Tag Archives: nuclear weapons

Silicon Valley Preppers

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I don’t love this New Yorker article all that much, because it is mostly a bunch of anecdotes strung together with the opinions of “high net worth individuals”, as though we should care more about their opinions than the opinions of other people. I don’t. But the article had a few interesting parts, including this description of a “the Survival Condo Project, a fifteen-story luxury apartment complex built in an underground Atlas missile silo” in Kansas.

The original silo of Hall’s complex was built by the Army Corps of Engineers to withstand a nuclear strike. The interior can support a total of seventy-five people. It has enough food and fuel for five years off the grid; by raising tilapia in fish tanks, and hydroponic vegetables under grow lamps, with renewable power, it could function indefinitely, Hall said. In a crisis, his swat-team-style trucks (“the Pit-Bull VX, armored up to fifty-calibre”) will pick up any owner within four hundred miles. Residents with private planes can land in Salina, about thirty miles away…

The complex is a tall cylinder that resembles a corncob. Some levels are dedicated to private apartments and others offer shared amenities: a seventy-five-foot-long pool, a rock-climbing wall, an Astro-Turf “pet park,” a classroom with a line of Mac desktops, a gym, a movie theatre, and a library. It felt compact but not claustrophobic. We visited an armory packed with guns and ammo in case of an attack by non-members, and then a bare-walled room with a toilet. “We can lock people up and give them an adult time-out,” he said. In general, the rules are set by a condo association, which can vote to amend them. During a crisis, a “life-or-death situation,” Hall said, each adult would be required to work for four hours a day, and would not be allowed to leave without permission. “There’s controlled access in and out, and it’s governed by the board,” he said.

The “medical wing” contains a hospital bed, a procedure table, and a dentist’s chair.

It’s easy for me to say “no thanks” since, not being a “high net worth individual”, this is not an option for me. But even if I were sitting on a billion dollars I don’t think I would be interested in this.

the Doomsday Clock

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The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have moved their doomsday clock from “3 minutes to midnight” to “2.5 minutes to midnight”. It appears to me to be the first time they have used a fraction. A couple quotes:

Last year, and the year before, we warned that world leaders were failing to act with the speed and on the scale required to protect citizens from the extreme danger posed by climate change and nuclear war. During the past year, the need for leadership only intensified—yet inaction and brinksmanship have continued, endangering every person, everywhere on Earth…

Technological innovation is occurring at a speed that challenges society’s ability to keep pace. While limited at the current time, potentially existential threats posed by a host of emerging technologies need to be monitored, and to the extent possible anticipated, as the 21st century unfolds…

For the last two years, the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock stayed set at three minutes before the hour, the closest it had been to midnight since the early 1980s. In its two most recent annual announcements on the Clock, the Science and Security Board warned: “The probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be taken very soon.” In 2017, we find the danger to be even greater, the need for action more urgent. It is two and a half minutes to midnight, the Clock is ticking, global danger looms. Wise public officials should act immediately, guiding humanity away from the brink. If they do not, wise citizens must step forward and lead the way.

They offer some recommendations, including the U.S. and Russia returning to the arms reduction negotiating table, reducing nuclear weapons alert status and maintaining communication and crisis de-escalation channels, meeting obligations under the Paris climate accord, multilateral engagement with North Korea, nuclear power safety and risk management, and new institutions to manage “potentially malign or catastrophic misuses of new technologies”.

your very own doomsday bunker

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Do you want a doomsday bunker but you are not sure how or where to build one? Now you can buy one (er, lease for 99 years…) already fitted out in South Dakota. The only question I have is, how will I get to South Dakota quickly when the missiles are incoming? I guess I could just move out there and live nearby. But if I am going to do that, I might as well just go ahead and move into the bunker. Once I am in the bunker, what will I do all day? I suppose I can count my guns and gold bars. But that might get old. Do they have cable? Come to think of it, I have a few more questions. Is there a water well? Is there a wastewater treatment plant? Is there a power plant? Is there a Walmart? After thinking this through, I think I’ll just take my chances here in civilization and hope the end is quick.

