this a document or a
    concept or what? Is there a single author?"
    
    The concept actually got published as a book with this title.  It was
    coined by a fellow by the name of O'Neill and is concerned with
    mankinds thrust into space.  He subscribes to the theory that man
    should get off-planet and not have all his eggs in one basket (so to
    speak).
    
    The High Frontier was used to describe the push, and the technologies
    necessary to get there, and stay there.  The ideas and concepts spawned
    from this include asteroid and cometary mining, orbital (sometimes
    called "O'Neill") colonies, massdrivers and so on...  It's good reading
    and is probably the way we will tend to go as humanity establishes
    itself off Earth.
    
    The concepts are so good that nearly all have been appropriated by
    various authors and have appeared in MANY SF works since the late 70's.
    
    David
    

    If you want to read more of Pournelle's pronouncments on "High
    Frontier" related topics, I suggest looking at "A Step Further Out"
    which is a two volume collection of Pournelle articles. He uses a lot
    of Star Wars stuff. His style and attitude gets a bit overpowering
    after while though.
    
    Clive

    
    Thanks for the info.
    
    >His style and attitude gets a bit overpowering after while though.
    
    Amen to that...
    
    JP

    re .11 a while = approx 30 seconds 

    It always seemed to me that the Russians could simply have ignored
    Star Wars; it would never have worked, and we could easily have
    damaged our OWN economy trying it.
    
    In fact, they could have respondedd to the whole arms build-up with
    a considerably less expensive and equally effective deterrent
    capability.
    
    The only reason it all worked was because the Russians were saddled with
    their own Pournelle's and Niven's in their military, who 'bit' at the
    'bait'.
    
    By the way, there's at least a possibility that we've *already*
    damaged our economy by the cold war.
    
    Ken

Arguably, a major reason that Japan has done so well is because they
haven't been permitted military spending.

I'd say that it's clear that we've damaged our economy severely.  The only
question is which of several forms of mismanagement and incompetence to
blame.

						-- Spencer

    Pournelle and others who claim that our billions spent on star wars
    drove the Russian government over the brink, are indulging in pure 
    self-serving speculation. The Russian system collapsed of its own
    weight. Now as the smoke is beginning to clear, people are starting
    to discover that the Russians weren't such a military threat after
    all, that the so-called missile gap of the 1960's never in fact ex-
    isted, that untold billions that went into the defense budget *didn't*
    go into schools, highways, education etc., as it could have. I don't
    know who was best served by all of this, but I surely know who def-
    initely wasn't - the millions of middle class taxpayers who paid all 
    the bills.
    
    I get the feeling that Pournelle and his ilk are seeing the finger
    of blame slowly turning in their direction and are reacting with
    a bit of pre-emptive horse-puckey.
     

    re: .4 (Star Wars accelerated supercomputer development)
    
    It's true that DARPA has spent a lot of money on computer
    research, much of it well-spent in my view.  But DARPA is not Star
    Wars - it's the research arm of the whole Pentagon.   Star Wars
    itself spent very little on computers as far as I know.  Most of
    it went to nuclear-pumped X-ray lasers or some other damn-fool
    idea.  
    
    Some military-funded research, such as the development of
    the Arpanet, does eventually have valuable spinoffs.  It's hard
    to see what spinoffs Star Wars could ever have that would justify
    its cost.  Consider that five times as much is spent per year on
    Star Wars as is on controlled fusion.  Even Jerry Pournelle would
    probably rather spend it on fusion.
    
    /jlr

Article: 2432
From: [email protected] (FRANK T. CSONGOS)
Newsgroups: clari.news.gov.usa,clari.news.gov.international
Subject: Kremlin insider: U.S. arms policies helped fuel Cold War
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 92 11:54:49 PDT
 
	WASHINGTON (UPI) -- Long-time Kremlin foreign policy adviser Georgi
Arbatov says the U.S. military buildup under President Ronald Reagan
actually prolonged the Cold War, not hastened its end.

	``It put pressure on the Soviet military,'' Arbatov said. ``The
Reagan policy helped sustain the perception by our hardliners of a
besieged country.''

	Arbatov, an adviser to Soviet leaders for 25 years and now an aide to
Russian President Boris Yeltsin, said there was a virtual ``conspiracy''
during the Cold War between the Soviet military-industry complex and its
U.S. counterpart.

	``One helped the other,'' Arbatov said in an interview with United
Press International. ``If you armed, the other guy would arm as well.''

	President Bush told the Republican National Convention that the
Reagan administration had won the Cold War, to a large degree, because
it had the resolve to stand up to the ``Evil Empire'' and spend hundreds
of billions of dollars on the military.

