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Lawrence Livermore Lab On The Chopping Block?
guttentag writes "According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Bush's Homeland Security plan calls for transferring $1.2 billion of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's $1.5 billion budget to a new Department of Homeland Security under Tom Ridge. However, the plan transfers only 4 percent of the lab's employees. Ridge's explanation of the numbers: "I cannot give you the kind of explanation you need to deal with that imbalance." LLNL funded and houses the ASCI White supercomputer, among other cool projects." While Livermore has an impressive research record, we would miss most the laser lab from Tron.
Cancel the flames. Tom Ridge says it is probably a misprint.
much ado about nothing. a fairly minor mistake in the most complex reorganization of the us gov't since the truman administration. it's been seized upon and made front page news (particularly on the Left Coast) to make the Bush administration seem inept and disorganized.
Compared to testing them in the "real world" I'd say this is rather cool.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Wouldn't taking away from Lawrence Livermore Labs budget be about the worst thing for homeland security, at least in the long run? I thought that is where the US develops a lot of military stuff. If GWB cuts off developed we will be fsked in the future when everyone has bad-ass weapons and we are still poking around with patriot missles.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
One of our great advantages over other foreign countries/terrorist groups is our technological innovation. I can't believe that we'd devote research dollars the explicitly promote that technological advantage towards homeland security. Just because homeland security is the hot topic doesn't mean we should cut off our means of supporting ourselves in the future.
Wow. And LLNL was definitely part of the holy trinity along with LANL and Sandia as the preminent nuclear weapons sites. Getting stuck in a Kane booth at LLNL was always so much fun. :/
From the computer science side of things though, Livermore has contributed a lot. It'd be sad to see them disbanded.
yeah, i'm with you. i'll take the fake detonation anyday.
no, my feelings were not swayed by watching Dr Strangelove this weekend...... i guess i can live without the comedy since we won't ever know the fun-fun that goes on in the war room.
If that aint cool what is.
The title makes it sound like LLNL will be shut down. I know numerous people who work there, most of which on a massive project called NIF. Tron was shot in SHEVA, which was replaced by NOVA (deriving my nick), which is being replaced by NIF. NIF is the largest fusion laser, based on ICF principles, and is under full swing of construction. It will be brought up later this year. In fact, France has a smaller 8-laser version that just came up this last week and LLNL employees flown there in order to observe any difficulties. This project is a multi-billion dollar one which I severely doubt the government will allow to be scrapped due to budget cuts like this.
So, the most I can see if LLNL being streamlined. I doubt Congress will even give 10% of what they're requesting out of LLNL's budget. LLNL does valuable research in weapon, energy, materials, etc. The government labs are run under the DOE, but do most of their expensive work for the DOD, such as NIF and ASCII being mostly for nuclear research. When the lab scare with China occured it was suggested that the DOD take over the labs, but instead they finally got their act together. Since this is most of the budget, I could only guess they are really trying to transfer the lab to this new department or the Bush administration going to screw everything up.
"Open Source?" - Press any key to continue
People in Washington are just using terrorism as an excuse to push an agenda that has nothing to do with terrorism and existed long before 9/11. LLNL, for example, has been an irritation for the Bush administration, and that kind of government funded research doesn't fit too well into their philosophy anyway; that's why they like to play football with it.
More newsworthy: The Bush Administration is holding three US citizens in military custody, with no rights to legal representation or due process.
Jesus Christ, am I the only one who this terrifies? Am I going to someday have to explain to my kids why, on old episodes of Law & Order, the suspects weren't simply turned over to the military when they asked for a lawyer?
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Short sighted? It would be short sighted to let them continue research into anthrax detection. After all, the FBI investigation was pulled as soon as the evidence pointed to extremist right-wingers linked with millitary research scientists.
while the disagreement may come from "simulating nuclear bombs", i would like to point out that the author is focusing on the "cool-ness" of ASCI WHITE, not the experimentation that it is used for.
