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The
Swords of Russia Into Plowshares
by
Rabbi Shimon Silman
Director, Rabbi Yisroel Aryeh Leib
Research Institute on Moshiach & Science
Professor of Mathematics, Touro College
Seven
years ago this week (the week of Parshas Mishpatim, 5752), a well known
conference took place in New York City at the United Nations between the
leaders of the major nations of the world - President Bush, Yeltsin, other
leaders of major military powers. In this meeting they made a joint
declaration that they are going to begin reduction of armaments and use the
resources and technology to further the development of economic conditions
in the world, to increase food production and to benefit mankind in
general. This meeting and this announcement probably escaped the attention of
most of us or was discounted as having no significance other then political
rhetoric. But the Rebbe Melech Hamoshiach who sees deeper into things
talked about this meeting and this announcement the next day at the
farbrengen Shabbos Parshas Mishpotim, 5752. The Rebbe, Melech HaMoshiach
said that this announcement by the leaders of the nations of the world that
they intend to reduce their military operations and increase food
production in the world is the beginning of the
fulfillment of the prophecy of Yishayahu HaNovi, the Prophet Isaiah,
thousands of years before that in the times of Moshiach the nations of the
world will beat their swords into plowshares. The Rebbe Melech HaMoshiach
continues that this was the direct effect of Melech HaMoshiach on the nations
of the world and in the Sicha the Rebbe Melech HaMoshiach discussed at
length the steps leading up to this. The hafotzas hama'ayonos, the
spreading of Chassidus and Yiddishkeit throughout the world and especially
the spreading of Sheva Mitzvos B'nai Noach among the non Jews is what
eventually lead to the collapse of the atheistic government in Russia and
ultimately to this strong declaration where all these nations declared that
they are going to beat swords into plowshares.
Since this is an event of Yemos HaMoshiach, once it starts it continues and
progresses. It was not a single isolated event which took place back then.
Rather it is the beginning of a process which will continue at an
accelerated pace until the prophecy is fulfilled completely.
One can find thousands of examples of military technology being that has
been transformed into peaceful applications over the past seven years since
this declaration was made. At the annual Moshiach & Science conferences
of the Rabbi Yisroel Aryeh Leib Research Institute on Moshiach and the
Sciences we frequently report on what's new in "Swords Into
Plowshares."
Our first report on this was in 5753, by the man in the United States in
the best position to talk about it. This man was the Director of Research
of the Advance Technology Office of
the Army Research Center at the Pentagon - the man at the forefront of
research into military technology. This man of course was the well known
Lubavitcher chossid, Dr Naftali Berg, z"l.
He spoke about how military technology at the Pentagon is being transformed
into peaceful
uses. [the full text and tapes of his lecture are available from the RYAL
Institute, 718-604-4700, RYALinst@aol.com] One of the areas he emphasized
was satellite technology. In the U.S. satellite technology was developed as
a military project back in the 1950's following Russia's launch of their
Sputnik spy satellite. There was a big panic in the U.S. that they are
ahead of us and on top of us, literally looking down on us. There was a mad
rush in the United States to develop our own satellite technology for the
same military purposes. Dr. Berg spoke about how all these satellites are
now being used for peaceful purposes such as to locate and identify land
which is good for agriculture, i.e. food production, and to find resources
deep under the surface of the earth which can't be located by conventional
means.
I would now like to update this somewhat. Last year there was an article in
Scientific American which documented at great length a whole range of
military satellites which are now being used for those purposes which Dr.
Berg spoke of - to locate land for agriculture, to locate natural resources
and similar things i.e. to increase food production instead of for military
purposes. One of the satellites that Dr Berg talked about was a satellite
called "Landsat". Landsat along with other similar military
satellites is now being used by NASA's newly established "Center for
Health Applications of Aerospace Technology" to track the spread of
diseases, especially those that spread in very mysterious ways. One of the
topics at the forefront of scientific research is to try to find out what
is causing these diseases to spread. For example cholera. There are certain
parts of the world which regularly have cholera like India and countries in
that area, but scientists have observed that since the early 1800's there
have been seven worldwide epidemics of cholera which have been
unexplainable. How did the disease spread through the world? Now some of
these military satellites are being used to identify conditions in the
oceans which contribute to the reproduction of the bacteria which cause
cholera. They found that the bacteria itself actually grow in the oceans
and can therefore be transmitted by ocean currents.