2016 in Review

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Each month this year, I picked three scary, three hopeful, and three interesting posts or groups of post from the month. Now I’m going to pick one of those three to represent each of the months. The choices are fairly arbitrary and the main point is just to review what the media was saying and what I was thinking about over the course of the year. Then I’ll see if I can identify any trends or come up with any insights.

Most Frightening Stories of the Year

  • JANUARY: Paul Ehrlich is still worried about population. 82% of scientists agree.
  • FEBRUARY: 77% of jobs in China may be threatened by automation.
  • MARCH: An IMF official uttered the words “economic derailment“. That sounds like it could be a real train wreck. Meanwhile Robert Gordon has expanded his pessimistic article on future growth into a book.
  • APRIL: Robert Paxton says Trump is pretty much a fascist. Although conditions are different and he doesn’t believe everything the fascists believed. Umberto Eco once said that fascists don’t believe anything, they will say anything and then what they do once in office has nothing to do with what they said.
  • MAY: The situation in Venezuela may be a preview of what the collapse of a modern country looks like.
  • JUNE: Trump may very well have organized crime links. And Moody’s says that if he gets elected and manages to do the things he says, it could crash the economy.
  • JULY: The CIA is just not that good at spying.
  • AUGUST: A former U.S. secretary of defense thinks the risk of nuclear war is higher now than during the cold war. The Republic Party platform appears to be outright in favor of nuclear weapons, while the Democratic Party platform includes a tepid commitment to maybe “reducing reliance” and spending on nuclear weapons. Jeffrey Sachs says the Syria War has become essentially a U.S.-Russia proxy war.
  • SEPTEMBER: The ecological footprint situation is not looking too promising: “from 1993 to 2009…while the human population has increased by 23% and the world economy has grown 153%, the human footprint has increased by just 9%. Still, 75% the planet’s land surface is experiencing measurable human pressures. Moreover, pressures are perversely intense, widespread and rapidly intensifying in places with high biodiversity.” Meanwhile, as of 2002 “we appropriate over 40% of the net primary productivity (the green material) produced on Earth each year (Vitousek et al. 1986, Rojstaczer et al. 2001). We consume 35% of the productivity of the oceanic shelf (Pauly and Christensen 1995), and we use 60% of freshwater run-off (Postel et al. 1996). The unprecedented escalation in both human population and consumption in the 20th century has resulted in environmental crises never before encountered in the history of humankind and the world (McNeill 2000). E. O. Wilson (2002) claims it would now take four Earths to meet the consumption demands of the current human population, if every human consumed at the level of the average US inhabitant.” And finally, 30% of African elephants have been lost in the last 7 years.
  • OCTOBER: According to James Hansen, the world needs “negative” greenhouse gas emissions right away, meaning an end to fossil fuel burning and improvements to agriculture, forestry, and soil conservation practices to absorb carbon. Part of the current problem is unexpected and unexplained increases in methane concentrations in the atmosphere.
  • NOVEMBER: Is there really any doubt what the most frightening story of November 2016 was? The United Nations Environment Program says we are on a track for 3 degrees C over pre-industrial temperatures, not the “less than 2” almost all serious people (a category that excludes 46% of U.S. voters, apparently) agree is needed. This story was released before the U.S. elected an immoral science denier as its leader. One theory is that our culture has lost all ability to separate fact from fiction. Perhaps states could take on more of a leadership role if the federal government is going to be immoral? Washington State voters considered a carbon tax that could have been a model for other states, and voted it down, in part because environmental groups didn’t like that it was revenue neutral. Adding insult to injury, WWF released its 2016 Living Planet Report, which along with more fun climate change info includes fun facts like 58% of all wild animals have disappeared. There is a 70-99% chance of a U.S. Southwest “mega-drought” lasting 35 years or longer this century. But don’t worry, this is only “if emissions of greenhouse gases remain unchecked”. Oh, and climate change is going to begin to strain the food supply worldwide, which is already strained by population, demand growth, and water resources depletion even without it.
  • DECEMBER: The geopolitical situation is not good. If Russia did hack the U.S. election, it wouldn’t be the first election they have hacked. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are not over, and the rest of the greater Middle East is increasingly a mess.