You can marvel for ages at a sharp new kitchen knife in itself, while not necessarily endorse the slaughtering (of my poor, poor carrots).
Besides, when (maybe one day) the scientists will get bored with generalized simulation of thermonuclear reactions and possibly direct this result into, say, nuclear power plants, nuclear propulsion, mars terraforming, etc etc
My life in the land of the rising sun.
the '/' means or in this case. He is not implying that all foriegn countries are terrorists. Try to not be so thin skinned, m-kay? :)
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
i posted and suddenly realized that carrots inevitably led to correlation that would not necessarily seem... approporiate... so -- good for you if you did not make the connection, and shame on the rest of you.
plug in "cabbages" in there, dirty minds
My life in the land of the rising sun.
I'd be more terrified of 3 terrorists wandering around this country detonating dirty bombs. As far as the Law&Order thing, we aren't talking about 3 kids who were caught swiping gumdrops from the corner store. We are talking about people who want to come into this country and kill as many people as they can.
Michael Loves Me!
The stature he enjoys currently is so clearly the product of the public need to have an admirable figure during a time of crisis (as was, I believe, the esteem accorded the Kennedy administration - I always felt he was overrated as a President) that I consider the Great Man theory of history to have taken yet another mortal blow.
Of course, since you know everything, you can just tell us all the name of the person who sent out the anthrax letters, show us your proof (or is your word proof enough?), and show up the FBI.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
You have an armed body claiming they have the right to kill four million Americans, who have demonstrated a high degree of lethality to date. Why don't you drop out of your naive fantasy land for a while to hazard some concern for the true physical safety of your children rather than your own patrician sensibilities.
well, folks, it really is that bad - the fbi is so lost they've resorted to asking random slashdotters for help in solving the anthrax case.
a sad sight indeed.
People really don't make enough of that: Carnahan DIED! The voters of Missouri wanted him out of the Senate so badly, they voted for a DEAD man!
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
NO FIGHTING IN THE WAR ROOM!!!
(lameness-filter-defeating text... (I'll yell if I want to, damnit))
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
you're missing the point
they aren't simulating nuclear detonations for a fucking screensaver, they're simulating to design better (i.e. deadlier, more horrible) weapons.
all that computing power, and this is what they do with it. they could be working on protein folding, doing advanced simulation on an alternative fuel engine, heck, they could leave it sitting there idly testing the reimann hypothesis, but they're designing bigger and supposedly better ways of killing off an entire city.
H bombs are big and scary, supposedly the only thing we want them for is deterrant, and aren't they already big enough and scary enough for that purpose? even if you don't think the US would ever use such a weapon (though it's the only nation in history that has) eventually knowledge spreads, and someone somewhere has a bigger bomb thanks to the cool supercomputer.
Sure it's better than turning unspoiled tropical islands into Dresden, but that doesn't make it *good*
/ end leftist, out-of-fashion, no-nukes rant.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Do you know how old our curent stockpile is? Do you know what the expected stable life time is of our curent weapons? Look both nubers up and you may be in for a shock.
Right now we have a shortage of people able to design and maintain nukes. This is a bad thing unless we manage to get rid of every last one of them (not going to happen).
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Where in the law does holding citizenship bar you from being treated as an enemy combatant?
Even if true, it doesn't mean that the 96% who aren't being transfered are being axed. This is fairly common in politics, the department or bill with the funding, has budgets transfered to it and the staff doesn't change. It just restructures who pays for their salary and toys. Since congress and the taxpayers seem more willing to fund homeland security now, it makes sense to bureaucrats to tranfer budgets that it would be politically impossible to increase to the new popular department.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Dance around the law as much as you want. This is what I believe in:
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
ASCII White is a general purpose simulation cluster with many many uses. It currently simulates various elements of our nuclear stockpile including weapon aging and detonation. But that is only the particular simulation being run on the cluster. It can simulate virtually anything that can be simulated on a very powerfull platform, *that* is the cool part. Its a very powerfull computer. And wait until the next version... 30 tflops, currently being worked on, and which will run Linux. Talk about a beowulf cluster.
