In the world of research and development, as in the world of entrepreneurial capitalism, there’s this notion of a “proof of concept.” A proof of concept is a small-scale test or prototype demonstration that takes some new idea and subjects it to some stress-testing by reality — not a full dose but enough to show that the idea might be worth pursuing. Prove the concept, and maybe you’ll risk fully funding the idea. Can’t prove the concept? Give up. Move on to something else.
For two decades now, ever since Ronald Reagan unveiled his “Star Wars” vision, a faction of the defense-industrial complex has been trying to produce a proof of concept for missile defense — to show that we can, with some level of reliability, defend the U.S. by shooting down hostile incoming missiles.
This week, they failed, again.
As proofs of concept go, this was not a cheap one — the single test cost $85 million. We’ve spent $80 billion to date on this program, and President Bush wants to spend another $50 billion in the next few years.
But the real issue is not cost but methodology: The whole point of the proof of concept approach is that, if you can’t prove the concept, you pull the plug while you’re still in the R&D phase. The Bush administration is instead ignoring the simple reality of the results of its experiments and barreling forward.
I guess it’s just being consistent: If you don’t accept simple budgetary arithmetic and you don’t accept the results of weapons inspections in Iraq and you don’t accept the overwhelming scientific consensus on global warming, why should you break the pattern and accept the data from your missile-defense experiments? After all, that might be inching uncomfortably close to the “reality-based community.” (See Fred Kaplan in Slate for a more detailed argument: “We can’t even count on the rocket getting out of its launch silo, much less the millions of minute operations that must follow. President Bush fielded a half-dozen antimissile missiles and called them ‘operational.’ But they’re a ruse.”)
What we have here, aside from a massive and repeated technical failure, is a proof of concept for our government’s new, proof-of-concept-free approach to spending our money. If we can get away with this reality-denial, the Bush administration’s logic goes, let’s keep doing it on a bigger and bigger scale! And indeed that’s what’s unfolding as the comic opera known as the Bush economic plan plays its overture to Act Two.
Let’s see, we had enough money to support Social Security until we cut taxes repeatedly and manufactured a crisis, which is now being used to justify a ridiculous privatization scheme. But we still have enough money to pour into the black hole of missile defense.
I hate to be cynical, and certainly a lot of this is being driven by stupid blind ideology, but there is a common thread here: There’s profit to be made by parking billions of Social Security money on Wall Street. And there’s money to be made in missile defense.
Hey, maybe some of that money will be kicked back in 2008, when it’s time to find and fund another Republican to keep this con game going!
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