<1. MISSILE DEFENSE: TEST FAILS, BUT "SUCCESS RATE" IS UNCHANGED.

..."this one didn't count; it failed to reach the endgame."



Sorry, if you're trying to shoot down an enemy missile, you fail just as badly if you drop a Coke into the control panel as if your advanced high technology fails. And when an atomic missile is heading your way, it's an expensive failure.

I assume they will debug it, and I can understand their defensiveness.

2. MISSILE DEFENSE II: WE STILL CAN'T SEEM TO STOP SCUDS.

Seems it would almost be easier to just hide the warheads under bags of cement in a ship and park it in a port. Forget the missiles altogether. ;)

Of course, if your target isn't near the ocean, you're screwed.

This whole Scud thing was a scam from the first. Yemen wasn't going to use those missiles. There's nobody to shoot them at within range of a Scud. They were going to pass them to someone else. They know it, the U.S. knows it, North Korea knows it, and everybody knows everybody else knows it. We let them go through because now we're watching them like a hawk, and damn straight those missiles are going to rot in Yemen. If North Korea got paid in advance, someone on the receiving end is going to be really pissed.

3. GENESIS PROJECT: A REALLY GOOD SCAM CAN BE USED OVER AND OVER.

Of course, such an engine is physically impossible. But even if it weren't...

"Evil Oil Company Conspiracy Hides Magic Engine!" One of the oldest urban legends in the book. Even showed up on the "Lone Gunmen" TV series. What nobody realizes is that the car companies are as large, rich and powerful as the oil companies, and would cheerfully throw their grandmothers off the Empire State Building if they could get the plans to a car that ran on water. They would make billions. So they would have an incentive NOT to hide the technology.