Soaring, Cryptography and Nuclear Weapons
May 29, 2009 7:34 AM   Subscribe

 
How do you know how big I think the threat of nuclear war is?
posted by xmutex at 7:38 AM on May 29, 2009 [4 favorites]




I'm not too sure on the sources for this conclusion....
posted by HuronBob at 7:47 AM on May 29, 2009


I'm fairly confident I will see nuclear warfare in my lifetime. There are not enough resources to go around.
posted by norabarnacl3 at 7:48 AM on May 29, 2009 [4 favorites]


You know, ever since I was a little kid I've thought that getting nuked wouldn't be too bad a way to go...provided, of course, that you were directly underneath the first wave of bombs. A bright light, maybe a millisecond's worth of pain, and poof! Of course, now that I'm a bit older this idea has been tempered by the knowledge that for every person who died instantly there would be millions if not billions who starved to death or died due to various forms of social unrest afterwards, but in terms of my own theoretical death...I'd still take it over years of painful infirmity, dementia, etc.
posted by Stonewall Jackson at 7:54 AM on May 29, 2009


Plus, there's the chance that instead of dying you'll develop cool superpowers.
posted by brain_drain at 8:03 AM on May 29, 2009 [4 favorites]


two fringe blogs and youtube link have me convinced!
posted by orville sash at 8:23 AM on May 29, 2009 [1 favorite]


We've come disconcertingly close to the precipice before, and with entire countries of nutjobs like North Korea and Iran coming up through the ranks of nuclear powers, it's more of a "when" question than a "how" question.
posted by WalterMitty at 8:26 AM on May 29, 2009 [1 favorite]


entire countries of nutjobs like North Korea and Iran

From what I understand, it isn't fair to judge the character of a people based on the actions of their government, freely elected or not. Maybe calling them "nutjob countries" is better than calling them "countries of nutjobs"?
posted by hippybear at 8:29 AM on May 29, 2009 [2 favorites]


Marginal Revolution isn't that fringe even though it is sufficiently all over the place that it doesn't really have a lot of expertise over most of the domains that it covers.

I will say this about Nuclear War. People seem to value the idea of an anthropomorphic controlling agent in and of itself and independent of any utility that that control provides. This leads to attempts to manipulate risk in poorly understood ways when it is difficult to actually mitigate risk. I think on some level the credit crisis was a result of an example of this very phenomenon. A lot of what went wrong can be described as seeking to reduce the probability of a bad outcome by making the bad outcome worse should it occur (heavily leveraged bets on small 'predictable' fluctuations being an example of this). In many cases the trade offs between probability and severity of bad events are poorly understood but it is sufficiently important to have a person that can be credited or blamed that people will overlook the gaps in knowledge to an irrational degree.

The same sort of mechanism seems to be at play with nuclear weapons. It certainly seems as though having nuclear weapons makes a bad outcome (war) less likely. It's also pretty clear that nuclear weapons make the bad outcome, should it occur, much worse. And we really don't have a good idea about the relationship between the two. (Of course nuclear war is 'game' with many actors so there's more going on than what I'm describing but I am mostly addressing those few who think that the fact of nuclear weapons is somehow beneficial as general violence deterrent.)
posted by I Foody at 8:39 AM on May 29, 2009 [2 favorites]


This post needs another authoritative link.
posted by localroger at 8:46 AM on May 29, 2009


"My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing will begin in five minutes. " Ronald Reagan
posted by caddis at 8:53 AM on May 29, 2009 [2 favorites]


The blog links seem kind of sparse. Conversely, the video is very long, much less than my lunch break allows.
posted by futureisunwritten at 8:53 AM on May 29, 2009


Stonewall Jackson: "You know, ever since I was a little kid I've thought that getting nuked wouldn't be too bad a way to go...provided, of course, that you were directly underneath the first wave of bombs. A bright light, maybe a millisecond's worth of pain, and poof! Of course, now that I'm a bit older this idea has been tempered by the knowledge that for every person who died instantly there would be millions if not billions who starved to death or died due to various forms of social unrest afterwards, but in terms of my own theoretical death...I'd still take it over years of painful infirmity, dementia, etc."

