Superweaponry

But if by 1980 the racial problem in South Africa and the more general problem of social revolution in the underdeveloped areas are both threatening, the one most threatening problem of all — the one that fills every lesser international issue with an appalling peril — is the problem of the superweaponry.

When I came to Ahmedabad, it had become clear to me (for I had just come from the disarmament conference of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences) that man as a species can no longer afford any more to cultivate illusions either about his own “nature” or about that of other species, or about those “pseudo-species” he calls enemies — not while inventing and manufacturing arsenals capable of global destruction and while relying for inner and outer peace solely on the superbrakes built into the superweaponry.

By awarding big contracts to huge corporate war profiteers (with their long tradition of cost overruns for superweaponry), ERDA and the NSF deal setbacks to the innovative, independent, and courageous small firms which pioneered the solar energy field and are now in danger of being deprived of their rewards. While these firms risked their slender capital resources and made technical breakthroughs with little or no government support, large grants to the behemoths of the corporate world now will assist the giants in muscling or buying out the little enterprises.