Most Hopeful Stories of the Year

Most Interesting Stories of the Year

  • JANUARY: The World Economic Forum focused on technology: “The possibilities of billions of people connected by mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge, are unlimited. And these possibilities will be multiplied by emerging technology breakthroughs in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing.”
  • FEBRUARY: Titanium dioxide is the reason Oreo filling is so white.
  • MARCH: Michael Pollan urged us to eat food. not too much. mostly psychedelic mushrooms.
  • APRIL: Genes can now be programmed just like circuits.
  • MAY: The world has about a billion dogs.
  • JUNE: Switzerland finished an enormous tunnel through the Alps that took 20 years to build.
  • JULY: I was a little side-tracked by U.S. Presidential politics. Nate Silver launched his general election site, putting the odds about 80-20 in favor of Hillary at the beginning of the month. The odds swung toward Trump over the course of the month as the two major party conventions took place (one in my backyard), but by the end of the month they were back to about 70-30 in favor of Hillary. During the month I mused about NAFTA, the fall of the Republic, the banana republic, The Art of the Deal, how to debate Trump, and Jon Stewart.
  • AUGUST: Here is a short video explaining the Fermi Paradox, which asks why there are no aliens. Meanwhile Russian astronomers are saying there might be aliens.
  • SEPTEMBER: Monsanto is trying to help honeybees (which seems good) by monkeying with RNA (which seems a little frightening). Yes, biotech is coming.
  • OCTOBER: Neil deGrasse Tyson says “we might expect to find as many as 100 alien civilizations in our galaxy communicating with radio waves right now.”
  • NOVEMBER: New technology can survey and create a 3D model of a room in seconds.
  • DECEMBER: According to Bill Gates, “new genome technologies are at the cusp of affecting us all in profound ways”. But an article in Nature says we should not be too hopeful about living much past 100.

And now for trends and insights…

Serious long-term threats related to population, food, water resources, natural capital depletion, biodiversity loss, and climate change. These are all inter-related. In past years I probably would have suggested that these threats are so likely and so consequential that we should focus nearly all our efforts on them. But things have changed a bit over the past year. Now it appears that we face dire short term threats as well in the form of serious geopolitical instability, risk of war and global economic stagnation. If you don’t deal with short term threats you might not be around to deal with the long term ones. And voters have chosen leaders in the past year who have no intention of dealing with the long term threats. They make no serious attempt to understand their nature or root causes. In fact, they don’t even acknowledge that the threats exist in many cases.

War. The possibility of war is certainly the biggest short-term threat we face. If we get through the next 4-8 years without a war between major powers or any sort of nuclear detonation, we will have to consider that a win. The greater Middle East from North Africa to Afghanistan is dangerously unstable, and the U.S. has already been drawn into a proxy war with Saudi Arabia and its allies on one side and Iran and Russia on the other side. And it appears that Russia may have played a direct role in influencing the U.S. election. An accidental clash between U.S. and Russian forces in Syria, Eastern Europe, or over the world’s oceans could be enough to set off a series of escalations and miscalculations that leads to a war nobody wants or stands to gain anything from. A naval confrontation between the U.S. and China could be a similar risk.

The Great Recession. Although the U.S. economy has picked up, the overall global growth and employment situation is deeply concerning. Rather than just a cyclical downturn, it may be a long term trend driven by demographics, debt, and underemployment caused by automation. The automation trend is going to be relentless. The 2007-8 financial crisis caused by excessive risk taking in the U.S. finance industry may just have been the straw that broke the camel’s back and made the long-term trends obvious, and another financial crisis that severe at a time of weakness might be the one the world doesn’t recover from. Our new U.S. leaders are already working with big business to roll back the necessary but still inadequate protections put in place after the ’07-8 crisis. Costs and risks imposed by climate change are not going to make the economy any better.

