80 Billion Dollar US Intelligence Budget and the Defense of Civilization

From: http://theblotch.com/wordpress/?p=934

80 Billion Dollar US Intelligence Budget and the Defense of Civilization
by SPLOTCH
So it seems that 80 billion dollars per year are being spent on the Intelligence Industrial Complex in the United States – 80 billion dollars: $80,000,000,000. But what are they doing, exactly? what are they watching and what are they trying to guard against? Stinking, unwashed, underfed cave dwellers in Afghanistan? A clerical, Sharia-based, and thus eminently or even overly orderly government in Iran? A few nuts with fizzle bombs and explosives in their underwear? And this costs 80 billion dollars?

In the meantime, the whole electrical, electronic, digitally base infrastructure of modern civilization – the entire economy, the food supply, the money supply, pretty much everything which makes modern civilization what it is, is completely unprotected if the sun makes one untoward burp in our direction. Scientists call this a CME or coronal mass ejection, which in addition to other exotic waves and particles could send an EMP or electric magnetic pulse our way.

What could a massive EMP do? If this EMP creates its own magnetic field oriented with the earth’s own magnetic field, it could knock out every power grid on the planet. What would that mean? No communication. No one would have any idea whether anyone else was affected. Computers, cell phones, and land lines useless, as if they never existed. Modern vehicles based on electronics (anything built within the last decade or so) would cease to operate. The long and complicated chain of trucks which brings food to the hundreds of millions every day in North America would stop dead. Grocery stores would be cleaned out in a day. Furnaces would not work in the north. Those with fireplaces would soon be tearing boards off their neighbors’ houses to keep warm. The others would simply freeze. After that, it’s every man and woman for themselves. Whoever has the most guns and the most bullets will eat and keep warm, the others will perish. A Mad Max world with no end in sight for maybe a century if ever.

There is presently no protection for this. The power grids are not dampened or shielded. There are not enough spare transformers around to light one small city. Nothing has been done, nothing is being done. And yet 80 billion dollars a year are being spent to insure that a radical doesn’t blow up your local convenience store or bring down a plane. Plane crashes are bad, but how about the end of civilization, the death of billions, and a benighted essentially medieval world dominated by the strong and the ruthless for decades or centuries?

This is a very remote possibility though, right? Actually, scientists say such an event is inevitable within 10 to 100 years – or as early as tomorrow for that matter. Inevitable means it will happen, it’s only a matter of when. Will we be prepared when it does? Not if it happens right now, we won’t.

Add to this the very real risk from large asteroid strikes, also inevitable in the course of the next few centuries or again as early as next week, and also potentially as damaging as the CME or even more so for a really big one, and it adds up to – we’re spending $80 billion on what?

A bill has presently been introduced in Congress but has not yet passed. It is called H.R.5587 and seeks to establish a United States Commission on Planetary Defense. The bill calls for the establishment of a 2 million dollar budget to help track NEOs or near earth objects (civilization-killing asteroids, in other words). 2 million dollars to help ward off the extinction of the human race, 80 billion dollars to track a few savages with AK-47s – does that sound reasonable? Lets compare those two numbers: $2,000,000 vs $80,000,000,000. Crazy.

Why might ET talk?

Below is an interesting discussion about reasons that might compel a civilization to broadcast its existence.

From: http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/12/the-human-species-urge-for-et-communication-a-galaxy-insight.html

The Human Species' Urge for Contact - The Search for ET (VIDEO)

The search for extra-terrestrial life assumes two things: that there is some, and that it wants to talk, and while the first is obvious to anyone with even the remotest understanding of the size of the universe the second still poses a lot of questions. The fact is there's only one E.T. whose communications motives we ever understand, and all he wanted was to get off our crazy dirtball.  And we made him up.

Those interested in interstellar inquiry (which we really hope is all of you) should check out the METI discussion linked at the end of this post. The Benford brothers launch an interesting discussion on the costs and constraints of any communicating aliens, and while the idea of applying economic limitations to alien life is depressing it's well worth thinking about.  There's also a discussion of the motivations for messages, and the sort of signal we should expect from each.

Thinking broadly, high-power transmitters might be built for wide variety of goals other than communication driven by curiosity. Here are a few examples:

Kilroy Was Here. These can be signatures verging on graffiti. Names chiseled into walls have survived from ancient times. More recently, we sent compact disks on interplanetary probes, often bearing people’s names and short messages that can endure for millennia.

High Church. These are designed for durability, to convey the culture’s highest achievements. The essential message is this was the best we did; remember it.

The Funeral Pyre: A civilization near the end of its life announces its existence.

Ozymandias: Here the motivation is sheer pride; the Beacon announces the existence of a high civilization,even though it may be extinct, and the Beacon tended by robots.

Help! Quite possibly societies that plan over time scales ~1000 years will foresee physical problems and wish to discover if others have surmounted them. An example is a civilization whose star is warming (as ours is), which may wish to move their planet outward with gravitational tugs. Many others are possible.

Leakage Radiation: These are unintentional, much like objects left accidentally in ancient sites and uncovered long after. They do carry messages, even if inadvertent: technological fingerprints. These can be not merely radio and television broadcasts radiating isotropically, which are weak, but deep space radar and beaming of energy over solar system distances. This includes “industrial” spaceship launchers, beam-driven sails, “planetary defense” radars scanning for killer asteroids, and cosmic power beaming driving interstellar starships with beams of lasers, millimeter or microwaves.

Believe and Join Us: Religion may be a galactic commonplace; after all, it is here. Seeking converts is common, too, and electromagnetic preaching fits a frequent meme.

Interstellar communication is no easy feat (assuming you haven't found any kind of space-time shortcut). People like to joke about how an aliens first look at us will be I Love Lucy or American Idol (in which case we'll be very lucky to avoid extermination), but physically it'd be easier for the alien to warp here and buy the DVDs.  Television transmitters aren't exactly interstellar beacons.  The most powerful transmission tower in the world only emits 2.5 Megawatts - assuming zero losses (and while you're at it wish for a unicorn), by the time the signal reaches the closest star it's spread out over 130 billion square kilometers, only twenty picowatts per square meter.  Not even a trillionth of a lightbulb and, in case you haven't noticed, the only thing we can see that far away is stars.

We have to assume than any information we intercept is either intentionally beamed at us (or out at random) or based on technology we haven't imagined yet.  We should really hope for the latter or it's going to be a long cold existence of extremely slow shouting at each things.

Luke McKinney