This appears to be for investigating how many scientist have left the US sponsored by state powers. But this also seems like bad communication on the FBI and perhaps poor publishing.
I think there is some confusion that there are more people going missing and dying in the sector while not outlining that there are more people going missing AND dying.
Or I'm just completely wrong, the only reason why I am making such assumptions because there is more information about this in the ASML case where a whisleblower leaked that china has poached ASML engineers and have given them new identities to work in chip manufacturing sector in china.
It's hard to believe that this administration would suddenly care about brain drain, after decimating all academic grants and generally exhibiting anti-intellectual behavior.
The decline in quality of both investigations and information/studies by the FBI over the past year and a half has been extremely noticeable.
This is just not a serious organization anymore, and the lack of such a thing at the federal level leaves us insanely vulnerable to our own criminal operations.
The same thing happened with the IRS even earlier, multiple rounds of intensive they just cannot pursue criminals of a certain type, and the criminals know it. So they can run basically unchecked, looting all of us for billions.
I don't have the link but someone estimated the number of scientists working in the defense field (it's a lot) and the number of deaths per year you'd expect (over 100). There's probably nothing here. It probably doesn't hurt to have the FBI take a second look at any death of somebody who has a security clearance or is working on export-controlled tech, but OTOH that might be a lot of work.
Steven Novella did one[0] - "Well, there are about 2 million researchers in the US. There are about 25 deaths per million people per day in the US, that’s 50 scientists dying each day, or 73,000 scientists over a four year period. Finding 11 that have some vague connection does not seem unusual to me."
He goes into greater detail further down to assuage the "BUT BUT that's genpop not JPL!" whatabouters and does some "how TF are these people connected?" musing.
“Planetary defense” is a fig leaf covering the development of technologies to intercept and destroy ballistic missiles above the atmosphere.
The belief is that the first country to have this reliably at scale breaks the “mutually assured destruction” paradigm that has governed nuclear weapons policy for decades. If the U.S. can send nuclear ballistic missiles, but can’t be hit by nuclear missiles, what stops them from just nuking anyone who disagrees with them?
A lot of people are saying it’s disconnected, but even if it was, if a string of your country’s top rocket experts started disappearing, you wouldn’t just sit idly by
The frequency of fireballs in our planet’s skies seemed to grow in recent months. NASA and other meteor experts can’t agree on what explains it.
...
In response to growing public interest, a NASA public affairs official said in a blog post at the end of March, “While it may seem like meteor reports and sightings have been more frequent recently, it is not out of the ordinary.” The post explained that from February to April, there is often a 10 to 30 percent increase in the number of extremely luminous meteors — and nobody is quite sure why.
Mr. Hankey said that this 10 to 30 percent increase was already baked into the American Meteor Society tally, and that it doesn’t explain the apparent doubling of fireball sightings in the year’s first quarter.
Can you, please, also quote how this sightings are tallied?
Is that an astronomical observation by same people or is that based on self-reporting citizens?
"People see more stuff in the sky" is a common sign for people getting more anxious about attacks from the sky. To my knowledge, first UFO reporting waves happened during cold war when people started to get paranoid about soviet spying.
> The frequency of fireballs in our planet’s skies seemed to grow in recent months.
It feels reductive to point out that this has coincided with a massive increase in the number of small satellites with limited lifespans up there.
(And yes, you'd expect NASA and the AMS to have thought of that but I honestly wouldn't put it past them to be deliberately ignoring Starlink satellites given Musk's political power and petulance to people who cross him.)
I'm sure there's something behind deaths and disappearences of key rocket, defense, and nuclear scientists in Iran. Has been going on for a while.
For the US, my money is on "more evidence is needed". I could imagine the more "diverse" among the scientists deciding it's time for a career/employer change over the past year or so, though.
Of those who are missing and not dead, I wonder if they are largely not US citizens, or citizens who have strong/stronger ties outside the US. It would not surprise me if people like that have decided to take their talents elsewhere, given the current state of anti-intellectualism in the US.
11 people over 4 years doesn't seem like that much. Its not clear to me how big a population that is out of but if its government scientists i assume there are tens of thousands of those if not hundreds of thousands.
Still, FBI should be investigating every suspicious death of people with high level clearence.
Statistically, I would look at deaths from that age group among space flight science and compare this "blip" to the p50. I don't think it's easy to say if 11 deaths/disappearances over 4 years is high or not, without looking at the problem this way.
Why would FBI ever announce that they are investigating something? Is it that time of the year where they have to convince budget makers about their importance?
Or are they trying to direct attention from something else? Epstein?
It is good that there is a proper investigation, and I think it’s likely just a statistical anomaly.
My personal opinion is that scientists should be off-limits for any military as
long as they are not directly involved in operational planning and execution in an active state of war.
That said, targeting and capturing scientists is a military policy with a long history.
Removing individual expertise may delay strategic asset acquisition, but targeting alone is unlikely to destroy a programme outright and could even increase a country’s desire to strengthen research and acquire even more expertise.
You can see good examples of this with how the Israelis fail horribly over and over, preventing Iran from acquiring weapons-grade nuclear material. They failed so hard that the President is telling the public that Iran was within weeks to have a functional nuclear weapon and has set the world economy on fire over this with millions all over the planet suffering right now as a direct consequence of that decision.
Just a few days ago, a Ukrainian electronics expert for drone tech was hit in his home with five Shahed drones by Russia.
