
A Trump-era purge of military scientists at a legendary think tank - SolaceQuantum
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-science/
======
leroy_masochist
I read the article and didn't find any compelling examples of how the Jason
team did anything that created actual value for the DoD specifically or US in
general.

AFAICT, this is a team of distinguished scientists that is kept on the
government payroll so that the US has the best scientific minds available for
national security issues. Sounds great in theory, but when a clearly
sympathetic article's chosen examples of the good work the group does include
nuggets such as, "In the 1960s, the Jasons invented a type of sensor that
could detect enemy guerrillas in Vietnam and communicate their location to
U.S. bombers", I dunno, I'm kind of skeptical. I mean, maybe that sensor had a
subsequent use case for the space program or something, who knows.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
One of the things pointed out that they identified when certain plans (eg.
missile defense system) was not useful, and also that the sound heard during
the 'sonic attack' were crickets.

~~~
leroy_masochist
Right, but they're hardly a single point of failure with regard to internal
oversight of missile defense systems; that alone is a multiple $Bn per year
endeavor with several competing bureaucracies analyzing weak points and areas
to improve.

The cricket thing is just a hypothesis; the article itself says that, "No
definitive cause of the illnesses has been determined".

I don't have a dog in this fight, I'm just kind of skeptical.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
They're not a single point of failure, they're one of a myriad of important
analysis of weak points and areas to improve. Note that in the article the
scientists are not defining the illness, merely were able to identify the
source of the sound.

I'm mostly skeptical at the skepticism. Why wouldn't one want to retain world
class researching talent to be queried at a moment's notice regarding anything
that could possibly threaten the country?

~~~
sverige
Why would a retainer be something we should put tax dollars toward? Why not
pay them when they are needed, instead of paying them for who they are?

Reminds me of Nixon trying to get rid of the Tea Tasting Board.

[https://www.nytimes.com/1970/05/13/archives/nixon-drops-
plan...](https://www.nytimes.com/1970/05/13/archives/nixon-drops-plan-to-
abolish-tea-testing-board.html)

~~~
SolaceQuantum
They are paid for when they're needed. They've been scheduled for 15 studies.

------
papito
Ya'll are not aware of the level of anti-intellectualism and anti-expertise in
the Soviet Union, are you? Well, it was so epic and catastrophic - there is a
new show about it, called Chernobyl.

To be accurate, there WAS science, engineering, and expertise, but it had to
neatly align with the Party Line.

~~~
ohaideredevs
The USSR also glorified scientists to a degree that is unheard of in the US.
While people here grew up with Martin Luther King Ave, the USSR kids grew up
with Yuri Gagarin street.

Furthermore, phds were available to people besides wealthy kids or those
looking to commit economic suicide.

There were problems with the USSR, but education definitely surpassed US
education in the 80s. Furthermore, what Kennedy tried to do with his fitness
program was commonplace in the USSR.

~~~
wyldfire
I lived for a while in Milwaukee, WI which sports a James Lovell Street. I was
curious and I looked up Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong. Armstrong has streets
named after him in California and Nevada, I didn't see one for Aldrin.

~~~
drak0n1c
Buzz Aldrin is a prominent conservative, and has campaigned over the decades
and given speeches at CPAC and the SOTU. Politics also influences how city
governments name streets.

------
notfromhere
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Technology_Assessmen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Technology_Assessment)

This is like when Gingrich killed OTA to make room for lobbyists and
consultants to run roughshod. Guarantee this is going to lead to a fat
contract for someone

~~~
asark
> According to Science magazine, "some Republican lawmakers came to view [the
> OTA] as duplicative, wasteful, and biased against their party."

Presented without comment.

~~~
notfromhere
"biased against their party" is both depressing and sad given the low standing
of scientific knowledge in the modern GOP.

------
whatshisface
If you're not planning to engage in nuclear war with modern national
superpowers, maybe you don't need a board of the top physicists on call for
information about weapons research.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
In the article, the board of top phycisists are also queried about waves and
the safe storage of nuclear material. They also were the guys who state that
the 'sonic attacks' in cuba were crickets.

~~~
SaintGhurka
That is an inaccurate characterization of the finding. They found that the
sound that they heard was crickets. They did not determine what caused the
injuries or illnesses. The linked article was careful with its wording.

------
SamReidHughes
If giving a bunch of academics vacations in La Jolla is so useful to the
bottom line, maybe Google, Apple, or Walmart should buy their services
instead.

------
Animats
There's an argument that the Jasons have outlived their usefulness. They're
mostly physicists, who were more important in the atomic age. One of the books
about them indicates that they need more bio and social science expertise.
That was written in the terrorism age.

That's not why Trump got rid of them, of course.

~~~
addicted
That's an argument for them being expanded or modified.

------
liberte82
> In Oceania at the present day, Science, in the old sense, has almost ceased
> to exist. In Newspeak there is no word for 'Science'. The empirical method
> of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were
> founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc. And even
> technological progress only happens when its products can in some way be
> used for the diminution of human liberty. (2.9.30).

> The Party employs science and technology to curtail human freedom and
> privacy, and to control human behavior.

------
godshatter
Am I the only one that was shocked to find out that we have around a thousand
independent advisory committees on the payroll? As someone who is a citizen of
the US and who is not a Republican or a Trump supporter, I think we do need to
scale back funding in a large number of areas of the government given the huge
amount of national debt we have taken on. Having around a thousand advisory
committees seems ridiculous. Maybe the Jason committee should have been
spared, maybe not, but I can't claim to be upset that we are trying to cut
back.

~~~
frtlp
Perhaps the roughly $700B defense budget could make up those cuts?

:)

~~~
godshatter
I would be very happy indeed if that ever became a thing. In my opinion, we
should have just enough of a military to be able to protect ourselves and stop
policing the rest of the world, or whatever it is we think we're doing.

------
roenxi
Putting the Trump name on this probably got them more eyeballs, but it seems a
bit of a pity. The story is genuinely interesting without branding another
article with the president's label. It seems unlikely he is especially
involved in this. Mentioning him unnecessarily politicises the story; the man
stirs up strong feelings.

~~~
IfOnlyYouKnew
The decision was made and is being defended by a direct appointee of the
President:

> On March 28, Trump appointee Michael Griffin – the Pentagon’s chief
> technology officer – unexpectedly moved to terminate the group.

It's also done in accordance with an executive order signed by the President
himself:

> A June executive order signed by Trump requires all federal agencies to
> slash a third of their independent advisory committees by September 30, with
> the goal of ultimately reducing the total number of such committees to no
> more than 350 from about 1,000 now.

There is nothing frivolous in mentioning the person responsible for a policy
under discussion. While it may sometimes seem like there is too much Trump
news, most journalists not directly covering the White House actually are
fairly hesitant to invoke his name, because it invariably dooms any
discussion. But in a case such as this, it would be journalistic malpractice
not to show the line of causality.

