Just remember, conspiracy theories are easy because no one wants to believe that any part of life is random. Sometimes, it really isn't a conspiracy. I usually apply the theory that humans suck at keeping secrets, so if it would require a lot of people to keep the secret, it's probably not true.I figure the response I send him is a strong enough point to be worth my sharing it with everyone... In short, the theory that "if it would require a lot of people to keep the secret, it's probably not true" is extremely dubious.
One of my favorite examples is the Stealth Aircraft Program. The stealth program was revealed to the world in 1988, at a press conference with fuzzy photos. However, the F117 Nighthawk had been flying missions for 7 years at that point, and construction of the first stealth plane started in 1976. The secret facility that manufactured the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber had 13,000 employees for many years prior to it's disclosure. Estimates of the cost per plane run between 737 million to 2.1 BILLION dollars. Per plane. Around twenty B-2s (and some number of F117s) were made in the 80s, so that's a pretty big chunk of the US military budget being kept completely mum.A minimum of 13,000 people kept that particular secret for 7-10 years. They would have kept it longer if the pentagon hadn't decided that telling the world "we can bomb you and you'll never see it coming" was a potent strategy for deterring the Soviets.
That establishes a precedent. Large numbers of people can keep a secret, as long as the stakes are high enough and the advantage to playing along outweighs the advantage of leaking info. Yes, people can get rich by leaking the plot of an upcoming movie - but leaking high-level military secrets gets you killed or arrested.
Remember, that happened during the 80s, when we feared the Commies about half as much as we fear the terrorists today. What kind of secrets are thousands of Americans keeping quiet about today "for the good of the nation"?
3 comments:
Two things:
1) citing a single example is confirmation bias, but...
2) for what it's worth, over the past year or so, you've changed my mind about conspiracies.
There are those who believe the revealing of the stealth program was more of a Bush election stunt than a scare tactic. The Russians were probably more scared of the stealth myth and the loads of spy misinformation leaking to them.
Another way to keep a large secret is to flood the information market place with misinformation. I will often do this at work (like when I told an operator I missed a day because I was seeking psychological help for having to deal with her bullshit every day). The U.S. is prohibited from doing such domestically but will often plant stories in foreign papers. But then unsuspecting politicians will site these foreign press releases when making a call to action domestically. In no time it all gets so confusing nobody knows what the hell to believe anymore. It's just a good thing no American news sources print misinformation so at least someone has a monopoly on truth.
1) citing a single example is confirmation bias, but...
Interesting criticism.
If I'm trying to disprove the notion that "large groups of people can't keep a secret for years" it would seem (to me) that even a single example where a very large group did keep a secret for years would be enough to disprove the negative.
But, you want more examples, I'll gladly furnish them:
Somewhere between 30 and 50% of the operational strength of the US Army during WW2 was fictional and existed on paper only. Allied Command so thoroughly convinced the Nazis that these units existed, they were able to make Hitler hold back Rommel's armored divisions after D-Day out of fear that thousands of imaginary soldiers and tanks still "stationed" in England would make a second landing as soon as Rommel headed south. This lie took several years (and the complicity of the US media - National Geographic ran an article about US Unit Patches that included all the fakes to intentionally fool the Nazis) to establish, and in a very real sense it's what won the war.
Khalid Sheik Mohammed came up with a plan to crash airplanes into important US buildings. It took him 15 years to finance and enact the plan. During that time he convinced 19 other men from a variety of countries to hijack and pilot the planes to their deaths. To accomplish this, these religious extremists had to get into the US on visas, take flying lessons in the US, buy coordinated tickets, and smuggle box cutters onto airplanes. All without making enough ripples for the FBI to realize there was a significant imminent danger. And that's without looking at any of the alternative conspiracy theories, just the official story from the 9/11 commission.
Watergate was only tangentially related to Nixon, but he tried to cover it up, and that opened up all kinds of investigations into his other illegal acts. Most of his administration was never punished, and many remained working in government for decades thereafter. Some of them still hold positions of influence. Nixon sacrificed himself to stop the investigations, and congress rolled over, content that it'd had enough of a show trial to pacify the nation. Then Ford pardoned Nixon and nothing ever changed about the way they do business in DC.
Those are all "recent" examples, but you'll recall that 2 dozen senators plotted Caesar's public murder, so there's indications this sort of thing has been going on for a long time.
So, while the notion (that it's human nature to not keep secrets) is a pleasant and comforting one, I can't accept it as true.
Conspiracies happen every day. The best defense conspirators have is people's desire to mind their own business, take it on faith that everythings gonna work out okay, and/or accept the simplest solution. There's any number of quotes from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that would be appropriate here. The important thing to realize is that if you don't actively pursue the truth, you'll never find it.
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