survival and nuclear issues -- where is a way out?

So much has been happening lately that it reminds me a bit of the folks who theorize

about "the singularity." (Odd footnote: I received an email a week ago saying that it was John Von Neumann,

and not the transhumanist crew or the mystics, who coined the notion of .. global singularity...)

And not all is good.

Nuclear things are just as important a part of energy as oil, so I think it fits the list, even though it connects

with a lot of nonenergy issues. This is a survival issue. The level of interconnection between different levels

of the system is really incredible; I apologize that it's hard to make a linear story of the tangle.

For simplicity -- let me begin with a twelve year old's version. The school complains: "We think there is a problem. He seems to be depressed.

He's talking about everybody dying." I ask him: "What's the problem?" He says: "Dad, you know I watch

the news, not cartoons or stuff like that. Don't try to kid me. You know that Iran is going to have the bomb pretty soon --

maybe really soon, maybe 3-5 years, but soon enough. When they do, you know they are going to give it to Hammas,

which will immediately vaporize about half of Israel, and pretty much flatten the rest. The US won't take this lying down, but

there will be long-range missiles on all sides, and we will have World War III. You know where that goes."

Three obvious questions -- Would Iran really give it to Hammas and Hezbollah?

Would the US really retaliate if there is mutual assured destruction?

Would Iran also give the bomb to Chechens and folks in Venezuela and Afghanistan working with drug lords?

All of this is near term, and worrisome enough. But the need for sustainable electricity, at prices lower than the

high price of wind and solar today, worldwide, in the face of limitations of the simple "one cycle" nuclear fission we use in the US...

is a critical backdrop to this. What if we end up seeing not one but a hundred Irans in a couple of decades,

new nuclear states which may not even start out wanting bombs but which can't help having high-grade nuclear materials floating around.

The President's recent conference is a very important positive step, but no matter how strong the safeguard system...

it's a matter of life or death that we not OVERLOAD that safeguard system. Right now, the world is on course to doing precisely that,

moving us into problems much worse than the near-term Iran tangle I just mentioned.

Getting solar to 6 cents per kwh or less, and making it fully available to the entire world, is one part of a rational strategic response to this.

US renewable energy standards, focusing on sustainable nonfission sources, is another part, because of what it helps

all of humanity do with wind and solar. A fourth generation intelligent grid could help, if it lowers the effective price of wind.

But given the risks and costs of those two important efforts -- we really ought to be adding energy from space as a major,

large "third leg" of the core push on renewable electricity. Like the others, it is not economically ready yet to compete

in the baseload electricity market, but it really does have the potential, if we did what we need to do. What's more -- it

has far more support than American political people would think in the developing and multipolar world.

But "for want of a nail the war was lost."

In order to break the rather negative logic with Iran and Hammas -- to make it clear that the US **COULD** retaliate

if Iran's clients vaporized half of Israel -- the US **COULD** realistically develop and deploy affordable space-based missile

defense, if a few affordable things were done, most critical being the development of something like $200

per pound-in-low-earth-orbit (pound-LEO) access to space within something like 5 years. Turns out -- this IS doable.

Technologically, it is doable. Politically -- well, there are all those politically savvy cynical people who don't really care whether they and their families

may get physically dead. (This is an important study in psychology in itself, but maybe we should hold those details for later.

Some of us would like to proceed from the simple assumption that we would prefer our people to survive, and would like to

ask what it takes.) $200/pound LEO **IS** doable, but only if you know how....

It turns out that $200/pound-LEO is also crucial for making energy from space economically plausible.

Because the idea of energy from space arouses strong human emotions (which are already blinded by partisan emotions already

in Washington!), it is hard to get a straight objective story on this... but NSF ran a joint effort with NASA on this in 2002 which did

get the basic facts to me. At $200/pound, the best life-cycle cost estimate for space solar power (SSP) designs which were fully vetted

was 17 cents per kwh (from SAIC). In the neighborhood, but not good enough. IN ADDITION to access to space, SSP would require

an efficient (maximum information, minimum cost) research program to try to develop technologies beyond that vetted option, to reduce cost. (Not so different from earth solar that way!) John Mankins, who was my NASA partner in running the NSF-NASA effort in 2002 (but later purged by

the Ares people), has stated that he has improvements in hand to the vetted designs, which he expects would get to 10 cents per kwh

for baseload power. But with no money at all for this kind of thing, there are no SAIC numbers for that improvement. 10 cents per kwh

is not so far from the fully loaded cost of safe nuclear fission (especially if national security externalities are considered,

and we think global).

What's more... I see an unproven (risky as in 50-50 probability) way to get it down to 5 cents per kwh with room for less, low

enough to really eliminate the economic pressures for a nuclearized planet. Have published this in a few obscure places,

and talked about it in somewhat less obscure places. IT IS A FORM OF NUCLEAR POWER -- but NOT ALL NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGIES

ARE THE SAME. The breeder reactors that the earth is now on a path to disseminate worldwide are far more

hazardous than the various forms of US-style regulated fission. The alternative nuclear power I will discuss is far LESS hazardous.

