The Clone Wars.

You've possibly noticed a common theme in everything Bu$hCo does is DisInformation.

There are many examples. Consider the rabid Christian fundamentalism of a man who usually doesn't attend church. A war against terror that really is more designed to sow the seeds of terrorism. Fake questions at Presidential news conferences from male prostitutes posing as press agents. Fake news designed by the government to promote its modifications of Medicare, Social Security, and even its conduct of the war in Iraq. And a Star Wars-influenced NASA promotion of putting men on Mars while cutting the science needed for them to survive the trip.

Over the last couple of days, I've addressed some of the interesting items in the DARPA FY2006 budget recently submitted to Congress. DARPA is the engine behind the Future Combat initiative heavily touted by Donald Rumsfeld, the current brass at the Department of Defense, and the NeoTheoCon think tanks at the AEI. Like the disinformation listed above, the smokescreen is pretty thick around this budget, which is designed first to enrich the Carlyle Group Company, and secondarily to promote American security.

Like their fixation on a God without compassion, they seem to have a fixation on technology without the hardware to actually do the work.

Some sections of this budget are heavily padded to do things that are very ill-advised. For example, the initiatives on robotics spend much money in the attempt to develop a cybernetic Warfighter, with almost $100,000,000 to be spent on development of a self aware, indoctrinated artificial intelligence to be used in combat- while only spending a small amounts of money on the software to actually ensure it can walk.
That's nuts. Insane to make any machine indoctrinated and capable of ignoring direct orders in the field because of its own assessment of higher mission priority (remember HAL?)- and folly to develop sophisticated robots incapable of moving in the real world.
We're not talking Three Laws of Robotics that keep a robot from harming civilians.
We're talking programming in an attempt to make a self aware, situationally aware fighting machine with policy directives that would encourage a machine, for example, to destroy a village in order to save it.
We're talking the lion's share of a budget item to be spent on programming that's not directed to robotic function, but robotic AI, assessment, and control.

Last night I wrote about something in the budget that was of more straightforward use to the soldier and with more real world applicability outside the military frame of reference, the development of coherent electromagnetic energy technologies, useful in communications, in technological and engineering applications, and of course in combat.
Even with this, about half of the budget goes not to research and development, but to "software" development, "virtual" testing, and "training".

Finally, here I'd like to talk about an area of the DARPA budget for Future Combat that I have a little bit of expertise in.

Biodefense.

Except... looking at the actual budget, there's very little really set aside for biodefense.

There is, however, lots for some really strange projects on living things, including soldiers I'm afraid...

The Biochemical Materials ($43.398 million) thrust examines how breakthroughs in the understanding of biochemistry can drastically improve the survivability of soldiers. For example, examining the biochemistry of the brain during sleep deprivation can lead to new approaches for maintaining the cognitive function of soldiers in the face of sleep deprivation. The application of biochemical principles can also lead to techniques to allow the principles of biological organisms that survive in extreme environments to be exploited for the preservation of tissue and cells of interest to DoD. Finally, understanding the biochemical behavior of organs and tissues, including the interaction of energy with biology, can lead to significant advances in the medical treatment of the soldier on the battlefield.

I'm sorry, this is beginning to sound like an X-Files episode.

Do I need to explain to anyone what a bad idea that is?

The Program Plans are even worse:

Program Plans:
- Demonstrate induced desiccation strategies for platelets and red blood cells that allow prolonged periods (> 24 months) of dry storage and recovery. Evaluate efficacy of the blood products in the battlefield environment.
- Develop self-care medical technology to enable the warfighter in the battlefield to accelerate wound healing, internal clotting and pain relief to increase a soldier’s survivability on the battlefield.
- Develop an understanding of the biochemical and physiological causes of decreased cognitive performance during sleep deprivation through studying animal model systems, synaptic function, and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).
- Demonstrate and validate approaches to develop biomaterials and other concepts that extend the cognitive performance capabilities of warfighters during extended periods of sleep deprivation and stress.
- Develop methods for maintaining functional and physiokinetic endurance by nutritional and physical methods that are rapidly inducible, reversible and minimize the need for caloric intake while maintaining both strength and endurance.
- Develop methods for regulating core body temperature and hydration to maintain physical performance and endurance when training.
- Demonstrate the capability to transfer biochemical processes chemically or physically to cells, tissues, organs, systems, and organisms lacking robust survival mechanisms.
- Develop an understanding of effect of non-lethal physical forces on biological responses, including traumatic brain injury.
- Demonstrate full 3-D visual image representation carried on electronic dog tag that can be used to predict likelihood of survival from potentially lethal battlefield wound. Extend 3-D imaging approaches to a virtual autopsy capable of a more rapid and accurate post mortem wound assessment.
- Define and demonstrate new operating room technologies for the battlefield that reduce the needs for operating personnel.
- Develop devices to locate bleeding and stimulate the clotting process using acoustic energy.
- Develop methods for selectively reducing metabolic requirements in a reversible manner following injury in order to extend the period of survival from injury to initiation of treatment.

These aims range from bad- (lyophilized blood isn't blood anymore!)- to poorly thought out- (you don't triage by just looking at dog tags, I don't give a damn how high tech they are- you look at the injured soldier)- to just plain appalling (transcranial magnetic stimulation??!!).

You get the gist of it. It's really does read like the D.o.D. hired some of the old writers for the X-files to dream up some doozies. Fortunately, there are some really good sites that monitor what's coming out of the Pentagon on a regular basis.

I'd advise you to get aware of them, citizen. Who knows when that Cyberdyne Series Warfighter will show up on a street near you? What will you do when Rumsfeld will actually orbits a Skynet satellite?

If you haven't examined the Defense Tech site, please do. It's where I found the link to the DARPA budget. Noah Shachtman is a patriotic progressive who does a great job of blogging on a daily basis about what's new in "technology, defense, politics, and geek culture".