Hello everyone, welcome to the new week!
Recently I presented over at TU Delft (Vereniging voor Technische Physica) on the Science of Security. I’ve now published this lecture as audio and as text with lots of slides. Learn all about radar, rockets, stealth, penicillin, hydrogen bombs & my thoughts on how in Europe we have no good avenues for doing military tech research, and how this could end up badly. And a humble suggestion for EU and NATO what to do.
I (modestly) think the whole presentation, as text or audio (with slides) is worth your time, but if you don’t feel like reading 10k words or listening for 46 minutes, here is a summary:
I expand a bit on my background in national security, and explain that I am not in favor of war, so I do think we should have technologies that are scary enough that no one will begin a war against us. And if they do, I want us to win it.
I then showcase various militarily important innovations: atomic bombs, rockets, radar, Enigma/Bombe, GPS/atomic clocks, penicillin, spy satellites.
When summarized, it is clear that universities and science played a major role in all these things. However, universities were rarely “where it happened”. Mostly these played a supporting role. In other cases the military research benefited science (Hubble Space Telescope, lithium & plutonium isotope knowledge).
Universities and societies periodically fret over how they might be leaking scientific knowledge to regimes which might militarily target us with that knowledge. In this talk, I argue universities can’t keep secrets anyhow and that they are in fact outright set up to disseminate and publish what they know. It makes very little sense to worry about what foreign students might pick up here, since it will get published anyhow.
I illustrate a bit what it takes to protect classified data, and invite comparison with how a university operates, and how it is in NO way set up to keep secrets.
I also sketch some scary developments in which the Chinese may well be ahead of us. And that we clearly do not have a lot of special technology left to hoard here.
The talk then discusses where military/defense innovation should happen. Quite clearly universities are involved, but it is likely best to have labs associated with such universities, but not sharing the same buildings and information security practices. Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos National labs etc are great inspiration here. As are the ‘Seven Sons of National Security’ universities in China.
Europe has nothing like that. Meanwhile, “big defense” companies are also not nimble and can’t do this innovation themselves. Startups can do great things with technology that is nearly there, but they can’t do things that cost dozens of millions of billions.
There are a few labs left which can do classified research (like TNO), but these too aren’t currently known for their nimbleness.
I call for EU and NATO to also set up at least one “Son of National Defense” institute. In this way we can again innovate with military technology, and keep ourselves safe.
Thank you!
Bert