So, what would happen if a author, let’s say a sci-fi book author designed a fictional vehicular weapons system 100% from his original head, and published it in his book, when that weapons system was actually 99.9% the classified real life weapons system.
Let’s say the guy had absolutely no history of ever being in a position where he had ever been exposed to any actual classified documents, and it was just a pure coincidence that it happened to clone the actual classified system.
Would the man be charged, even though it is in no way his fault? It seems harsh that simply inventing a random piece of technology or information for a fictitious story would get someone executed just because that bit of tech that they thought up in their head just happened to coincidentally represent a real-life classified document.
Let’s say that the information is highly detailed, and represents the actual real material to at least 99% accurate or more.
I mean, you wouldn’t get charged in most cases for just revealing the exact speed of a vehicle, would you? If you could, then what if you just made a program that counted from 0 to 1000 with maybe 5 decimal places? One of those values would have to be correct, would that have you charged? What if you posted this information with a spambot all over the internet, on each single value?
In 1944 the science fiction story "Deadline " was published. The author had enough (fictional) details about the development of an atomic bomb that the FBI pulled him in to find out how he had breached the security around the Manhattan Project.
Some Sci-Fi authors have been prescient on general concepts, predicting in vague outlines items which were later militarily sensitive. E.g, Hugo Gernsback predicted and described radar in 1911, and H.G. Wells predicted the atomic bomb in 1914.
However it would be extremely difficult for an author to predict specific implementation details of a militarily-sensitive nature purely and solely from mere supposition and contemplation.
But there are well-known cases where fiction authors have somehow obtained or synthesized militarily sensitive details and published those. In some cases they were threatened with prosecution.
When Stanley Kubrick made Dr. Strangelove in 1962, his production designer obtained public but sensitive high resolution photographic negatives from aircraft journals and used those to construct the then-secret B-52 interior. The Air Force was quite alarmed when they saw the film and demanded the source of their information. Kubrick was briefly worried about prosecution but they proved they got it from a public (albeit obscure) source.
When Tom Clancy wrote Hunt for Red October in 1984, the secretary of the navy said he’d have been court marshalled had he been a uniformed soldier. How much of the revealed information was clever supposition and how much was obtained through sources, I don’t know.
One of the most serious recent cases was when director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal did the movie Zero Dark Thirty in 2012. They obtained highly sensitive details about special forces equipment and tactics, and depicted these in the movie. The case was referred back to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution, but Justice declined to prosecute. The filmmakers were fortunately able to prove some of their information was obtained in a lecture they were invited to, which due to mis-coordination by the authorities was more revealing than planned: Secret Report: Panetta Gave bin Laden Raid Details to 'Zero Dark Thirty' Makers - The Atlantic
Back to the OP question, specific details like the above could not be derived from mere conjecture. However a clever person with industry or operational experience could take some vague information, make some informed guesses and craft a depiction which conveyed or implied greater detail than was publically released.
Slightly off topic. When I obtained a clearance (not for technical things though) they specifically told us not to talk unless necessary, even for unclassified bits. The reason is that there are only so many ways to do things/way things are that a smart enemy could figure out quite a lot from unclassified stuff.
I suspect if the OP happens, TPTB will wonder just how much the enemy has figured out; if an amateur can get so mich right.
In one of David Hackworth’s books, he went back to Vietnam in the 1990’s to meet with former opponents. They told him that they often figured out American battle plans just by listening to chatter on wireless. I have read similar things said by Iraqi and Afghan mlitants.
Pretty much the same logic why prison guards must refrain from talking about any aspect of their lives where possible. Inmates could piece that information together and devise something. Never underestimate the enemy, the government knows this, that is why they chase down every lead. They won’t take chances and won’t simply brush off a coincidence without causing a ton of heat.
Note this happened in the film Dr. Strangelove, when Kubrick and his team reverse-engineered the interior of a B-52, rendered so accurately that they got some unwanted government attention as a result.
Is this guy publishing something like, “And Han jumped into his spaceship, which goes the speed of light by exploiting {insert brief description of scientific mumbo jumbo here}” or is he publishing the engineering specifications of how one can build the engine to this spaceship?
By sheer coincidence, an article I wrote about government censorship of mentions of atomic weapons during WWII has just been posted in the New York Review of Science Fiction.
The government could do this because it had established an actual Office of Censorship (OoC) in 1943 that specifically forbade newspapers and magazines from publishing certain information. Earlier in the war, newspapers normally self-censored. But up until December 7, 1941, floods of information about the possibilities of atomic weapons were published everywhere. After August 13, 1945, when pictures of the atomic bomb were allowed to be published, the censorship was removed. In the interim, there were three other cases that triggered government investigation.
One author, Philip Wylie, was temporarily put under house arrest until a quick investigation cleared him. Nobody was executed. :smack: In today’s world a similar investigation would be conducted. The kid who tried to build an atomic bomb in his backyard was never prosecuted. Neither was the kid who tried to make a fusion reactor. Information about potential weapons is freely available in truckloads. The government would check to make sure that no documents were leaked or stolen. If the weapon got built, then it could be treated like possession of any other weapon.
British Intelligence agents were sent to the home of Leonard Dawe, the man who created the crossword puzzles for the Telegraph. After a lengthy questioning process, they became convinced that it was all a massive coincidence.
I imagine that Mr. Dawes was perilously close to being detained or imprisoned for a while until he managed to convince the authorities of his innocence.
Not a weapon, but a similar thing happened with the TV show “Get Smart.” The writers of the show thought they were just making stuff up but actually hit upon some real spy tricks, and ended up being investigated as a result. After that, the show’s producers voluntarily ran the scripts past a government representative to make sure that they didn’t accidentally reveal any other classified spy stuff. I believe that a few scripts actually did end up getting changed as a result.
Sort of: When a famous German scientist witnessed the splitting of the atom, he remembered reading a novel by H G Wells and realized how such technology could be used as a weapon.
Not so much a weapon, but Arthur C. Clarke came up with the idea of using geosynchronous satellites for communication which has both military and civilian applications.
(minor nitpick, others came up with the idea independently before Arthur C. Clarke did, but Clarke popularized the idea, which led to its actual invention many years later)