I have a low regard for U.S. intelligence, but it turns out the
situation is worse than I imagined it might be. The whole system is
out of control, ineffective, and it is costing fantastic sums of
money. WaPost just published the results of a monumental two-year study:
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/
Some findings QUOTE:
* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies
work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and
intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as
live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
. . .
* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating
redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and
military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of
money to and from terrorist networks.
* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by
foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000
intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are
routinely ignored.
This is sorta off topic I realize, but bear with me for a moment. It
is sorta on-topic too because:
1. I firmly believe that if cold fusion could be developed, most of
our enemies in the Middle East would lose their funding and vanish.
Terrorists living in abject poverty thousands of miles away from the
U.S. and Europe cannot hurt us. They may hate us but they do not have
the means or the time to hurt us.
2. So much money has been wasted! Just a tiny fraction of it might
have been enough to develop cold fusion and solve 99% of the problem.
3. Seldom in modern history has the government and its independent
contractors screwed up as badly as this. Post-Pearl Harbor, the
invasion of Iraq is the only other example I can think of. I know a
good many horror stories about federal and corporate incompetence but
the scale of this mess is breathtaking. It is most regrettable that
we must depend upon the Federal Government to do what's right by cold
fusion, since corporations are demonstrably even more hopeless than
the government when it comes to this field.
- Jed