A job at the lab is about the most secure job on the planet. Haven't you guys counted the number of SCIAM articles based on LLNL technonology?
. cgi?file=/c/ a/2002/06/11/MN170910.DTL
We'll always need stockpile stewardship (the reason for the lab's existence), and we'll always need cutting edge projects (like the Bio-Terror detection systems used at the Olympics)
fyi -- see
Today's SF Chronicle:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article
the jist:
"I just have to give you a better dollar amount," Ridge said. "The bigger issue to be framed here is for you to understand that we are not going to
take over the traditional relationship they (the Department of Energy)had with Lawrence Livermore."
Ridge said only employees who work specifically on countermeasures to protect Americans against nuclear, biological or chemical weapons -- a small fraction of the lab's work -- would be affected.
"Historically, and at least for now and for the future, the Department of Energy is going to control and work with Lawrence Livermore as it
relates to nuclear weapons systems," Ridge said.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
As a Missouri resident who voted for him - let's try for the entire story.
After the plane crash, his wife decided to "run" in his place. Given the time frame, it was impossible to change the ballot.
There is a bit more to this, involving the governor selecting a replacement, etc, but people were voting for Jean Carnahan.
"But we decide which is right, and which is an illusion"
Besides, today's top supercomputer is tomorrow's video game CPU. Pretending that locking up a particular supercomputer can stop the work is just that: pretending.
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
> Where in the law does holding citizenship bar you from being treated as an enemy combatant?
Where does the US Constitution say "the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury unless the state accuses him of being an enemy combatant"?
What if the state accuses you of being an enemy combatant and blackholes you, too? That's OK, right? You can trust the government to do the right thing on this?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Someone in the Department of War wants to be able to do "surgical nuclear strikes".
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
I think nuclear engineering is fascinating. I also think using a nuclear weapon is the single most destructive thing we could even imagine doing (thought a sequence of dumb mistakes could snowball into worse). The ability to hold those two seemingly contradictory ideas in the same mind is what makes "The Curve of Binding Energy" one of the best technology reads around. You appreciate the allure of the science and the folly of forcing new technologies as a fix for fundamental human nature issues.
After 50+ years of nuclear weapon development, let's face it. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. We are the only country ever to use the device in a non-test, and there are two countries with far less than an escalating world war at stake who are apparently toying with the idea of tossing a few of these around in the name of God(s).
"The valley is an emerald set in pearls; a land of lakes, clear streams, green turf, magnificient trees and mighty mountains where the air is cool, and the water sweet, where men are strong, and women vie with the soil in fruitfulness. " (Walter Lawrence) which India and Pakistan are willing to use as their nuclear badminton court. Nice.
We'd better know how they work and how to handle them.
Additionally, this is the sort of research that also allowed us to spend enough money to make the USSR play catch-up and collapse their regime. Forcing the Soviets into the poor house and then getting them towards a market economy, a seat outside the door at NATO and increasingly open communication is also far better than blowing them (and likely ourselves) off the map. If simulations got us along this path, then fine.
Do I agree that this was all the best way to do things? Nope. Were there scary possibilities that were minutes from happening along the way? Devastatingly so.
Does saber-rattling with nukes suck? Yes.
But saber-rattling with virtual nukes sucks far less.
As you live longer, one of the things you realize is that all to often you're lucky if it's only two evils you have to choose the lesser of.
Sobering, sad, but often true.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
And these aren't people who "come into this country", they're citizens of the US. Every American should be outraged that Bush and company are so willing to disregard the rights he's sworn to defend.
