The dreams of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America, who united the Thirteen Colonies in the 18th century, may have died or have at least become shaded in the 21st century. Nothing nettles America more than the hordes of diverse people whom she cannot exclude from her land. The new multitudes are jamming into the cities, making these centers the most fearful jungles of “manyness” and are threatening the Anglo-Saxon empire. The cities are becoming the storm center as well as the nerve center because they are where the serious menaces to America is lurking. They have not only become the home of roughs, gamblers, thieves, robbers, lawless and desperate men and women, rioters, skeptics, and the irreligious, but they are also the lair of wealthy and luxurious people who do not care for the Kingdom. This has allowed people to adopt a sense of pride in their deviant work, as they are gradually able to reconceptualize their killings and other crimes as an acceptable and rewarding business profession. Murder, the unlawful killing of a person, is considered a serious criminal offense in the United States of America, and it is punished by extreme penalties. In addition, most Americans do not feel that the penalties are extreme enough. In overcoming the intense stigma associated with murder, the hit man or hit woman lacks the supports available to more ordinary types of killers. #RandolphHarris 1 of 25
Some cultures allow special circumstances or sanction special organizations wherein people who kill are insulated from the taint of murder. Soldiers at war, or police in the line of duty, or citizens protecting their property operate under what are considered justifiable or excusable conditions. Individuals acting on their own, who kill in a spontaneous, “irrational” outburst of violence, can also mitigate the stigma of their behaviour. I mean, people will go ape for one minute and shoot, but there are very few people who are capable of thinking about, palling, and then doing it. Individuals who kill in a hot-blooded burst of passion can retrospectively draw comfort from the law which provides a lighter ban against killings performed without premeditation or malice or intent. At one extreme, the spontaneous killing may seem the result of a mental disease or dissociative reaction, and excused entirely as insanity. However, when an individual who generally shares society’s ban against murder, is fully aware that his or her act of homicide is (1) unlawful, (2) self-serving, and (3) intentional, one does not have the usual defenses to fall back on. How does such an individual manage to overcome his or her inhibitions and avoid serious damage to his or her self-image (assuming that he or she does share society’s ban)? This is the special dilemma of the professional hit man or woman who hires himself or herself out for murder. #RandolphHarris 2 of 25
There are two types of professional murders: the organized and the independent. The killer who belongs to an organized syndicate does not usually get paid on a contact basis, and performs his or her job out of loyalty and obedience to the organization. The independent professional killer is a freelance agent who hires himself or herself out for a fee. It is the career organization of the second type of killer that will be discussed. The organized killer can mitigate his or her behavior through an “appeal to higher loyalties.” He or she can also view his or her victim as an enemy of the group and then choose from a variety of techniques available for neutralizing the offense against the enemy. However, the independent professional murderer lacks most of these defenses. Nevertheless, built into one’s role are certain structural features that help one avoid deviance ascription. These features include: Contract. A contract is an unwritten agreement to provide a sum of money to a second party who agrees, in return, to commit a designated murder. It is most often arranged over the phone, between people who have never had personal contact. And the victim, or “hit,” is usually unknown to the killer. This arrangement is meant to protect both parties from the law. However, it also helps the killer deny the victim, or hit, is usually unknow to the killer by keeping the individual relatively anonymous. #RandolphHarris 3 of 25
In arranging the contract, the hired killer will try to find out the difficulty of the hit and how much the customer wants the killing done. These considerations determine the price. He or she does not ask about motive for the killing, treating it as none of his or her concern. Not knowing the motive may hamper the killer from morally justifying his or her behavior, but it also enables one to further deny the victim by maintaining one’s distance and reserve. Finally, the contract is backed up by a further understanding. If the killer fails to live up to one’s part of the bargain, the penalties could be extreme. This has the ironic effect that after the contract is arranged, the killer can somewhat deny responsibility. Reputation and Money. Reputation is especially important in an area where killers are unknown to their customers, and where the less written, the better. Reputation, in turn, reflects how much money the hit man had commanded in the past. Pete, who could not recall the exact number of people he had killed, did, like other hit men, keep an accounting of his highest fees. To him big money meant not only a way to earn a living, but also a way to maintain his professional reputation. People who accept lower fees can also find work as hired killers. Heroin addicts are the usual example. However, as Pete says, they often receive a bullet for their pains. It is believed that people who would kill for so little would also require littler persuasion to make the talk to the police. This further reinforces the single-minded emphasis on making big money. #RandolphHarris 4 of 25
