That might be a bit strong, but they should be severely limited. They way it is today, frequently it seems like the "Secrets" are really just secrets from the citizenry. When you look at something like the U2 the "enemy" knew more about it than the American people. Same thing today, do you really think the Chinese can't figure out the capabilities of our spy sats?
Most of these secrets should have a defined and quite short timeframe. AKA if the CIA/NSA/FBI feels the need to investigate someone, then sure its a "secret" up until they decide to file charges, or drop the case. At that point everything should be public. Oh, and they should have a max of 3-5 years to do one or the other instead of just leaving the investigation open forever.
Same basic idea for "technology", with maybe a slightly longer timeframe (10 years?), none of this stuff is science fiction enough to warrant keeping it secret forever despite claims that newer stuff might build on the older.
> When you look at something like the U2 the "enemy" knew more about it than the American people.
But at the same time, it's hard to be positive how much the enemy knows about anything. And you can't always decide "Well they probably know X, so let's tell out citizens." What if the enemy didn't actually know and made critical (or even non-critical) decisions based on bad information? After all, any good enemy is also going to play the counter-intelligence game and try to mislead you on what they do and do not know.
> Same thing today, do you really think the Chinese can't figure out the capabilities of our spy sats?
Some of our satellites? Yes. All of our satellites? No. And I'd bet the same in our situation and trying to figure out theirs.
> Most of these secrets should have a defined and quite short timeframe.
For those not in the know: they do have a time frame ("Secret" is 26 years, "Top Secret" is 52 in the USA). Obviously, those time frames are up for debate as being appropriate or not.
What I don't think people realize of the military and intelligence community is that our biggest enemy in regards to some of this is actually the "average joe" that's working inside. I found that the number of people that miss-classify data, particularly by over classifying it, was staggering. Such as people that by default would set all emails to TS/SCI//ORCON/NOFORN, and then you end up with an invite to lunch with an address for a Chipotle but you can't even print it out because the sender is a moron. It's quite possible than when you hear the government having trouble FOIA'ing docs it's because of crap like that.
I think there is a difference between telling everyone "We have this really fast plane called the U2, and the Russians have been lobbing missiles at it. For the moment its fast/high enough to outrun them but this won't last forever" and telling them how fast/high.
There is a middle ground between handing out out engineering information, and pretending it doesn't exist.
state secret should always be limited in time. I also think that NDA should generally have a short time limit. A NDA with longer duration should have a monetary compensation.
> How large of a group of people should be able to have secrets?
That's not really the issue. It's not a matter of the government being forced to tell you something. They can keep a secret if they can keep the secret. But if you can present evidence which you've gathered on your own, you should be allowed to present it to the court and be heard. And if the government doesn't care to contradict your version of the facts by presenting contrary evidence then they shouldn't have to, but that may mean they'll lose their case.
The technology to make small, compact, high output thermonuclear weapons isn't out in the open nor is a lot of the technology used to reduce the CEP of ICBM warheads.
The big thing we're missing for modern weapons is the nature of aerogel between the primary and secondary stages. You'll still get a nice boom if you screw that up.
Basically we know why we want it (optimally igniting the second stage using the energy of the first stage), but we don't know exactly what it's made out of or the process for making it. We know it's gnarly, toxic stuff though.
It requires nation-state level resources to even attempt to build them. Even states dedicated to developing them against the wishes of the international community (i.e. North Korea) have been barely successful.
It once required the smartest people utilizing resources from the wealthiest nations. 80 years later North Korea is making a pretty good effort. In another 80 years do you think it's unreasonable to think a wealthy individual might be able to build something?
In other words, why would building an nuclear weapon not get easier?
> In another 80 years do you think it's unreasonable to think a wealthy individual might be able to build something?
They'd not be able to do it without the weapons grade material. The matter of getting that stuff isn't really a secret, it's just pretty expensive, takes a lot of time, and will be noticed by intelligence agencies. I don't see why any of that would change.
The list of suspects will be short; anybody trying to refine U-235 would need huge quantities of natural uranium and a warehouse full of precision centrifuges. And anybody trying to create Pu-239 would need a nuclear reactor.