---
Ha! My ideal way is to get totally blissed out on E, make love under a falling nuclear bomb, and orgasm right as it gets to us.

You KNOW that's the awesomest way to go! (aside from your concerns about the rest of humanity. I mean, if the bomb IS gonna fall, fuck it, may as well go out with a bang)

Or, I guess to quote d boon/minutement: "When the bomb, starts fallin' on the first day of world war 3. gonna grab me a girl, go out and fuck her... yeah yeah... world war 3."
posted by symbioid at 9:00 AM on May 29, 2009


From what I understand, it isn't fair to judge the character of a people based on the actions of their government, freely elected or not. Maybe calling them "nutjob countries" is better than calling them "countries of nutjobs"?

While I agree with the basic sentiment of this statement, I am somewhat disturbed at the 'because they're totally crazy' theory of nuclear proliferation which seems to be popular these days.

I really doubt any country or leader of a country really wakes up and decides "I'm going to blow a really enormous amount of money on nuclear development because I'm craaaaazy! Wha-ha-ha-hooey!" I think the reason that this attitude makes me nervous is because I'm in an entirely different camp about nuclear proliferation, and the attitude that countries are building nuclear weapons because they hate our freedom or whatever tends to lead to actions which make me very nervous because of what I've been taught about nuclear proliferation, namely that the main thing that stops countries from developing nuclear weapons is that nuclear weapons are very very very expensive and make your neighbors really nervous, and most countries would rather spend that enormous sum of money on something else and not take the hit in international opinion.

If you're all, "AXIS OF EVIL, THEY'RE CRAZY, TIME TO KICK ASS, IT'S THE ONLY WAY!", then, yeah, I'm a limp wristed, lilly-livered, cheese-eating liberal because I think that running around invading one country and warning two others that THEY'RE NEXT is only going to push them harder to develop nuclear weapons.

Anyway, I guess it's kind of a side digression.
posted by Comrade_robot at 9:01 AM on May 29, 2009 [5 favorites]


Whenever I wonder how close we are to nuclear war, I just glance at the friggin' how-close-are-we-to-nuclear-war clock (five minutes to midnight, since 2007!).
posted by steef at 9:02 AM on May 29, 2009


Comrade_robot: ""I'm going to blow a really enormous amount of money on nuclear development because I'm craaaaazy! Wha-ha-ha-hooey!" "

--
I think it's more like "I'm gonna blow a really enormous amoutn of money on nuclear development because *my enemies* are craaaaazy!"
posted by symbioid at 9:07 AM on May 29, 2009


Oh come ON! I know that recently things have been all about repeating the late 70s, but nuclear war? That is so passe it's beyond belief. It's been done. It's as old and boring as the population bomb.

What ever happened to the newer ways of destroying civilization, like Peak Oil, Global Climate Change and the like? Aren't they cool enough? Do we really need to go back to the 70s for everything?
posted by happyroach at 9:28 AM on May 29, 2009


It is of course a distinct possibility that these "countries led by nutjobs" are actually "countries led by entirely rational leaders who, having taken into account all the variables and influencing factors that they are aware of, find that developing and threatening to develop nuclear weaponry is the course of action best suited to furthering their interests". You may or may not wish to insert an "unfortunately" or an "inexplicably" somewhere in there in order to attach a moral or intellectual judgement of some sort.