As a result, killing is conceptualized as a business or as just a job. Framing the hit in a normal busineslike context enables the hit man or woman to deny wrongfulness or deny injury. In addition to the economic motive, Pete, and hit men and women discussed how the job was exciting, fun, game-playing, power, and impressive to their romantic partners as incentives for murder. However, none of these motives are mentioned by all sources. None are as necessary to the career as money. And, after a while, these other motives diminish and killing becomes only “just a job.” The primacy of the economic motive has been aptly expressed in the case of another deviant profession. Women who enjoy pleasures of the flesh with their customers do not make good women of the evening, according to those who are acquainted with this institution first hand. Instead of thinking about the most effective way of making money at the job, they would be doing things for their own pleasure and enjoyment. Skill. Most of the hit man and woman’s training focuses on acquiring skill in the use of weapons. “Then, he met these two guys, these two white guys…them two them two was the best. And but they stayed around over there and they got together, and Pete told [them] that he really wanted to be good. He said, if [I] got to do something, I wanted to be good at it. So, they go together, showed him, show him how to shoot…And gradually, he became good…Like he told me, like when he shoots somebody, he always goes for the head; he said, that’s about the best shot. I mean, if you want him dead then and there…And these two guys showed him, and to him, I mean, hey, I mean, he don’t believe nobody could really outshoot these two guys, you know what I mean. They know everything you want to know about guns, knives, and stuff like that.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 25
The hit man or woman’s reputation, and the amount of money he or she makes depend on his or her skill, his or her effective ability to serve as a means to someone else’s ends. “The result is a focus on technique. Like in anything you do, when you do it, you want to do it just right. On your target and you hit it, how you feel: I hit it! I hit it!” reports Pete. This focus on technique, on means, helps the hit man to “deny responsibility” and intent. In frame-analytic terms, the hit man or woman separates one’s morally responsible, or “principal” self from the rest of himself or herself, and performs the killing mainly as a “strategist.” In other words, one sees oneself as a “hired gun.” The saying, “If I didn’t do it, they’d find someone else who would,” reflects this narrowly technical orientation. Therefore, the contract, based on the hit man or woman with opportunities for denying the victim, denying the injury, and denying responsibility. However, this is not enough. To point out the defenses of the professional hit man or woman is one thing, but it is unlikely that the novice is at a point where he or she both lacks the conventional defense against the stigma of murder, and he or she has not yet fully acquired the exceptional defenses of the professional. How, then, does he or she cope? Negative experience is a feeling of disorientation. Expecting to take up a position in a well-framed realm, one finds that no particular frame is immediately applicable, or the frame that one thought was applicable no longer seems to be, or one cannot bind oneself within the frame that apparently apply. #RandolphHarris 6 of 25
One loses command over the formulation of viable response. One flounders. Experience, the meld of what the current scene brings to one and what one brings to it—meant to settle into a form even while it is beginning, finds no form and is therefore no experience. Reality automatically flutters. One has a “negative experience”—negative in the sense that it takes it character from what it is not, and what it is not is an organized and organizational affirmed response. Negative experience can occur when a person finds oneself lapsing into an old understanding of a situation, only to suddenly awaken to the fact that it no longer applies. In this regard, we should expect negative experience to be a special problem for the novice. For example, the first time he killed a man for money, Pete supposedly became violently ill: “When he [Pete], you know, hit the guy, when he shot the guy, the guy said ‘You killed me.’…something like that, cause he struck him all up here. And what he said, it was just, I mean, the look right in the guy’s eye, you know. I mean he looked like: Why me? Yeah? And then he said that at night-time he’ll start thinking about the guy: like he should not have looked at him like that…I mean actually [Pete] was sick…He couldn’t keep his food down, I mean, or nothing like that….[It lasted] I’d say about two months…” #RandolphHarris 7 of 25
