eeinterested wrote:
bEElzebub wrote:
bcgamefisher wrote:
It's a sad fact that as we move forward with an EV future that the flip side of a good thing can give us such destructive things.
The EEsu has so many civil uses it's potential for good is huge.
But rail-guns,ray-guns and exo-soldiers get the money and the backing.
How mission critical are supercaps? how long till LM and EEstor can talk? The emergence of competing designs may actually speed up a release. There may even be a "Military" grade EEsu for all we know.
But it's quite obvious the military would be all over this and I wonder if it is commercialization? or declassification we are really waiting for.
I think a lot of technolgy evolution will be military driven for a long time. The thing is people tend to forget the history of society all the time. How many empires that has risen and fallen. Almost all empires has ended violently, some has imploded but most have been gunned down by a newer better society. It is just darwin's rule survivor of the fittest that holds true society wise too. The only thing looking brighter in that direction is the constant flood of information world-wide that we have today. But although we think that is a bullet-proof thing few of us would notice when misinformation was started to spread by some rouge government. Thing is there are technologies we know of today that would rock the boat and flip the power in an instant as soon as some country had it developed. I can think of 4 directly,
1. Robot army - preferably Von Neumann types.
2. Airborne swarm-robots (fly like things).
3. High-Power laser in orbit, shoots down all enemy satellites and can destroy targets on land.
4. Anti-matter bombs.
As soon as any country have one of these they can take over the world easily. Then it is just for the others to hope that is not their agenda.
But after looking back 2000 years and remember as recently as 20th century we had 2 world wars and plenty of minor clashes and to think that mankind has evolved since is merely just stupid. At least there is no biological difference, so if people liked to empower other people 50 years ago we can be pretty sure that is still the case. So if I was US government and had the power to loose, I would definetely have a pretty steep military budget. One thing we all can be pretty sure of is that if the Talibans had some doomesday weapon they wouldn't really care about civilian casulties. And by the the way it is only a nation with big superiority that cares about civilians. In world war II all parties made sure they killed as much civilians they could to make sure to weaken the enemy the most by an attack. People tend to think the 2 atom bombs was the worst thing that have ever happened, then they perhaps forget that it died more people in tokyo from classical firebombing than the two atom bombs killed together. In fact the atom bombs probably saved millions of lives because japan would probably not surrender if it wasn't for the big upper hand with the atomic bombs.
So not to sound too pessimistic but it is by far the lowest odds to bet on new big war within the next 100 years. So all we can do is try to be on the winning side.
Assymetrical warfare is the only thing that can realistically take place for the next decades. Big vs. insurgents, really.
Any clash between nuclear powers is not winnable by any stretch or measure. If you are not willing to lose all of your major cities in a war, it is not winnable. One submarine can do this.
There is nothing that can protect any major country from any determined nuclear power with the ability to project its arsenal.
This changes things. We need to get down to the business of creating peace. The Taliban needs to be fought, but they did not arise from nothing. Any major conflict can be traced to lots of mis-steps by the dominant powers, and grindingly bad conditions for the regular people.
Railgunning, lasering and bombing our way to peace just ain't gonna happen. We already have astounding superiority; it does not stop suicide bombers, etc.
Backpack nukes, rogue generals, desperate despots, etc. are best kept in check by cooperation and conflict resolution.
Yes and the only way to win against asymmetrical warfare is to change the way we treat other peoples and nations.
The root causes underlying that are generally greed by the "haves".
To win we must defeat "pure" capitalism. The idea of restricting commerce through legislation is however,not likely.(too many lobbyists and uncooperative nations) If we are to avoid inevitable wars and risk of extinction we must change some core values.(wish we could)
Too much cream floating at the top has dis-enfranchised the masses.(nothing new there)
I have always thought this would lead us all to a climactic war long before now. It is a testament to those wise MAD pioneers. The good news is asymmetric warfare does not have the reach to wipe us all out (I hope).
Lens scale 6 down from 8 waiting is hard but still optimistic....will drop to 3.01 if nothing after AGM