Working in energy, you have probably heard the old saying "fusion is the energy source of the future and will always be so."

Back in the 1970's, I visited some of the top fusion folks at MIT, and was depressed by what they told me in all candor.

"Most of the high (6 cents?) cost of existing fission reactors is the cost of the high cost heat-to-electricity systems required

to handle radioactive materials. In 50 years, if we do perfect big magnetic bottles to do fusion, they will be very expensive,

and we will have to ADD their cost to the basic 6 cents for the heat exchange and radiation." In short, Mankins' 10

cent solution is probably at least as good or better, and more likely to be available sooner.

But that's magnetic bottles. There is another mainstream, credible approach to nuclear fusion -- laser or inertial fusion, where large lasers are used to ignite fusion in small fuel pellets. The US has been wise and unique in putting more energy into THAT approach, and becoming the world's leader in it,

rather than throwing too many billions into buying a ticket to watch what Japan and Europe do with magnetic bottles ("ITER").

Of course, paying for big lasers is now as hard as paying for big magnetic bottles. BUT -- laser technology is part of the world of Moore's Law

(my part of NSF!), where radical changes are happening, and even more radical opportunities are appearing on the near-term horizon.

GIven proper funding and encouragement and focus, our community probably could make it possible and affordable to build

lasers which can fuse deuterium-deuterium pellets (which dramatically reduce the problematic neutron production). If I were running

such a research program today, in today's climate, I'd put about half the effort into the kind of lasers Lawrence Livermore has been thinking about

(earth-based lasers powered by a surge in the electric power grid), and half into lightweight lasers to be deployed in space using mirrors

and solar light to power them. Using the second type of laser IN SPACE, IN VACUUM, there is no need for that six cents heat exchange system;

the energy comes out DIRECTLY as electrical currents! It all computes ...

but only if we have access to space.

Some people believe in the ultimate possibility of a third generation of nuclear energy, beyond both fission (first generation) and fusion (second generation).

I tend to believe that the probability of that is over 70%. But we will never get it if all we do is erect monasteries to worship superstrings

or the theories of the past. We will never get to it if all of our experiments go one proton at a time, at great expense. We would have to do

experiments which really probe the unknown, whose outcome we cannot predict, which evoke much higher energy levels than we have ever deployed

before in our history. To do this, at minimum risk to our survival and under maximally controlled large-scale conditions... I wouldn't

want to start the relevant experiments until we have the ability to do them in space. That too requires $200/pound, if we remember that

even physics has to live within budget constraints.

============

So will we get to $200/pound-LEO?

At www.werbos.com/space.htm, I have posted a couple of simplified basic explanations of what the problems are.

The President

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/04/15/making-investments-groundbreaking-developments-21st-century-space-exploration

has actually announced a new direction for NASA which could theoretically get us there, in time. That's incredibly encouraging...

BUT it will be no small matter to arrange it such that we really get the relevant technology.

For the Iran aspect... it would be better just to go ahead and develop the RLV which Chase has proposed ASAP (for which I have many more details

in various places, and he has many times more). And at the same time, to make arrangements with China and others

to get the full civilian electricity benefits from energy from space which access to such an RLV ("launch services") would allow.

Not easy, but there is hope.

Even if the probability should be more than 90% that we will all fail at this, and all die in the end, a rational

person does not just give up on a 10% chance of survival. Nor does he/she just ignore what's

coming. The rational response is to focus very, very intensely on maximizing what hope we have.

===============

================

Nuclear things and oil are STILL not the whole game in the Middle East, not even remotely so.

There are also deep cultural aspects in play, but they do stretch the scope of this list and the length of this email.

Best of luck to us all,

Paul

deeper issues in polarized health care and energy debates

A friend of mine recently posted some thoughts about the health care debate,

which got me to think about analogies to energy issues and bigger issues:

======================

On Fri, Apr 2, 2010 ... wrote:

There were many many details to the healthcare bill, and other things such as student loans were covered, but the fundamentals were established early on and they were debated extensively. It came down to two entirely different approaches:

1. Treat medical care as a market-related good, stimulate competition, add transparency, reduce legal-related costs, and confront people with the true cost of what they are buying.

2. Treat medical care as a kind of public good, and extend free or heavily subsidized coverage to many people who do not get much now. Panels and other devices will be established to find cost effective approaches to healthcare delivery, but demand can be expected to grow and that is a good thing.

=========================================

In parallel with this, other folks are organizing debates about whether the government should pick winners and losers

(related to energy and jobs), or not. Industrial policy, or not.

A few years back, the electric power community was deeply divided on the question of whether that sector should

be deregulated, or not.

This reminds me of a guy I used to work with, Lotfi Zadeh of Berkeley, who leads a major movement arguing that

binary yes/no white/black thinking has become an extreme curse which needs to be transcended; his alternative approach

to reasoning is widely used in areas like industry in Japan. But I have replied -- we don't need shades of grey;

we need to think in colors, in more dimensions, when black and white pictures simply don't fit.

For example -- with the electric power system, the free market alternative to the ideology of regulation relies

on the behavior of consumers as rational (actually, clairovoyant) actors. It delegates all the details to the consumer.

