
A Stark Nuclear Warning - jseliger
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/07/14/a-stark-nuclear-warning/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR%20Nuclear%20warning%20DAFs%20photography&utm_content=NYR%20Nuclear%20warning%20DAFs%20photography+CID_cdcb323379751927b97848003ede3e76&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_term=A%20Stark%20Nuclear%20Warning
======
Gustomaximus
From Cuban crisis: "First, Perry writes, the Soviet ships approaching the
blockade imposed by the US had submarine escorts that were armed with nuclear
torpedoes. Because of the difficulty with communications, Moscow had
authorized the submarine commanders to fire without further authorization.
When an American destroyer tried to force a submarine to surface, both its
captain and the political officer decided to fire a nuclear torpedo at the
destroyer. A nuclear confrontation was avoided only because Vasili Arkhipov,
the overall commander of the fleet, was also present on the submarine. He
countermanded the order to launch, thereby preventing what might have started
a nuclear war."

Another one of these 'almost nuclear' stories. There's only so many times
humanity can roll the dice and come out clean. Scary stuff.

~~~
ams6110
A nuclear torpedo to take out a destroyer? Seems like the proverbial swatting
a fly with a sledgehammer? And what of the submarine? Torpedos are fairly
close-range weapons, at least in those days. Would it have survived the blast?

~~~
pm90
I may be wrong here, but a surface detonation is unlikely to damage a
submarine that is deep underwater. That is the reason why a fleet of nuclear
submarines are the best nuclear deterrent: hard to take out since they can be
anywhere undersea, mobile and ready to counterattack at a moments notice.

~~~
graycat
> hard to take out since they can be anywhere undersea, mobile and ready to
> counterattack at a moments notice.

When I was working in that stuff, the usual point about the SSBNs (the US long
range missile firing submarines) was that they were darned difficult to find.
Also, it was standard to assume that they moved in some variation on Brownian
motion so that, even if did get some data on their location, it was not very
useful for extrapolation.

So, a major point about the design and operation of the SSBNs was that they be
darned difficult to find -- via passive sonar, magnetic anomaly detection,
active sonar, or anything else. Also, a big deployment of search resources
that might be more able to find an SSBN would be regarded as _provocative_.

Then there was the point: If the Soviets did find a US SSBN, now what? If they
track it for very long, then that is provocative. If they don't track it, then
they will soon lose it again. If they sink it, then there are all the other US
SSBNs ready to fire back.

So, the Soviets would have to find AND sink ALL the US SSBNs at the same time.
Finding all of the SSBNs at the same time without being provocative was
regarded as essentially impossible.

So, maybe somehow there could be a nuke war but limited to sea. Then could
pick off each SSBN as it was found one at a time. Then how long would the
SSBNs last? Once I was asked to answer that! So, I derived some math, wrote
some software, submitted my results, and the next day my wife and I went for a
vacation in Shenandoah! Later my work was sold to a leading US intel group. I
could tell you which one, but then I'd have to ...!

Ah, the math wasn't either artificial intelligence or machine learning!

~~~
srean
You do seem to have a distaste for the term machine learning.

