GREG BEAR

THREAT VS. VISION: THE LONG VIEW IN AN AGE OF FEAR AND GREED

The United States of America has not had its back to the wall in over sixty years. In some respects, internally, we have grown weedy and poorly disciplined. We have lost our way in a tangled forest of old problems and conflicts, both internal and external.

In these long decades of quasi-peace and security for most (some might call it a queasy peace), we have faced challenges both political and military—most importantly in the so-called Cold War, with its demoralizing and divisive proxy conflicts. But strategic persistence and political and economic stability led the United States and the free world to victory, and to the conversion of past enemies to present-day allies—however shaky and troubled our relationships.

In all this turmoil, the greatest challenge of all has been to maintain America’s forward-looking sense of can-do brilliance in the face of being nibbled to death by ducks—by ten thousand smaller challenges and fears. We face no strategic threats on the scale of either World War II or nuclear annihilation,  yet we feel just as uneasy—and that unease has been expertly played for political if not strategic advantage, by our politicians, and by a few of our allies and enemies.

Even now, pundits and politicians claim we are entering “World War III,” or even “World War IV,” which certainly trivializes the scale and sacrifice of previous decades.

The troubles we face are nothing new—they represent extensions of conflicts and political failures both past and present. Characterizing them as new is disingenuous at best.

They reflect the sort of challenges and threats faced by any nation at the pinnacle of its achievement. Less powerful nations and cultures jockey for advantage. Their tactics cannot be those of the wealthy and powerful. From Mithridates to Saddam, the weak have played their calculated, nasty games for the only tactical advantage they can hope to gain, going toe-to-toe with giants.

In light of this, the most difficult challenges we face are loss of perspective, panic, and failure of imagination—all far more dangerous to our republic than any of our current enemies.

To quote classic Pogo, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Today, more than ever, the bullet we don’t hear is the one most likely to cause us the most damage.

In my view, the greatest physical threat, long-term, is likely to be the inner corrosion caused by unstable individuals and small disruptive groups given extraordinary power through new biological technologies. Already there are Web sites that provide encouragement and information for so-called Bio-hackers—“amateurs” who may soon strive to create or re-create real viruses, and real plagues, based on existing templates. These SIMAD threats—Single Individual, Mass Destruction—can arise through the misuse of the very teaching tools we’ll need to stay competitive in science and technology—and through private financing, politically motivated and/or from foreign sources.

Within the next ten years, it will be possible for a small team—even a lone individual—to recreate a deadly flu virus—or almost any other virulent pathogen—in small, hidden labs, using a minimum of commonly available equipment.  (I’ve presented just such a scenario in my novel, QUANTICO, to  explore an alternate profile for the American anthrax bioterrorist, still at-large.) The safety problems facing these SIMADs will be far fewer—and far more cheaply and easily solved—than any similar endeavor using nuclear materials.

The necessary equipment and materials may be exceptionally difficult to track, in an open scientific culture and economy.

And the more disorganized and demoralized our society, the more such extremists will feel compelled to force change. A number of SIMAD extremists in the next ten years will try to find a way to leverage society—or attempt to bring it down.

Given an atmosphere of religious and political polarization, extremists, unbalanced individuals, and even external enemies could cause mass casualties and disruption relatively cheaply, through manipulation of readily available chemical and biological materials. A spiral of repression and fear worse than anything we face now could easily follow.

In my view, such threats in the near future will overshadow the dangers of nuclear conflict or nuclear terror.

Nevertheless, to focus all our resources and imagination on averting such threats—to shut down scientific inquiry, hamstring our economy, and cater to a political culture of suspicion and unlimited counter-terror efforts—would be to throw our game, lose the greater cultural war, and squander our value as a civilization.

The overall health of a culture cannot guarantee an end to internal threats—but it certainly contributes to reducing their frequency and impact. An economically healthy culture empowered by healthy political flux and a sense of optimism about the future, for both individuals and the world, removes fuel from the fires of politically-inspired madness.

Eight out of ten Americans, according to a recent poll, believe that America is in a long-term decline, with no end in sight. This mood of hopelessness began long before 9-11, and reflects much more than just difficulties in the Middle East—it reveals self-frustration,  disappointment with a leadership that seems to have lost its way, and a growing populace that neither appreciates the amazing work currently being done in science and technology, nor understands where that work needs to grow—and how it needs to be tasked with solving the huge logistical and environmental problems even now weighing down our country and our world.