Thus comes the idea of sending signals to the consumer every 5 minutes, day and night, and expecting the consumer to

constantly reset a thermostat or turn things on and off. The "little ring" that flashes red when electricity prices rise

is proof that people really have gone to that extreme. That's binary thinking. At the same time, equally thoughtless

adherence to ideas of central power have gotten some utility people to define "smart grid" as: "We have the power to turn off

people's air conditioners whenever we choose to, in our operations room." Neither of the old paradigms is powerful

enough to fit the realities of human life and hnuman needs here. It is possible to build a society based on either of the two extremes,

but either one could get worse and worse in choking off the human spirit...

For the grid case, a coherent kind of third way has begun to emerge. Besides the "red ring" (waking people up when electricity prices rise)

and the central authority... why not develop automated intelligent agents which represent the interests of the consumer?

Why not have the price signals available every 5 minutes to the home, but let the consumer choose higher level POLICIES, in effect,

which he/she leaves it to the intelligent agent to IMPLEMENT? There is a phrase ("price-responsive intelligent appliance")

which I find myself using over and over again, in defining the fourth generation concept of an intelligent grid.

(See http://www.werbos.com/E/Intelligent_Grid.pdf .)

Though I am not a specialist on health care... I have lived in this country long enough to have seen a lot of the pieces

that people need to think about here. A central problem in health care is that consumers simply cannot afford

to keep up with the incredible complexity of what they have to deal with, HERE AND NOW under the existing system,

to the extent that a model of clairovoyant markets would require. It makes the red ring look tiny by comparison.

There is ALREADY excessive cognitive pressure, based on misconceived kinds of ideal thinking. People

die as their paperwork is being processed. Maybe you've been lucky enough to have missed all that, but in my case,

I would simply not be alive today if I hadn't been able to do some end runs around the system, using resources

that most people don't have.

I can't say that I know what the best balance would be for health care -- the sort-of Parto optimum between the

competing considerations that need to be dealt with. It generally requires full application of all the intelligence we have,

and real dialogue, to approximate that kind of optimal balance. (And even ongoing research.) The partisan

approach doesn't get there.

When it comes to breaking our addiction to oil, the same kind of need for rational balance applies.

Neither extreme -- the traditional overprescriptive 2,000 page bill building up unnecessary bureaucracy,

nor the extreme of doing nothing or imposing a simple gas tax -- would do much at all in the real world

to capture the clear opportunities we have to solve that problem before it wipes us out.

(See www.werbos.com/oil.htm for a worked-out middle way.)

Larry Summers said recently that he isn't hearing much talk now of double-dip recession or

"W" curves. I understand the desire to reduce the fear which inhibits some economic activity.

But the price of world oil has not become less threatening in the past few weeks.

(Didn't it just go up? There was that gas station in Maryland where gas was $3.15 again...

but who besides a nagging technical expert would notice that sort of thing? Is it

really "too deep in the weeds"?) If I were planning to run for office later this year or in 2012,

I wouldn't be hiding from the most serious possible thoughts about how to affect

reality on the ground....

a breakfast recipe

Ok -- It doesn't save the world. But all of us have to eat. Some of us need protein, but are not ready for very heavy things in the morning. So here is what I now like, after lots of experimentation.

A kind of heavy miso soup. With milk, plenty of food, but easy on morning digestion.

Start with --

1. A container of miso paste. Where I live, we have an H-mart. Lately, we buy a half-pound or pound container of aka miso, shinshu...

2. Some firm tofu. Costco has a nice option.

3. A can of salmon and a can of clams, also available in bulk from Costco.

4. A bag of sheets of wakame (also from H-mart).

(Since the miso paste and the wakame last very long, it all matches.)

Probably it would be good to have fresh scallion onions, or dried chopped onion,

as well.

To get ready --

have a small pot, a largish bowl, and a tea kettle.

First, I put water on in the tea kettle.

Next, using the BACK side of a big table spoon, push two very big spoonfuls of miso paste around

the sides of the bottom (third? half?) of the bowl.

Then... following my wife's preference... slice the tofu. I use about one and half of the pieces in

Costco's pack... each piece being about two inches by two inches by one inch.

I dump them, and the open cans (INCLUDING fluid), into the pot. I would put in chopped onions

at the same time, if I felt like it.

Then put enough water into the pot from the kettle to fill it to the top, and put it on high.

Then pour just enough water from the kettle (ideally about 130-140 degrees?) into

the bowl to cover the miso... no more than one third full. Use the BACK of the spoon

to squeeze and push the paste, to get it to dissolve completely.

Then cut about a sheet and a half of wakame into the bowl. With scissors, first cut it into

strips about one inch long, against the grain. Then point the edge down into the bowl, and slice off lots of little pieces (strips stacked on top of each other) down into the bowl.

Add fresh scallions if you have some.

And then, when you feel the pot has been done enough, just pour it into the bowl, hopefully filling

it to about the top.

When I do this, the big bowl has enough soup for about four breakfast sized bowls.

I eat one, and save the rest for quick microwaving on work days.

