Paul Adams - Summary of Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military

Summary

of

Accessory to War

Neil deGrasse Tyson and Avis Lang

Conversation Starters

By Paul Adams

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EVERY GOOD BOOK CONTAINS A WORLD FAR DEEPER THAN the surface of its pages. Questions herein are designed to bring us beneath the surface of the page and invite us into the world that lives on. These questions can be used to:

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Introducing Accessory to War

A

ccessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military is a book written by Neil deGrasse Tyson and Avis Lang. It is a story of how science and military interests have been intertwined and entangled since ancient times and in the early years of space exploration.

The book gives an overview of the close ties between science and national security issues, particularly citing the history of space exploration and its relation to the Cold War. Military planners and astrophysicists focus on the same thingstracking, multi-spectral detection, imaging, nuclear fusion, ranging, and access to space. But while astrophysicists study the universe and regard it as their laboratory, military men regard it as a battlefield. The authors explain how astrophysics had been used by men in uniforms in pursuit of war. Scientists want to understand the universe but soldiers want to dominate it. What is key to both is having the right technology to pursue their own ends. The book features subjects related to celestial navigation and satellite-related warfare. The authors use their research skills and knowledge to explain how technology, science, power, and industry intersect.

The authors are comprehensive in their telling of their story. They start with scientific space exploration during the ancient Greek times and move on to Galileo's time, and to today's GPS technology. They tackle a wide range of subjects including spy satellites, the Hubble Space Telescope, Apollo program, the Iran War, and more. Astrophysics is explained in relation to politics, spanning 3,000 years. For this reason, it serves as a map for civilizations to survive in the future. Described by critics as an uneasy alliance, science's role in aiding wars is recognized. It is well-known that nations who have advanced scientific knowledge are the ones who have the war advantage. It is also admitted that astronomers and physicists have benefited from this alliance. The authors explore the implications of the partnership issues of security policy and its influence on scientific exploration. The authors provide well-thought insights and observations. They use the well-researched historical information to forward their arguments. In concluding, they say that the use of knowledge to dominate other nations is not possible in today's space age. What is essential is the cooperation among nations and scientists. The interconnected world has made this cooperation possible. It is the path to planetary well-being.

In their prologue, the authors cite how science has produced war weapons including biological arsenal such as bacteria and viruses; and chemical weapons such as poisoned water, nerve agents and chlorine gas. Physicists have produced the atomic bomb. Compared to these scientists, astrophysicists have not produced any weapons, but they study the things that military focus their energies on like access to space and nuclear fusion. The authors admit that knowledge between astrophysicists and the military have flowed both ways. The astrophysicists are "curiously complicit" in their alliance with the war industry, they say, but they also acknowledge that as a community, astrophysicists are mostly "liberal and antiwar." Through the years, the alliance has served the military's purpose of "conquest and hegemony" and in today's 21st-century science, satellite warfare is being explored.

DeGrasse Tyson says the idea for the book started in the early 2000s when he was a member of the Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry under then-President George W. Bush. He says the work introduced him to political advisors, Air Force generals, and Congress members and gave him an inside look into the politics of science and technology. He thought of how this alliance between science and the military has worked in the previous historical periods. The authors cite and quote famous thinkers and scientists whose insights into the alliance between science and the military are significant. In chapter one, they cite Edmund Phelps, the Nobel laureate in economics, who said that innovation in the sciences, economic and social dynamism all go hand in hand with capitalism and war. He says the war on the ground or in space is tied to capitalism and a vibrant economy. The authors further quote Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch astronomer, and mathematician who lived in the 17th century, who said that war has actually urged expansion and growth in other areas of society particularly in literacy, agriculture, exploration, and science. On the other hand, intellectual stagnation and lack of armed conflict were observed to have coexisted together. DeGrasse Tyson and Lang say that these observations by prominent scientists do not necessarily need be true in the present century. The scientific efforts could be directed "toward the betterment of all rather than the triumph of the few. " They add that capitalism will not survive without a majority of people and other species who would soon be dead due to polluted air and water, cosmic rays, or asteroid falling from the sky.