Why does John Walker Lindh get a trial before running home to his mommy and daddy while Jose Padilla is held using secret evidence but without trial or a lawyer? John Walker was captured on the battlefield fighting with the Taliban, while Jose Padilla is guilty of maybe having met with al-Quaida and maybe having thought about planning to build a bomb.
Is there a double standard? They are both US citizens, but John Walker is white and Jose Padilla is not. Has that affected their treatment?
cpeterso
My guess is money has more to do with it than race in this situation; Lindh has not only his white skin but his rich parents who have hired good lawyers to defend his rights. Also Lindh had no priors and was widely regarded as a good kid; Padilla is a former gang member with weapons charges and widely regarded as a thug.
Either way it is ridiculous to consider either a threat to the fabric of the nation; the symbolic significance these people have been granted by the Bush administration's treatment of them as devil incarnates is pretty much guaranteed to backfire. Incidentally, it's pretty much the mirror image of the Manichaean worldview held by the type of people who join al Qaeda.
So let's not piss on the Constitution in our morbid fear of a few thousand fanatics who want to light their shoes on fire. Find these bastards, try them, and destroy their ability to threaten us, of course, but let's not pretend the threat they pose is part of a cosmic battle between good and evil. That gives them way more power than they deserve. And if we're willing to trash our most precious liberties to run away from them, then perhaps we really are as weak as they say we are.
I heard that when the police confronted Jose Padilla, he pulled out two light sabers and proceeded to KICK ASS. Now if that is not evil, I don't know what is.
cpeterso
Since when is it cool to simulate nuclear bombs?
When it's done with ASCII
as much as it scares me to give additional powers to someone like GWB I believe terrorist attacks and potential attacks constitute a public danger as good as anything you could think up. so it appears to be constitutional to my eyes. Whether we're going after the cause or the symptoms is another story however...
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
We're talking about citizens of this country, who are still to be considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Sounds like you've already made up your mind, doesn't it?
> > except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger
> as much as it scares me to give additional powers to someone like GWB I believe terrorist attacks and potential attacks constitute a public danger as good as anything you could think up. so it appears to be constitutional to my eyes.
Sounds to me like the "when" clause qualifies "in the land or naval forces, or in the militia". I.e., the requirement for a grand jury indictment holds even in the armed forces, except "when in actual service in time of war or public danger".
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The USA-PATRIOT act specifically requires the Attorney General or President to declare someone an enemy combatant. One of the restrictions is that the person must not be a US citizen.
The 1942 case involved persons who worked for an enemy that congress had declared war on. Congress has not declared war on Al Queda.
To deny the civil rights of a certain class of people amounts to a Bill of Attainder. The constitution specifically prohibits bills of attainder.
All the protections in the constitution are worthless if they can be eroded with a simple accusation. Even if one supports military tribunals for enemies of the state, the state should be required to prove, in open court, that the defendent is indeed an enemy of the state. In the 1942 case, the defendents did not dispute that they took orders from the German High Command.
Should you lose your right to a public jury trial if a member of Al Queda claims that you work for them? What burdon should the state have to meet before taking away someone's right to a public jury trial?
In the German sub case, there were two subs. One landed in New York, the other landed in Florida.
But they weren't citizens.
One of them claimed US citizenship. He was born in Germany. He moved to the US when he was five. His parants became naturalized citizens. He later returned to Germany. He claimed that he never lost his citizenship.
The court never resolved the issue, instead claiming that:
Haupt never disputed that he took orders from the German High Command.
There is also the fact that congress had already declared war on Germany.
Finally, there is the issue that the USA PATRIOT act only allows for military tribunals of non-US citizens.
Bzzt, wrong! More efficient can mean bigger, but it can also mean cleaner (i.e., less fallout) and cheaper. Cleaner is obviously good: a war would kill fewer people in less gruesome ways, and clean bombs are a better deterrent. Cheaper is also good, since all the bombs will have to be rebuilt from scratch in the fairly near future. (Don't give me any garbage about nuclear disarmament. It'll never happen, anybody who thinks it will is deluded.)
