Axil Axil <[email protected]> wrote: > As the U.S. will soon become the world leader in fossil fuel development > and worldwide sales well into this century, it is not in the interest of > Russia, the U.S. or its other energy producing allies to sponsor a > competitive or more rightly a superior energy source. If the past is > prolog, the U.S. will attempt to restrict LENR to secret military > operations like Drone power, small naval vessel power plants, and remote > base power sources. > This scenario is unrealistic. The U.S. government does not have the power to restrict a technology in this fashion. Once it becomes generally known that cold fusion is real, no government, corporation or other institution will have the power to stop it from being developed and deployed. The lure of money will be far too strong. Consumers will demand it.
Corporate CEOs, Senators and other powerful people often imagine that they are in control of events, but that is not the case. A corporate CEO is a slave to his customers. Whatever they demand he must supply. By proclaiming that the LENR technology is top secret and a dangerous > nuclear application with weapons of mass destruction potential . . . > This cannot be done. Knowledge of the technology is already too widespread. These devices are not that complicated to make. After people realize it is real, every industrial corporation will begin frantic efforts to replicate it. They will soon surpass Rossi, just as in 1909 competitors soon surpassed the Wright brothers. Even if the U.S. government claims LENR is top secret or dangerous, other governments will ignore it. The most important military uses of cold fusion will be in ordinary civilian technology such as automobiles, telephones and flashlights. Not in exotic weapons. The most important technologies of the WWII were trucks and DC-3 airplanes. See the quote from Eisenhower in my book. If the U.S. does not allow widespread use of cold fusion in civilian technology, our military will soon be weakened. Military leaders understand this, and will not let it happen. People here who extol the Chinese government and economic system have exaggerated ideas about its effectiveness. It is far from perfect. The U.S., the EU and Japan are still in the aggregate far ahead of China, well integrated with one another, and more capable of developing cold fusion rapidly. It is far from a foregone conclusion that China will lead in this technology, although it surely will play an important role. This reminds me of the notion that the Chinese have somehow put a hammerlock on the market for rare earths. That's ridiculous. The U.S., Canada and other countries have huge supplies of rare earths. We stopped mining these metals because the Chinese produce them at a much lower cost. They do that because they ignore their own environmental laws and they pay their workers very little. The U.S. and Japanese manufacturers could easily pay a few extra pennies per magnet or per cell phone and make up the difference. If the Chinese ever again threaten to embargo these materials to jack up the price, I am sure the U.S. will do that, and Japan will revive North American production. I expert they are doing that now. See: http://oilprice.com/uploads/AC1025.png I remember in the 1980s when people claimed that Japan was the economic powerhouse of the future. I found this notion ludicrous, as did most Japanese people I knew. Of course it was and remains a major industrial power, but there was never anything magic about the government, MITI, their corporations or their educational system that would put them far ahead of other countries. The only time in history when one set of nations progressed far ahead of others was the industrial revolution from 1700 to 1900, when Europe and the U.S. became far wealthier and technically ahead of Asia and the third world. That was because of unique conditions that will never reoccur. The biggest reason was lack of communications. People in Japan and China did not know what was happening in Europe or the Americas. Now they do know, and there is no chance they will miss out on any major technological advance. And no chance we will miss out on a breakthrough in those countries. If consumers in Europe or China begin buying cold fusion powered cars, consumers in the U.S. will hear about it. (remember when they want to mobilize popular opinion: "We don't want the > smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."), they can maintain their worldwide > advantage in fossil fuel sales of coal, oil and especially liquefied > natural gas. > Not a chance. No one can sell a technology when a rival technology is half the price, or ten times cheaper, or a thousand times cheaper -- as cold fusion will inevitably become. You might as well suggest that by mobilizing popular opinion the government might have prevented the use of electric lighting, automobiles, or computers. Or that it might persuade people to go back to using horses instead of automobiles. No power on earth can prevent people from adapting technology which is far better or cheaper than the old version. - Jed
