It is exceptionally strange how the ācontagionā of wrongdoing seems to attach to the person pointing it out, rather than the person committing it; as though it somehow didnāt exist until pointed out.
Maybe people never quite grasp āobject permanenceā after all, and may go throughout life not realizing that a crime must have existed behind the veil for somebody to reveal itā¦
It feels like politicians, business, and media deal with spin so often, they genuinely forget there is a reality beyond it. From that perspective, things donāt exist until pointed out, and while solving problems can be nice public relations often does the exact same thing.
What does ānuclear cultureā have to do with this? The author never mentioned it in his essay. In fact, it seems like this essay argues the opposite of nuclear culture (the culture of those involved in developing nuclear weapons). Nuclear weapons are a military secret while NSA spying was a public secret. And the culture that protects nuclear weapon secrets continues to do so because they feel it is ethical to keep those secrets out of the wrong hands, while the culture that protects public secrets will continue to leak them because they violate the public trust.
Edit: Additionally, the government will try to make it look like leaking public secrets is the same as espionage (selling to a government or organizationānot leaking) or the leaking of military secrets because it knows that using a strawman argument is the only way it can twist the public perception to make it look like the government is the aggrieved party and not the aggressor.
Edit 2: This also supports the authorās point that the government is more angry about the release of public secrets than military secrets. Military espionage (like the stealing of submarine soundproofing technology) can be treated as a crime. But public secrets need a smear campaign and a disproportionate response in order to get the public on their side.
Nuclear culture in that the general populace should just go on believing everything is fine and spend more money at WalMart, despite there being maniacs, sycophants, halfwits, and outright plutocrats in charge of the world.
If you see the flash, put your head between your legs and kiss your ass goodbyeā¦
Clarify please. Are you trying to say that there are real threats and that the public secrets that have recently been released were harmful to national security or are you trying to say that public secrets sometimes are not released because the public is complacent about it? And what does this have to do with nuclear culture?
Iām not sure what nuclear culture is, let alone what it has to do with this editorial.
I agree thereās a difference, morally, between giving a classified weapon system specification to a foreign power and revealing a classified domestic surveillance program to a newspaper. Those are not the same things. I also agree with the analogies given that suggest public/bad secrets enable bad behavior. Iām not sure āpublic secretā is the right term, though. I would hope bad behavior is worth leaking about even if people donāt suspect it to be true.
Well, a person who knows nuclear secrets, can have original ideas, which are, from the moment they think them, classified. It is an odd thing.
āNuclear culture,ā in quotes because itās the snapshot bio of the author of the article, which appeared in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. If thereās a magazine for it, thereās a (sub?) culture.
Itās not that the wrongdoing naturally attaches to the person who points it out; the real wrongdoers have to do a lot of work to make it happen.
For some, peeka-a-boo remains the ultimate thrill-ride
I was just reminded of Mordecai Vananu. Thatās some good whistleblowing. Heās still in Israeli jail.
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