I am all for preventing a ELE but who will be in charge of it and would it only be for the purpose of deflecting (or some other method) a NEO?
They are trying to work out who would be in charge of it now. The scientists and diplomats are all agreed that it needs to be a consensual supra-national effort. The military types are less enthusiastic about that approach. What does that tell you?
I am of the firm belief that elites run the world and it scares me to think that they would have weapons of some sort placed in near space that could easily be pointed inwards at the direction of some global body (under their direction). That's not even talking about using it against Aliens (if they exist), which would be either a good thing or bad thing depending on level of threat (if there is one).
Whether or not these "elites" exist, space has already been militarized. There is a strong likelihood that some nations will develop "anti-NEO" systems that have, er, secondary uses... but they will develop these anyway. Relax, if the "elite" wanted to reduce the population, they'd just add corn syrup to everything and diabetes would do the rest.
