(1972 Interview. Rolling Stone Magazine.)

Robert Palmer: Is the modern control machine's dependence on heavy weapons a sign that psychological control is breaking down?

William Burroughs: Yes. Of course, the whole concept of revolution has undergone a basic change with the introduction of heavy weapons. Anybody can make a sword or a spear, and some approximation of small arms, but they can't make automatic weapons, tanks, machine guns, planes, and so on. So with heavy weapons five percent can keep down 95% by just sheer force, if they have to. Of course no government has ever survived for any length of time anywhere by sheer force because of the personnel that they would have to have. They would have to have a constant surveillance unless they used some form of psychological control, like electric brain stimulation. But the problem that you see in all guerrilla warfare of occupying a territory where the governed are hostile, or even a good percentage of them, of course, is terrific and ultimately insoluble.