Technology. Technology brings us grave concern over the employment situation, but also great hope that we could see a long-term pickup in productivity, and therefore our overall wealth and quality of life. Of course, an increase in overall wealth and quality of life may help only a small slice of society if that society is structured to concentrate rather than share the wealth, and the leaders we have chosen in the U.S. for the next few years are clearly committed to the former. Extreme concentration of wealth could lead us eventually to a situation of such instability that the only outcomes are armed revolution in the streets or else absolute authoritarian control.

But let’s optimistically assume that our political system eventually comes up with a consensus on sharing the wealth. Now a higher rate of productivity growth (within ecological limits) would be good for everyone. In this world, people whose jobs are displaced by automation would be quickly retrained for new jobs, and they would be educated in the first place so that they are very flexible and adaptable to changing conditions. Over time, we could become so rich that we simply don’t have to work so much, and we could devote more of our time to leisure activities, learning for the sake of learning, the arts, civic and social activities, etc.

This might seem like a utopian vision, but it has happened in the past. People used to work incredibly long, hard hours to grow just enough food to survive, and they didn’t live all that long at that. Later people used to work long, hard hours in factories and sweat shops. Technology, cheap energy, and the wealth they have brought have made huge changes in working hours and life expectancy for most of us. With technology seemingly advancing all around us, the puzzle is why we aren’t seeing similarly spectacular advances today as we have seen in the past.

Advances like the tractor and electricity were enormous changes at the time of course. Maybe today’s technological advances, even though they seem impressive to us, simply aren’t as dramatic as these advances were in their time. That is the basic thesis of Robert Gordon, who I mention above. The World Economic Forum and Nouriel Roubini articles I mention above have good summaries of the advances we are seeing. Roubini categorizes them as:

  • ET (energy technologies, including new forms of fossil fuels such as shale gas and oil and alternative energy sources such as solar and wind, storage technologies, clean tech, and smart electric grids).
  • BT (biotechnologies, including genetic therapy, stem cell research, and the use of big data to reduce health-care costs radically and allow individuals to live much longer and healthier lives).
  • IT (information technologies, such as Web 2.0/3.0, social media, new apps, the Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality devices).
  • MT (manufacturing technologies, such as robotics, automation, 3D printing, and personalized manufacturing).
  • FT (financial technologies that promise to revolutionize everything from payment systems to lending, insurance services and asset allocation).
  • DT (defense technologies, including the development of drones and other advanced weapon systems).

Roubini acknowledges the argument that these advances are not the equivalent of past advances, but also suggests that we may be in the lag phase between when technological advances happen and when they begin to have obvious effects on productivity. I think I said it pretty well in my post so I’ll repeat what I said:

Although the plow, the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, etc. were game changing, the game didn’t change as soon as they were invented. They had to catch on, infrastructure had to be built, resistance to change had to be overcome, and it took awhile. Each successive revolution happened faster though, which is why I am skeptical that this time is different… I think there is a lag, and it just hasn’t hit yet. If and when there is a sharp technology-driven surge in productivity, it doesn’t mean everything is going to instantly be great for everybody. As we produce more with less effort, there will be winners and losers, haves and have nots. And there will be a lag between when that starts and when it gets resolved. And just to beat a dead horse, we can’t just keep producing and consuming more forever unless we figure out a way to do that without growing our ecological footprint. And, we need to watch out for those defense technologies.

The information technology is all around us now, and the biotechnology is just starting to take off. 2017 could be the year when we have the same excitement in the popular imagination about biotech as we saw with the internet in the mid-1990s. Or maybe it will take a few years.

It is possible that our technology could advance so fast that ecological limits will cease to be relevant before they begin to exert a major drag force on our global economy and society. I don’t think it is safe to put all our eggs in that basket though. I am also saddened by the extreme and seemingly accelerating destruction of our planet’s ecosystems as we have known them throughout human history. We can try to preserve some of what is left, but even if we are successful it will be more like a museum or zoo recording what we used to have than a real, large-scale functioning planetary ecosystem.