And yes, even if your country is led by nutjobs, it doesn't make everyone in the country a nutjob. It might make them unfortunate, but it doesn't make them crazy.
posted by WalterMitty at 9:28 AM on May 29, 2009 [1 favorite]


It is of course a distinct possibility that these "countries led by nutjobs" are actually "countries led by entirely rational leaders who, having taken into account all the variables and influencing factors that they are aware of, find that developing and threatening to develop nuclear weaponry is the course of action best suited to furthering their interests". You may or may not wish to insert an "unfortunately" or an "inexplicably" somewhere in there in order to attach a moral or intellectual judgement of some sort.

One of the things that tends to 'cause' development of nuclear weapons is a threat which a country does not feel it can defeat conventionally. There's no moral or intellectual judgment there; if the United States military is coming after you, you're probably not going to be able to develop a conventional military which is going to make it not come in and depose you. That means you'll probably go for the magical nuclear button. This means that if you think (like I do), that nuclear proliferation is a Bad Thing, you'll try to avoid throwing your weight around even if it seems like fun times, the war will be over in six weeks tops, &c.

There is, of course, a sharp disconnect between people who believe as I do, and people who think that nuclear weapons are being developed because they're completely bonkers over there. You can't really negotiate with people if you've decided that they're nuts-o and have no real reasons for developing nuclear weapons other than blah blurge bleep.
posted by Comrade_robot at 9:38 AM on May 29, 2009 [1 favorite]


Here's a more digestible version of the Soaring talk. FYI, Martin Hellman is best known as the co-discoverer of public key cryptography & co-inventor of Diffie-Hellman public key exchange, the first public key algorithm.
posted by scalefree at 9:54 AM on May 29, 2009 [1 favorite]


with entire countries of nutjobs like North Korea and Iran

Yea, because the nation-states that have declared and undeclared nuclear weapons are filled with stable non-nutjob!
posted by rough ashlar at 9:55 AM on May 29, 2009


There's a difference between "they're developing nukes because they're crazy" and "they're developing nukes and they're crazy".

In the case of North Korea in particular, I think this difference is not merely theoretical.
posted by Flunkie at 10:01 AM on May 29, 2009


all about repeating the late 70s, .... newer ways of destroying civilization, like Peak Oil, Global Climate Change

Peak Oil - The production peak for US of A was back 1970's. OPEC. Carter Doctrine.
Global Climate change - the coming ice age was the vogue book.

Everything old is new again.

Want new? Peak Phosphorus. Although that may have been covered by the Club of Rome Limits to Growth/Howard Hughes urine collection.
posted by rough ashlar at 10:02 AM on May 29, 2009


Me personally?

I'm going to blow a really enormous amount of money on nuclear development to to build cheap power plants, and save the oil for later.

What, what?
posted by wah at 10:04 AM on May 29, 2009


That means you'll probably go for the magical nuclear button.

Don't forget the magical bio-engineered "plague" option. $25,000 for a DNA printer and things like wheat rust, smallpox, (animal name/country name) flu or even soil-dwelling bacteria producing alcohol and BAM! Humanity attack!
posted by rough ashlar at 10:08 AM on May 29, 2009


I'm going to blow a really enormous amount of money on nuclear development to to build cheap power plants, and save the oil for later.

How did the Shaw of Iran get the money for an account *AND* have internet access? I thought you can't take it with you!
posted by rough ashlar at 10:10 AM on May 29, 2009


The Road was such a good book.
posted by voltairemodern at 10:22 AM on May 29, 2009 [1 favorite]


You know, if people were less greedy bastards and contraception was more widely used, this would be avoidable to some extent.
posted by kldickson at 10:23 AM on May 29, 2009 [1 favorite]


Comrade_robot: You are, of course, correct. My comment did have too much smart-ass and not enough reflection, especially for the Blue.

And you echo my sentiments about the nuclear (finally! no longer "nucular") development in countries which feel threatened by our unmatchable war machine. If "lopsided" war is the only way we can be fought, the choices are only guerilla squads and "terrorist" actions, or WMD deployment or threat of deployment.