Bzzt, wrong! (heard that one before?
This is a complete and total non-sequiter. What does the rate of deaths by car accident have to do with anything???
First of all, it's non-sequitur, not "non-sequiter".
Second, you only think it's a straw man or a non-sequitur because you don't get his point. Let's put it this way. Something like 10,000 people die every year from gun-related deaths. We have not implemented gun control, because we have a Second Amendment. We have decided that 10,000 casualties per year is a price that we are willing to pay for the Second Amendment. Whatever your feelings about the Second Amendment are, you have to concede that the casualties we tolerate on its behalf are somewhat illustrative of the value we place on it.
Sept 11 comes, there is a terrorist attack that kills a mere 3000 people, and all of a sudden people are "forefeiting" their Fourth Amendment rights. Does this not concern you? The going rate for a constitutional right should be much higher than this. You can make an argument that possibly saving lives should be worth more than worrying about the civil rights of crazy Islamic black guys. But if you're going to view civil liberties via this public safety perspective, you should at least be consistent with it and favor gun control with as much enthusiasm. That would save way more lives, wouldn't it?
I haven't heard any sensible argument in favor of this guy's incarceration. They've all been variations of "oh so you would like a dirty bomb in your neighborhood then huh!" Which is like saying "Why are you defending whichcraft? Why are you in favor of witches?" to accusations of a witch hunt. We've got a guy who's in jail for wishing he could build a dirty bomb. He's doing time for surfing the web as far as I can tell. For typing "dirty bomb recipe" into Google and "researching" their construction. (1. Wrap deadly isotope around dynamite. 2. Light dynamite. 3. Run away.) Merely planning to do something is not a crime. You now live in a country where citizens are put in "indefinite detention" with no trial for a thought crime. This is a major milestone toward a police state. You should be alarmed that this is happening.
And it's not as if wanting to build a dirty bomb means you're going to do it. Does he have any radioactive material with which to make one? "Planning" to build a dirty bomb doesn't amount to a hell of a lot if you don't have any dirt. It's fairly obvious the only reason he's being held in military detention is because Ashcroft knows this crappy evidence would be laughed out of any legal court. They wouldn't even have enough for an indictment. And by arresting rather than monitoring and following this guy, they screwed up one of the only good leads they've gotten from their Camp X-Ray interrogations- which have otherwise been a complete fiasco. All they can do to cover their asses now is keep the guy in jail forever by inventing new laws for themselves as they go along.
NIF isn't solely being built for Nuclear Weapons research - indeed it's predecessor as the largest laser in the world, the University of Rochester's Omega Laser (a mere 60 beams
www.lle.rochester.edu
was only used for classified research 2 weeks a year. The primary purpose of the NIF laser is to research is to research Inertial confinement fusion reactions - by studying the reaction we learn how to build better bombs, by studying the reaction & it's confinement, we learn how to build the holy grail of power sources - a fusion reactor.
What I find interesting and what many people seem to miss is that the Constitution does not refer to US citezens. "No person". "Any person". "The accused". It doesn't matter if you're a US citizen or a foreign national - you should be entitled to the same basic rights. It seems clear to me that the authors of the Constitution valued these things as fundamental things, not privledges of US citizens; their merit is that they apply univerally.
I'd rather be flying
Simulating isn't that cool. But atmospheric tests.... now that's really cool!!!!
Where in the law does saying you're an "enemy combatant" supercede your right to a grand jury and a speedy trial? Giving someone a new label doesn't mean the constitution no longer applies.
> > land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger
> Seems to me these are parallel constructs:
That would require another "or". The only grammatical question is whether the the "when" clause modifies all the preceding, or just "in the militia", and the comma makes it all but certain that it is intended to modify all the preceding.
> It never ceases to amaze me that the same people who scream the loudest when the government does something they don't like tend to be the very same folks who support giving the government more and more power.