There, I ended on a pretty pessimistic note. That’s how I feel at the moment. Not all stories have to have a happy ending. (This is exactly why King Lear is my favorite Shakespeare play, because the bad guys do bad things and get away with it, and sometimes real life is like that.) I just don’t want to get my hopes up about 2017. Come on 2017, maybe you will pleasantly surprise me.

November 2016 in Review

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Sometimes you look back on a month and feel like nothing very important happened. But November 2016 was obviously not one of those months! I am not going to make any attempt to be apolitical here. I was once a registered independent and still do not consider myself a strong partisan. However, I like to think of myself as being on the side of facts, logic, problem solving, morality and basic goodness. Besides, this blog is about the future of our human civilization and human race. I can’t pretend our chances didn’t just take a turn for the worse.

3 most frightening stories

  • Is there really any doubt what the most frightening story of November 2016 was? The United Nations Environment Program says we are on a track for 3 degrees C over pre-industrial temperatures, not the “less than 2” almost all serious people (a category that excludes 46% of U.S. voters, apparently) agree is needed. This story was released before the U.S. elected an immoral science denier as its leader. One theory is that our culture has lost all ability to separate fact from fiction. Perhaps states could take on more of a leadership role if the federal government is going to be immoral? Washington State voters considered a carbon tax that could have been a model for other states, and voted it down, in part because environmental groups didn’t like that it was revenue neutral. Adding insult to injury, WWF released its 2016 Living Planet Report, which along with more fun climate change info includes fun facts like 58% of all wild animals have disappeared. There is a 70-99% chance of a U.S. Southwest “mega-drought” lasting 35 years or longer this century. But don’t worry, this is only “if emissions of greenhouse gases remain unchecked”. Oh, and climate change is going to begin to strain the food supply worldwide, which is already strained by population, demand growth, and water resources depletion even without it.
  • Technological unemployment may be starting to take hold, and might be an underlying reason behind some of the resentment directed at mainstream politicians. If you want a really clear and concise explanation of this issue, you could ask a smart person like, say, Barack Obama.
  • According to left wing sources like Forbes, an explosion of debt-financed spending on conventional and nuclear weapons is an expected consequence of the election. Please, Mr. Trump, prove them wrong!

3 most hopeful stories

3 most interesting stories

Trump and the military-industrial complex

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This article published in Forbes the day after the election pretty much says it all: For The Defense Industry, Trump’s Win Means Happy Days Are Here Again. So much for “draining the swamp” and sending the special interests packing. (By the way, this isn’t fair to swamps. Before Washington D.C. was drained and became a cesspool of legalized corruption, it was a highly productive wetland ecosystem. And what I just said isn’t really fair to cesspools which are a low-tech but highly cost-effective means of treating wastewater. How about we just go with shit-pile? But that’s not really fair to shit-piles, which contain valuable nutrients…)

First, Trump has repeatedly stated that he will modernize the nation’s aging nuclear arsenal, which consists of missile-carrying submarines, land-based missiles in Midwestern silos, and long-range bombers.  The Obama Administration has nuclear modernization plans, but it hasn’t explained where the money will come from.  Now, it is sure to come.  Big winners: General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls Industries which make subs, Lockheed Martin which makes sub-launched missiles, Northrop Grumman which is building a new bomber, and Boeing which builds tankers and airborne command posts to support the nuclear force.  One of these companies will also be tapped to replace land-based Minuteman missiles.

Second, Trump has proposed significantly increasing the size of the Army and Marine Corps, which will require major equipping initiatives.  Vehicle makers BAE Systems and General Dynamics will benefit not only from new production, but also upgrades to the existing fleet making it more lethal and resilient.  Helicopter makers Boeing and Lockheed Martin will almost certainly get more money, as will companies like BAE Systems and Raytheon that provide radios, electronic warfare gear, and ground-based air defense systems.

