Noam Chomsky - The Militarization of Science and Space - TAC Forum, MIT (20040215)

Speech given at the MIT Culture and Technology forum, 2004. ABOUT THE LECTURE: Chomsky launches a savage, two-pronged assault on national economic policies and efforts at global domination.By now the stakes are so high that issues of survival arise, says Chomsky. The basic principle underlying our current economy is to make rich people happy and make everybody else frightened. Chomsky lays particular blame for this doctrine on Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan-- Saint Alan-- who claims the economy is working well because of private entrepreneurial initiative and expanding consumer choice. Chomsky disagrees. He claims that in the last 30 years, it has been public spending on such technologies as computers, satellites, the Internet and lasers that has fed the economy. And the wealth derived from these technologies has gone primarily into the hands of corporate masters, who represent a fraction of the American people. The government has used a succession of bogeymenthe Soviets, Communist insurgents around the world, and now global terrorismto scare taxpayers into supporting core defense programs whose technologies ultimately spin off into private hands. The current administration advocates not merely controlling space, but owning it, with a new missile-based system and satellite-guided unmanned drones. This expensive strategy, combined with the doctrine of striking first at perceived enemies, may well bring global calamity.