That is uniquely true of the U.S. Department of Defense, where it is typical to find some of the most senior positions in the weapons acquisition system populated by people who have little understanding of new technologies or business processes.
They trade a very narrow conception of power in the international system based on nuclear weapons for a much broader one based on economic integration and development that really brings them much more security in the long term.
In short, like every other major new weapons system introduced since the slingshot, Stuxnet creates new strengths as well as new vulnerabilities for the states that may wield it.
The suspicion, though, is that weapons like the Active Denial System really are reminiscent in many minds of the ray guns of science fiction, and that using them in combat would be a PR mistake.
Iraq has long had a date for when sanctions can start to be lifted: when it has handed over all its weapons of mass destruction and a monitoring system is in place to prevent them being rebuilt.
In 1997, for instance, the verification system for the Chemical Weapons Treaty was devised by the world's chemical-manufacturing associations.
Staff at the company that provides warheads for Trident, the UK's nuclear weapons system, are to walk out for the first time in a row over pay.
So the fact that new weapons programs may take 20 years to reach the field in a political system that operates on two- and four-year cycles is a real threat to keeping those programs on track.
This weapon, which is called the Active Denial System, has been developed by the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, in collaboration with Raytheon.
Weapons in the game include chemotherapy, cancer drugs and cells in the body's own immune system.
In Baghdad, a high-level official in the Iraqi Ministry of Interior described, also on condition of anonymity, an elaborate system to divert weapons from Ministry of Interior facilities to local arms traffickers and militias.
The second item the political system prefers to target as a bill-payer in defense downturns is the actual production of weapons, because political impacts tend to be localized even when the programs employ thousands of workers.
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