We live in a culture caught between fear and greed—a weedy, under-challenged, over-privileged nation that has not had its back forced to the wall in sixty years, yet remains so powerful and rich that most American citizens will never experience the kind of misery and deprivation that drives politics in much of the rest of the world. We are spoiled rotten—and thus far trapped in selfish partisan blindness, stuck with leaders who seem to lack any will or ability to jerk us out of our moral and emotional tar-pit. Instead, many of our leaders exploit our disaffection to stay in power—a virulent cycle that circumvents accountability and short-circuits any viable future.

The cycle must be broken, and it can be. Not surprisingly, the fundamentals that define America remain the same. We’ve been through similar doldrums before, and emerged with new energy. We have amazing reserves of intelligence and creativity. With any change in leadership at the highest level, there must come a re-commitment among leaders at all levels to focus on not just their careers, or their departments, but on the real and brighter future we will pass along to our children.

The greatest things we have to offer are hope, opportunity, and vision. Our DOD-funded research labs have always been at the forefront of  exploring new technologies and envisioning new opportunities in unexplored frontiers.

 I propose that the best use of AFRL resources must be to intensify and expand upon what the Air Force has been or should have been doing all along—assuring the safety and reach of aerospace exploration and information-gathering, researching and extending both our human presence in space, and the robotic exploration of regions we can’t now exploit or visit in person.

To accomplish these goals, AFRL should expand research in the following areas:

Artificial intelligence. Any aerospace enterprise will be enhanced by truly expert systems. Image and language recognition, as well as problem-solving systems, remain primitive. Current thinking in these areas is still mired in simplistic mathematical work-arounds. The greatest problem facing AI is the same problem facing psychology neurobiology, ecology, and genetics: we still do not adequately understand how living things sense their environment and communicate and adapt to solve problems. We lack viable and widely applicable theories of  complex interacting systems. We do not understand thinking and behavior in individuals or in complex groups. Until we do, artificial intelligence will remain a misnomer, and robots will neatly vacuum our living rooms or amuse us with playful antics.

Large-scale solutions to global warming. While global-scale scientific solutions were once laughingly dismissed as the fantasies of chrome-domed technocratic schemers, we may soon require international efforts on a huge scale to avoid world-wide economic and even ecological disaster. American voters seem to regard New Orleans as the canary in the coal mine—and Al Gore’s movie, as well as our long, hot summer, is pushing many voters across a wide political spectrum to think long and hard about global warming and the environment. Gregory Benford has provided a paper which offers an ingenious example of a technological solution to global warming. Such solutions may be the only way out, given the political fractiousness of much of the world—including our own slowly awakening voters, bless them.

Cheaper space travel. Reducing the cost of putting a kilo of mass in orbit should be the main goal of current space research. A concerted effort to jump the hurdle of extraordinary expense, with the cooperation of the private sector, is more important than ever. Cheap access to space opens up so many possibilities they are hard to count.

Perhaps the greatest long-term Air Force effort will be to help protect the Earth against space projectiles—asteroids and comets. This would give the Air Force a mission far more ambitious and ultimately more impressive than strategic nuclear defense—astronomical defense. A full-scale asteroid defense program could save all life on Earth from extinction. This is almost literally the bullet we don’t hear—except in science fiction, and in poorly-funded, uncoordinated, and dispersed international efforts.

The old, grand dreams of innovation—solar power satellites, new power technologies, multiple space stations, and an expanding presence in the solar system, searching for off-world resources—are still powerful. They represent end-runs around the conflicts and stalemates we will face on Earth for centuries to come—bold solutions to old family difficulties.

As Mr. Hawking has recently reminded us—and as Tsiolkovsky once told us—we cannot stay in Earth’s cradle forever, nor keep all our eggs in one basket. We must disperse, to preserve humanity and Earth’s living heritage. Space research—human exploration and travel—must not be sidelined in short-sighted squabbles for funding. Science is what human beings do, and human beings on the scene—whenever possible!—do it better than robots.

The worst political end-game—quite literally—would be for our defense labs to cater to a limited political vision in an attempt to guarantee short-term funding. The political landscape is too volatile, and the stakes are too high.

The mandate given to our research labs is Vision—we need them to give us the means to guarantee our long-term security, but also to reach out and touch the stars. That is the vision of the last century, and it has yet to be fulfilled.

I urge a re-commitment by the AFRL to the future so many of us have dreamed of—a prolonged effort to take and hold the future’s high ground, both technologically and morally—by giving hope to a world still weighed down by shadows.

Our greatest strategic advantage will come from providing our nation, and the world, a magnificent and universally attractive outlook on the future. The culture and the civilization that does this will win.

The grand vision remains.  As a nation, and as a species, we are outward bound.