evilauthor wrote:
Okay, low tech solutions presume you're trying to comply with the Proscriptions. If you're not going to comply with the Proscriptions, you might as well go whole hog and use Federation comm tech. There's no point to low tech non-compliance solutions when hi tech non-compliant solutions are readily available.
IOW, if you're going to openly flout the Proscriptions, there's no reason to NOT use full up Federation tech.
It should be pretty evident with the latest snippets that Merlin's plan is NOT to tech back up to Federation tech levels completely from scratch. The plan is to start mass producing Federation tech and handing it out as soon as it's politically possible (which includes making sure the OBS doesn't blow the planet away). The whole current teching up is just to get people used to the idea of innovating, not to reinvent everything the Federation had.
Your statement describes a binary reality. Everyone on Safehold knows, or they don't know. If they know, we jump to full Federation technology. Merlin has been wasting the past decade if that is his final plan.
To proceed from where the last book took us, we can never have a political settlement without the ICN and ICA maintaining a military technology superiority, which gets harder and harder to maintain without violating proscriptions.
Merlin modified the assault shuttle he used to rescue the Earl of Thirsk's family. It didn't set off the OBS, and the violation of proscriptions weren't publicly known.
The Seijins have been taking actions that can only be accomplished as a violation of the proscriptions. The OBS wasn't set off. Everyone that thought about it knew it was a violation of the proscriptions, but church couldn't prove it, and was never in position to punish the Seijins.
The group in the know keeps expanding, and it is not unrealistic to expand the knowledge to elite military units. If they use sealed black boxes that everyone who knows of the boxes knows must violated proscriptions, but the boxes are sealed and the the violation can't be proven, and the OBS can't detect the violation, then we have an expansion of technology without the political settlement, or the OBS destruction.
Interim steps provide time for progress without a war to the death.