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Comment by taraharris | Hacker News Reader

I don't know what's going on, but it's clear that there are vast sums of money going into illegal black programs beyond congressional oversight. I strongly suspect that Kirkpatrick's role is to deflect public interest and criticism in order to maintain the status quo. I don't trust a single word he says.

Regardless of whether or not there is alien life, our government should be forced to open up its secrets, whatever they may be. We don't need any of this to stay safe.

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In 2009, the black budget was estimated to be over $50 billion [1]. It's so huge that the military industrial media complex designed, built, and operated an entire 100 jet wing of secret new fighters in the 1980's [2].

1. https://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/05/pentagons-black-bud...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_F-117_Nighthawk

We can write anything; the differentiator is evidence. Certainly there are programs outside public oversight, but do we have evidence of the vast sums outside Congressional oversight? Where do they get the money if not from Congress? Do you have evidence of Kirkpatrick's role?

> our government should be forced to open up its secrets

That is generally the law (including the Freedom of Information Act), though there's overclassification by security agencies. Some things need to be classified, obviously, so what exactly are you advocating? How do we improve it?

We should repeal the National Security Act of 1947.

Nuclear weapons have proliferated to nine nations around the world since the passage of that act. The production of nuclear armaments is clearly limited by political will and industrial power, not knowledge.

The act protects a foreign policy establishment that has abused its power to conduct dirty tricks against other nations for decades in order to keep American elites rich and in power.

No one is going to invade the American homeland, given the vast oceans separating us from the rest of the world. Repealing that act and removing the foreign policy establishment from power would unwind our vast empire abroad and greatly improve our relations with other nations.

I would prefer that we do this cleanly, but unfortunately I think our empire will suffer a far messier fall from power over the coming decades. Empires at this stage flail wildly in their military adventures.

Even accepting what I think are very inaccurate perceptions of US and world international relations needs, what would we replace it with?

Also, back to our topic, how do you handle secrecy? Again, obviously some things must be secret, some things public.

Absolute answers are too easy - nothing, everything, destroy the entire foreign policy establishment, etc. We need real ideas and answers.

There's no need to "destroy" the entire foreign policy establishment. We just need to force them to operate without the secrecy and privileges they presently enjoy and exploit so they can be subject to the democratic process.

Surely this is better than to suffer more wars like Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.

EDIT (apparently my responses are being throttled): In response to wolverine876's question below, "How would secrecy be managed?"

We don't need any secrecy or statecraft. We're so large and established that we can do everything out in the open. Russia and China know where our missiles, bases, ships and submarines are, and we know where their are. The only people in the dark about everything are the citizens in both countries.

A similar argument was made against Linux when open-source was new. It turns out you don't need any closed source code at all to run a successful project.

I'm still not sure what solution you are suggesting. How would secrecy be managed?

"ufo detection" and missile defense are the same technology so you couldnt be more wrong.

Missile defense is a misnomer. The distinction between a defensive and offensive capability is meaningless in the context of arms races and mutually assured destruction. As we pour billions into shooting down ICBMs, China will pour billions into new delivery systems to evade that defense, and vice versa.

The net result is that money on all sides is taxed away from things that people actually need and want (food, shelter, medicine, schools, parks, the arts) and directed into things that either rust in silos and bases or kill us all.

The only way to stop an arms race is to increase transparency and to negotiate treaties with our peers.

Transparency is a double edged sword. You definitely want to hide some capability (ambiguity) otherwise the opponent can calculate what to do to win, and then just do that.

What we need is to minimize or eliminate the adversarial relationships between nations globally. The only winners of the present status quo are the elites in every nation.

That's heavily context dependent and it's a perspective that assumes that adversarial relationships emerge because both sides did something wrong. This naive appeasement mindset in the 1930s did more harm than good, for example. If you have a rival that's revisionist and aggressive, sometimes you need less cooperation and negotiation, and more war, in order to accelerate their demise. Of course, you usually don't want that, but as I said, it's context dependent.

I genuinely can't believe that you're doubling down on the idea that missile defense capability secrecy isn't necessary. Are you an actual spy? The secrecy is precisely what prevents the arms race.

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