It is applied math, anybody who claims otherwise could not be more wrong. It
is applied probability theory and computer science with lot more focus on
algorithms than is expected of a statistician, and yes without a fetish for
asymptotic normality. Usually, but not always, with a stronger focus on
prediction accuracy rather than on accuracy of parameter estimates. In that
sense its closer to (non-parametric) decision theory than to run of the mill
stats.

~~~
graycat
Yup. I got all that from Leo Breiman, not his earlier work as an "academic
probabilist" but his later work in classification and regression trees (CART),
random forests, etc.

Yup, if look carefully, in many common cases can do well on prediction
accuracy even when parameter accuracy is not so good. E.g., can even do well
on prediction accuracy when parameter accuracy is zilch, e.g., some, but not
all, cases of _over fitting_.

You are right about the applied math: _Machine learning_ has a lot that is
good and new, however the good is mostly not new and the new, not very good.
E.g., I watched a Prof Ng lecture on the gradient descent unconstrained
minimization involved in their fitting, and it seemed that either their
minimization problem is awfully easy or Prof Ng didn't know much about the
applied math of such minimization going way back.

So, machine learning stole a lot from some now quite classic applied math,
assigned some new names, e.g., _learning_ and another anthropomorphic name
they dreamed up for iteration step size, and claimed something new. That's
called academic theft, plagiarism, or some such, right?

Then there's the hype. So, just from _machine learning_ , the pop culture
press is extrapolating to the _Terminator_ movies. Absurd.

Then, bigger, there's the implicit assumption, if only from just playing with
the words, that the main path to _smarter machines_ is _machine learning_.
Well, if the effort is limited to Breiman's piecewise linear curve fitting,
that path is absurdly limited. Much better for making machines _smarter_ ,
i.e., do more, work better, is just to start with lots of now classic
pure/applied math, get out a clean sheet of paper, and derive what need for
the problem at hand. As much as I like Breiman, both his early work and his
last work, there're oceans more good work in applied math that is nothing like
Breiman's last work, e.g., with high irony, his earlier work!

Uh, here's another case where it looks like a machine has _learned_ \--
stochastic optimal control. In some cases, it can look darned _smart_. Another
place -- game theory, to be more specific, the von Neumann-Morgenstern work.
Then the Nash generalization. But such things are far from the current
_machine learning_.

~~~
srean
As I have mentioned several times to you start with vapnik. That's where
modern ml begins. Brieman is great but he got a few things wrong, for example
he thought boosting and bagging are fundamentally the same, that is they are
just variance minimization methods. In fact boosting us what gives random
forest its power. BTW less well known trick, use random rotation not just
random selection of features or datapoints. Their's lot more to ml than
decision trees. One of its fundamental framework is convergence of empirical
processes, which is essentially glivenko cantelli on steroids. Vapnik and
Chervonenkis provided the first modern breakthrough result but a lot has
happened since then.

I would say screw the hype just read what it is. I think your disdain for the
name 'machine learning' is getting in your way.

I strongly disagree with your allegation of academic dishonesty though.
Optimization has been a fundamental part of ml from the very start and with a
strong overlap in the community. I am sure nemirovskii will ring a bell. In
any case how can ml steal from applied math when it is applied math. The lingo
differs here and there: estimating parameters become learning parameters etc.

Andrew NGO's course is not for you. Go directly to the books and then
conference and journal papers.

Focus varies but info theory, stats, signal processing, approximation theory
are pretty much the same thing, so are their open problems.

Btw you could not be more wrong about stochastic optimal control or repeated
games being far from current ml. Oh and another major major tool in ml is
geometry of function spaces. You are reading the wrong sources, probably the
populist ones. Get to the real stuff given what i know of your taste in math i
think you will enjoy it.

~~~
graycat
Thanks, I'll keep that.

"glivenko cantelli on steroids", good. Sounds like they actually did
something.

Yes, I'm torqued by the new _learning_ labels on old bottles of pure/applied
math, but that is not in my way.

> The lingo differs here and there: estimating parameters become learning
> parameters etc.

Rubs my fur the wrong way.

If they have some stuff beyond borrowing from Breiman, okay.

What's "in my way" now is my startup: I've got the math derived and typed into
TeX and the 80,000 lines of typing for the code, with the code running,
intended for production, and in alpha test, so just for now I no longer have
any pressing math problems to solve.

But, in time, I may return to my math and tweak it a little to try to get some
variance reduction. Maybe some of the better _machine learning_ literature
would help, or maybe I'll just derive it myself again.

 _Function space geometry_ is about where much of my core math is.

Thanks.

~~~
srean
Heh! indeed, its all geometry :)

Happy to hear back from you. I am actually gladdened that your anomaly
detection work is getting some interest on HN lately. Hope something comes out
of it. I am now slowly coming to the conclusion that pushing better methods on
an existing stack would be really hard. Too much friction, too much politics.
Perhaps the way is to create your own better cloud of servers, but that's
really big league stuff. Not sure I have the stomach for that.

