Technical authority in the media: public debate on the Strategic Defense Initiative

In this paper, I will examine the role of technical authorities in the US news media debate about the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in the mid-1980's. I argue that individuals either appropriated or attacked technical authority as suited the individual's political views. In the first section, I show that although scientists opposed to SDI attacked both its technical and strategic wisdom, proponents of SDI limited their authority to questions of feasibility. In the second section, I show how the political activism of scientific opponents throughout 1985 and 1986 led proponents of SDI to heighten their emphasis on the distinction between strategic and technical authority. In the third section, I argue that the use of technical authorities by opponents of SDI reflects an underlying ideology about the arms race that actually drove the debate. In inclusion, I will point to some limitations inherent in using technical authority in a debate driven by ideology.