Tag Archives: nuclear weapons

September 2024 in Review

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I was sitting down to do my “October in Review” post and realized I never got around to September. So better late than never. I’m writing this on November 9, 2024 after the U.S. election but I’ll try to give U.S. politics a rest in this post (update: I almost succeeded although I couldn’t resist an interesting point about the U.S. Constitution).

Most frightening and/or depressing story: There is nothing on Earth more frightening than nuclear weapons. China has scrapped its “minimal deterrent” nuclear doctrine in favor of massively scaling up their arsenal to compete with the also ramping up U.S. and Russian arsenals. They do still have an official “no first strike” policy. The U.S. by contrast has an arrogant foreign policy.

Most hopeful story: AI should be able to improve traffic management in cities, although early ideas on this front are not very creative.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Countries around the world update their constitutions about every 20 years on average. They have organized, legal processes for doing this spelled out in the constitutions themselves. The U.S. constitution is considered the world’s most difficult constitution to update and modernize.

vertical proliferation

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I am not the only one who has noticed the U.S. fanning the nuclear proliferation flames. This is Richard Haas, “President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations”.

another type of proliferation now merits attention: vertical proliferation, namely, increases in the quality and/or quantity of the nuclear arsenals of the nine countries that already possess these weapons. The danger is not only that nuclear weapons might be used in a war but also that the possibility of war would increase by emboldening governments – like Iran in the scenario above – to act more aggressively in pursuit of their geopolitical goals in the belief that they may act with impunity…

It all adds up to a dangerous moment. The taboo associated with nuclear weapons has grown weaker with time; few were alive when the US used nuclear weapons twice against Japan to hasten World War II’s end. Indeed, Russian officials have hinted strongly at their readiness to use nuclear weapons in the context of the war in Ukraine…

Three and a half decades after the Cold War’s end, a new world is emerging, one characterized by nuclear arms races, potential new entrants into an ever less exclusive nuclear-weapons club, and a long list of deep disagreements over political arrangements in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. This is not a situation that lends itself to a solution, but at best to effective management. One can only hope the leaders of this era will be up to the challenge.

We are not “pursuing our national interests” if we ignore actions other countries are likely to take in response to our actions. This is just simplistic, childish thinking.

terrible news on nuclear risk

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The New York Times makes a very scary claim here.

The second big change arises from China’s nuclear ambitions. The country’s nuclear expansion is running at an even faster pace than American intelligence officials anticipated two years ago, driven by President Xi Jinping’s determination to scrap the decades-long strategy of maintaining a “minimum deterrent” to reach or exceed the size of Washington’s and Moscow’s arsenals. China’s nuclear complex is now the fastest growing in the world.

This is awful news. The U.S. and Russia certainly have no moral high ground here. They could have proposed to reduce their arsenals to a minimum credible deterrent in exchange for China not expanding theirs. I am not a person of vast intelligence, but I can see that this would benefit the world. You would have to “trust but verify” with a heavy international inspection regime of course, but there is plenty of Cold War precedence and experience with that.

I don’t trust the New York Times (or rather, the spies on their staff masquerading as professional journalists and thereby undermining all credibility of their actual professional journalists), and the paragraph above is not even the main point of the story. The main point of the story is supposedly the U.S. preparing for the possibility of a coordinated attack by both China and Russia. The way this was leaked to the press has a whiff of propaganda to me, but the possibility of three planet-ending nuclear arsenals rather than two is terrible news for the world’s overall nuclear risk whatever the sneaky intentions of this particular article.

August 2024

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Obviously, there were plenty of goings-on in the U.S. presidential election campaign in August. I’ve talked about that elsewhere, and everybody else is talking about it, so I’ll give it a rest here.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Human extinction, and our dysfunctional political system’s seeming lack of concern and even active ramping up the risk. We have forgotten how horrible it was last time (and the only time) nuclear weapons were used on cities. Is there any story that could be more frightening and/or depressing to a human?

