Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • June 17, 2013 11:38 PM

As I’ve repeatedly said in the past you need to understand the UK “special relationship” with the US.

Towards the end of WWII various people in the various British M.I.’s (like MI6) realised that British political power in the world was on the decline due to Britain having bankrupted it’s self fighting the war and nolonger had the reserves to build it’s self back up. Worse they also knew through “lend lease” the cost of fighting alone would be extracted multiple times over by America (and was untill Maggie Thatcher finaly got rid of it).

The problem was simple Britain had a large hungry population and limited land mass also it’s industry had had the guts knocked out of it and had few natural resources of it’s own left. Contrast this with America that whilst having a large population had plenty of land resources and raw resources and had built up it’s industrial base compleatly unhampered by the strife of war.

Physicaly the British had nothing the Americans everything. What the British did have that the Americans did not (for various reasons) was a good and very experianced inteligence operation (which was one reason the NSA and various other secret US agencies came into being in an attempt to do much like the DHS is now supposed to do but still does not).

The people in the M.I.’s realised this was the only “trump card” the British had. Thus they formulated an idea to retain British influance by trading intel.

At the heart of this was the BRitish-US Agrement (BRUSA) which formed an inteligence sharing collective that quickly became an “above elected government” arangment, with it’s own heirachy and rules. It quickly got other WASP nation members and became known as the UKUSA agrement. Some of these new members discovered that they were in effect tier 2 or later tier 3 members.

Most of the “technical” side was US based and organisation and liason UK based. The elected politicos were seen as dangerous loose cannon and were kept as much as possible in ignorance of what was going on.

One aspect used against politicos almost from day one was the old “if you know what I know but cannt tell you” hook to lure some of them in and tie them up in “pacts with the devil” agrements in return for “nodding head” oversight. Part of this was and still is the dirty little game of spying on political opponents (we know that the UK’s Jack Straw MP was one recipient of such intel for Harold Wilson PM at the time of the Libral Party scandle). Such cheap baubles and “word on the quiet” investment advice to trusties etc ensured that no questions of importance ever got asked by oversight commities in various countries. Further the “our friends abroad” tactic was and still is a method used to manipulate elected politicians with surveillance tit-bits that might or might not have been true but had the desired effect of removing potential “rocks in the road” types from commities where they might make the intel organisations lives more difficult.

In fact when it came to tier2 and tier3 countries such as AUS-NZ the politicos discovered that US staff on attatchment were calling the shots over the elected officials heads.

As such it’s embarising for politico’s to admit they are impotent over their own intel organisations and have no idea as to who exactly is calling the shots and why and in return for not asking and paying through the nose they get a few crumbs off of the table that whilst of immense value to individual politicos are not realy of any worth when it comes to National Security in it’s many forms.

Hopefully what the re-boiling of these issues will do is cause citizens to start asking which end of the body of government the elected politicians are actualy at, the head with teeth chewing rapidly through resources, or the bottom which makes and unpleasent mess others have to clean up and where the tail wags aimlessly to please the onlookers.

I suspect many readers will figure their elected politicos of recent times, by the public stink of their behaviour are definatly not at the end where the brains are…

Clive Robinson • June 18, 2013 6:37 AM

@ Arkh,

Contrary to what most people think the leading edge on space development is not done by big country super-powers.

This is because payloads not delivery systems is where it’s at and most of the world leading research in that area is done in European countries these days.

Oddly in the case of the UK it’s because of OSCAR and other similar amature radio space projects.

A case in point is the UK’s Guildford University and the offshoots in the adjoining Surrey Science parks. Similarly Licester with it’s universities and the National Space Museum.

Surrey University got going in the space race because of it’s amature radio group and the Uni saying yes to having a stripped down WWII destroyer Boffors Gun Mount put on the roof to act as a directional antenna base. It became the UK AmSat home and encoraged many students to get involved with the development of electronics not just for Amature Radio Sats but also for leading edge astronomical missions as well, which also gave rise to a lot of civilian work.

Technology has got to the point now where micro and nano sats are being developed around smartphone systems, with ion jet rocket motors for low thrust manovering in orbit for station keeping etc.

Surprisingly an ion jet rocket motor can be made with relativly simple tools in a home workshop. All you realy need is a sacrificial electrode made of a high density but soft metal and a series of accellarator electrodes. In effect it’s just like the electron gun in an old Cathode Ray Tube, except for the fact you are producing heavy ions at the cathod not electrons… Ionisation of course can be fairly easily done with an electric arc or other electricaly powered welding technology. The advantage of ion motors is firstly they only require electricity and very small quantities of heavy metal element fuels and they work well in the vacuum of space providing low G but constant acceleration as long as the solar cells see the sun.

It’s an interesting time in Europe for space development and it’s likely to continue for the foreseable future.