-------------

One funny thing. Our cat really, really likes this stuff. My wife wouldn't believe it at first...

but it really went wild with THIS broth... next wakame... next salmon and clams...

but still strongly preferred this tofu over the cat food it ignored nearby.

But this is an odd cat, which plays with mice and attacks coyotes.

That's all.

power grids and cybersecurity

First -- thanks to Mitzi Wertheim and others on this list for getting me invited to

the energy conference at the National Defense University a few months back. It was

a great learning experience. One thing I learned -- really high priority that DOD assigned to the security and vulnerability of the electric power grid.

(Though I did hear the same message in a couple of hearings last year as well.) Because

the integration of renewables and the optimal use of plug-in hybrid cars requires more of a "smart grid,"

there is every reason to worry about the risk that the cybersecurity grid problems and trends might be even worse in the future

than they have been lately.

On many, many occasions I have heard electric utilities say things like "oh yes, we get attacked 50,000 times per day."

And once, over beer, a utility guy I was particularly close to confided with me about the really scary cat and mouse games they have to play, routinely,

just to keep things going even now.

And so... I don't have a complete picture of this issue, the way I think I do with energy. Please forgive if I report impressions which turn out to be false.

But in doing some due diligence for some personal computer issues, I have had to grope and do my best on some things that others might find interesting.

If one of you corrects some of my wrong extrapolations, please be tactful about it -- but please do not just regurgitate flawed conventional wisdom.

First -- some background. You have probably heard that "there is no such thing as an unbreakable operating system. First and foremost, security is a human thing

and a frame of mind and..." This is only a half truth. There is a lot of very important useful stuff going on in areas like

avoiding insider threats and in intrusion detection. (My friend the electric cat sure had use for a good sniffer to help him.)

But -- a lot of people who make useful products, in all areas of human endeavor, have a tendency to be unfair to other folks

who also make useful products different from theirs. There really is such a thing as an unbreakable operating system, and it has a crucial role to play

in areas like this. For example -- I'm willing to bet that those 50,000 attacks per day, AND the more serious ones my friend told me about,

were not insider attacks. An unbreakable operating system would help a WHOLE lot, especially since it feels like a kind of wrestling match where the sheer volume of attacks

is becoming hard to deal with. And the computer horsepower available for cyberattacks is growing per Moore's Law -- or faster.

Where to find an unbreakable operating system? As it happens, I was very lucky in graduate school to get to work on the GE-then-Honeywell Multics operating system,

which was developed as an outcome of very serious and rigorous research at leading universities. Theorems have been proven and books written. It became

the first operating system certified as approved for multiple security level jobs. It was the core of the World Wide Military Command and Control System (WWMCCS)

in the Pentagon for several years. (In time, Moore's Law and the market caught up with it.) They told me that a tiger team was sent to break it, with full access to

all the code (which was in PL/1, and far more intelligible than usual operating systems); they found just one trap door, easily closed, and that was that.

Multics embodied a then-new system called "ring brackets," among other things. Microsoft and Apple have both talked a lot about getting back to ring bracket types of security

in recent years, but there are certain issues in implementation. To put it mildly. Theorems only work if one is strict about making the assumptions of

the theorem valid. People tell me that the MOST reliable, unbreakable operating system available today is the Unix-based

system developed by Roger Schell for the National Security Agency (NSA). I believe that his famous "orange book" is available on the web.

But what about Windows? I have certainly known experts who say that use of Windows for really critical missions (like power grid operation?) is a security risk.

My older daughter once dated boys who wrote code for microsoft, and it was VERY clear that they were not enforcing the kind of rules required to comply with

unbreakability theorems. (My daughter did.) More seriously -- when Vista came out, I did a quick google scan through a lot of the new literature, and it became apparent

that Microsoft was more effective in enforcing their own ability to control a user's computer from the outside -- inevitably leaving the open spaces which make it actually easier

for a well-informed hacker to get in there. It cut back on ordinary USER control, not on hackers' rights. But still, I have used windows at work and at home, for a number

of practical reasons -- not least of them, pressure from IT groups, who have certain vested interests vis-a-vis microsoft, security or not security.

About a month ago, the winds of change started blowing -- HARD.

First episode we all saw -- on the surface. You probably remember the great "China raids google" scandal, which people are working hard to get past

on many levels on. Neither google nor China like wars; they have some common sense about Pareto optimal arrangements, even if it does

imply some mutual safeguards. One side effect -- google told a lot of customers: "It's not our fault that the government of China saw so many

of your emails. For god's sake, what do you expect when you use unencrypted wireless links?" And to all gmail users (including me) they inserted a discrete note

at the top of all gmail web pages, announcing "new security relations". Click on it and you see... https security is now the DEFAULT. We don't

want people hurting themselves by accident. You can change back if you want, but you have been warned. (Additional comment:

at a hearing on cybersecurity last year for Senate Commerce Committee, the guy who runs networking for AT&T basically said

"there might be some hope that someone might someday develop a way to make wireless communications REALLY secure, but it's not clear to us that this is really possible."

The Terminator 3 scenario is not so far off as people think.)