Most hopeful story: Drugs targeting “GLP-1 receptors” (one brand name is Ozempic) were developed to treat diabetes and obesity, but they may be effective against stroke, heart disease, kidney disease, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, alcoholism, and drug addiction. They may even be miracle anti-aging drugs. But really, it seems like the simple story is that most of us in the modern world are just eating too much and moving our bodies too little, and these drugs might let us get some of the benefits of healthier lifestyles without actually making the effort. Making the effort, or making the effort while turbo-charging the benefits with drugs, might be the better option. Nonetheless, saving lives is saving lives.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I did some musing about electric vehicles in August. The hype bubble seems to have burst a bit, as they did not explode onto the international commercial scene as some were hoping/predicting. This is partly because public infrastructure has not kept pace with the private sector due to sheer inertia, but I always detect a whiff of the evil oil/car industry propaganda and political capture behind the scenes. Nonetheless, just as I see happening with computer-driven vehicles, the technology and market will continue to develop after the hype bubble bursts. In a way, this almost starts the clock (5-10-20 years?) for when we can expect the actual commercial transition to occur. It will happen gradually, and one day we will just shrug, accept it, assume we knew it was coming all along, and eventually forget it was any other way. And since I seem to have transportation on the brain, here is a bonus link to my article on high speed trains.

the last days of World War II

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There is a new book about the U.S. fire bombing and nuclear attacks on Japan, leading to Japan’s ultimate surrender in 1945. I haven’t read the book, just listened to the FreshAir interviewed with the author linked to here. A book I have read, and which influenced me profoundly, was Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. This new book (based on the interview confirms a few things I understood from that earlier book.

  1. In terms of suffering and loss of life in a short time, the U.S. fire bombings of Tokyo are one of history’s greatest war crimes. This new book says however that the U.S. was aiming for military targets and the bombing technology of the time was not that precise. On the other hand, the military apparently realized pretty quickly how awful it was and kept doing it anyway. For those who don’t know, a hundred thousand people or more were basically cooked.
  2. The Japanese military was just not going to surrender. Their plan was civilians to fight to the death to the last man, woman, and child, with sticks and stones if necessary.
  3. Japanese civilians were largely on board with this plan. The U.S. island hopping campaign and invasion of Okinawa were horrible, and any invasion of the Japanese mainland would have been another level of horror, human death and suffering beyond that. You could argue that the lives of U.S. soldiers, who had just been through hell in Europe (although U.S. casualties of course paled in comparison to British, European, and Russian casualties, and there were virtually no U.S. civilian casualties) were valued more than the lives of Japanese civilians.
  4. The emperor was in favor of surrender for months leading up to the bombing, but the military was largely in control of the emperor. Even after the atomic bombing, the military was still split and the emperor basically went against them to publicly surrender.
  5. Truman was kind of a bastard. I stand by this. Had FDR lived, I of course can’t say whether anything would have turned out differently, but I like to think it might have.
  6. One argument I hadn’t heard was that the Japanese occupation of China and Southeast Asia was killing as many as 250,000 civilians a month (!), and by cutting that short the American atomic bombing saved more civilians than it killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Maybe, but I still think there is a moral difference between deciding to kill directly and indecision which allows others to continue killing.

Are there lessons for today’s urban warfare and civilians who are willing to fight (real or perceived) enemies to the death. I won’t go there at the moment, but at least the number of zeros on today’s death and suffering is far fewer than the 1940s. Of course, one nuclear detonation could change that in mere moments.

May 2024 in Review

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Just realizing I never did a May 2024 post. Here it is. I also made a range of political musings in May, which I have chosen not to include below, but they are on the record for anyone interested.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: What a modern nuclear bomb would do to a large modern city. Do we already know this intellectually? Sure. Do we constantly need to be reminded and remind our elected leaders that this is absolutely unthinkable and must be avoided at any cost? Apparently.

Most hopeful story: The U.S. might manage to connect two large cities with true high speed rail, relatively soon and relatively cost effectively. The trick is that there is not much between these cities other than flat desert. The route will mostly follow an existing highway, and we should think about doing this more as autonomous vehicles very gradually start to reduce demand on our highways in coming decades.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Drone deliveries make some sense, but what we really need is infrastructure on the ground that lets all sorts of slow, light-weight vehicles zip around in our cities efficiently and safely. And this means separating them completely from those fast, heavy vehicles designed for highway travel.

February 2024 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story: The war on terror continues, and the propaganda umbrella has expanded to cover attacks on any group labeled as “Iran-backed”. Fentanyl gets an honorable mention, but affects mostly the poor and miserable whereas the war on terror threatens to immolate us all.

