Quickies: Insight Is Wherever You Find It

     And I’ve just stumbled over a big chunk:

     “What’s the role of bioweapons in war?”
     “To bring low an enemy who values freedom but not the tools of its preservation, by such means as may strike at any point without warning or restraint.”
     “That one sounds like Mu Zhang. Meaning?”
     I had to think for a moment. “Meaning…a society that tries to be open and unarmed at the same time is stupidly vulnerable to infiltration weapons. There’s all kinds of ways to turn civilians into horrible time bombs using mind control and nanotech. If they don’t do proper security screening, and they’ve all got access to fabricators, and no one is armed, that kind of thing can kill off a whole colony overnight. But even if it doesn’t, places like that don’t adapt well to an internal threat that invalidates their whole political philosophy.”

     [E. William Brown, Perilous Waif]

     Okay, okay: At this time we don’t have mind control, military nanotech – at least, I hope not – or fabricators (which SF writers used to call “pantographs,” and whose ancestors would probably be today’s 3D printers). But we do have a moderately free and very open society: a society whose openness and naivety toward its enemies courts destruction.

     The naivety is best expressed in this: our widespread aversion to becoming an armed society once again.

     The threats against the United States are diffuse. That is: owing to our openness, they can move among us with ease, and can strike without warning at any point or time. The only possible counter to a diffuse threat is a diffuse defense: an armed and patriotic population whose individual citizens are willing to fight for their country even at mortal risk. It’s how Switzerland stood off the rapacity of the surrounding nation-states for several centuries. It’s how Israel has stayed afloat since 1948.

     America’s enemies are more numerous, more cunning, and better armed than Switzerland’s or Israel’s.

     Does this have application to the Wuhan virus, the Kung Flu, the Chi-Com Crud? Perhaps not...but it will apply to some future threat. Count on it.