The government is grabbing more and more power right now, and I don't support it.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The fallacy to all of this is the assumption that designers are interested in _bigger_ bombs. Bigger bombs are easy; we've known for years how to build very big bombs. No one's interested.
Most of the work done on nuclear weapons at these labs falls into two categories: verifying that aging weapons still work (instead of testing them) as already mentioned, and designing new, _smaller_ bombs. Smaller bombs are considered more destabilizing by the anti-nuclear movement -- hence all the protestation. However, the general public doesn't see smaller as a threat, so the misconception that bomb designers have any interest in bigger bombs goes unchecked.
If you do the research, you'll find out that during the 80's, the number of nuclear weapons in the US arsenal went up several times, but the aggregate megatonnage went _down_ by a factor of 10. Weapons were converted to MIRV's, large bombs were discontinued entirely, and a number of smaller (field artillery, SAM supression, etc) weapons were added. Since the 80's, this trend has continued, though cutbacks in weapons production have curtained the trend.
Personally, my feeling is that the world is safer with the enormous decrease in megatonnage, even if smaller weapons slightly increase the liklihood some nuclear weapon will be used ("it's only a small bomb"). Smaller weapons are, as a general rule (easy to violate, but as a general rule) cleaner, more precise, and more likely to be used against a military target (missile launcher, ship, base) than indiscriminately against a large urban target. The problem with that is that it takes out the Mutual Assured Destruction doctrine; if neither side is losing cities, they might fight a limited nuclear war. I come down on the side that says MAD was useful, but lost relevance a long time ago -- and that it's better to be physically incapable of large-scale destruction than to be limited merely by the fear "they'll do it back to us!"
Re the second amendment: I differ in opinion. What you've called a trade-off in human lives is more indicative, I think, of a recognition of the infeasibility of gun control with respect to limiting said gun-related deaths.
Yes, that's a valid argument. But it goes both ways. Ashcroft has been eviscerating the Fourth Amendment ostensibly to protect us against terrorism, but I don't feel any safer. In fact, I think this business of arresting anyone with a turban is more of a show for us to make us feel safer than any real strategy.
then Congress should declare war. does anyone else find the new tradition of fighting undeclared wars a bit disturbing?
i mean the Spanish-American war was declared and that was much smaller than Vietnam, Desert Storm or (most likely) whatever mess we're about to get ourselves into.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
You miss two key points here: first off, there are strong arguments that banning guns would result in more crime deaths, not less -- indeed this has been the experience in the UK, which finally banned handguns several years back, and in the years since has seen skyrocketing rates not only of violent crime, but of gun crime. London is now more dangerous to live in than any large city in the US.
Secondly, Mr. al-Muhajir is not under arrest for `planning' to do something without falling through. He is under arrest for entering the nation as an enemy combatant in the service of such actions. This is a crime, and under the supreme court precedent set in the case Ex Parte Quirin is subject to military jurisdiction.
(Quirin, by the way, was a case stemming from a very similar precedent -- several Germans agents, including one American citizen, were infiltrated into the US from an enemy submarine with plans to blow up dams, power plants and Jewish-owned businesses in the US. They were caught by the FBI and tried by military tribunal, a procedure which the supreme court upheld.)
As for whether Mr. al-Muhajir should have been arrested at once or tailed, I doubt that you are in possession of enough information to make that judgement at this point, and I'm not sure that such monday-morning quarterbacking accomplishes anything...
Ashcroft has been eviscerating the Fourth Amendment ... arresting anyone with a turban
Care to back up either of these claims? At all?
ostensibly to protect us against terrorism, but I don't feel any safer
Oh, ok. If Mr. MillionthMonkey doesn't feel any safer, let's call the whole thing off. Open up the border, boys! Call the troops home! Forget preventing further attacks, and let's focus on making Mr. Monkey feel safer instead!