The Washington Post reports the awarding of a multi-billion-dollar contract to Boeing to create a “virtual fence” along America's borders with its neighbors Mexico and Canada (September 21, 2006). The technology of this fence is, the Post notes, largely based on military technology. Boeing proposes using an air-propelled tracking drone called the Skylark already in use by Israeli and Australian forces, and also of ground-based motion and heat detectors that have been used in Iraq.

Nay-sayers cited in the article suggest that this is largely a science-fiction dream that's bound to be undone by a million and one real-world technical and human problems. Most such grand schemes are, including those used in wars. We would do well to be suspicious of such dreams of prevailing through technology alone. The more lurid (and hence satisfying) these dreams are, the more inevitable their failure. Then there are the human factors, which almost always trump technology.

Such sketches of how technology alone is going to solve our problems always postulate ideal conditions -- best-possible case scenarios. War or conflict conditions (such as patrolling the border) are by definition never best-possible-case scenarios. The other guys are always trying to find a way around your plan. The more you're drunk on your dream of what absolutely positively has to happen, the more certain it is it won't.

That's what Clausewitz meant when speaking of “the fog of battle.” Sure, you can start with a plan, here an assurance that you control things through technology. But remember: the other side is people, and they're going to be finding human ways to spike your guns, literally or metaphorically. You can't assume in battle -- or in the immigration struggle -- that the opposition is going to do what you want it to do -- what your geek dreams say they have to do.

In the case of this elaborate fencing, dream hits reality in the fact that, as realists cited in the article point out, the technology simply doesn't deliver despite grandiose assertions that it will. The Homeland Security inspector general (not, therefore, a leftie dirtbag) reported in December that a half a billion dollars has been spent on cameras since 1998 but (as the Post puts it) “nearly half of the cameras were never installed, nearly 60 percent of sensor alerts are ever investigated, 90 percent of the rest are false alarms, and only 1 percent resulted in arrests.”

Then there's the fact that apparently about half of the illegal foreigners in the US come in legally, with a visa that they then overstay. The fence won't catch them. And then also is the probability that if you make the border tighter, those once in will hesitate ever to leave, afraid of being able to re-enter. These are human factors -- people finding ways around the machine. They almost always do. You know why? Somebody created those machines. Somebody on the other side can figure out a way around them.

That, in a nutshell, is the Achilles heel of this kind of geek dreams thinking. It promises instant gratification and total control, something we rarely have. But we're more and more prone to it, as American voters want wars without body bags.

Take “Star Wars,” President Reagan's geek dream of a missile shield for the U.S. A month or so ago there was a successful destruction of a war-games missile -- after decades of unsuccessful trials and countless millions of dollars. More telling, this recent late success had at least one major problem: those out to destroy the missile knew exactly when it would be launched and where. It's like the way my four-year-old “catches” the baseball I so carefully throw into his mitt. Only the geek dreamers would call this a success.

Politicians like these technology-heavy one-stop-shopping sorts of futuristic solutions: because politicians are by definition selling immediate gratification -- they're always looking to the next election. Voters love them because they're like those fat-loss ads that promise you'll be able to eat anything you want, and the pounds will still miraculously melt away. Heck, everybody loves them. They're way cool, first of all, as the kids say: no problemo, the tech guys will hook you up. But they are dreams: They postulate what they want to happen and then assert the available technology will achieve that goal. In fantasy everything always turns out okay.

Conflict isn't the only place we dream our geek dreams. Geek dreams are being offered against the increasingly dire possibility of major climate change that will flood low-lying areas, dry up much of the world's surface, and lead to widespread warfare. We needn't do anything, because somewhere the men in white coats are working away. No politician is going to change course because Boston won't be underwater on his or her watch. This dream of salvation through science (makes us think of DuPont's “Better Living Through Chemistry” from the l940s) jibes well with the eternal American optimism. Things are never truly dire, and the planes will come in and save you anyway. Things turn out fine in the end.

They may. But there's no guarantee they will, because technology is always invented by, installed by, and run by humans. Your baggage check machine can be never so sophisticated, but if the person scanning the screen doesn't catch what he or she should, it all comes to naught. You can strip-search passengers, but if you let workers drift through doors whose only safeguard is a sign saying “Authorized Personnel Only” you're going to have problems. If you look at luggage but not cargo, the plane hardly feels safe.

Battle plans that rely on an infatuation with, rather than a healthy respect for, technology invariably stumble, also due to the human factor. Nobody in the military likes to hear the word “Vietnam,” because it's the ultimate response to the problem of over-confidence in machinery. Of course we had the technology, but in the jungle and against these foes, it proved ineffective, or a liability. You can give your troops the latest in weapons, but if they're stoned or uninvolved, or blow the grenades just so they don't have to carry them (I've been reading Tim O'Brien's “The Things They Carried” with students), all your plans come to naught. Heck, 9/11 was a good example of creative human thinking from the other side, as are suicide bombers. We just didn't think they'd come up with that. But they did.

Military leaders are never well advised to indulge in geek dreams -- the sci-fi assurance that just one little program will solve all their problems. It's not theoretically impossible -- in fact, it's theoretically possible. But life isn't theory. It's messy, and human, and in battle the other guy is always trying to undo what you've done, not support your fantasy.

Which is why we need thinking officers, people who can deal with the gray areas. Not more geek dreams.