From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Tue Jan 09 2001 - 23:48:33 MST
John Marlow wrote:
>
> Could be; as I said, it's a guess--but I suspect
> neither of knows the true capabilities of current
> detection gear.
I myself know nothing about either the rad sources or the detection
capability, but as a general rule, I'd note that even where Government
Secrecy rears its ugly head, you can still make statements like "The NSA
would need a 10,000-fold improvement over any radiation detection
instrument known to science before they could detect a moving warhead from
orbit." No, you don't know the true capabilities of current detection
gear, but if finding warheads would take TL11 detection gear you can
probably assume the NSA doesn't have it.
(TL11 == "Tech Level 11". Contemporary civ is around TL7, maybe TL8 in a
few places.)
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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