Curious if you have given any thought to the choice of the metric space where
you define your statistics. That might play an important role from what I have
seen. There might be an interesting manifold story there.

Big spoilsports are non-stationarities and even bigger are those fat tails. If
only everything had a moment generating function.

I see that you have been pointed to Abu-Mostafa he is definitely a good
source. Not that Andrew Ng is unaware of the stuff, far from it, he is
fighting a different battle: to make parts of ML a commodity.

If you have time then you can browse the proceedings of COLT (conference on
learning theory) and ICML.

> or maybe I'll just derive it myself again.

You almost always have to derive it yourself anyway even after you have seen
the derivation by somebody else.

------
beloch
What concerns me the most about nuclear weapons is that the technical barriers
to building them are getting lower all the time. They're currently within
reach of despotic states of below average scientific capacity. All that's
required is the will to defy the world (e.g. North Korea). Given how North
Korea and Iraq have been treated lately, what despot _wouldn 't_ pursue
nuclear weapons if he thought he could succeed in building them fast enough to
avoid being invaded?

In the future, the barrier will be even lower. Nuclear weapons will likely
fall within reach of motivated and capable terrorist movements such as ISIL,
although I'd be more worried about organizations that haven't carved out
territory that's easy to attack. Once that happens, things could get very
ugly. There is no such thing as MAD with a distributed terrorist organization.

Missile defense systems offer no real answers. They don't work against state
of the art missiles (such as Russia has), nor do they work against smuggled
bombs or bombs built within the borders of their target nation. The kind of
surveillance that would be required to adequately secure a nation against such
weapons is the stuff Orwell never even dreamed of. It would require utterly
pervasive, invasive, and constant surveillance.

~~~
a_imho
Conventional weapons are destructive enough, not to mention chemical and bio
agents. What concerns me is the most is the last part of your comment.

>The kind of surveillance that would be required to adequately secure a nation
against such weapons is the stuff Orwell never even dreamed of. It would
require utterly pervasive, invasive, and constant surveillance.

1\. AFAIK mass surveillance is not very effective in preventing bad actors
(e.g. terrorist communicating via sms) yet it is promoted so much we are ready
to accept that reasoning right away.

2\. It is a symptomatic treatment, however we can go much further in
prevention and deescalation to swing those actors a better way. I don't think
certain people are born evil.

~~~
jerf
"Conventional weapons are destructive enough"

No, they really aren't. Israel has been peppered with hundreds of rockets on
the time frame of days or weeks, and at the national scale, they were
basically an inconvenience. One nuke, by contrast, can take out an entire
city. North Korea currently has at best the capacity to really badly hurt
South Korea before they were rendered militarily ineffective, and even then,
for all the death and destruction they could cause, most of Seoul would still
be there afterwards. If they have nukes, though, most of Seoul could be
destroyed in one fell swoop. Or most of anything they can reach, which also
includes an awful lot of China.

It turns out that if you plot the destructive radius of even very large
nuclear bombs, many cities are actually substantially larger than just one.
But, still, between fallout concerns and the fact that there is now a total
hole in your city's infrastructure, one nuke is still probably enough to kill
an entire city, if not necessarily every person in it. There aren't any
conventional weapons we can say that about.

There also aren't any chemical weapons we can say that about. Their effects
are very mean and very nasty and very hideous, but they're also a great deal
more limited than the common conception of them. For instance, one of the
characteristics that makes mustard gas appealing is that it's heavier than
air, which means that it tends to collect in below-ground-level
fortifications, forcing the enemy out. This same characteristic renders it
useless for destroying a city.

As for biological weapons, well, we do tend to speak of them in the same
breath as nuclear weapons. However, their big problem is that it's difficult
to create a really effective one that is also guaranteed not to kill the user.
You've basically got the choice of things like smallpox, which are effective
and contagious but you won't be able to stop hitting you (if nothing else,
your enemy may well consider medieval warfare a source of inspiration and just
start dropping infected bodies on you), or you have things like anthrax which
are effective, but being not particularly contagious means that it's actually
quite difficult to get them into people at scale.