Things such as warming of the ocean in certain areas, the sea level of the
ocean being higher or lower, and certain green plants in the ocean on which
this bacteria feed contribute to the growth
and spread of the cholera bacteria. So satellites are now being used to
identify those locations in the ocean which are conducive to the spread of
the bacteria and then to forewarn those
countries where it is likely that the epidemic would spread.
The Landsat satellite is also doing something similar. There is a certain
disease in Brazil which is spreading to urban areas and its transmitted by
infected flies. This much is known. But it is not known why it hits certain
areas of the cities and certain other areas aren't hit. These satellites
have been used to identify how the flies are spreading the disease and
they've come up with an idea that forest animals such as foxes are coming
out of the forest carrying the flies infected with the disease and making
contact with certain areas of the city which are close to forest and
thereby spreading the disease to the city. This gives them the ability to
stop the disease at the point that it enters the city before it spreads.
Closer to home another military satellite has done the same thing right
here in New York State with respect to a disease called Lyme Disease. It is
spread by ticks also carried by forest animals. Usually deer carry the
ticks and if a person is
bitten by the tick, Chas v'Sholom, he gets the disease. Satellites have
identified certain areas in West Chester county for example, which are
particularly conducive to the spread of this disease, because of a
combination of things - their proximity to the forest so that forest
animals coming out of the forest make contact with people, and the
abundance of shade and moisture in those areas which is also conducive to
the spread of the disease. Thus we see that the use of satellites for
peaceful purposes is now an extensive program. NASA has actually
established a center to use these satellites for medical purposes.
Another thing Dr. Berg spoke about is Dual Use Technology. This is a new
program in United States Government which was initiated by the current
administration where military research is no longer being carried out as
pure military research but has to be simultaneously researched for peaceful
purposes.
This brings us to the main theme of this paper which is the transformation
of military technology to peaceful uses in Russia. In Russia, which was the
most militant of all the military nations in recent history, there is a
development in the area of Swords Into Plowshares which goes beyond
anything that is happening in the United States. The background is as
follows. A few days
after the Rebbe Melech HaMoshiach announced in Parshas Mishpatim 5752 that
the prophecy of Yishayahu that they shall beat their swords into plowshares
has begun to be fulfilled, President Yeltsin and President Bush sat down
together at Camp David and made a plan to establish the International
Science and Technology Center in Moscow. This was to be an international
center which would come up with scientific projects for former military
scientists in Russia to employ them to work on transforming Russian
military science and technology into peaceful uses. That was the entire
purpose and goal of the Center. Over the next two years this became a
reality. By 1994 there was a functioning institute of science and
technology in Moscow funded by four countries: the United States, Russia,
Japan and the European Union. They put hundreds of
millions of dollars into this. They were concerned both with Russian
technology and with Russian scientists. The purpose of the institute was to
come up with and evaluate proposals which would take Russian military
science and Russian military scientists and employ them
to transform the technology and science that they had developed for
military purposes into peaceful purposes. The first executive director of
the institute was an American named Glenn
Schweitzer who wrote a book called "Moscow DMZ: The Story of the International
Effort to Convert the Russian Weapon Science to Peaceful Purposes." in
which he documents the institute's accomplishments during its first years.
The first point I want to make about the International Science and
Technology Center (ISTC)
is that whereas with respect to the United States, Dual Use Technology was
considered a very good development, for the ISTC in Russia, Dual Use
Technology was not good enough. In the United States while the Pentagon may
be required to persue a dual use policy rather than a pure military policy,
it is nevertheless interested also in advancing military technology. Thus
Dual Use Technology may be the best we can hope for until we see the
complete geulah and there is no more war and no more swords, no more military
and no more weapons. What about in Russia?
In Russia this International Scientific Technology Center which was
supposed to fund projects to transform military technology into peaceful
uses would not be interested in Dual Use Technology. United States, Europe
and Japan would not be interested in pumping millions of dollars into
Russia to finance scientific projects which could be used for military
purposes as well as peaceful purposes. They would be interested only if the
projects had uniquely peaceful applications with no possibility of their
being used for any military purposes. These were the only kind of projects
that the ISTC considered.
