My professional contacts are acting strange. The ones who know that I'm a weak fit for government research are shutting me out. The ones who *don't* know that are desperately reaching out.
There's a stupidly huge number of job postings for DoD contractors. They actually pay industry standard - they usually pay garbage.
Something's happening, I don't know what it is.
cc @Elliptica
ceo_of_monoeye_dating
in reply to ceo_of_monoeye_dating • • •I personally suspect that our government is trying to develop some previously inconceivable military technology. I'll call such a secret project "Z," out of ignorance of what it actually is. My discipline is highly specialized, but it's also so broadly applicable that "our government wants CMD to be useful" gives zero fucking information other than "there's a camera of some kind somewhere" which could easily just mean 'we want new face detection tech to keep Z out of our enemy's hands."
The US has been atrocious at keeping secrets for decades. DOGE was obviously a government purge - I suspect that this was actually done to throw out people who our government suspects would leak information about Z. That is, this was a transition from a pseudo-peacetime civil service to a wartime civil service.
Our government is trying to scrape up scientists from the streets right now - if it wasn't, I wouldn't know shit. It cannot find enough suitable scientists to develop Z. That must mean Z is either big enough that it requires a stupidly huge number of scientists, or the US scientific community is full of people unfit to work on Z. I'd suspect it's the latter - American scientists are mostly driven by one of two desires: the desire to publish public research or money.
Patriotism in the scientific community is very low. Unfortunately, the scientists that *do* fill our National Labs are...not the best, nor the brightest. They're usually driven by the desire for a stable job where they don't have to compete...a desire held by incompetent people. They are not *idiots*, but they are undeniably outclassed by the typical university professor, and they are comically outclassed by people selling you ads.
I think we're looking at a second nuke race. I don't know what the next "nuke" is, but whatever it is the US government is trying to make it right now.
IRGC Commander Xenophon
in reply to ceo_of_monoeye_dating • • •