Even now, nukes are a problem.

~~~
a_imho
To my knowledge rockets fired at Israel are very basic, while Israel has the
Iron Dome in place, thus it is a bit of cherry picking. Conventional bombs can
surely destroy cities. Nevertheless, an argument can be made nuclear bombs are
more cost effective, I don't know about that.

Chemical weapons are certainly WMDs and very potent, as seen in the Syria
attacks.

There are many ways you can hurt your enemy, depending on one's goals. E.g. as
far as I remember the central element of Mr. Robot is an attack on world
economy, which might cause more disruption and suffering than killing
civilians.

Reflecting back on history, we don't even have many nuclear incidents. On the
other hand it shows if we are serious about hurting others we will find a way.

Also, just for thoughts, if we leave the western centric pov, every other
nation could be concerned with the west having nuclear capabilities while they
are denied.

~~~
delazeur
> To my knowledge rockets fired at Israel are very basic, while Israel has the
> Iron Dome in place, thus it is a bit of cherry picking.

My understanding is that most of the rockets fired at Israel are not loaded
with explosives, and that most of the damage comes from whatever fuel is left
when they impact.

------
rrggrr
Despite three major armed conflicts fought between nuclear powers by proxy,
none thankfully have resulted in nuclear war. Deterrence works. What doesn't
work, and a flaw that is growing exponentially with nuclear proliferation is
failures in design, command and control. The incredible and incredibly
frightening book "Command and Control" (see link at bottom), highlights
several near catastrophic misses in the US nuclear arsenal. Now multiply by
all nuclear states, the risks of accident are terrifying. The world would do
well to open source safeguards so that even rogue states (eg. North Korea) can
benefit from control and process that mitigate risk of unintended nuclear
detonation.

[https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-
Ill...](https://www.amazon.com/Command-Control-Damascus-Accident-
Illusion/dp/0143125788)

~~~
zalg0

      > so that even rogue states can benefit 
    

Dude, human factors like personality and mood quickly render safeguards moot,
within the atmosphere of a despotic dictatorship.

Open source any amount of safety protocals, and pray that they get used, and
you'll acquaint yourself with disappointment.

People who concoct nuclear programs are toying with suicide, and their level
of interest in safety can be understood by their decision to weaponize such a
thing to begin with.

Meanwhile, cap such a program with a lone psychotic emperor, prone to fits of
cruel and unusual punishment, and see what he does on a bad day, as his body
ages, and he grows crankier with every waking morning. Now surround him with
an echo-chamber of eager-to-please, hawkish, testosterone-fueled military
upstarts.

Sounds like a pretty cool video game plot.

~~~
rrggrr
Quite the opposite. Firstly, despotic regimes are by their nature control
driven, one common characteristic of which is an inability to act without
central directives from leadership. Iraq is a classic case. Despotic regimes
persist for the purposes of preserving and enriching the despot, where even
the intent to use nuclear arms in an age of deterrence is extremely counter-
productive to that goal. North Korea, Russia and other nations demonstrate the
futility of preventing proliferation. But there has been some success in
educating fledgling nuclear states on safeguards (reportedly Pakistan). If you
can't eliminate it, mitigate it as best you can and manage the risks.

~~~
zalg0
I am dubious. Mostly, because preserving and enriching a despot means catering
to their whims.

A despot's pet nuclear project is likely to have an authentic red button
(provided in any variety of interfaces, telephone, mechanical lock and key,
fingerprint authenticated, whatever). If one imagines themselves as a despot,
the ego almost demands it.

Between the despot, The Button, and the operational weapons, there are many
layers of human factors. Maybe the red button is a placebo, and the
underlings, being less suicidal than their singular leader, would never permit
the button to perform its dreaded task, but is that assured?

------
my_first_acct
This is a review of the book "My Journey at the Nuclear Brink", by William
Perry, US Secretary of Defense in the the Clinton administration. The reviewer
is Jerry Brown, Governor of California.

