Abstract
Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld, by Sharon Weinberger. Nation Books, 276 pages, 2006, $26.
When I first heard the term “hafnium bomb,” the thought that came to mind was of the device stolen by the hapless warriors of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick in the classic book and movie The Mouse that Roared. But, that was a “Q-bomb.” No matter. One bomb is as fictional as the other.
The story of hafnium has all the makings of a good joke were it not for the historical context in which the events played out. Sharon Weinberger's Imaginary Weapons is an in-depth exploration of how various U.S. government agencies were convinced, based on a combination of discredited theoretical results and a dubious experiment involving a dental X-ray machine, to spend millions of dollars to support work on this “nuclear hand grenade.” Much of the action took place against the backdrop of the Iraq War, which tragically appears to have some common features with the story of hafnium weapons, namely government self-deception and a willingness to believe in nonexistent threats.
Indeed, Weinberger succinctly sums up the purpose of her book in the epilogue: “This book should not be read as a clarion call to rally forces against fringe science, but rather, a warning that without a government willing and able to turn to scientific advisers, there is little chance for sound public policy, particularly in the realms of national security.”
Hafnium, as Weinberger recounts, is like a poster child for all that is worrisome about the relationship between fringe science and national defense. It serves, too, as a template: Deluded scientists gain the ears of either ambitious–or overly cautious–national security officials who worry about not supporting an idea, no matter how wacky, because the enemy may be working on it. This is despite the government's own scientists pointing out over and over again its impossibility.
A government that refuses to listen to its scientific advisers is bound to make bad policy decisions, and we all may suffer as a result. Sharon Weinberger's tale takes you deep into the belly of this beast, and you are likely to be disturbed at what you find.
One of the central organizations in this story is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which is mandated to search outside the box for new technologies that might aid in national defense. I remember my own experience with DARPA, which convinced me early on of the dangers inherent in the military support of marginal and often-untested physical ideas. The Smithsonian had several scientists who received DARPA support to explore neutrino detection technologies (as Weinberger recounts in her book, neutrino detection is of great strategic interest since nuclear submarines produce lots of neutrinos), and they asked Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek and me to review the results. The projects we examined sometimes were led by distasteful if charismatic scientists of dubious professional ethics. We conceded that one of the projects, which involved possibly detecting neutrinos from a nearby nuclear explosion with a ton-size detector, was at least plausible. However, we later learned that DARPA was hesitant to fund such a project because they were already providing $1 million a year to Joseph Weber (of gravity wave detection fame), who claimed he could put a Volkswagon-sized detector in space that could detect every nuclear reactor on Earth.
Truth may be stranger than fiction, but fiction is often more profitable. Hucksters have successfully sold miracle cures for ages, and when it comes to talk of infinite energy, warp drives, transporters, or, in the case of this book, a nucleus whose “isomer” (a long-lived excited state of the nucleus that decays by the emission of gamma rays) might store millions of times more triggerable energy than that contained in chemical high explosives–with no release of radioactivity–the opportunity for an agency with a great deal of money to buy in often seems too good to be true. And it usually is.
The chief protagonist in Weinberger's story is Texas physicist Carl Collins, whose work provides a prototypical example of fringe science. His experimental results are irreproducible, and his paranoia regarding the “scientific establishment” grows with each year, as reputable scientists from the distinguished JASON group (an elite cadre of Nobel-class scientists that advises the government on defense issues), to a hardworking group of experimentalists at Argonne National Laboratory, continue to provide counterevidence to his claims. Nevertheless, a hafnium bomb project came surprisingly close to being funded–at the level of a major defense project–before Congress wisely cancelled it.
As Weinberger also points out in her somewhat rambling review of two decades of false claims and unheeded warnings, the media play their own role in fueling fringe science. Wild claims sell more magazines than sober results, so even popular scientific magazines such as New Scientist, which had a cover story on the hafnium bomb, get in on the act, once again underscoring the danger attached to publishing scientific results first in the popular press.
As far as I can tell, the book is an extension of a long magazine article Weinberger first prepared on hafnium, which in fact played a laudable role in the demise of the project. Because of the extensive detail, the book reads at times like a core dump from a series of reporters' notebooks. Tighter editing would have helped. It is sometimes difficult to follow the details, as various events and descriptions are repeated in different contexts, and familiar characters reappear as if they are new.
On the other hand, this repetition may, perhaps unintentionally, give the reader a clearer understanding of the frustrations associated with trying to properly vet speculative ideas when those ideas relate to national security. Time and again the same events reoccur, as new officials are seduced into believing and reputable scientists are marginalized as skeptics. The fact that support for the hafnium project spanned almost two decades is surprising, that is until one recognizes that there is still a flourishing underground of support for cold fusion.
Ultimately, this book reminds one of the fundamental tensions that inevitably surround the dilemma facing the national security elite. In a world where technology is furiously evolving, being caught with one's technological pants down is more than merely embarrassing; it could affect the safety and well-being of millions of people. By the standards of public defense programs that waste billions of dollars–like the current U.S. missile defense system–the amount that DARPA wastes on projects like hafnium or miracle neutrino detection is a drop in the bucket.
Nevertheless, there is a lesson here, and this is the lesson revealed by Weinberger in her epilogue, which was so remarkably cogent that I wish at least parts of it had appeared earlier in the book. As she ultimately muses, the money spent by DARPA may be largely innocuous, even if spent on silly projects like mining zero-point energy or attempting to use psychic plants to ferret out enemy installations, but “unless government is willing to listen to scientific advisers, it faces a future filled with imaginary weapons.”
It is important to realize that this moral extends beyond weapons development. A government that refuses to listen to its scientific advisers is bound to make bad policy decisions, and we all may suffer as a result. Sharon Weinberger's tale takes you deep into the belly of this beast, and you are likely to be disturbed at what you find.