ANTI-​​TERROR RESEARCH FUNDS = “PUBLIC TROUGH”

The L.A. Times reviews the bil­lions of dol­lars in research money being spent this year on home­land defense. The paper’s — and a for­mer defense official’s — con­clu­sion: “What we will have in two or three years is a huge new pub­lic trough. The fund­ing going into this is way overblown. When you throw this kind of money around, even well-​​intentioned peo­ple can’t con­trol it.”

Efforts to build national [bio­log­i­cal] net­works of sen­sors “makes Star Wars look easy,” the defense offi­cial said, refer­ring to the 20-​​year drive to build a mis­sile defense sys­tem. The offi­cial agreed to speak on con­di­tion of anonymity. As gov­ern­ment offices, uni­ver­si­ties and con­trac­tors estab­lish dozens of home­land secu­rity research cen­ters, he added, “What you hear is the thun­der­ing of the herd rush­ing to the money.” 

March 7th, 2004 | Homeland Security | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.