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C00002 00002	defens[w83,jmc]		Notes for talk on Science and Defense
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defens[w83,jmc]		Notes for talk on Science and Defense

No, there won't be a war, but there will be such a struggle for
peace that not a stone will be left standing.

1. The debate is too shrill.  The doves and hawks each say that
following the other's proposals will lead to imminent disaster.
However, we have dithered between the two policies for 37 years
and haven't had World War III.  Evidently the path hasn't been
straight and narrow.

2. The hawks have one point, however.  They claim the new thing
is the increased ratio of Soviet to American military strength.
This is sometimes denied, however.

3. I don't suppose anyone thinks Reagan wants to start a war.

4. That the present peace campaign took off after the Russians
finished deploying the SS20s, seems, to use a favorite Russian phrase,
"not an accident".

5. I think it is regrettable that we didn't win the war in Vietnam
or at least continue the stalemate.  Many more people have died
in Indochina since the communist victory than died in 30 preceding
years of war.

6. Perhaps American scientists could have helped win that war if
we hadn't been mostly against our side.  We weren't really asked
for help, but read about the initiatives by scientists before
the American entry into World War II.  Also during the war.

7. It should be remembered that anything done about defense must
be something continuable indefinitely.  It isn't like World War II
where people signed up "for the duration".

8. There is sometimes but rarely a real conflict between open publication of
scientific results and defense.  There should be compromises.  I
think Stanford was and is unnecessarily uncompromising in the
matter of Umnov.  Lieberman took the far out position that we
couldn't even be unco-operative about scheduling visits for him
to industrial plants.  There is a tendency to set up straw men
by implying that the Government wants to restrict what can be
said in classes and other fantasies.

9. A substantial part of the contentiousness seems to me to be
political.  The academic community primarily supports Democrats,
and many tend to pick fights with Republican administrations.

10. DARPA usually has taken a very long range view of their support of
AI research.  During the era of the Mansfield Amendment, the left
hand often didn't know what the right hand was doing.

11. The DARPA program managers are the Government officials who
know the most about what the projects they support are doing.  They
don't know much, because they don't all have the education, and
they have too many projects to supervise, and they spend most of
their time on bureaucratic measures.  It would be somewhat better if more
academic scientists would help out by putting in two years.
Ask Bob Englemore.  However, the present situation is better than
DARPA hiring a lot more bureaucrats.

12. A variety of sources of support is good for science, and the
system whereby most of it is supported by NSF and some by mission
oriented agencies is good for science and good for the country.

13. Playing obstructive games with the Freedom of Information Act
would be harmful.  No real harm has been done, however.  We can
fill out the forms if it really comes to that.