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Missile Defense

Nazi engineer and Disney space advisor Wernher Von Braun helped give us rocket science. Today, the legacy of military aeronautics has many manifestations from SDI to advanced ballistic missiles. Now there is a controversial push for a new missile defense system. What will be the role of missile defense in the new geopolitical climate and in the new scientific era?

rshowalt - 10:48am Oct 27, 2000 EDT (#445 of 446)

If I've ever denied the importance of American military strength, or military strength to any nation stae, or if I've ever denied the importance of good military information, I don't recall it. Don't think I ever made such a mistake.

I've said that nuclear weapons are militarily useless, corrupting, a clear danger to the safety of the world, and should be taken down. That is, I'm advocating the abolition of one kind of weapon, for practical reasons that are in the essentially universal interest of human beings, whether they be soldiers or civilians. An analogy I'd use, but with renewed force, is asbestos, a long used insulation and fiber material now known to be unacceptably toxic. People responsible for buildings take down asbestos, not because they are against fiber, or insulation, but because a particular technical arrangement happens to be unacceptably dangerous. The argument for taking down nuclear weapons is of the same sort, but hugely magnified. Nuclear weapons, in the current internet world are even more unacceptably dangerous than they used to be, and they could (in my view, probably will) destroy the world unless they are taken down.

If the U.S. wanted to get nucs down, I believe that something close to 99% of all the nuclear weapons in the world could be dismantled, and the weapons could be effectively outlawed, within a few months.

You speak of a "joining forces" of intelligence agencies. Don't think I've ever advocated that, (though intelligence operations of different nations have been communicating in various ways for centuries.) Communication between intelligence agencies would be a good thing ( if they could check what they were telling each other ) because it would make surprises less likely, and it is surprises that make agressive military action a paying proposition. No military, ever, wants to attack a fully informed enemy in a prepared defensive posture. So wide distribution of good information weakens offensive chances, and strengthens defenses. That is to say, widespread information serves the cause of stability. With the internet, and with more and more information flows, conventional war is getting to be less and less a reasonable kind of "politics by other means."

We'd have a far, far safer, more stable world if we outlawed nuclear weapons. Nobody wants to think of these weapons, because everybody is so viscerally afraid of them (as moviemakers know) but if we could overcome that fear, the mechanics of taking them down, according to the take down proposal of #266-269, this thread, which has now been much discussed, would be straightforward.

I still have some hopes for that proposal. So long as it is buried in a talkboard thread, and not validated by institutional means and more widely discussed, it can't bear fruit. But that validation may not be impossible. If people I'm talking to believed what I believe about the cast of characters (real names) in this thread since September has been, I suspect it would be possible.

rshowalt - 09:21am Oct 28, 2000 EDT (#446 of 446)

The breakends and code thefts at Microsoft, reported in this paper, and well reported elsewhere too http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/microsoft/0,2759,178712,00.html offer an important warning to all who feel that, since discussion of nuclear arms safety is suppressed by classification, all is safe.

By the standards of Microsoft, our military is nearly undefended from web hackers, and the military system is now full of internet connections - more than it even has documented, much less controlled.

I don't think anyone can demonstrate that the control logic, and arguments for stability, were EVER valid in the nuclear weapons area. But absolutely none of the old ones reflect the new internet threats.

Nuclear weapons, with the uncertainties that now exist, present a clear, present danger to the survival of the world. In the CNN TV documentary Rehearsing Armageddon the antique displays and controls of our operational missile systems must have impressed most technical people. They only offer a small comfort - the system is not, and cannot be made to be, isolated from the computer vulnerabilities of the larger military system of which they form a part.

Nuclear weapons should be taken down without delay. I do not believe that the United States Government could produce a single person, informed and in authority, who could argue that these weapons are safe for the world, if that person had to stand up to reasonable crossexamination under rules consistent with getting to straight, right answers.

Of course, with classification rules, and morays in the press, as they are, they haven't had to, so far.

Perhaps that may change.

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