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Comment by SolaceQuantum | Hacker News Reader

One of the things pointed out that they identified when certain plans (eg. missile defense system) was not useful, and also that the sound heard during the 'sonic attack' were crickets.

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Right, but they're hardly a single point of failure with regard to internal oversight of missile defense systems; that alone is a multiple $Bn per year endeavor with several competing bureaucracies analyzing weak points and areas to improve.

The cricket thing is just a hypothesis; the article itself says that, "No definitive cause of the illnesses has been determined".

I don't have a dog in this fight, I'm just kind of skeptical.

They're not a single point of failure, they're one of a myriad of important analysis of weak points and areas to improve. Note that in the article the scientists are not defining the illness, merely were able to identify the source of the sound.

I'm mostly skeptical at the skepticism. Why wouldn't one want to retain world class researching talent to be queried at a moment's notice regarding anything that could possibly threaten the country?

Why would a retainer be something we should put tax dollars toward? Why not pay them when they are needed, instead of paying them for who they are?

Reminds me of Nixon trying to get rid of the Tea Tasting Board.

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/05/13/archives/nixon-drops-plan...

They are paid for when they're needed. They've been scheduled for 15 studies.

I'm sure top scientists working on stuff for the military are just filling public research journals with all the work they are doing.

And you don't think the people in charge of keeping nukes safe saying they are needed to keep the nukes safe justifies their position?

How are missile defense systems not useful? The most obvious example of a useful missile defense system that comes to mind is the Iron Dome Defense System.

In the article, the example was a "space-based missile defense system".

... oh ... yeah, that's fucked.

Strategic missile defence systems are destabilizing; game theory argues that if the other side builds such a defence your best bet is to attack before it's completed; failing that you need to build up your armory to a size where it can overwhelm the projected defense. This is why the US and UUSR signed a treaty in '72 specifically banning them (except for one city each; the US didn't even bother to deploy its).

Wasn’t this abrogated?

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