Mike's review of Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld
Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld by Sharon Weinberger
Mike's review
rating:
bookshelves:
nonfiction
status:
Read in March, 2008 — I have a copy to sell/swap
Equal parts hilarious and terrifying. It focuses on one particular DARPA-funded project -- creating a bomb with the power of a nuclear weapon but small enough to carry in your briefcase (or under your turban?). A perfect storm of ignorant bureaucrats and military personnel (no doubt primed to ignore scientific consensus and peer review by decades of politicized science bashing), credulous journalists, a culture of secrecy in the Bush white House, and pathological science by a few outsider physicists (blinkered by combination of egoism, greed, and ambition) lead to multi-million dollar sink hole.
It would be funnier if anyone culpable was ever held accountable, but of course on one in Bush's government ever is. The terrifying part is (1) this weapon, dubbed the "nuclear hand grenade", would not only be worthless in normal military use but effective only as a terrorist weapon; (2) although the science behind the program is completely horseshit, funding continued, at lea...more
It would be funnier if anyone culpable was ever held accountable, but of course on one in Bush's government ever is. The terrifying part is (1) this weapon, dubbed the "nuclear hand grenade", would not only be worthless in normal military use but effective only as a terrorist weapon; (2) although the science behind the program is completely horseshit, funding continued, at lea...more
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