~~~
jamesrom
The gushing flattery of Perry in this review is gross.

~~~
ageofwant
Agreed. It actually forced me out three paragraphs in. I do now realise how
ineffectual, grating even, fawning deference to authority has become, to me at
least.

~~~
pm90
I don't understand this sentiment at all. It seems like Perry's advice is most
rational and reasonable and seems to be ignored by most of the Establishment
and the general Public.

I'm all against hero worship, but giving credit where credit is due - to a man
who has lived through WW2 right up to the end of the cold war, seems
reasonable.

~~~
ageofwant
You misunderstand. My beef is not with Perry. It's with the author's writing
style. I'm not going to forgive poor writing because I happen to agree with
the writer. Its not what he is saying, its how its being said.

~~~
sdenton4
Meh. Writing isn't his day job, and it's really not all that badly written.
There are many brilliant people out there who aren't brilliant writers, who
are worth listening to none the less.

------
f_allwein
I agree that the nuclear threat may be bigger today than in cold war times.
More nations now have nuclear weapons and the possibility that one will be
used one day is > 0.

When I grew up in Germany in the 80s, there was a real sense that nuclear war
could start any time. Unfortunately, we haven't used the short widow of
opportunity after the cold war to get rid of all nuclear weapons. Now I wonder
what, if anything, can happen to convince us as a species to get rid of them.

~~~
epicureanideal
I think part of the threat increase is also that when nuclear weapons were
new, people were more afraid of them. Now the fear seems to be wearing off.

~~~
ams6110
We also have bona-fide lunatics in the ME and NK that are gaining access to
nukes.

~~~
neolefty
ME?

~~~
lesbaker
Middle East, probably

------
wallace_f
Even though the risks are enormous, any world power using nuclear weapons
would probably need to be exceedingly irrational. World leaders want to stay
in power, and continue to rule over their subjects. I don't see it happening,
except by: 1) misunderstanding/miscommunication 2) incompetence 3) desperation
4) particularly bloodthirsty individual

Should we be confident? #1 was witnessed in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki (mokusatsu incident) #2 Incompetence is pervasive in government
(i.e. when the Stratfor leaks came, their internal wiki said of the FBI "good
at breaking up used car rings. Confused by anything more complicated." Even
corporations with close ties to government disparage the powerful 3-letter
agencies without counter argument.) #3 yet to be seen #4 I hope it is out of
the cards

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
>any world power using nuclear weapons would probably need to be exceedingly
irrational.

Leaders are exceedingly irrational. Stalin and Hitler literally killed
millions.

Considering that many generals in the German army considered WWII unwinnable
before Hitler started it, WWII may have been one of the world's longest and
bloodiest suicide notes.

Combine that with a literal death cult, laced with bizarre fantasies about
blood, iron, and the holy homeland, and you can see just how irrational world
powers can get.

Japan wasn't much better off. The bombs were a horror, but at least they
cauterised imperialism out of the Japanese psyche for at least a few
generations - at a huge cost.

The US isn't much better off now. The reasons for war are more religious than
personal - the pursuit of profit - but the millions who have died since WWII
in US direct and proxy campaigns are no less dead for it.

Russia? China? Let's see.

It's clear that the only reason we've avoided nuclear suicide so far is blind
luck - often the blind luck that put a relatively sane individual in a
position where they, not presidents, emperors, kings, and politicians, could
choose the fate of the world.

Ultimately you can't win at Russian Roulette. You can only _not lose_ \- for a
limited time.

------
imglorp
Why was China not mentioned as a third, major participant in the next arms
race?

Why were all the lesser proliferants not mentioned? Isn't it far more likely
that somebody on a holy mission buys or steals something they shouldn't have
in the near future than a full conflict among the big three later?

~~~
caf
China's nuclear doctrine is based on "minimum deterrence", which is why their
arsenal is considerably smaller than that of the big two.

~~~
imglorp
China alone has ICBM's to deliver anywhere they like. So they're on par with
the big two. It really doesn't matter how many they have.