Pete’s account conforms to the definition of negative experience. He had never killed anyone for money before. It started when a member of the Detroit drug World had spotted Pete in a knife fight outside an inner city bar, was apparently impressed with the young man’s style, and offered him fifty dollars to do a “job.” Pete accepted. He wanted the money. However, when the first hit came about, Pete of course know that he was doing it for money, but yet his orientation was: revenge. Thus, he stared his victim in the face, a characteristic gesture of people who kill enemies for revenge. Expecting to see defiance turn into a look of defeat, they attempt to gain “face” at the loser’s expense. However, when Pete stared his victim in the face, he saw not an enemy, but an innocent man. He saw a look of: “Why me?” And this discordant image is what remained in his mind during the weeks and months to follow and made him sick. As Pete says, “He shouldn’t have looked at him like that.” The victim’s look of innocence brought about a “frame break.” Given that the frame applied to an activity is expected to enable us to come to terms with all events in that activity (informing and regulating many of them), it is understandable that the unmanageable might occur, an occurrence which cannot be effectively ignored and to which the frame cannot be applied, with resulting bewilderment and chagrin on the part of the participants. In brief, a break can occur in the applicability of the frame, a break in its governance. #RandolphHarris 8 of 25
When such a frame break occurs, it produces negative experience. Pete’s extremely uncomfortable disorientation may reflect the extreme dissonance between the revenge frame, that he expected to apply, and the unexpected look of innocence that he encountered and continued to recall. The quotes above are from Pete, who is a hit man. Pete speaks of himself in the third person to explore the behavioral side of contract killing, or because his disassociates with himself when it comes time to hit a person. However, it is possible that is become possessed when he has a contract and enforces it. Demon possession is a condition in which one or more evil spirits or demons inhabit the body of a human being and can take complete control of their victim at will. By temporarily blotting out his consciousness, they can speak and act through him as their complete slave and tool. The inhibiting demon (or demons) comes and goes much like the proprietor of a house who may or may not be “at home.” When the demon is “at home,” he may precipitate an attack. In these attacks the victim passes from his normal state, in which he acts like other people, to the abnormal state of possession. Causes of demonic attacks vary. In many case, the targets do not deliberately call on evil spirits so these would latch onto them. Rather, they engage in “spiritual openings” that the spirits consider an invitation, which eventually leads to an attack. #RandolphHarris 9 of 25
There are aspects of life where a particular kind of situational respect is required. In daily speech, the terms “formality” and “informality” are sometimes used to refer to this central axis of situational regulation. And these terms might be tend to stress unduly the kind of clothing that is worn, the degree to which the sequence of acts in a social occasion is codified in advance and heavily enjoined, and the range of activities that is permitted. The terms “tight” and “loose” might be more descriptive and give more equal weight to each of the several ways in which devotion to a social occasion may be exhibited. For example, certain social settings in different communities are differently defined as regards tightness. Thus, public streets in Paris seem to be more loosely defined than those in Britain or America. On many Parisian streets one can eat a loaf of bread while walking to or from work, become heatedly involved in peripatetic conversations, engage in a full-course meal at an open café table, expect not to show surprise at oddly costumed persons, and so forth. In Anglo-American society one would have to look to summer resorts to find a similar degree of looseness. (In any case, Americans tend to find France and summer resorts relaxing for the same reason: many public gatherings seem to demand less attachment and respect, allowing one an easier depth of either private or interpersonal concerns.) #RandolphHarris 10 of 25
Similarly, in many Anglo-American communities a teacher will be expected to remain thoroughly oriented in to the situation during school hours, while in a rural community in Southern Italy we learn that: It is not uncommon for a teacher to come late to class and to spend the morning smoking a cigarette and looking idly out the window. In many geographical regions in America, a continuum can be traced regarding the formality of dree required of men who patronize public eateries. There are still establishments that require dinner jackets. Those next in line insist at least on ties and jackets, and may keep a supply of ties handy to accommodate would-be customers who turn up informally attired. At summer resorts in the same geographical regions, one can find establishments whose posted house-rules demand that T-shirts be worn in addition to swimming trunks, these establishments thereby distinguishing themselves from those final seats of beach informality in our society where eating, drinking, and dancing are allowed even barefoot men in swimming trunks. Incidentally, it might be noted here that societies seem to have their own limits regarding tightness and looseness and that these limits seem to change over time. In spite of some recent efforts to bring pomp back into American life, the most formal of evening clothes are becoming more and more rarely sed, and decorations such as jewelled tiaras can properly be worn these days at almost no occasion. #RandolphHarris 11 of 25
