In honor of Hayden, the military, the NSA, and the CIA

http://www.chelseagreen.com/2004/items/welcome/Excerpt

When I was a child, I was taught—as a fundamentalist Christian—that while the devil could not read my mind, he watched everything I did, scanning for the slightest shift of my body or expression that would reveal my thoughts. He did this, I was told, because he wanted to know me. And he wanted to know me not because he loved me—as God did, who watched me also and who knew in addition what went on in my head and in my heart—but because he wanted to tempt and even control me.

My response as a child was to attempt to control myself, to let neither my face nor body, nor especially my actions, reveal my thoughts. I’d fool him! But I knew even at age five that this was a waste of time. I knew—though of course I could not have used this language—that if the devil, or for that matter anyone, could assemble a large enough body of data about my external habits, he could in time effectively read my mind. I knew also that the capacity to read my mind, whether by God, man, or devil, would lead necessarily to the capacity to control me: surveillance controls, and absolute surveillance controls absolutely.


http://www.chelseagreen.com/2004/items/welcome/Excerpt2

Of course our culture today is not secular, but just as religious (in the pejorative sense of superstitious, unconscious, assumed) as ever. Only today, science is the religion, experts are the priests, bureaucrats are the gatekeepers, and research and development institutions are the cathedrals.

Right now, military researchers at MIT and elsewhere are working hard to fabricate technologies that will—and we have to stress that we’re not making this up—allow soldiers to leap buildings, deflect bullets, and even become invisible. Shoes containing power packs will store energy when soldiers—or state police, or corporate security guards, insofar as there’s a difference—walk, then release this energy in bursts to allow them to jump over walls. Soldiers—cops, corporate goons—will be given exoskeletons, like insects, to deflect bullets. These exoskeletons will have the capacity to turn into offensive weapons as well. These exoskeletons will also deflect light so that those wearing them will be as invisible as the man at the center of the Panopticon, as invisible as God. Ned Thomas, director of the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies at MIT, explains why he wants to try to create these übersoldiers—and I picture him laughing like all the mad scientists in all the bad science fiction movies as he speaks— “Imagine the psychological impact upon a foe when encountering squads of seemingly invincible warriors, protected by armour and endowed with superhuman capabilities, such as the ability to leap over 20-foot walls.”