------
graycat
The article was concerned that NATO expanded its membership too much, that is,
added too many countries too close to Russia. Presumably the concern here is
that Russia will, then, feel more threatened by an attack from NATO.

Uh, gee, guys, that concern seems not to understand maybe the more important
role of NATO! Sure, first cut, it appears that the purpose of NATO is to have
the European countries ban together better to defend themselves against an
attack from Russia. Hmm ....

But maybe a more important reason for NATO is to take all of the military
forces in Europe, especially those closest to Russia, and put them under
central command and control, with a big role for the US. Why? To stop another
case like started WWI -- some terrorist in the long boiling Balkans shot a
prince of Austria or some such. That is, the purpose of NATO is to keep a lid
on the instabilities of 22 or so countries west of Russia and, thus, avoid
war, protect Russia, etc. Sure, this is a joke but only partly.

Or, in history, how often has Russia gone charging to the west trying to take
over Sweden, Germany, or France? Or was the real threat Napoleon charging
east, Germany charging east, etc.?

Or, we can expect instabilities in Europe. So, we need to keep a lid on that
pot. Thus, NATO!

Russia? A good lid on that unstable European pot, e.g., the long boiling
Balkans, is very much in Russia's interests.

------
knowaveragejoe
This is IMO one of the most important things that next to nobody pays
attention to. People toss around "use a nuke" or "because we have nukes" as
though they're like any other conventional weapon. I'd venture to guess that
none of those people have been around a large conventional weapon exploding,
which pales in comparison to even a small nuclear warhead.

~~~
vacri
This reminds me of the irony of when the US invaded Iraq, because "Saddam has
Weapons of Mass Destruction"[1]... while bragging that the US was going to use
the MOAB, the Mother of All Bombs, the largest conventional bomb ever. The US
has always had trouble with the internal consistency of it's propaganda :)

[1] Which weren't nuclear, and required a redefinition of the phrase to suit.

------
bambax
> _Why is fear of a nuclear catastrophe far from the minds of most Americans?_

Because there's nothing they/we can do about it? There's no much point in
worrying about things you have no control over.

------
DanielBMarkham
I completely agree that the danger now is much more than it was 40 years ago.
Having said that, there's plenty of blame to go around for everybody, and I'm
not sure there is much to be done about it.

The underlying problem is that technology is making smaller and smaller actors
capable of more and more destructive actions. It's not just nukes. It's not
inconceivable that one hacker somewhere could take down the U.S. electric
grid. That's insane.

We're living in an extremely asymmetric world. Reducing nuclear stockpiles
needs to be done. It eliminates the ability to create worldwide nuclear
catastrophic damage with a push of a button. But if things got serious between
major powers? They'd just build more nukes. You've taken what might have
happened in 60 minutes and turned it into a 2-week affair. It's a move in the
right direction, but I don't think it fixes anything. It's just better.

I am probably wrong, but my gut tells me the nuke threat may be overblown, at
least in terms of a complete, species-ending event for mankind. We're like
cockroaches, and I tend to believe some of us would struggle through somehow.
I hope we never find out. But as to the larger issue of small groups holding
enormous destructive power, I not so optimistic. I could easily see a
situation where multiple catastrophic attacks in various sectors occur
simultaneously. I am not so sanguine about our chances then. And I don't see
any sort of policy change or treaty changing any of that.

Scary times to be living in.

------
luckystarr
So _A Canticle for Leibowitz_ is still relevant. Chilling. :(

------
golergka
BTW, people jumping from government to industry and back is usually seen as
corruption in liberal HN crowd — but I don't see any complains here.

------
dkbrk
> Perry tells us that parity is “old thinking” because nuclear weapons can’t
> actually be used—the risk of uncontrollable and catastrophic escalation is
> too high. They are only good for threatening the enemy with nuclear
> retaliation.

This is an important point, which I believe is not necessarily subscribed to
by all those in the military. In particular, I am greatly concerned that the
use of tactical nuclear weapons—even very small ones on the scale of just 100t
TNT or so—is far more likely to occur than a full scale strategic nuclear
exchange, and that this could lead to escalation with tactical nuclear weapons
of ever greater size, eventually leading to a far higher probability that
