The alien hypothesis?

[Blake Stacey]

Quoting Richard Fiero <rfiero at gmail.com>:

> At 07:32 PM 10/17/2005, jporter wrote:
>
> Fermat's theorem has application in cryptography the use of which is 
> essential to the military.  Strong encryption is classified as a 
> munition by the U.S.G.
> Please try again, Mr. Doe.

Um.

The fact that Fermat's theorem has cryptographic applications is 
incidental.  It
is possible that some of the grants which allowed Andrew Wiles to eat while he
worked were originally established to fund mathematics that might have 
military
applications.  However, those applications were not what drove Wiles to 
work on
the Theorem; instead, he desired to fulfill a childhood dream.

Analogy:  Johnny Teenager works after school, making Xerox copies and 
fixing the
coffee machine at a defense contractor in town.  After pocketing 
several months
of 1.5 * minimum wage, he hops in his beat-up Subaru and follows a punk 
band on
tour all summer.  Is punk rock now funded by the federal government?  In an
accountancy sense, perhaps yes, but in a moral sense?

I hasten to add that Wiles proved Fermat's Last Theorem by proving the
Taniyama-Shimura Conjecture, a statement about elliptic curves and modular
forms which earlier mathematicians had shown to be equivalent to Fermat's
statement of algebra.  With a high degree of certainty, neither Taniyama nor
Shimura received money from the DOD or the NSA.  How do we apportion the guilt
now?

Furthermore, if all mathematical discoveries which impact cryptography
automatically fall under the "munitions" umbrella, then we better classify the
integers double-quick.

Blake