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In the Trump Administration, Science Is Unwelcome. So Is Advice. (nytimes.com)
Anonymous readers share a report: As President Trump prepares to meet Kim Jong-un of North Korea to negotiate denuclearization, a challenge that has bedeviled the world for years, he is doing so without the help of a White House science adviser or senior counselor trained in nuclear physics. Mr. Trump is the first president since 1941 not to name a science adviser, a position created during World War II to guide the Oval Office on technical matters ranging from nuclear warfare to global pandemics. As a businessman and president, Mr. Trump has proudly been guided by his instincts. Nevertheless, people who have participated in past nuclear negotiations say the absence of such high-level expertise could put him at a tactical disadvantage in one of the weightiest diplomatic matters of his presidency.
"You need to have an empowered senior science adviser at the table," said R. Nicholas Burns, who led negotiations with India over a civilian nuclear deal during the George W. Bush administration. "You can be sure the other side will have that." The lack of traditional scientific advisory leadership in the White House is one example of a significant change in the Trump administration: the marginalization of science in shaping United States policy. There is no chief scientist at the State Department, where science is central to foreign policy matters such as cybersecurity and global warming. Nor is there a chief scientist at the Department of Agriculture: Mr. Trump last year nominated Sam Clovis, a former talk-show host with no scientific background, to the position, but he withdrew his name and no new nomination has been made.
"You need to have an empowered senior science adviser at the table," said R. Nicholas Burns, who led negotiations with India over a civilian nuclear deal during the George W. Bush administration. "You can be sure the other side will have that." The lack of traditional scientific advisory leadership in the White House is one example of a significant change in the Trump administration: the marginalization of science in shaping United States policy. There is no chief scientist at the State Department, where science is central to foreign policy matters such as cybersecurity and global warming. Nor is there a chief scientist at the Department of Agriculture: Mr. Trump last year nominated Sam Clovis, a former talk-show host with no scientific background, to the position, but he withdrew his name and no new nomination has been made.
The people giving advice on Korea have been fucking it up for 60-ish years, and REALLY fucking it up for 25 resulting in a viable nuclear program. So I wouldn't listen to them either.
This is exactly the discussion the leaders of the G7 are having today about Donald Trump.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Many people like to blame Trump, but he is a symptom of the US Environment. When Education is constantly cut for a period of 40 years and constant hate towards educated people, this is how things end up.
On TV you see nothing but Reality Shows and shows talking about Ancient Aliens and other such things. You end you with a population that believes Science is fake and thinks Angels and other such things will come and 'save us'.
More people seem to believe in pseudoscience (wikipedia) than anything else, thus you get a Trump and I do not see that changing
Seriously? I don't about you, but I would like a nuclear physicist to tell me if Un is bullshitting me.
You admire speaking plainly? OK. I find your ignorance baffling. I cannot believe people are still supporting Trump considering everything he's fucking up.
He's rolled back Obama's ban on coal miners dumping their waste into rivers and stream - which poisoning the water; DRINKING water for people. And god forbid if you like to fish or enjoy the water - it's fucked.
He's neutered the CFPB - the best thing our government has done for us little people in decades. Banks are now free to steal from us again.
He's totaling screwing up trade deals that took years to negotiate because of his childish and ignorant beliefs on trade.
His real estate and deal making acumen was all a creation of his publicist.
He's stirring up more trouble in the Middle East which damage this country for many many years to come.
Unless one is an Evangelical Christian Kook who thinks he's some of messenger from your skydaddy, this guy is just fucking all of us over.
Sort of sad that reckless braggadocio is what passes for "insightful" nowadays, and I really don't get why people are conned into thinking that large and intractable security problems with set and firm interests can be resolved with the swagger of a used car salesman who was born into a real estate empire.
If you focus on Kim Jong-Un, his interests are pretty straightforward even if his methods and rule are extreme. He wants to stay alive and stay in power, and balance the internal threats from a horribly subjugated population and potentially ambitions rivals in the military and his family with the external threats of the US, South Korea, Japan, and yes, even China. So what sort of uninformed bullshit will baffle Kim into losing grip on his primary interests and capitulating? And why in the world would he believe the promises of the highest profile pathological liar in the world, the one who just reneged on a similar sort of deal with Iranians, proving that the US very much is not a reliable dealmaker right now.
And you need the nuclear weapons experts to prove that any program to dismantle the weapons program works, as if you walk in blind on the basic scientific and engineering details of the nuclear programs then you will end up blind as to the effectiveness of any disarmament measures. Not really hard for the North Koreans to cheat (which they've done before) if you don't even have the basic competence and mechanisms to verify compliance with a potential disarmament pledge.
Perhaps you don't what to have everyone working on the nitty gritty details coming in and chatting it up with Kim in the summit, but that brings forth the lie to how this summit is supposed to be a magical way to solve the problem. Normally these high profile summits with leaders just confirm the lower level detailed negotiations and diplomacy that lead up to them and provide a bunch of nice photo ops, and last I checked the prep work to actually draft out then cement a deal has not been done yet, likely intentionally.