Any social establishment is itself likely to provide instructive variation in tightness or formality requirements, according to place and time. In Central Hospital, for example, attendants claimed that they need wear their ties and “look smart,” that is, situationally oriented, only when on that half of the campus that contained the administration building. On the night-shift, when doctors and nurses were absent, attendants would administer medication without bothering to take their cigarettes from their mouths, and tended to slouch more while sitting or standing. Therefore, one can draw from this example that there are ways one leaves oneself more open to demon possession. Are you doing things that are conducive of the Lord? Are you engaging in slander, gossip, fights, drugs, drinking, terrorism, premarital pleasures of the flesh, and not going to church? Well, these are ways to open yourself up to becoming possessed by demons. God’s regulations for good Christian behavior is very tight. “Why did you say we must remember ourselves when it is most difficult?” Our own exposure to life is both a threat and an opportunity. You know you must not do something. One part of you wants to do it. Then your remember yourself and stop it. Self-remembering has an element of will in it. If it were just dreaming, “I am, I am, I am,” it would not be anything. You must give a certain time simply to studying what remembering means, and what not remembering means, and what effect these have. Then you can invent many different ways to remember yourselves. #RandolphHarris 12 of 25
However, actually, self-remembering is not an intellectual or abstract thing; it is moments of will. It is not thought; it is action. It means having increased control; otherwise of what use would it be? You can only control yourself in moments of self-remembering. The mechanical control which is acquired by training and education—when one is taught how to behave in certain circumstances—is not real control. “Are we to understand that self-remembering means awareness?” Not only awareness. It means also a certain capacity to act in a certain way, to do what you want. You see, in our logical way of thinking, according to logical knowledge, we divide consciousness from will. However, consciousness means will. In the Russian language, for instance, “will” is the same word as “freedom.” The word “consciousness” means a combination of all knowledge; as if you had all your knowledge before you at the same time. However, consciousness also means will, and will means freedom. “What does giving up will mean?” Giving up childishness, inefficiency and lying. “Does giving up self-will involve giving up your own judgment?” It depends in what. What does giving will mean? How can it be achieved? You have mistaken ideas about this. First you think of it as a final actions: that you give up will and have no more will. This is an illusion because we have no such will to give up. #RandolphHarris 13 of 25
Our will last for about three minutes. Will is measured by time. If once we give up three minutes of will, tomorrow, another three minutes will grow. Giving up will is a continuous process, not one action. A single action means nothing. A second mistake is not remembering certain principles to which you give up will, such as rules. For example, there is a rule that you should not talk about this system. The natural desire is to talk, but if you stop yourself, it means that you give up your will; that you obey this rule. There are many other principles to which you must give up your will in order to follow them. In the 1950s the Ivy League colleges were faced with a problem. Each school wanted to produce a willing football team. The colleges found themselves overemphasizing athletics and compromising their academic standards in order to build a championship team. Yet, no matter how often they practiced or how much money they spent, at the end of the season the standings were much as they had been before. The average win/loss record was still 50/50. The inescapable mathematical fact is tht for every winner there had to be a loser. All the extra work canceled itself out. The excitement of college sports depends as much on the closeness and intensity of the competition as on the level of skill. Many fans prefer college basketball and football to the professional versions; while the level of skill is lower, there is often more excitement and intensity to the competition. #RandolphHarris 14 of 25
With the excitement and intensity in mind, the colleges got smart. They joined together and agreed to limit spring training to one day. Although there were more fumbles, the games were no less exciting. Athletes had more time to concentrate on their studies. Everyone was better off, except some alumni who wanted their alma maters to excel at football and forget about academic work. Many students would like to have a similar agreement with their fellow students before examinations. When grades are based on a traditional “bell curve,” one’s relative standing in the class matters more than the absolute level of one’s knowledge. It matters not how much you know, only that others know less than you. The way to gain an advantage over the other students is to study more. If they all do so, they all have more knowledge, but relative standings and therefore the bottom line—the grades—are largely unchanged. If only everyone in the class could agree to limit spring studying to one (preferably rainy) day, they would get the same grades with less effort. The feature common to these situations is that success is determined by relative rather than absolute performance. When one participant improves his or her own ranking, one necessarily worsens everyone else’s ranking. However, the fact that one’s victory requires someone else’s defeat does not make the game zero-sum. In a zero-sum game it is not possible to make everyone better off. Here it is. The scope for gain comes from reducing inputs. While there might always be the same number of winners and losers, it can be less costly for everyone to play the game. #RandolphHarris 15 of 25
