NEARMIC Explains Danger Of an Electronic Battlefield

Developments in "electronic warfare" currently employed in Indochina--which may be adapted for international security and domestic surveillance systems--were outlined by members of New England Action Research on the Military Industrial Complex (NEARMIC) before an audience of about 50 at Burr Lecture Hall last night.

Speakers on the program, which was coordinated by the Harvard-Radcliffe Catholic Students Center, suggested tax resistance, political campaigning, educational programs, and the direct confrontation of corporations involved in the manufacture of weaponry as possible means for hastening the end of the war.

Camouflage

Arthur Fink, a graduate student and a volunteer for the American Friends Service Committee, narrated "The Automated Battlefield," a NEARMIC slide presentation which depicts camouflaged anti-personnel mines, bombs guided by television signals, and helicopters equipped for sighting targets at night which have been designed to compensate for the reduction of actual American fighting manpower.

Helicopters equipped with infra-red sighting which were designed for use in Vietnam have already been used in domestic police work, Fink said, and one Pentagon associate has suggested the use of electronic signal bracelets and tracking equipment to watch over released convicts, parolees and prisoners on bail.

William Haseltine, another graduate student working with NEARMIC, stated that the technology now in use was developed by academic scientists working in Cambridge in 1966 who believed the electronic battlefield might actually end the war and "on American terms."

Over 100 New England corporations are now listed by NEARMIC for involvement in weapons development, close to half of them in Boston and nearby Massachusetts cities.

Ngo Van Long '68, editor of Thoi-Bao Ga, the Vietnam Resource Center's newsletter for Vietnamese students in the United States, warned war protesters not to see electronic warfare as the entire issue at stake.

"A few years ago, we asked to 'bring the boys home,'" he said. "Nixon has shown he can do that and still fight the war, with technology, on the same level or at a higher level than before."