I checked with my wife, and she was skeptical. Sure enough, the change was ONLY for wireless connections. To get full security for ALL your gmail,

you need to click the "ALWAYS" http option in gmail settings. I do that, and it doesn't slow things down. Does it work? Two weeks ago,

I heard some pretty wild and fiery speeches threatening to overthrow the government of Iran, especially using facebook and Utube and twitter and such.

No mention at all of google. The fiery people were openly disdainful of the ancient email generation. So who did Ahmeijad complain about and crack down a week or two ago?

Not one word about facebook. It was gmail. I guess someone else thought enough about security to check the box. And, I hope, maybe google's https

is strong enough that the Revolutionary Guard, at least, would find it hard to crack routinely. Not so bad, on the scale of things. On modern computers, I don't detect any slowdown.

Next episode: after a year on the Hill, I come back to NSF to be told "We have determined that Eudora 7 is a security risk. We have put measures in place

to get rid of it, forcibly, from all computers at NSF." I said: "But wait, this is my entire file structure for the last 10-20 years. Even if I could find a way to

forward it to Outlook, it would be like taking a warehouse full of files on all subjects known to man, and just dumping all the contents into a huge heap on the floor."

But they said: "No exceptions. And no Eudora 6 or 8 either." I was not kidding about Outlook; it was hard enough to approximate real intellectual standards for even

one year, dealing with just a few subjects, on the Hill, using Outlook, even exploring its outermost limits. So I looked a lot closer.

First, the folks I rely on most tell me that Apple's new OS X, version 10.6, really is a close enough cousin of Roger Schell's kind of unix-based system.

Indications are that it's the closest thing to a truly unbreakable operating system I could get on the market, with a limited budget. On a close study -- Apple Mail

(PERHAPS with the add-on "leap") has the features I found essential in Eudora. Microsoft's Entourage 2008 was the next best competitor, but .. not quite for reasons

we could get into. So at this moment, I am now looking at a really beautiful new Apple computer, and about to make the final transitions. No need for

buying conversion software; IMAP servers (like gmail!!!) and OWA make it much easier than in the past to transfer email. (Difficulty of transfer was the main

problem with Eudora 7 -- even transfer to Eudora on a new computer!) I do wish I had noticed the IMAP option in google years ago. (google "gmail IMAP.")

So now -- I will be migrating to all Apple Mail for official work, all gmail/Eudora7 for all personal or less official stuff, and outlook at times as a kind of backup repository store but not active use.

An interesting related story -- did you notice the recent announcement from China of pervasive standards for all computer software and hardware products?

Part of this is undoubtedly "the great firewall of China" and neo-mercantilism, but not all. China has been worried about ITS cybersecurity

just as much as we have -- and perhaps a whole lot more effectively! I did try to discuss some of these issues with US government folks in past years.

For example -- to really protect all government agencies and infrastructure, it would be possible to enforce an incremental forced compliance (in all government procurement)

of software which not only meets unbreakability standards, but has a way the government can do AUTOMATED checking of all new source code to

be put in critical areas. I feel confident that Microsoft would be willing and able to respond to a proper phased-in rule. (If not, there's Apple...)

But what about the hardware aspect? If the hardware itself does not implement what the software thinks it is going to do... could chip builders

insert their OWN back doors? Not a joke. I once proposed that we broaden cybersecurity research to include crossdisciplinary hardware/software stuff...

but research is often a SOURCE OF MONEY. Certain local fat cats in computer science wanted to avoid the dilution of funding that would come if some

of the cybersecurity money went to hardware experts. (I doubt that recent liposuction has changed them much, but we should try to be open...)

The new Chinese standards do seem to suggest total awareness of all this. But in all honesty... I was not looking forward to the possibility of having to

learn about chip diagnostic procedures myself... it's not obvious what can be done if the chip manufacturer is not part of it. Most of that is overseas now.

There are some folks who will say of cybersecurity: "the Chinese may have standards, but we have a czar." But the Chinese and the Russians are

not the only ones on earth who have ways of dealing with czars.

========================================================

-- Have received some interesting feedback from that posting.

-- Some folks in industry are enthusiastic about SE-Linux which, they say, is a publicly available

version of NSA's unbreakable operating system. If you have a PC, and don't want to be a branch office of

China's data collection effort, you can just set this up and use it for ALL your network connections.

It has a package called Evolution -- at least two varieties, providing essentially the same capabilities as Office,

including email like Outlook. (I deeply respect China's active curiosity, but the same paths they use can be used

for many other purposes.)

-- BUT: the new national cybersecurity plan appears quite different in flavor, from the (limited) newspaper accounts.

There has been a long-standing dilemma -- to "build higher walls" to protect government and critical infrastructure

from things like overseas takeover attacks (which can literally burn out expensive power generators), or to create big

breaches in the walls and lower the walls, so that investigators can peer inside and keep an eye on things.

This relates to a point I alluded to -- do we protect the user from all others, including Microsoft, or do we protect microsoft

from the user? Logic says we COULD aim for stronger, higher and more transparent walls... but I haven't seen much of that.

It is possible that we are now moving towards greater ability to see terrorists living in America, but greater vulnerability

of critical computers outside the NSA.