The source of the problem of why (some) students study too much is that they do not have to pay a price or compensation to others. (Of course, the dumb thing to do is believe you are stupid and not study at all!) Each student’s studying is akin to a factory’s polluting: it makes it more difficult for all the other students to breathe. Because there is no market in buying and selling studying time, the result is a “rat race”: each participant strives too hard, with too little to show for one’s efforts. However, no one team or student is willing to be the only one, or the leader, in reducing the effort. This is just like a prisoner’s dilemma with more than two prisoners. Escape from the horns of this dilemma requires an enforceable collective agreement. As we saw with OPEC and the Ivy League, the trick is to form a cartel to limit competition. The problem for high-school students is that the cartel cannot easily detect cheating. For the collectivity of students, a cheater is one who studies more to sneak an advantage over the others. It is very hard to tell if some are secretly studying until after they have “aced” the test. BY then it is too late. In some small towns, high-school students do have a way to enforce “no-studying” cartels. Everyone gets together and cruises Main Street at night. The absence of those home studying is noticed. Punishment can be social ostracism or worse. To arrange a self-enforcing cartel is difficult. #RandolphHarris 16 of 25
It is all the better if an outside enforces the collective agreement limiting competition. This is just what happened for cigarette advertising, although not intentionally. In the old says, cigarette companies used to spend money to convince consumers to “walk a mile” for their product or to “fight rather than switch.” The different campaigns made advertising agencies rich, but their main purpose was defensive—each company advertised because the others did, too. Then, in 1968, cigarette advertisements were banned from TV by law. The companies thought this restriction would hurt them and fought against it. However, when the some cleared, they saw that the ban helped them avoid mutually damaging and costly advertising campaigns and thus improved their profits. As with advertisers, scientists are trying to stop means of losing control. The simplest imaginable approach to “guiding” nanotechnology would be to stop it. The easiest trip to plan is the trip that goes nowhere. This would have a certain appeal, if it were possible. Because of its enormous potential for abuse, nanotechnology has the potential of doing great harm. If we believe that human beings and human institutions are too incompetent to deal with nanotechnology—that they are too likely to turn it to aggressive military use, or too likely to make it freely available to madmen and women—then the option of stopping the development of nanotechnology may seem attractive indeed. However, the ethical question that must guide human actions is not “Would it be better to stop?,” but “Would attempts to stop make things better?” #RandolphHarris 17 of 25
One option is to push forward, emphasizing the need for caution but also the potential for good applications. The promise of medical, economic, and environmental applications, joined with the threat posed by a new arms race, provides a powerful motive for international cooperation. With positive goals and an inclusive stance, international cooperation is a promising strategy; it could provide a basis for guiding the development and application of nanotechnology. Another option would be to emphasize the downside, to focus debate on potential abuses in support of a campaign to halt development. In following this strategy, an activist group would want to downplay the civilization applications of nanotechnology and emphasize its military applications. Horror stories of potential abuse (including abuses that regulation could easily prevent) would help to make the technology seem strange and dangerous. This strategy might succeed in suppressing civilian research in many countries, though probably not all. Unfortunately, it would also guarantee funding for classified military research programs in laboratories around the World, even in the most morally honest countries, because of their then-inevitable fear of consequences if someone else developed nanotechnology first. In a hostile public atmosphere, research would be pushed into secret programs, and in secrecy the prospects for broad international cooperation would disappear. Attempts to stop nanotechnology for fear of a new, unstable arms race become self-fulfilling prophecies. Afterwards, the advocates of this view could then say, “We warned you!” as the World slid toward a war they themselves had helped to prepare. #RandolphHarris 18 of 25