I think, however, it is less scary to think about actual State-started nuclear war, and more about the likelihood of a desperately poor country like North Korea selling nukes to non-national groups who might then deploy them to their own ends.
posted by hippybear at 10:29 AM on May 29, 2009


It is of course a distinct possibility that these "countries led by nutjobs" are actually "countries led by entirely rational leaders who, having taken into account all the variables and influencing factors that they are aware of, find that developing and threatening to develop nuclear weaponry is the course of action best suited to furthering their interests".

Everyone please take a vacation from this thread and come back after reading the Essence of Decision. It makes a very nice, cogent argument (coincidentally through discussion of nuclear war) against any attribution of rationality to entities of that scale, even (maybe especially) when they are composed of otherwise rational individuals. As a side benefit, this argument caused Milton Friedman to flip his shit.

Of course, I thought we learned all we need to know about the rational foundation of nuclear escalation and deployment from a certain computer in a certain movie...
posted by 7segment at 10:41 AM on May 29, 2009 [1 favorite]


Hey, if handguns make us all safer, then surely nukes do the same but on an international scale. Surely the NRA supporters are positively *insisting* that every country develops nuclear weaponry!
posted by LordSludge at 11:10 AM on May 29, 2009 [2 favorites]


I try to talk to girls, but I keep thinking about World War III.
posted by porn in the woods at 11:15 AM on May 29, 2009


I watched this talk all the way through, and I have to say that while this guy may be a good glider pilot (by virtue of still being alive) and probably a good electrical engineer, he's a pretty lousy policy wonk. There are a number of problems with his analysis, and perhaps the most glaring is his proposed solution of conducting a risk analysis.

As a new scientist, I can appreciate his desire to have quantative information on the probability of event x happening. In public health, we spend a lot of time running risk analyses, and they are invaluable to the design of good interventions. As a former policy/IAff wonk, I have to take issue with his methodology and conclusions. The problem with a risk analysis of a political/strategic event is that the population you're studying is 1, meaning that it's impossible to predict events with much confidence. As such, it's sort of disingenuous when he says that one event is ten thousand times more likely to happen than another, and slightly ridiculous when he uses civillian nuclear power plant disasters as a reference. Further, there's no quantitative way to measure the determinants of a president or general's actions. Without statistical integrity, his argument falls into the ceaseless chatter of all the other Washington analysts.

Even more lame, though, is his call to action. He wants to commission a study to prove his napkin research, and "raise public alarm" if necessary. It's been done, and the only argument for its effectiveness is post hoc ergo propter hoc. A more prudent course of action would garner him a lot less attention but likely be much more effective: try a top down approach of dissuading scientists from entering weapons research and running seminars for congressional staffers on markov-chain modeling of international affairs.
posted by The White Hat at 11:25 AM on May 29, 2009


Instant Metafilter Random Juxtaposition Death Match:

Who would win?

porn in the woods

vs.

The White Hat

---------------


One, a random, desperate virgin.

The other, a pretentious know-it-all wannabe (also new: presumably the 'new' is important).



--------------


FIGHT!
posted by titus-g at 1:44 PM on May 29, 2009


New because last year I was in policy and now I'm in the sciences. Also, that was your first comment to Metafilter?
posted by The White Hat at 3:15 PM on May 29, 2009


“We've come disconcertingly close to the precipice before, and with entire countries of nutjobs like North Korea and Iran coming up through the ranks of nuclear powers, it's more of a "when" question than a "how" question.”

