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You may be interested in a post I wrote on this subject a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8916033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8916
by pdkl95 12y ago
You may be interested in a post I wrote on this subject a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8916033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8916033
Summary: The question isn't if the knowledge about dangerous weapons will leak, but when that leak will happen. The as technology keeps getting better and better, it is only a matter of time before those technologies are cheap/simple enough to become something that can be found in a "garage workshop".
Trying to resist the spread of knowledge merely slows the rate of diffusion at best - it can have the opposite effect - so this is not a long-term solution. I suggest that we need to start fixing the underlying problems (poverty, tribal feuding, etc.) that create the motive for using dangerous weapons, or we are going to get a nasty surprise someday.
- chroma 12y agoThere's a selection effect at work. It seems as if everything leaks because you don't hear about the stuff that doesn't leak. Plenty of things have been kept secret for decades: differential cryptanalysis, Ultra, FOGBANK. Those are just some of the ones we know about. It's quite likely there are more we don't.
- talmand 12y agoYes, they were kept secret for decades and yet you know about them now. It's not always a question of how long can information that is considered potentially dangerous can be kept secret. Sometimes it's a question of can it be kept secret indefinitely if the information is deemed dangerous enough. Many would say no.