Attempting to stop technological development is a simple but dangerous idea. The greater its success, the greater the polarization it would cause between technology advocates and technology critics. A moderate success would push research out of the public universities and into corporate and military research labs. A greater success would push research out of the corporate laboratories and into heavily classified programs. A truly amazing success would end most of these, leaving the only remaining military programs in the hands of those states with thoroughly repressive governments or alien ideologies. This, presumably, is not how one would prefer nanotechnology to be developed. The only genuine success would be a total success, and this would mean banning research not only in the United States of America, and Germany, and France, and the rest of Western Europe, and Japan, and the Soviet Union, and the People’s Republic of China, and Taiwan, but in Korea, South Africa, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Brazil, Argentina, Vietnam, and the part of Colombia controlled by the Medellin Cartel. Later, as computers improve, as chemistry advances, as more and more proximal-probe microscopes are built by high school students, total success would require banning kids from tinkering in suburban garages in Pittsburgh. Competitive pressures are pushing technology toward thorough control of matter, and we have seen that this goal can be reached by many different paths. Preventing one area of research would not prevent the advance, nor would stopping work in one country. #RandolphHarris 19 of 25
When the United States of America delays drug development through regulations by the FDA, drug companies simply switch research overseas, or non-U.S.A. companies pull ahead. Orbital-launch capability and nuclear-weapons capabilities are other examples. Very seldom has one country given these abilities to another, yet at least eight nations are able to launch satellites to orbit independently, at least seven have detonated nuclear devices, and another two are suspected to be within reach of nuclear capabilities. India and Israel have built bombs and launched satellites, though neither is considered a great power or a leading force in World technology. Where nanotechnology is concerned, many countries are capable of doing the required research, and more will be in the future. South Korea has both the needed educational levels and the ambition; visitors from the People’s Republic of China ask about nanotechnology. A decision at the top directing the resources of a nation could get results almost anywhere. The United States of America is only gradually being shaken from its illusion that it rules the World of technology. However, whoever rules the World of technology is generally the World leader. Like military force, economic clout is increasingly based on knowledge. High technology is congealed knowledge. As the super-symbolic economy spreads, the value of leading-edge technology soars. #RandolphHarris 20 of 25
In January of 1985 nearly 200,000 tons of Romanian 96-inch carbon steel arrived in North America and went on sale for 40 percent less than comparable Canadian steel. The story of that shipment began thirteen years earlier, when the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu placed his country’s nuclear development program under the aegis of the DIE, his foreign intelligence organization. According to Ion Pacepa, the former head of the DIE, who later defected to the West, teams of intelligence-trained engineers were provided with false papers and sent abroad to find jobs in the nuclear industry. According to Pacepa, these techno-spies actually landed positions in General Electric, Combustion Engineering, their Canadian counterparts of affiliates, as well as in Siemens, Kraftwerke Union, and AEG in West Germany and Ansaldo Nucleari Impiante itn Italy. Soon technical intelligence began barreling into Bucharest. Knowing that the Canadians were having difficult selling their CANDU reactor, Ceausescu, through the DIE, hinted that he might buy as many as twenty CANDUS. In fact, on October 27, 1977, the Romanians signed an agreement with the Canadians, the remainder with Romanian help. Canada thereupon laid down the welcome mat for Romanian nuclear engineers, many of them DIE agents. The result, according to Pacepa, was that “the DIE soon obtained intelligence covering approximately 75 percent of CANDU-600 technology, a modern security system for nuclear plants, technology and equipment for producing heavy water, and architectural and construction plans for nuclear plants built in Canada, West Germany, and France.” #RandolphHarris 21 of 25
Better yet, Romania was able to sweet-talk Canada into putting up a $1 billion loan, supposedly to be partly used as payments to Canadian firms involved in the project, the remaining Romanian costs to be paid to Canada in the form of countertrade or barter. By March 1982, the entire commercial deal melted down, as its were. However, Romania had already pocketed an advance tranche amounting to $320 million. Moreover, Romania also already had most of the technology it needed. All it needed to do now was send Canada goods under terms of the barter deal. Which is why Romanian steel entered Canada and began to undersell the domestic product. The Romanian scam, combining technological espionage with an economic rip-off, is less unusual than it might appear in a World in which research cost are skyrocketing and the cost of stolen technology is extremely inexpensive by comparison. In fact, according to Count de Marenches, former chief of French intelligence: “In any intelligence service worthy of the name you would easily come cross cases where the whole year’s budget has been paid for in fully by a single operation. Naturally, intelligence does not receive actual payment, but the country’s industry profits.” This—not just military considerations—explains why spies swarm around any center of new technology, why the Soviets and others have focused on Silicon Valley, why the Russians even tried to buy Valley companies. It is why Japan, too, is a major target today. (According to a former KGB officer stationed there, “Even the special audio equipment used by the KGB residency to monitor radio communications between Japanese National Police surveillance teams was stolen from Japan.”) #RandolphHarris 22 of 25
