A report that Google is hedging on its pledge to stop participating in Project Maven, the military program to adopt artificial intelligence for drone targeting, brings to mind Hans Bethe’s 1995 plea to scientists and engineers developing new nuclear weapons: “cease and desist.” For the old lion of Los Alamos, there was only one way to end the perpetual technical refinement of weaponry: remove yourselves, all of you, right now.  It was the logical conclusion of a line of thought he had expressed as early as 1954, regarding work on nuclear fusion armaments: “In the course of time, the present conflict between communism and democracy, between East and West, is likely to pass, just as the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have passed. We can only hope that it will pass without thermonuclear war. But whichever way it goes, the H-bomb will remain with us and remain a perpetual danger to mankind.” Pity he is not here today to comment on the relentless development of autonomous lethal drones. Of course, few took his advice back then.

With the passage of another Cold War “whiz kid” whose youthful technological prodigy was sacrificed on the altar of nuclear supremacy, historians are left to contemplate why. Harold Brown’s mentor, Edward Teller, epitomized the clinical paranoia that ruled the era, so much so that Teller became unemployable in the government he relentlessly militarized. By contrast, Brown remained acceptable in polite Washington company, perhaps because he lacked the H-bomb father’s vampirish Hungarian accent. (Too, he had an enjoyable sense of humor, as when he told the Senate Armed Services Committee in April 1987 that Sen. Pete Wilson’s views on certain Star Wars issues “may win a Nobel prize–not in physics, but in perverse literature.”) But Brown’s legacy of world-destroying weapons, including the grotesque MX ICBM, is testament to how thoroughly he nonetheless embodied Teller’s mindset. A seemingly immortal relic of the catastrophe that was World War II is the industrial and political constituency that continues to laud America’s myriad Harold Browns as saviors of democracy.  But they can and will justify anything, especially any raid on the nation’s treasury, in the name of defense against whatever goes bump in the night. Harold Brown, like so many of his fellow whizzes, should be mourned as a mind wasted on an obsession that was and still is a national disaster.

He was, to boot, a longtime director of the tobacco giants Altria and Philip Morris.

Concerns about harmful applications of artificial intelligence are “very legitimate.” Dangers posed by artificial intelligence are “not one of those things that keeps me up at night.” Guess which words were spoken by Google CEO Sundar Pichai and which by DARPA director Steven Walker. While the tempest-tossed masses may be forgiven for not even knowing what AI is, let alone whether it is good or bad, these two authorities at the top of the technocratic ladder reflect the field’s deepest knowledge base. Right? So Pichai is troubled and Walker is what, me worry? Here in a crystalline nutshell is the battle for the future between civilian and military applications that is one of the strongest story lines in the history of technology, especially for the past century. Hundreds of billions of dollars push the tech from each side. Pichai and Walker ought to start spending occasional weekends together–you know, maybe get to know each other a little, being apparently from different planets.

Long ago and far away, in an old collegetown in the land of prestidigital lakes, lived three damsels in a half-timber cottage. They had faces that could launch thousands of ships and the most handsome, strongest young men of the college gladly would have tried that and whatever else might possibly win even a single hour of their fancy. But there were so many fine suitors that it took nothing short of magic to acquire more than the pleasure of an idle afternoon. So one of the young men, an outlier who appeared to foolish eyes as just another schlub with long hair, learned to pluck ping-pong balls and quarters from behind the pretty ears of the loveliest of the three. She was of course charmed by this impossible feat and made him her consort, no matter that he had a suspicious name and no visible past other than something to do with New Jersey. This was perhaps his first great act of wizardry, from which he went on to acclaim around the wide world.

So rest in peace, Ricky.  Somehow you knew from the start what it takes to enchant the hard-to-get.

The Congressional Research Service, which is supposed to help members of Congress understand the limitless arcana of American government, has issued an update on the B-21 Raider strategic bomber program. Although billions of dollars continue to pour into the project–one of the Air Force’s top 3 procurement priorities–since CRS’s last look, the research agency has nothing much new to say.   Fundamental technical details remain unavailable.  The vast program is still being managed through “nontraditional means” via a purposely miniaturized Air Force office. Special Access classification, long criticized as fostering mismanagement, still makes validating the proposed costs impossible. In other words, it’s still trust us, good fellas as far as Congressional oversight is concerned.