strategic weapons are eventually used.

I believe that if you looked at the Top Secret plans produced by the Pentagon
and the Russian General Staff you would find many that call for "limited" use
of tactical nuclear weapons in response to an overwhelming attack by
conventional forces. In addition there are proposals such as the "nuclear
bunker buster" that was floated a few years back during the invasion of
Afghanistan.

The great problem is that once the use of nuclear weapons of any sort becomes
at all normalised, there is no upper limit to their destructive capability.
The largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, Tsar Bomba, was a three stage
thermonuclear device and had a yield of about 50 Mt TNT, but such a weapon
could be easily scaled up simply by adding additional thermonuclear stages.
Once nuclear weapons become actively used in any capacity the destructive
capability of a nuclear-armed state is limited only by its restraint.

Consider the Allies' strategic bombing campaigns against Germany and Japan in
WWII. The goal was to destroy the enemy's ability to make war and to force
them to surrender; this involved killing civilians and military personnel, and
destroying infrastructure and production capability. Note that killing
civilans served to advance the principal goal of winning the war but was not
an end in itself. If the war could be won with everything exactly the same
except for fewer enemy casualties, I believe any sane commander with ethics
remotely similar to my own would take that choice. In other words, inflicting
enemy casualties has positive instrumental value but negative intrinsic value.
In contrast, Hitler saw killing Jews and other populations as having positive
intrinsic value, as a goal worth pursuing in and of itself.

If I had complete authority over a nation's nuclear weapons I would never,
under any circumstances, actually use them. In all respects I would act as
though I would respond to a nuclear attack in kind without hesitation, but
that would be a lie. If I were faced with an overwhelming strategic attack and
had the opportunity to respond with an attack of equal magnitude, I would not.
Such an act would not change the outcome of my own nation, it would merely
inflict the same on my enemy, which since I am not a psycopath has negative
utility. At that point the war is already lost, the best one could do is
minimise the destruction inflicted on humanity as a whole.

So I believe Perry assertion "nuclear weapons can't actually be used" is
literally correct in the logical extreme. The problem is that deterrence
requires the appearance of being ready to use them, and that is very difficult
to fake. I think this underscores the importance of control mechanisms.
Historically such mechanisms were opposed because they might put the weapons
out of action when they need to be used, for example the Minuteman ICBM codes
were set to all zeroes until 1977 and even today the captain of a British
Vanguard-class submarine has the capability to launch without a code being
transmitted from headquarters. This lends credence to the idea that these
militaries intend to actually use such weapons in the event, not just appear
to be prepared to use them. If you wanted to just fake the appearance of being
prepared to use them it would be sufficient to plan not to distribute the
right codes: the deterrence effect would not be lessened at all as the enemy
would never risk you not being able to distribute the correct codes in the
event.

~~~
dagwaging
>If I had complete authority over a nation's nuclear weapons I would never,
under any circumstances, actually use them. In all respects I would act as
though I would respond to a nuclear attack in kind without hesitation, but
that would be a lie. If I were faced with an overwhelming strategic attack and
had the opportunity to respond with an attack of equal magnitude, I would not.
Such an act would not change the outcome of my own nation, it would merely
inflict the same on my enemy, which since I am not a psycopath has negative
utility. At that point the war is already lost, the best one could do is
minimise the destruction inflicted on humanity as a whole.

part of me wants to hope that the individuals involved in the creation and
deployment of nuclear warheads have actually agreed to silently sabotage them
all, rendering them inoperable even if there were an attempt to use them

it would make a good storyline, at any rate

~~~
mikeash
Have there been nuclear tests where they just pulled a weapon off the
proverbial shelf and blew it up without any more preparation than it would get
in a real war? I wonder if such a scheme would ever have been detected.

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keybuk
Seeing this title, I thought: "(Nuclear) Winter is Coming."

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dogmatix
Winter is coming?