The entire Romanian system was modeled after the much bigger technology espionage apparatus constructed by the Soviet Union and centered in the so-called Line X of the KGB, its Directorate T, the scientific and technological section. A 1987 U.S.A. State Department report based on CIA data charged that one third of all the officials of the Soviet Chamber of Commerce and Industry are, in fact, known or suspected KGB or GRU officers. “Hosting over 200 trade exhibitions and about 100 Western business delegations annually, and inspecting thousands of goods each year give its employees extraordinary access to imported equipment…” The Soviets pay special attention to robots, deep-sea marine technology, and industrial chemicals. As the lack of hard currency makes it difficult for many in it, they are irresistibly drawn to illegal acquisitions. This suggests a coming step-up in technological espionage by the less affluent countries of Africa, Asia, and South America. If they themselves cannot use the knowledge their engineers or students steal, they can at least sell it. Indeed, one of the frequently ignored aspects of technological espionage is what might be termed the “resale” market. Furthermore, as knowledge become ever more central to economic, military, and political power, techno-espionage causes increasing friction among former allies. Note the recent changes that French intelligence has intercepted IMB transatlantic communications, passed them to Groupe Bull, and also planted agents in American computer firms. Witness, too, CoCom. #RandolphHarris 23 of 25
CoCom is the Paris-based Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls set up by sixteen nations to prevent the seepage of Western high technology to what was then the Soviet bloc. CoCom, the scene of escalating dissension among its members, now face possible disintegration. Members increasingly resent its restrictions on trade, and accuse one another of using it to gain commercial advantage. At the initiative of the Europeans and Japanese, moves are under way to shorten the list of restricted technologies and embargoed countries. However, in 1983, when the United States of America, the main force behind CoCom, proposed that Chia be struck from the list, a howl arose. Wester European nations fearing that the U.S.A. would take over the Chinese market vehemently opposed this proposal and kept it from ever seeing the light of day. Japan had recently been embarrassed by the Toshiba affair. This centered on a Toshiba subsidiary’s illegal sale to the Soviets of highly sophisticated equipment for grinding submarine propellers blades. Under heavy U.S.A. pressure, Japan tightened its own domestic export controls to precent a recurrence. One result, however, was to cut itself off from part of its Chinese market. Thus, Japanese machine tool exports to China plummeted by 66 percent in the single years 1987. Japan was furious, therefore, when a Cincinnati Milacron machining center turned up in Shanghai. #RandolphHarris 24 of 25
This kind of commercial war now threaten to explode CoCom altogether. Moreover, European economic integration means that the exports controls of individual European nations are weakened, since goods can flow freely among the twelve EC nations. The rise of the super-symbolic global economy also brings with it, as we saw, the creation of transnational or multinational business groups, along with multiple, boundary-crossing commercial alliances and joint ventures. These increase the cross-flows of knowledge, and make it far harder to police. For all these reasons, technology will join economies as a top-priority target for the World’s spies. The spy of the future is less likely to resemble James Bond, whose chief assets were his fists and Ultimate Driving Machine, than the Line X engineer who lives quietly down the block and never does anything more violent than turn a page of a manual or flick on his microcomputer. O Lord, our hope in every generation, we rejoice in the wonderous deliverance Thou didst bring to pass for our fathers. When Haman rose to crush us, Thou wast at our side. Thou didst bring to naught his base designs, delivering us from destruction. In our day, too, O Lord our God, we trust in Thy saving power. We know it is Thy will that evil be subdued and righteousness prevail. Keep us ever steadfast the no weapon formed against us may prosper. Inspire us like Mordecai of old, to be unswerving in our devotion to Thee. Like Esther, may we ever be eager to serve our people, even at the peril of our lives. Cause us to know as Mordecai knew, that whether we be born to high or low estate, we share alike our people’s lot. That though we dwell in safety, blessed with abundance, our brother’s hurt is our hurt, their sorrow, ours. Hasten the day when all oppression shall cease, and tyranny shall forever be crushed: when strife shall no longer set off man from man, but all shall unite in true brotherhood to serve each other, and thus, O Lord, serve Thee. #RandolphHarris 25 of 25
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Randolph Harris II International 