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…al-Ghazali and his family sheltered in their house as a fierce street battle erupted in his neighborhood. In the midst of the fighting, he noticed that the Americans had called up an oddly configured tank. Then to his amazement the tank suddenly let loose a blinding stream of what seemed like fire and lightning, engulfing a large passenger bus and three automobiles. Within seconds the bus had become semi-molten, sagging "like a wet rag" as he put it. He said the bus rapidly melted under this withering blast, shrinking until it was a twisted blob about the dimensions of a VW bug. As if that were not bizarre enough, al-Ghazali explicitly describes seeing numerous human bodies shriveled to the size of newborn babies.
Originally posted by The Vagabond
I suspect you may be taking the "faking its own death" thing a bit too literally. I'm not suggesting that the US is attempting to appear completely broken. That would be a very dangerous ploy;
If the authority of the federal government, the prestige of the nation, and our standard of living all fall too far, then our political situation would be radically destabilized in mere months. Within a year there could be deep regional hatreds in America that could plague a whole generation. Within 5 years I would expect widespread violence and rampant crime. Sometime after 10 years, America would try to rip itself into somewhere between 3 and 8 separate nations. Not a good strategy.
What I'm suggesting here could be working on an incredibly short timetable. I could imagine it being as short as what follows:
2008-2009 they take the money, 2010 they plan and prepare and screw up and delay as is their custom, 2011-2012 real work is underway on "project x" whatever it might be, and we appear to have bottomed out and leveled off and a really good plan to get us going up again is finally announced. Obama is narrowly reelected in 2012, possibly due to above average turnout among voters age 120-200 in Florida and Ohio. 2018 word is slowly getting out about what we're up to, but it's too late for anyone to catch up in whatever area we've been trying to leap ahead in.
2020- we have whatever it is first and we enjoy a commanding lead for several years, during which we can get to work on the next step.
Now again, what is "it". What would possibly be our goal if we were doing something so elaborate? It would have to be a generational advance in technology I think. Anything from A.I. to Zero Point Energy- that makes it impossible for the competition to catch up once you get there first.
Tale AI for example. If you create a programmable super-human intelligence before anyone else, then it is unlikely that anybody can catch up to you (unless their late-arrival version is vastly superior to yours) until you reach the limits of that technology, because while they have to train computer scientists still to work on their own AI so they can catch up, you can now simply copy and paste all of the computer scientists you want to help you improve further and widen the gap.
I like to look at the big picture, and the endgame is ALMOST in sight. At some point there is a race to the technological singularity, and whoever wins it controls the fate of the world, because as exponential increases in our capabilities come faster and faster together, the gap between the leader and the runner up gets wider. You can do the math for yourself.
2 squared is 4, 3 squared is 9, the difference is 5. Next advancement: 4 quared is 16, 9 squared is 81. The difference is 65.
So what are we squaring? It could be energy production, it could be computer power, it could be the number of shots a military weapon fires per minute. It doesn't matter. The point is that at some point in the future, being 5 years ahead in technology will be the equivalent of being ahead 50 years today. (ie: the difference between 2100 technology and 2110 technology could be greater than the difference between the technology of 1960 and that of 2010.)
That is a pretty decent motive to take a certain degree of risk in order to increase your black budget, and not only does it not require, but it does not really allow us to appear helpless- it simply requires that a whole lot of money and other resources go missing for a while.
Originally posted by The VagabondUSA faking its own death?
Originally posted by Silver Shadow
Nobody is coming to help you.
And in a few years time, when America is a desolate smoking ruin, ruled by street gangs, some Americans will still be saying, this is all part of our master plan for world domination.
Product Description Editor's Preface The manuscript comprising this book has an unusual history. It was completed in 1994 and submitted to the National Defense University for publication; however for a number of reasons, it was never actually published in hardcopy form. The staff of the Directed Energy Professional Society (DEPS) including a number of independent reviewers active in DE research felt that the material was a valuable addition to the body of literature in directed energy and should receive the benefits of open distribution in the context of historical reprint. Containing much more than simply descriptions of DE effects as implied by the title, it is a unique compilation of material ranging from the physics of conventional kinetic weapons to particle beams and provides a unique single source on the principles and effects of these weapons. It should prove useful to practitioners in the field as well as executives seeking to understand the detailed attributes of directed energy. Joseph S. Accetta, Ph.D. Managing Editor, Directed Energy Professional Society March, 2009