Re: Military-industrial 101
Dear Mngrrrl.
Please go and find out some real history. Almost every sentence you wrote is factually incorrect. And in the case of Enigma, deeply offensive.
At the time, before the war, the Enigma machine was freely on sale for use by companies to use for security of communications.
As usual, we in Blighty were very slow to do a lot in the way of realising the potential it held.
Thanks to the Poles, we did end up in possession of these machines, and then came the fun of trying to decrypt their output, closer to real time the better.
A lot of that involved a guy called Alan Turing. Perhaps you have heard of him? And along the way this involved building what is considered to be the world's first modern computer. The Americans later thought they had, but this was because the British one was so secret that US companies had no need to know, and so they didn't. And everyone in Britain who worked on it was forbidden to ever mention it. It's mainly because, should it ever happen again, Churchill didn't want anyone to know how we did it, so we could do it again.
That computer, incidentally, was built by a genius Post Office engineer by the name of Tommy Flowers.
As for your Military Industrial Complex, that term was used by the Supreme Allied Commander. His name was Eisenhower. Have you heard of him? He became your president. He warned us all against that Complex, and he was right.
I'll make 3 predictions. Think of them as a get out clause for you.
1. You're young.
2. You're Republican.
3. You've never read a history book.
If I'm wrong on any of them, then you have no excuse.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