Third, Trump has stated an intention to expand the Navy’s fleet to 350 warships from less than 300 today.  That probably means buying aircraft carriers and surface combatants faster, which would be good news for General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls Industries — the nation’s two leading producers of warships.  The Obama Administration already has programmed fairly robust spending on Virginia-class attack subs (not to be confused with ballistic missile subs) which are built in partnership by GD and Huntington; Trump’s win will do nothing to undermine that plan, and may expand it.  If the Marine Corps grows, Huntington Ingalls will also be building more amphibious warships.

Apparently, a lot of this assessment comes from a report card on the military by the Heritage Foundation, which rates our nation’s military as “marginal” and the army in particular as “weak”, despite the fact that we outspend our “enemies” by orders of magnitude.

A think tank from the opposite end of the spectrum called Center for International Policy had this to say in 2011:

Current reductions must also be measured against the unprecedented growth in Pentagon spending over the past 13 years. Since 1998, the Pentagon’s base budget has grown by 54% (adjusted for inflation).4 Moreover, with the country turning the page on a long decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the planned reductions represent a historically small drawdown when compared with those following the end of Korea, Vietnam, and the Cold War…

We spend more on the Pentagon and related military activities than all of our potential adversaries combined – over four times what China spends – and roughly double what we spent in 2001. 6 Defense spending includes not just the Pentagon’s budget, but also intelligence, veteran’s affairs, defense-related atomic energy programs, defense-related interest on the national debt and other defense-related agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security. Altogether, this constitutes 23% of the entire federal budget, more than half of discretionary spending, or $832 billion…

Our conventional and nuclear forces are more capable, better equipped, and better trained than any other military force in the world.14 For example, as former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates explains, with 11 large, nuclear-powered carriers, the U.S. Navy can carry twice as many aircraft at sea as the rest of the world combined, and the Marine Corps is the largest force of its type, exceeding in size most nations’ armies.

Let’s look at a few more numbers. I’m piecing together numbers from multiple sources and years here so I don’t expect them to be highly accurate, just to give a general idea.

  • U.S. federal government spending is about $3.85 trillion for 2016. (Source: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com, which sounds like an official government website at first glance but is obviously not.) $916 billion of this is for Social Security. $595 billion on Medicare. If I can do math, this leaves $2.3 trillion for everything else.
  • So let’s take that $832 billion estimate from above for all security related spending. 22% of all federal spending, and 36% of spending outside of Social Security and Medicare, which are funded mostly by their own dedicated taxes rather than income tax. In other words, more than a third of our federal income taxes go to support the military and national security.
  • The federal budget deficit in 2016 was $587 billion. This sounds bad at 15% of federal spending, but sounds less bad at about 3% of GDP. Our creditors (which include ourselves) don’t worry too much because we could probably cut spending and/or increase taxes by this amount if we absolutely had to. Just like my mortgage, my creditors don’t actually want me to pay it off, they just want to know that I could if I had to.
  • The nuclear weapons “modernization” program (this is a code word for new nuclear weapons) has been estimated to cost a total of $1 trillion over 30 years. Ignoring inflation, interest, and all principles of finance and accounting, this is $33 billion per year, which doesn’t sound so big next to the other numbers above. It is a diabolical fact that nuclear weapons are relatively cheap compared to conventional weapons. This is one thing that makes them so hard to get rid of – we could never afford to replace them with an equal amount of conventional power, so to get rid of them we would have to give up some power relative to the other countries of the world.

So, let me come up with some of my naive policy prescriptions just for fun:

