Torture of the physical variety was effective and the North Vietnamese were happy to work with it, as it yielded the same results while offering a more permanent reminder to victims. Jacobsen explores this and how the US military tried to find ways of extracting intel without leaving any permanent damage, though it would not be met without resistance and a form of retaliation by the North Vietnamese. Psychological warfare was becoming a key to successfully learning about the enemy and how to break them down. This was also the era of new weaponry, which could be utilised and leave no outward scarring. Jacobsen cites the emergence of napalm and other chemical weapons key to US success, though there was a need to be careful not to come across as violating war treaties and killing tons of innocent civilians. While this might look good on the surface, as soon as technology is released, it can (and is) copied by others, meaning that US strategies to use bombs or chemicals would soon be met with an equally potent weapon by the opposition, making technological advancement essential. With the onset of wars in Asia, US Defence began looking at new strategies to defend against the enemy and scare Soviet-backed countries into submission before things got out of hand. As Jacobsen explores further, the bomb testing had some fallout no one could have expected, when cancers and other radiation-based diseases emerged in many of the scientists involved in the testing. From there, exploration into what other types of military and defence advancements could be done became the task of the day. As Jacobsen explains in the opening chapter of the book, secret tests for a new hydrogen bomb took place soon after the Second World War and the results were astronomical. The need to be technologically advanced became essential for the US Government with the onset of the Cold War. Readers who enjoy this type of analysis will surely want to take detailed notes as they make their way through this book. Jacobsen uses her exceptional research and writing abilities to provide the reader with a sensational look well behind the curtain and into the secrets the US Government has been using to further its stronghold around the world. As author Annie Jacobsen posits, some of the technology is used by the US military two decades before it becomes public knowledge, leaving me to wonder what’s being worked on now. These are the technological inventions the US Department of Defence use to further their abilities on the world scene. I'm super disappointed, because this book was extremely interesting before I lost faith in its accuracy.įar away from anything the general public understands, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) lurks. The problem with a book like this is that the subject matter is difficult for a layperson to fact-check, and when fairly simple concepts aren't correct, it doesn't bode well for the recently declassified material. When I got to the part where the author completely mangles Moore's Law (instead of saying computing power doubles every 18 months, she was saying it squares), I was done. After that, though, my skeptic senses were perked for more inconsistencies. I am generous, however, and understand that misspellings can make it through even the best of editorial processes. First of all, she refers to a bombsight as a "bombsite." Bombsite doesn't even appear to be a word, and was my first clue that this book may not have been properly edited or fact-checked. Unfortunately, as I got deeper into the book, I started to see some errors with concepts I was quite familiar with already. The author had some opinions or drew some conclusions that I was slightly skeptical of, but they were fairly clearly labeled as opinions, so that was fine with me. The material was interesting and seemed well researched. For the first 150 pages, I was completely hooked.
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