This is a segment from The Breakdown newsletter. To read more editions, subscribe

“He that is neither one thing nor the other has no friends.”

— Aesop’s Fables

When President Reagan announced his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in a televised address from the Oval Office, it was met with derision.

Scientists explained that a plan to shoot down Soviet missiles from space using lasers and particle beams was simply impossible with 1980s technology.

The press sarcastically renamed his plan “Star Wars,” because it sounded as fictional as the soon-to-be-released Return of the Jedi.

Only one constituency took it as seriously as President Reagan: the…

Read more on Blockworks