I could get more sardonic and sarcastic, but if you've glanced at least a bit at Trump's business history like I have then you should probably be even more pessimistic about relying on the mythological art of the deal. The multiple bankruptcies are just the tip of the iceberg.
Yes, but Trump is actually a strong sociopath unlike presidents for decades before him.
Um, Trump is a sociopath that makes 'strong' statements and routinely backs down from them. But he's so strong that he refuses to admit he's backed down. I guess as long as the press has some modicum of 'The Emporor's New Clothes' respect left for the office, he can get away with that. But how exactly does that make him strong?
And how the fuck have we gotten to the point where somebody like you, who seem nominally literate, will fawn over somebody being a sociopath - strong or otherwise? Or are paid trolls being dispatched to such obscure corners of the Internet as Slashdot? Now that's scary.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
What I find odd is that there's so many pro Trump folks on /. (which is ostensibly a site for pro-science nerds)
Many folks here on /. are indeed pro-science nerds. Many are also libertarian and don't like government regulation. Of the viable candidates, Trump was the most likely to reduce government regulation. Personally I am not a big fan of the president, but his election wasn't a surprise to me, nor is the support for him here on /.
until Saddam & Gaddafi. In both cases we secured promises, backed up by extensive international inspections, that they would not develop weapons of mass destruction. And in both cases we proved to be untrustworthy and brutal and arranged for both men to be murdered (Gaddafi died with a bayonet twisting in his gut).
Kim would be a real mad man if he stopped trying to get nukes after seeing what we do to people who relinquish them
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The guy just had a toddler temper tantrum with Canada and now he's supposed to be talking to the most crazy dictator out there and we think he can accomplish something? Sure, we *should* be talking. But we should be prepared too, get the facts too before negotiating. He should know how many nukes we have, should know the history of the Korean war, know why the North and South don't trust each other, know why North Korea distrusts America, know the history of other negotiations in the past, and so forth.
Trump was good at deal making in the early days. Later on though, when word got around that his deals resulted in you getting shafted, he had much more problems making the deals. He's got a massive ego that makes him erroneously think that he's a good negotiator, and an ego big enough to seriously screw up the talks. Just look at how he had a toddler tantrum at Canada, does you honestly think that North Korea will be easier for him to deal with than Canada?
Do you have any examples (specific quotations would be awesome but I think that might be asking too much) of bad science advice people have given with regards to Korea?
Well the scientists working with intelligence agencies have been wrong about the speed at which North Korean could develop nuclear weapons and delivery technology basically forever - from the most recent example:
" At the start of Donald Trump's presidency, American intelligence agencies told the new administration that while North Korea had built the bomb, there was still ample time - upward of four years - to slow or stop its development of a missile capable of hitting an American city with a nuclear warhead."
But this kind of terrible under-estimation goes back decades.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Simply redefining words to mean anything you want is not a valid way to make a point.
How is it stale if he is running point for the Russians just this week? He's acting in their geopolitical interests now, and is quite open about it. The lingering issues haven't been resolved yet (though Manafort is being buried under a mountain of indictments), and Trump piling on more and more new issues. I have a hard time seeing how the damage won't be extremely long lasting and reshape the post Cold-war political order, well past however long the Trump presidency lasts.
It's not the press man.
They are hoarse from pointing out his lack of clothing for the last 9-12 months.
The problem is Mr. Trump's authoritarian followers. Read up on the authoritarian mindset. It's present in about 25% of any population. It's capable of flipping on a dime repeatedly to conform to whatever the leader's new reality is.
It is probably a huge survival trait in authoritarian regimes.
If Mr. Trump says the sky is black, then to the authoritarian's, it's sincerely black.
If the next day he says it is yellow, then it's sincerely yellow to them.
They have little to no cognitive dissonance.
We did a lot of research into this after world war 2.
As long as democracy, honesty, and a free press are valued by the leadership- then the authoritarians value it. But they can flip on a dime to not valuing democracy, honesty, and a free press. Consider how many flipped from hating Russia to loving Russia in under 6 months. People who disliked Russia their entire lives suddenly were fine with Russia.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
It takes resources to do Science; the best thing we've got to create flows of resources is a Free Market.
That's weird, I could have swore that the USSR was the first country in space. I'm also pretty sure that what has made the U.S. such a scientific powerhouse has been tons of federal grant money that flows into our universities for basic research. The free market turns that into money afterward. There's also the issue of all those nifty advancements brought about through NASA's research.
The free market is important, but when you make it the be-all, end-all, you'll find that things don't work out as well as Ayn Rand's stories would have you believe.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Even if I grant your couple of [citation needed] deaths, I wasn't talking about typical low-level friction (and your definition of any death of any soldier anywhere as a "war" is just plain stupid). I specifically said "WWIII", which is well known by everyone, apparently except you, to mean a major, probably nuclear, war amongst superpowers.
We are not now, and have never been, fighting WWIII. Even the Cold War, which had plenty of dead soldiers on all sides, was not WWIII.
At least Trump has made politics unpredictable.
Yes, and everyone knows unpredictability is GREAT for the economy and foreign relations!