I would like to give some examples of the projects - and the scientists
involved - that the ISTC sponsored. The author Moscow DMZ estimates that
when the Russian Military machine was functioning fully, there were
approximately one million scientists, engineers and technicians working for
the Russian military. It was estimated that after the fall of the Communist
government about 60,000 of these had to be targeted for international
science and technology projects. These were the ones who were most volatile
and dangerous. They were scientists and engineers who if approached (as
many of them were) by Arab or far eastern countries to work in those
countries to promote their nuclear technology programs, they would be the
ones most useful to those countries. In other words if a low level
technician took such a job he could not cause much harm. But if a high
level technician or scientist took such a job his participation would be
very beneficial to their projects and thus a threat to world peace. So out
of one million scientists there were 60,000 who had to be employed.
In fact Russian scientists and engineers needed employment very badly. Once
their military contracts were cancelled a lot of them had no source of
income. It was found that many top Russian scientists were earning a lower
salary than bus drivers. So they were an easy target for Arab countries
that would offer them a job to come join their nuclear projects.
Of the 60,000 it was estimated that 30,000 were in aeronomical science;
20,000 in nuclear science and 10,000 in biological science. A third of them
- about 20,000 - remained employed by the Russian military. Another 15,000
got jobs in commercial sector i.e. they left science and went into
business. The remaining 25,000 were the ones that the ISTC took on.
Some of the projects that they worked on were the following: Nuclear
scientists who specialized in the design of nuclear weapons were put to
work on designing safer nuclear reactors. Russia is notorious for having
poorly designed reactors. They disregard nuclear
safety. The accident at Chernobyl which was the most dramatic of all the
nuclear accidents was not the only one. There were many, many incidents of
radiation leaks. Parts of Russia are
contaminated by radiation. Nuclear waste was not dealt with in any safe
way. A lot of times it was just dumped into rivers. Many ISTC projects
involved putting these nuclear scientists to
work designing safer better and more efficient nuclear reactors, and to
clean up the contamination in those areas of Russia that had been
contaminated by nuclear accidents and by
disposal of nuclear wastes.
Chemical and biological specialists, i.e. specialists that were trained in
biological and chemical warfare were given projects to work on pollution.
While in the United States pollution is already pretty much under control,
in Russia it has always been disregarded. They never concerned themselves
with it. Now the chemical and biological specialists are working on
chemical and biological pollution problems.
Aerospace specialists have been working on projects ranging from designing
special environmental observation aircraft to projects involving
researching nuclear propulsion technology for exploration of Mars.
In addition to the International Science and Technology Center, there is an
American organization called the Defense Enterprise Fund, financed by the
Pentagon, which is dedicated to helping Russia transform its military
industry into peaceful purposes. One of its projects is to help construct a
$200 million factory to produce silicon for computer chips in
Krasnoyarsk-26, a Russian "nuclear city" whose scientists have
been unemployed since the shutdown of most of the nuclear facilities there.
(New York Times, 11/18/98)
The magazine Science reported on one particular biological weapons
installation called Vector in the Russian city of Novo Sibirsk which was
transformed into a pharmaceutical research organization now called the
State Research Center of Biology and Biotechnology. Whereas before they had
the top Russian biological scientists working on devising biological
weapons to kill people, now they are doing research on viruses,
collaborating with the United States Center for Disease Control,
contracting internationally to produce pharmaceutical drugs and things like
that. The same scientists and the same technology which was once used to
produce biological weapons is now being used to produce drugs and to
research cures for diseases.
From the small sample of Swords Into Plowshares phenomena that we have
considered we see that the Rebbe Melech HaMoshiach's declaration that
Isaiah's "Swords Into Plowshares" prophecy has already begun,
along with all the other aspects of the Geulah, is the reality of the
world. As a professor of Physics from China recently noted at the beginning
of his article on the transformation of military technology to peaceful
uses in China, "The transformation of military technology to peaceful
uses is now the state of the history of the world." The same applies
to all other aspects of the Geulah as well. We need only to open our eyes
to see the reality as it is.
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