  • The Army and Marine Corps obviously do the same thing. Get rid of one of them. I would tend to get rid of the Army since the Marines have more experience riding on boats and getting from the boats to the shore.
  • Keep the Navy the way it is or even strengthen it a bit, as it is probably the branch of the military most likely to be needed.
  • Two out of three branches of the nuclear “triad” are completely useless – land based missiles and bombers. Get rid of them. If you can’t just throw them away, cancel the modernization program and retire them as they become obsolete. Store them safely or use them to generate carbon-free electricity in developing countries under UN supervision.
  • Keep the submarine-based missiles for the time being. Use them as bargaining chips and retire them little by little as we convince other countries to give up their own nuclear weapons.
  • The Air Force will have less to do now that it doesn’t have any nuclear weapons. Get rid of that part of it. Also get rid of most of its airplanes because the Navy has plenty of those. It will still have some satellites and what-not to take care of.
  • Change the Constitution so military-industrial companies can’t buy politicians and write the nation’s laws in their favor.
  • Change the Constitution so income tax revenues can be spent on the military only up to 2% of GDP. If the political system agrees to more funding, fund it through a national sales tax on everything the citizens buy, with a message printed on every receipt telling them exactly how much of every purchase goes to the “war tax”. Let them puzzle over why there is a war tax if there is no war.
  • Reform the Security Council by giving up the veto in exchange for everyone else giving up the veto and replacing it with some kind of rational consensus process.
  • Grow the economy, reduce the deficit, create jobs, build great infrastructure, provide great education, protect the environment, help the poor, etc.

giants of Cold War era nuclear strategy

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This New York Times Book Review article goes through some of the key architects of Cold War era nuclear strategy.

The theories of Cold War defense intellectuals now seem the stuff of a surreal madness that seized Washington during the last half of the 20th century. The core doctrine of nuclear deterrence was Mutual Assured Destruction, aptly known as MAD. It postulated that the best way to prevent a nuclear war with the Kremlin was to build an enormous atomic arsenal that would annihilate the Soviet Union if it dared attack the United States. Effective, yes, but a White House or Kremlin miscalculation would have left millions dead, nations destroyed and the planet reeling.

Albert Wohlstetter, an analyst at the RAND Corporation, was one of the most formidable of the nuclear policy savants. A combative champion of defense spending, he argued that the balance of terror inherent in MAD was unstable. Instead of assuming the MAD standoff would assure a durable cold peace, he feared a Pearl Harbor-like Soviet attack outside the imagined scenarios of defense planners, and he pressed for a nuclear war-winning policy. His ideas coursed through American defense strategy for decades, swaying presidents, attracting acolytes, infuriating opponents and igniting furious debates that ricochet through official circles to this day…

Robin, president of the University of Haifa in Israel, recalls many of the thinkers and baroque theories of the nuclear age. Some attracted national attention at midcentury, including Henry Kissinger, whose 1957 book, “Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy,” became an unexpected best seller, and Herman Kahn, whose chilling ruminations on winning and surviving a nuclear conflict made him an oracle of the unthinkable. Bernard Brodie, the intellectual father of nuclear deterrence theory, played a pivotal role in shaping Cold War nuclear policy.

August 2016 in Review

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3 most frightening stories

3 most hopeful stories

3 most interesting stories

  • Bokashi is a system that essentially pickles your compost.
  • There is an unlikely but plausible scenario where Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, could become President of the United States this fall. Speaking of implausible scenarios, I learned that RIchard Nixon made a serious attempt to pass a basic income bill in 1969.
  • Here is a short video explaining the Fermi Paradox, which asks why there are no aliens. Meanwhile Russian astronomers are saying there might be aliens.

Syria as a proxy war

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Jeffrey Sachs says the war in Syria has morphed into a proxy war between the U.S., Saudi Arabia and allies on one side, and Iran and Russia (and the Syrian government) on the other side. He also says the U.S. role is much larger than the public has been led to believe, and the media is not doing its job of asking questions.

the curtain gets lifted from time to time. In January, the New York Times finally reportedon a secret 2013 Presidential order to the CIA to arm Syrian rebels. As the account explained, Saudi Arabia provides substantial financing of the armaments, while the CIA, under Obama’s orders, provides organizational support and training…

Through occasional leaks, investigative reports, statements by other governments, and rare statements by US officials, we know that America is engaged in an active, ongoing, CIA-coordinated war both to overthrow Assad and to fight ISIS. America’s allies in the anti-Assad effort include Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and other countries in the region. The US has spent billions of dollars on arms, training, special operations forces, air strikes, and logistical support for the rebel forces, including international mercenaries. American allies have spent billions of dollars more. The precise sums are not reported…

The stakes of this war are much higher and much more dangerous than America’s proxy warriors imagine. As the US has prosecuted its war against Assad, Russia has stepped up its military support to his government. In the US mainstream media, Russia’s behavior is an affront: how dare the Kremlin block the US from overthrowing the Syrian government? The result is a widening diplomatic clash with Russia, one that could escalate and lead – perhaps inadvertently – to the point of military conflict.

