(no subject)
Feb. 17th, 2003 02:32 amhttp://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,57698,00.html
This bothers me. Aside from eliciting the whole "day late and a dollar short" reaction for me, there is the fact that you cannot suppress information these days. You really can't. At best, you can only hope to delay its discovery. And the fact is, anything anyone wants badly enough can be obtained, if they are willing to stop at nothing to obtain it.
So you suppress the information on a "superbug." And it turns out that you haven't suppressed it as well as you thought you had -- or the terrorists had scientists of their own who could duplicate the experiments. Or one of your own people isn't as loyal as s/he might have been.
You know what you have then?
You have a weapon in the hands of your enemy, about which the vast majority of people know absolutely nothing. Not how to counteract it, not how to keep themselves out of harm's way, nothing. And perhaps you don't even know it's been leaked, you're secure in the belief that it's been suppressed. So perhaps you yourself haven't bothered to develop ways to counter the threat.
Where does suppressing the information get you then?
This bothers me. Aside from eliciting the whole "day late and a dollar short" reaction for me, there is the fact that you cannot suppress information these days. You really can't. At best, you can only hope to delay its discovery. And the fact is, anything anyone wants badly enough can be obtained, if they are willing to stop at nothing to obtain it.
So you suppress the information on a "superbug." And it turns out that you haven't suppressed it as well as you thought you had -- or the terrorists had scientists of their own who could duplicate the experiments. Or one of your own people isn't as loyal as s/he might have been.
You know what you have then?
You have a weapon in the hands of your enemy, about which the vast majority of people know absolutely nothing. Not how to counteract it, not how to keep themselves out of harm's way, nothing. And perhaps you don't even know it's been leaked, you're secure in the belief that it's been suppressed. So perhaps you yourself haven't bothered to develop ways to counter the threat.
Where does suppressing the information get you then?
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