-- One guy says:

Do read the second public draft of NISTIR 7628. It is at

http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/PubsDrafts.html#NIST-IR-7628

He reiterates the common theme of folks being funded in this area "there is no

such thing as an unbreakable operating system. You only need to reset a few wires.."

BUT: there have been string theorems proven guaranteeing unbreakability in a useful, practical way

**IF** certain conditions/assumptions are strictly fulfilled. Sure, there is always a risk of someone

changing the hardware and invalidating the conditions. Sure, those risks do need to be taken very seriously

as part of any general plan. BUT a quantum improvement in our ability to fend of attacks by people who DON'T

have physical access to the wires would be well worth the trouble... and may be downright urgent, given

the strain that I hear our power system is already under. Not to mention how viruses and crime and such have become

more and more of a hassle.

That said -- I have no idea what the security tradeoffs are between SE-Linux, Mac OS X and the real NSA unix system

derived from Schell. Nor do I know how theorems from folks like Berkeley researchers have been updated to account for varying

ways of handling communication with the outside world.

On my PC at home, I do not really plan to install SE Linux. It's not a sensitive government installation, and the power

of Evolution and of raw Office is just not enough for my purposes. I will probably migrate at home from Eudora

to Outlook, and use an add-on, Neo Pro, to maintain organization -- and PERHAPS use it as a client for gmail,

using gmail's IMAP capabilities, or even use Eudora as a way to access gmail using the IMAP capabilities (even though

it won't give true google and Eudora access together for anything but the inbox). At work, the new Mac does fine.

Rescue mail migrating from Eudora 7 to Eudora 8

Since Eudora 7 was such a great achievement -- I paid a heavy price by trusting too much, too long, and "upgrading" to Eudora 8. For those others who ended up paying the same price, here is what I learned about the way out:

1. Initially, mailbox migration from Eudora 7 to Eudora 8 seemed easy, except that all attachments get disassociated. When I started that migration, I wish the Eudora 8 folks had warned me of that, and pointed to their obscure webpage which suggests INSTEAD of the provided migration tool ... the use of other tools like Aid4Mail or Eudora Mail Cleaner. The search engine in Eudora 8 didn't really work either, from the start.

2. A few months later... all the mail in all my mailboxes but inbox just disappeared. Years of stuff. When I asked what could be done on the Eudora 8 forum...

no suggestions. The Eudora 8 mailboxes are actually Thunderbird mailboxes.

In my case, they had somehow become corrupted. (Maybe Vista to Windows 7 had something to do with it.)

3. I tried copying the Profiles file to a new Mac at work, and using Eudora Mailbox Cleaner. EMC worked fine on Eudora 7 files (with some tricks), but not

on this stuff. Eudora Mailbox Cleaner converts Eudora 7 mail to Thunderbird proper or to AppleMail, but for the sake of features and stability I went to Apple Mail.

4. The only thing which worked to save my correspondence in Eudora 8

was Aid4Mail Professional... writing to a pst file, imported to Outlook.

I can't modify some things in that folder (maybe not anything?),

but I do have full access to see all the mail, finally. The mail in "empty" mailboxes suddenly

became visible again.

5. Based on this mess... to get back Eudora 7 functionality at home,

where I had tried Eudora 8, I will now be using Outlook with the Neo Pro extension (which gets back a lot of what we had in Eudora 7).

At work, I have ported my old Eudora 7 mailboxes to Apple Mail,

where a certain extension will get back a lot of the old functionality -- though Apple Mail by itself is not bad, a whole lot better than Outlook for folks with a complicated life.

(Aid4Mail will let me back up the apple mail to outlook, even though our Exchange server at work does not allow me to upload Apple Mail folders.) (Also -- thank to my colleague who showed me how "special folders" -- created by clicking on an innocuous looking plus sign icon on the lower left -- let me do searches much closer to Eudora's than I had expected.)

OOPS: Neo Pro does what my colleagues claimed, but the plug-in recommended by local apple users doesn't look right. Instead, I will extend apple mail by getting rocketbox. It's at an early stage, but its does do the right kind of search already; combined with the nice filing capabilities of Apple Mail, it gets me where I need to be. The rocketbox guy plans extensions which would get

apple mail back up to all the things I needed in Eudora 7...

6. Should I have just kept using Eudora 7 and not upgraded? At work, they would not let me, for security reasons. (That's what drove me to switch to iMac at work.) At home, the mess of someday moving that email worries me...

though with Aid4Mail or use of Eudora 7 as a client of gmail with the IMAP option maybe I should not have worried so much. Still, gmail supports both Outlook and AppleMail as clients; Eudora 7 works... to some degree...

with a few tricks... for now... but Outlook with NeoPro sounds better.

7. A friend suggested getting SE-Linux to run on my home PC, to get me security at home as good as what I now have at work, or maybe even better. The Evolution programs are said

to be as good a Microsoft Office. But Outlook without the Neo Pro extension is not really adequate for me, and it sounds like a pretty big project in a lot of ways.