Obviously, the U.S. and Russia are massive nuclear powers. Iran may have nuclear weapons, and rumor has it Saudi Arabia has a nuclear arsenal ready to go in Pakistan. So in addition to the human tragedy unfolding, the risk of World War 3 appears to be a real one here.

the party platforms on nuclear weapons

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Yesterday I suggested a realistic path to elimination of U.S. nuclear weapons – phasing out of everything but submarine-launched weapons as they become obsolete, renewed participation in global nonproliferation efforts, negotiations with other nuclear powers to give up their weapons in exchange for elimination of the submarine weapons, then finally robust inspections and verification. Let’s see what the U.S. political party platforms have to say.

The Republican Platform:

We must modernize nuclear weapons and their delivery platforms, end the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction, and rebuild relationships with our allies, who understand that as long as the U.S. nuclear arsenal is their shield, they do not need to engage in nuclear proliferation.

The Democratic Platform:

Democrats are committed to preventing the spread of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and to eventually ridding the planet of these catastrophic weapons. We believe America will be safer in a world with fewer weapons of mass destruction. Donald Trump encourages the spread of nuclear weapons across Asia and the Middle East, which would weaken the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), and he is unwilling to rule out using a nuclear weapon against ISIS.

Democrats want to reduce the number of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons around the world, as well as their means of delivery, while retaining a strong deterrent as long as others maintain nuclear strike capabilities. We will strengthen the NPT, push for the ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, and stop the spread of loose nuclear material. Democrats will be informed by a new Nuclear Posture Review in determining continued ways to appropriately shape our nuclear deterrent, with the aim of reducing our reliance on nuclear weapons while meeting our national security obligations. Democrats will also seek new opportunities for further arms control and avoid taking steps that create incentives for the expansion of existing nuclear weapons programs. To this end, we will work to reduce excessive spending on nuclear weapons-related programs that are projected to cost $1 trillion over the next 30 years.

The Green Platform:

Our government should establish a policy to abolish nuclear weapons. It should set the conditions and schedule for fulfilling that goal by taking the following steps:

  • Declare a no-first-strike policy.
  • Declare a no-pre-emptive strike policy.
  • Declare that the U.S. will never threaten or use a nuclear weapon, regardless of size, on a non-nuclear nation.
  • Sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Our pledge to end testing will open the way for non-nuclear states to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which has been held up by our refusal to sign the CTBT. Honor the conditions set in the NPT for nuclear nations.
  • Reverse our withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and honor its stipulations.
  • End the research, testing and stockpiling of all nuclear weapons of any size.
  • Dismantle all nuclear warheads from their missiles.

The Libertarian Platform

No individual, group, or government may initiate force against any other individual, group, or government.

The protection of individual rights is the only proper purpose of government. Government is constitutionally limited so as to prevent the infringement of individual rights by the government itself. The principle of non-initiation of force should guide the relationships between governments.

We support the maintenance of a sufficient military to defend the United States against aggression. The United States should both avoid entangling alliances and abandon its attempts to act as policeman for the world.

I suppose I like the Green statement best, but I am enough of a realist to suggest we establish moral authority by eliminating most of our weapons, but could keep a small number of submarine-based weapons in place and use them as a bargaining chip to get concessions from others. I am also enough of a realist that unless and until we have some sort of runoff or ranking-based voting, I’ll vote for the best candidate with a reasonable chance of winning. That pretty much leaves me supporting the Democrats’ somewhat tepid but basically on-target message. Getting defense-industry money out of politics would make it more likely that a Democratic leader could actually make real progress toward implementing their rhetoric.