As for defence, a notional military structure capable of defending assets and participating in Nato peace-keeping is promised.
Mr. Rumsfeld himself served as the chairman of a national commission on space issues, which earlier this year recommended that Washington develop "weapons systems that operate in space and that can defend assets in orbit and augment air, land and sea forces".
To do so, "explicit national security guidance and defense policy is needed to direct development of doctrine, concepts of operations and capabilities for space, including weapons systems that operate in space and that can defend assets in orbit and augment air, land and sea forces," the report said.
Why would anyone, including large drug companies let alone startups, invest millions of dollars to create life-changing inventions when they cannot defend assets against competitors?
More likely what they're envisioning is defending assets in space that are being messed with or attacked or using space assets as part of a ground operation by the US military.
Mr. Fourtou, in the conference call, defended his asset-disposal strategy, emphasizing that he sought "to avoid any fire sale".
In a speech at Case Western Reserve University, Sandra Pianalto, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, defended the asset purchases, saying that the recovery had been "exceptionally gradual " and that she did not expect unemployment to fall below 8 percent before 2013.
Our tradition as an inventive company has produced considerable intellectual property assets for our shareholders, and today's infringement litigation is part of our effort to protect and defend those assets".
Its vast and long-lived capital stock gives incumbent firms big incentives to defend legacy assets and resist innovations.
This has profound implications for policy design, suggesting a need to retain some element of income support in the policy mix in order to defend environmental assets against the extreme consequences of farm structural change.
"It's clearly their intention to put weapons in space to both defend U.S. assets as well as attack enemy missiles and enemy satellites".