8. Recommendations for use of Eudora Mail Cleaner (a Mac-only program):

leave a few hours for it to do the job (if you have gigs of stuff), and do not do anything when it seems to be hung up on a small task. Don't use the script to rebuild mailboxes when it is done;

just do it all by hand, and be patient. (Rebuilding mailboxes is faster than the initial conversion...

but it's best to select, say, 10-40 mailboxes, and then hit mailbox-> rebuild... group by group

until you are all done.) But when the input was corrupted Eudora 8 mailboxes, the result

was full mailboxes with empty messages -- UNLIKE the result with Aid4Mail, where I can read everything just fine. (Is it read-only? Haven't figured that part out yet. Ideas welcome.

Can't rename or delete anything I have tried... even as administrator..).

Candidate statement for National Space Society

For decades, I have worked to make human activity in space economically self-sustaining, with “multiplier effects” which make space more than just a” banana republic.” Space must open up big new markets. We must cut the cost of access to space to $200/pound. (That drives the economics of energy from space and the scale of other markets.) We need dogged efforts to connect the requirements all the way from nuts and bolts to global policies and politics.

In 1972, while getting a PhD from Harvard in Applied Math, I started the Harvard Committee for a Space Economy (HCSE). HCSE stimulated many new ideas. It provided a start for Mark Hopkins, and links to the Princeton group (O’Neill) and Drexler. George Mueller’s vision for the space shuttle inspired us, but Nixon’s response illustrated pitfalls in politics.

Teaching at U. Maryland (1975-1978), I included space in my course on Global Survival Problems, where I met Gary Barnhardt. With another friend, we founded the Maryland Alliance for Space Colonization, which got up to 500 members.

From 1979-1989, I became the DOE/EIA lead analyst for long-term energy futures. As Regional Director for L-5, I worked with chapters from New Jersey to the Piedmont. I served quietly but effectively as L-5’s representative to Congress, helping start the National Aerospace Plane Project (NASP). After my DOE colleague Gary Oleson became representative, I worked with him on a council of pro-space organizations leading to the founding of NSS.

Through 2010, I funded research from the Engineering Directorate of NSF. I funded AAC in Tennessee to apply computational intelligence to problems which plagued NASP. Based on their success, AAC briefly led America’s continuing effort in hypersonics (LoFlyte) after NASP cancellation. I cooperated with McDonnell Douglas, leading to the Handbook of Intelligent Control (White and Sofge), yielding methods to mass-produce materials for hypersonics and reduce the weight of thermal protection systems. I funded efforts to assimilate and improve a Russian approach (“Ajax”) to air-breathing vehicles fast enough to get to orbit. In 2002, I visited John Mankins, who agreed to “JIETSSP” – the last US government funding program for space solar power, which we ran jointly. (To learn more, search on JIETSSP at www.nsf.gov, or visit www.werbos.com/space.htm.) In 2009, I worked at the Senate on climate, energy, defense technology and space. Futures published my paper on a rational strategy to maximize the probability that humans really succeed in settling space.

misconceptions about backpropagation and brain

A friend recently passed on a paper which commented on backpropagation

(see www.werbos.com/Mind#htm) and the brain. Since there is SO much

misinformation out there, it's probably worth posting some comment on the supposedly learned comment....

==========================================

I summarized:

There is a HUGE amount of miscommunication between disciplines on this and many other topics. It's a bit like the wars between Republicans and Democrats which we

need to deal with and adapt to, like it or not.

Most of the people who say these things about backpropagation in the brain/psych world

do not even know what backpropagation actually is.

==================

My friend said:

Just ran across a paragraph in a long paper on other subject that walked into your territory, thought you might like to see it:

Critique of Back-Propagation :

The method of backwards calculation of weights is not biologically plausible. Thus, it cannot be viewed as a model for learning in biological systems, but as a method to design a network with learning features.

Second, the algorithm uses a digital computer to calculate weights. When the final network is implemented in hardware, however, it has lost its plasticity due to preset weights.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

That's really stupid. Both analog and digital neural net hardware exists with

adaptable weights of various types. 'Way back in 1994, Caulfield (an optical computing guy)

and I published a joint paper on how to do online learning with adaptable hardware weights,

which works in a practical way even with the simple forms of backpropagation that

untrained psychologists know about.

There was a period of lull on the neural net hardware front for a few years. But

on February 3-5, Luda and I are scheduled to go to a conference CNNA 2010

(an easy google) where 680 people are coming, dedicated ENTIRELY to neural network hardware, which is now finally getting to be recognized as the next big wave.

(But I will probably be a day or two late, because I'm supposed to speak at Herzliya 2010,

another conference you might enjoy googling -- especially the program.)

Now if the Pope says that no such chips exist, and Chua and XILINX say they are actually selling them, who do you believe? The Pope has a higher citation index,

so of course the chips do not exist -- if you believe in hermeneutics.

As many now do, as memories of Francis Bacon fade even in large parts of science.

If the humans believe more and more in hermeneutics, perhaps humans will conclude that computers do not exist and perhaps the chips will conclude that the humans need not exist.

I hope not, but things are indeed looking sticky lately.

