[ExI] Should the US Have a Military Presence in Space?

[Mike Dougherty]

On Tue, Jun 26, 2018 at 12:44 AM, <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

> But now consider information warfare, which we have been in for years
> now.  It has become more apparent recently, as we have come to suspect that
> American adversaries managed to influence US primaries to get both major
> parties to nominate their very worst candidate.  This is modern warfare.
> America lost the first major battle.  It isn't even clear who the
> adversaries are, but it is clear enough that at least some of them are
> within our borders.
>
> Consider that in the future, some of the most devastating weapons will be
> entirely software, systems that are developed by a small team of 20 to 50
> perhaps, no factory necessary, but absolute secrecy is critical.  If the
> effectiveness of a system depends completely on absolute secrecy, then I
> can imagine the following characteristics: the team will need to stay
> small, it will likely need to be geographically isolated perhaps as much as
> Los Alamos was, no bids can be issued, no subcontracts, very few people
> briefed even in government, resulting in a system which will cause
> confusion and uncertainty that any weapon system was ever used.
>
> There will be no immediately-obvious destruction of property, no direct
> injuries or deaths, no projectiles, no starving refugees, just a general
> feeling something went really wrong, a trail of chaos, a culture-war with
> no apparent underlying cause (as we had in the culture war of the 1960s
> where we at least had a questionable war to argue over (what do we have now
> that is analogous to that?  (Do think carefully before answering (no
> election outcome can be legitimately considered analogous to a war.))))
>
> We are seeing warfare transition dramatically, but there is an important
> point to my scenario: if a major offensive military subsystem like this is
> developed, it has all the characteristics which will require for it to be
> created by the military.  They can take a select group of highly-focused
> people, remove them to an isolated place for security reasons, take care of
> their mundane needs, control access, do all the stuff necessary to develop
> a system completely dependent on secrecy to be effective.
>
>
governments entering the memewars will be at a disadvantage: showing up
late where the international/global brands have been setting the stage for
50 years.

ok, maybe they'll have their own sandbox for ideology ... as long as cash
continue to flow, megacorps will allow governments to have their regional
influences
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