User:Armondikov/Secret technology conspiracy

The secret technology conspiracy is a form of conspiracy that asserts that the "government" or "Them" or the New World Order already have technology advanced well beyond what we see openly. While not a specific and stand alone conspiracy, it is a common thread found in comments on articles about technological advances. It's most commonly expressed when a new technology development is announced and commentators state the the "military will have had this for years".

Why it's bullshit
On the face of it, some of this can be true. Many technologies begin and secret military projects, or only as something of special interest. But this is usually because of budgetary reasons. You can justify vast expense on defence grounds without having to worry about whether it's profitable, but when the technology has been developed it can be taken into the civilian market and companies can turn a profit. But this doesn't expand to all of science and technology in general. And usually when "secret military projects" do actually exist, they're not lighyears in advance of the rest of the word as the fantasist insist.

Scientific progress requires the collaboration and cooperation of thousands of people working towards a common goal of technological advancement. Individual programs like the moon landings or the Large Hadron Collider involve decades of research and thousands of people just working on that one experiment or piece of technology - and this doesn't include the millions of people and, effectively, centuries of research and information gathering that preceded it. All of this prior research is essential knowledge before new technology can be developed.

What the hidden technology conspiracy suggests is either a) the above description of science is not correct or b) there is another branch of human science, replicating precisely the number of people, the money, and the infrastructure, except hidden in secret and years in advance. Moreover this would be confined to a single country, and probably replicated by each country involved in such a conspiracy. This is insane.