The result of his survival will likely be that more Ukrainians want to learn what he does and result in an even stronger drone electronics programme to gain a further advantage over Russia even quicker, especially in the midrange strike capabilities of the Ukrainians. If he had died, the same effect would have likely occurred. So touching this scientist / engineer was a huge long-term strategic error by the Russians.
Just like when the Ukrainians car-bombed Alexander Dugin’s daughter https://www.kyivpost.com/post/23139, which resulted long-term strategically in a Ukrainian brain drain by bullets behind ears.
Regardless of my or your opinion on this, this practice will likely persist as part of the foreign policy toolkit for states aiming to prevent proliferation.
And if you allow the US and Israel, or Russia or the United Kingdom, who all did kill scientists, to follow this policy unpunished, you need also to respect that their adversaries have the same right to do so.
Which means US scientists will end up as targets. Reality is, it has never been easier to kill a person with drones without risking capture or even consequences for the assassin, so the US might get some of its own medicine, and the only one who can stop that is the average citizen by putting enough public pressure on this issue to force a policy change.
52 comments
[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 117 ms ] threadI think there is some confusion that there are more people going missing and dying in the sector while not outlining that there are more people going missing AND dying.
Or I'm just completely wrong, the only reason why I am making such assumptions because there is more information about this in the ASML case where a whisleblower leaked that china has poached ASML engineers and have given them new identities to work in chip manufacturing sector in china.
This is just not a serious organization anymore, and the lack of such a thing at the federal level leaves us insanely vulnerable to our own criminal operations.
The same thing happened with the IRS even earlier, multiple rounds of intensive they just cannot pursue criminals of a certain type, and the criminals know it. So they can run basically unchecked, looting all of us for billions.
He goes into greater detail further down to assuage the "BUT BUT that's genpop not JPL!" whatabouters and does some "how TF are these people connected?" musing.
[0] https://theness.com/neurologicablog/whats-with-the-dead-or-m...
Also, what interest would a foreign power have in planetary defense against asteroids? Is there some dual-use technology in that?
The belief is that the first country to have this reliably at scale breaks the “mutually assured destruction” paradigm that has governed nuclear weapons policy for decades. If the U.S. can send nuclear ballistic missiles, but can’t be hit by nuclear missiles, what stops them from just nuking anyone who disagrees with them?
The "if" is doing the heavy lifting here. And universe has lot of "ifs". Here's one:
If this was a perfect distraction spun up to distract from Epstein files, it has succeeded and you have been had.
"People see more stuff in the sky" is a common sign for people getting more anxious about attacks from the sky. To my knowledge, first UFO reporting waves happened during cold war when people started to get paranoid about soviet spying.
It feels reductive to point out that this has coincided with a massive increase in the number of small satellites with limited lifespans up there.
(And yes, you'd expect NASA and the AMS to have thought of that but I honestly wouldn't put it past them to be deliberately ignoring Starlink satellites given Musk's political power and petulance to people who cross him.)
For the US, my money is on "more evidence is needed". I could imagine the more "diverse" among the scientists deciding it's time for a career/employer change over the past year or so, though.
Release the rest of the Epstein files. This seems the kind of conspiracy that could be found there.
Still, FBI should be investigating every suspicious death of people with high level clearence.
My personal opinion is that scientists should be off-limits for any military as long as they are not directly involved in operational planning and execution in an active state of war.
That said, targeting and capturing scientists is a military policy with a long history.
https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/alsos-mission/
The United States and Israel have allegedly carried out the most attacks on (nuclear) scientists after WW II.
There is a rather extensive scientific discussion about the legality and morality of this kind of targeting.
https://www.legitimacyasatarget.com/books/drones/
The overall conclusion in the broader scientific context, though, is that this approach is not effective.
https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501760341/all-...
Removing individual expertise may delay strategic asset acquisition, but targeting alone is unlikely to destroy a programme outright and could even increase a country’s desire to strengthen research and acquire even more expertise.
You can see good examples of this with how the Israelis fail horribly over and over, preventing Iran from acquiring weapons-grade nuclear material. They failed so hard that the President is telling the public that Iran was within weeks to have a functional nuclear weapon and has set the world economy on fire over this with millions all over the planet suffering right now as a direct consequence of that decision.
Just a few days ago, a Ukrainian electronics expert for drone tech was hit in his home with five Shahed drones by Russia.
https://united24media.com/latest-news/russian-shahed-drone-h...
The result of his survival will likely be that more Ukrainians want to learn what he does and result in an even stronger drone electronics programme to gain a further advantage over Russia even quicker, especially in the midrange strike capabilities of the Ukrainians. If he had died, the same effect would have likely occurred. So touching this scientist / engineer was a huge long-term strategic error by the Russians.
Just like when the Ukrainians car-bombed Alexander Dugin’s daughter https://www.kyivpost.com/post/23139, which resulted long-term strategically in a Ukrainian brain drain by bullets behind ears.
https://acleddata.com/report/personal-payback-assassinations...
Regardless of my or your opinion on this, this practice will likely persist as part of the foreign policy toolkit for states aiming to prevent proliferation.
And if you allow the US and Israel, or Russia or the United Kingdom, who all did kill scientists, to follow this policy unpunished, you need also to respect that their adversaries have the same right to do so.
Which means US scientists will end up as targets. Reality is, it has never been easier to kill a person with drones without risking capture or even consequences for the assassin, so the US might get some of its own medicine, and the only one who can stop that is the average citizen by putting enough public pressure on this issue to force a policy change.
If you care about y...