---------------------------------------------------------------

The commenter went on:

This loss is in contrast with the initial motivation to devlop neural networks that are biologically inspired. If changes are needed, a computer calculates anew the weight values and updates them. This dependence on a digital computer robs the neural network implementation of its spontaneous ability to restructure itself in response to experience and all the complex dynamics that goes with it.

============================================

My response:

Again, this assertion is mainly a matter of ignorance.

In more sophisticated neural network designs, backpropagation is not EVERYTHING!

It is an essential PART of the system.

Rewiring in the brain and rewiring in hardware are complex and important issues.

In fact, in a general system at the level of human brain intelligence or lower, there

are three critical issues at the heart of intelligence: (1) how the "weights" (synapse strengths

and intraneuronal parameters) are adapted or updated, on a continuum of nonzero values;

(2) how they may be set to zero ("nulled out") or reset; (3) how physical rewiring is decided.

In all cases, the important issue is not the physical mechanism (though that's

a key part to figuring out what we really want to know), but the functional

or computational basis for deciding to invoke (with what parameters) the physical mechanisms.

With or without rewiring, it is essential to do and understand both (1) and (2)

to understand normal brain intelligence, as well as to replicate brain-like intelligence

in computers. Backpropagation is an essential part of that. Thus the critic's argument here is a non sequitur.

Just for your edification -- it is unclear whether (3) is really significant in the vast majority of humans above the age of two. Until a few years ago, it was believed that no new higher neurons are created in the brains of humans above the age of two; now we know better, but

the survival and use of the new neurons (sent swimming through the blood from generic progenitor cells without higher intelligence) depends on factors probably calculated as part of the same system which performs (1) and (2), which needs feedback to do its job.

BUT AGAIN: I add these later comments just for your edification. I would say more,

but maybe this is not the right context.)

--------------------------------------------

The commenter went on:

Moreover, despite its popularity, the algorithm suffers from extensive calculations and, hence, slow training speed.

===================

My response:

When some folks try to turn on computers, it may sometimes take takes centuries for them to boot up. That's them.

It is true that valid generalization from complex experience takes a lot of time

even when it is done well, by any means whatsoever. Even human brains sometimes take years to learn the full implications of their life's experience. But for ordinary engineering applications, fast learning methods with feedback have been developed. In operations research (which knows more about these converegnce speed issues than any other disciplines), it would be seen

as a sign of pathetic ignorance or idealistic fantasy to imagine that convergence could be faster without derivatives than with them, if derivatives are used in an intelligent way.

But still, no one on earth can claim to have the optimal design as yet for making

OPTIMAL use of the information we get form backpropagation and from other sources.

(Those who do not even understand this challenge are not likely to contribute to it.)

The time required to calculate the error derivatives and to update the weights on a given training exemplar is proportional to the size of the network. The amount of computation is proportional to the number of weights.

This is again really stupid and ignorant, as a general statement. If neural network designs are emulated on a digital computer, the first sentence is generally true. Thus with a billion neurons

and 10,000 weights each, it would cost on the order of 10 trilllion calculations to calculate all

the derivatives. But it would cost about 10 trillion calculations to run the network itself from its inputs to its outputs.

The reason why brains and brain-like hardware are possible is that they use massively parallel

calculation. I can understand how someone in another field might be unaware of my own work,

but even a sincere high school kid wouldn't make such strong statements about backpropagation without knowing there exists a book called "parallel distributed processing," whose title should make it obvious what's going on.

In fact, results in the lab of Barry Richmond of NIH show that it takes about

30 milliseconds for the cerebral cortex to make a forward pass calculation from

its inputs to its outputs. It takes about the same to make the backwards pass it also

makes in every alpha time interval (anout one-eight of a second). The timing

is no problem. Backpropagation is a parallel calculation just as much as

involking a neural network itself.

===============

The commenter said:

In 1986 Sejnowski and Rosenberg described a simple back-propagation network simulation that reads and properly pronounces unrestricted English text with good accuracy. They named their system NETtalk.Large computer programs exist that accomplish the same task, but these programs, which take many hundreds of hours to write, painstakingly encode each English pronunciation rule and provide lookup tables to cover the many exceptions in the language. The NETtalk simulation program took only a short time to write and contains no explicit pronunciation rules or lookup tables.()

---------------------------------

My response:

I have to admit that I do not know anything about the literature on

practical technology products which try to do what NETtalk did.

Thus I have no basis for verifying or contradicting the claims in the paragraph abovem, except perhaps by analogy with other areas. Certainly I know

of areas where one group used traditional painstaking methods over years to perform

the same task that was performed very quickly (either before or after) by use

of a neural network. But there is also a great diversity of people using neural networks, some trained and some less trained, and some trying hard and others trying to get bad results.

At www.werbos.com/oil.htm, I posted some slides which included examples of applications where people spent MANY millions or billions of dollars using a wide variety of traditional, AI and control theory methods on an important application... where a well-crafted neural network system substantially outperformed them all. Those are for decision applications.

For "prediction" -- at www.werbos.com/Mind.htm#Mouse, I posted some recent slides given at Chile.

It is still a major challenge here how to get the word out, and upgrade the educational

systems.

Best regards,

Paul