	But Arbatov said he is not sure the United States really won the Cold
War. He said Japan or Germany are the more likely victors because they
are prospering economically and producing products the world wants.

	He noted that both Japan and Germany have been relying on U.S.
military protection since the end of World War II and able to spend much
of their resources on the civilian economy.

	Asked whether the collapse of communism was inevitable in the Soviet
Union, Arbatov replied:

	``I still believe that the socialist idea has grounds and it works in
some forms in many countries (like Western Europe) and influenced even
American lives,'' Arbatov said.

	``The idea embodies such elementary things as social justice, that
society cares about the weak, who are not left to perish so only the
fittest would survive. But what we tried to do was to build a utopian
society. And this utopian society was a failure.

	``Stalin ruled for 30 years. And now, 40 years later we still have
not accomplished the transition from a totalitarian society into a
normal society,'' he said.

	In his book published this month in the United States and titled 
``The System: An Insider's Life in Soviet Politics,'', Arbatov goes even
further by writing:

	``I, for one, have not lost my faith in the core of socialist ideal,
which is much closer to the social-democratic, rather than Bolshevik,
variety. Nor can I fully renounce Marxism....(because it) cannot be held
responsible for the political follies perpetrated in its name or for the
fact that it was turned into an official state ideology and even a state
religion.''

	Arbatov, director of the Moscow think tank Institute for U.S.A. and
Canada, and who took time out from a book tour for the interview, said
that introducing a market economy system to Russia is a very 
``difficult, painful process.''

	He said lifting price controls and subsidies has wiped out the
savings of millions of Russians without providing incentives to boost
production.

Article: 4083
From: [email protected] (WILLIAM D. MURRAY)
Newsgroups: clari.news.military,clari.tw.science,clari.tw.education
Subject: Lawrence Livermore curtails advanced weapons research
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 93 16:38:38 PST
 
	LIVERMORE, Calif. (UPI) -- Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory, one of the nation's leading advanced weapons research
facilities, announced Wednesday it was refocusing its efforts away
from defense projects like the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). 

	Spokesman Jeff Garberson said the lab -- located 45 miles
southeast of San Francisco -- has decided to reorganize its Physics
Department, home to Star Wars projects like the Brilliant Pebbles
anti-missile system. 

	``This is the first reorganization of our Physics Department
in three years,'' he said. ``And it reflects our focus for the future.
We are gearing down our weapons research. Our traditional nuclear
weapon design program has become less than a third of our effort.'' 

	However, Garberson was quick to add the laboratory would
continue on with $60 million in SDI-funded research this year. 

	``Our funding in the Star Wars area was about $180 million
three years ago,'' he said. ``We have $60 million left and will use
that up.'' 

	Like other national laboratories, Lawrence Livermore is
wrestling with how best to survive the end of the Cold War. The
facility has already entered into $110 million worth of Cooperative
R&D Agreements (CRADAs) with private companies to work on the
technologies needed for the 21st century. 

	``The lab is trying to adjust at every opportunity to the
changing national needs and wishes of the (Clinton) administration,''
he said. ``But this is a big place and we can't change overnight.
Change certainly is happening.'' 

	Before the end of the Cold War, the laboratory was known for
its Star Wars research. During the 1980s, the facility's scientists
proposed to launch an orbiting nuclear-powered X-ray laser that would
shoot down incoming missiles. 

	Then there was Brilliant Pebbles -- a project that called for
the launching of thousands of tiny satellites that would hone in and
destroy incoming missiles. 

	The projects' futurist nature drew criticism that helped deflate 
public support for the pet project of the Reagan administration. 

	``The Livermore lab was not at all important to (SDI's)
success,'' said Angelo Codevilla, a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover
Institution who worked on the Star Wars project for the Reagan
administration. ``It was terribly important to its failure.'' 

	Garberson said the laboratory was also beefing up its program
to police the selling of nuclear weapons research materials to Third
World nations. 

	``We have established a non-proliferation program,'' he said.
``We want to prevent the spread of information on mass destruction
weapons to Third World countries.'' 

	Garberson added that there had not been a problem in the past
with the selling of such technology, but that the Clinton
administration has made prevention of the spread of nuclear weapons
information a priority. 

    Its nice to see they've cut back on nuclear weapons research.  I
    wish someone had asked them who they intended to use'em on.
    
    I liked the line about it being a big place and can't change overnight.
    No way they're giving back that 60 mill earmarked for SDI...
    
    						Don