PEOPLE HAVE WONDERED BEFORE why I like Charles Stross. Perhaps this bit of dialogue from The Atrocity Archives will illustrate:

I play dumb: suddenly my heart is hammering between my ribs. “And is this useful?”

She looks amused. “It pays the bills.”

“Really?”

The amusement vanishes. “Eighty percent of the philosophical logic research in this country is paid for by the Pentagon, Bob. If you want to work here you’ll need to get your head around that fact . . . . They’re looking for a breakthrough. Knowing how to deconstruct any opponent’s ideological infrastructure and derive self-propagating conceptual viruses based on its blind spots, for example.”

If only the Pentagon did have a section devoted to offensive philosophy and “strategic folklore”. . . . But then, it is science fiction. Or is it? Heh.