Most hopeful story: The people who are in charge of the USA’s nuclear weapons still believe in the ideals behind the founding of the country, at least more than the rest of us. Okay, this is lean times for hope, but seriously this at least buys us time to figure some stuff out.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I am not a great chef by any means, but all hail recipe websites, however pesky they may be, for helping me make edible food.

boomers

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Vanity Fair (why them out of all possible publications? I don’t know) got “unprecedented access” onboard a U.S. strategic nuclear submarine. There are plenty of attention-catching quotes.

As the ominous backstop to America’s national security, the Department of Defense relies on a triad: intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), long-range bombers, and submarines. The latter are considered the triad’s least vulnerable leg and carry 70 percent of all deployed nuclear warheads in the inventory. Boomers are officially known as Ohio-class SSBNs—Navy-speak for “submersible ship, ballistic, nuclear”—and were built, as even the juniormost sailor will tell you (without a hint of irony), to “preserve the peace” and, in the event of strategic attack, to inflict unimaginable destruction. “We are prepared to unleash hell,” Admiral William Houston told me, adding that, of course, “We never want to do it. Those sailors know if their weapon system is ever used, they are probably not coming home to their families. And so they take their business very, very seriously. It’s what we refer to as a no-fail mission. You are working directly for the president when you’re out there.”

Um, I’m supposed to be comforted that the missiles are under civilian control, i.e. the military will not launch the missiles themselves. There is some comfort in this I suppose in that only the person who got a majority of electoral votes (many disproportionately representing empty land rather than human voters) can annihilate the planet. The military’s senior officers seems to have more faith in the mythical constitution and presidency than most of us civilians do.

On 9/11, Packer, then a lieutenant commander, was the engineer officer on the USS Ohio, an SSBN that was in the Pacific for a worldwide war game… The United States is under attack.” Over the next few hours, the Ohio received fragmentary reports: The twin towers had been hit; the Pentagon had been struck (true) and destroyed (not true). They also understood that the president was airborne—another portentous sign to those who wait on orders from the National Command Authority, which the president directs. The Ohio, Packer recalled, began the march from DEFCON five. To four. To three. “You take actions to make the platform more ready to complete its mission. You open safes and look at and access war plans that are normally not known or accessible.” When I asked how unusual those actions were, he replied, “I’d never seen those things. Ever.” Sailors on the Ohio began to speculate about who was behind the attacks. “The consensus on the boat was that it was Iran. And, as far as we were concerned, they were going to be radioactive glass…

Chilling – why do we jump to the conclusion that there is an Iranian boogeyman behind everything, evidence be damned…

Packer, like so many others interviewed for this story, told me he is bracing for a very different battle than the ones fought in the aftermath of 9/11. “2027 is the year Xi Jinping said they need to be ready to go to war,” … “In the Taiwan fight,” Packer maintained, “we’re prepared to go into the jaws of the Chinese undersea forces and take them all out.” All the surface ships as well.

So a U.S. China war is not only a foregone conclusion, it is on the calendar…

Over the second half of the last century, Western national security officials were preoccupied with trying to keep one adversary (the USSR) in check, even as the dueling nuclear powers ratified landmark arms control treaties. With those efforts now in eclipse and nuclear proliferation a chilling reality, America and its allies are currently contending with two near-peer opponents, Russia and China, as well as their own set of allies with nuclear aspirations, including North Korea, Iran, and, by extension, the Axis of Resistance—a term that encompasses armed groups like the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, and the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq.

Axis of resistance to what? being dominated by the threat of nuclear attack?

Don’t get me wrong. I am comforted that these people take their jobs deadly seriously. because their jobs are so deadly. I just don’t really buy into the idea that the United States needs a nuclear “deterrent” of thousands of warheads to outweigh the risk of accidental or intentional use of nuclear weapons. And I don’t like the idea that arms control treaties have fallen by the wayside and we cynically assume no further progress is possible.

November 2023 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story: An economic model that underlies a lot of climate policy may be too conservative. I don’t think this matters much because the world is doing too little, too late even according to the conservative model. Meanwhile, the ice shelves holding back Greenland are in worse shape than previously thought.

Most hopeful story: Small modular nuclear reactors have been permitted for the first time in the United States, although it looks like the specific project that was permitted will not go through. Meanwhile construction of new nuclear weapons is accelerating (sorry, not hopeful, but I couldn’t help pointing out the contrast…)

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: India somehow manages to maintain diplomatic relations with Palestine (which they recognize as a state along with 138 other UN members), Israel, and Iran at the same time.