No, I think it’s a how question. And there’s really only two ways, one would be the big fireworky full exchange sort of deal. And the other way would a slow motion version of that. Say, India v. Pakistan for starters. It’s not going to be a full on exchange. They’re going to save some in reserve.
…sorta like two chubby old guys fighting. They get gassed early so they’re sparingly throwing punches doing slow motion damage to each other. Or like an old woman falling down the stairs, but she can’t stop herself.
And the world would go on and on like that for decades. One short limited exchange after another. Cutting of livable real estate out of the world one chunk at a time. There’d be refugees, and they’d be their own political factor. There’d be food riots. All that. Each nuclear strike not a response, but in seeking a tactical advantage.
I mean, once you bust out the nukes, they’re on the table. But that doesn’t mean you use them all up. So Pakistan hits India. Disavows the people that did it. India says “ok.” And waits. Then, when they’ve got credible (to them) info that it might happen again – they preemptively strike. “What?” they say “You hit us first anyway. We have this info here that you were going to hit us again.” So maybe Pakistan retaliates right away – but more likely they hold off, move in with conventional forces and use the nuke threat to cover that. So India hits them or not. Probably not. In part because they’d be close enough to their borders, but also in part because they can reach behind the lines and hit some cities with nukes. So they do that. So now there’s an army cut off from supply in the middle of a country. That becomes nasty. Time goes by. Fallout spreads. China gets involved. India doesn’t know much about fighting China of late. They threaten them with nukes. Etc. etc. etc. Just slow mix of conventional aggression backed by nukes – since the gene’s already out.
Depressing really. Probably shouldn’t have brought it up.
posted by Smedleyman at 3:28 PM on May 29, 2009 [1 favorite]


Even more lame, though, is his call to action. He wants to commission a study to prove his napkin research, and "raise public alarm" if necessary. It's been done, and the only argument for its effectiveness is post hoc ergo propter hoc.

In the question and answer period somebody brings up the Doomsday Clock and he speaks about how that is subjective, while he proposes a more quantitative analysis. Regardless, I agree with your argument that a quantitative analysis of this type of risk doesn't seem very feasible.
posted by Defenestrator at 11:51 PM on May 29, 2009


One problem is that this sort of war has never actually happened before - i.e. an actual exchange of weapons of mass destruction by two powers (not necessarily states, mind), both with the capability to effectively deliver such weapons unto their opponents.

Historically, nothing similar has happened, only conventional war on a global scale. In the previous century, we had the US hitting Japan with nukes, but Japan did not have the capability of attacking America with anything remotely as powerful (they did try balloon bombs, but it bears no comparison). We had the US facing off with the Soviets - both armed with nukes - but neither side has actually used them against each other.

Today, we have multiple power blocs (NATO, G20), rising powers (China, India), old powers tenaciously hanging onto the vestiges of their former hegemony (Russia), rogue states (North Korea), non-state actors (various terrorist organisations), and also the occasional mad scientist (Amerithrax). And it's not just nukes, now; rough ashlar mentioned $25K DNA printers. You can cook up a biological weapon in a cheap lab. You also have cyber-warfare. The options feasibly available to a determinedly destabilising force are myriad.

The world is going to hell. It might not be a handbasket; it could be anything, actually. A pandemic with 30 million deaths? A severe oil shortage? An accidental nuclear or biological-weapon launch? Hell, aliens? War is a given. It's only a matter of time.

Smedleyman has a good point. It's not a "when or how". It's a "when" AND a "how". Possibly "why", though that would be more of a curiosity-satisfying thing than anything else. Definitely "where". And "what", given the available options.

Thanks, 7essence; I'd forgotten that bit of my college course in IR. Rationality is of course by no means a given. That makes the inevitability even more certain.
posted by WalterMitty at 2:33 AM on May 30, 2009 [1 favorite]


TL;DR/ TL;DW?

In one sentence: we're all going to die!
posted by WalterMitty at 2:33 AM on May 30, 2009


that was your first comment to Metafilter?
posted by The White Hat


Yeah I noticed that too. That and the fact they've been a Mefite since 2001. Interesting start.
posted by nudar at 4:50 AM on May 30, 2009


I'm hoping for aliens. Shit, we need some Vulcans up in this joint. Although we might get stuck with Ewoks. Or even Greys.
posted by kldickson at 7:38 AM on May 30, 2009


We've come disconcertingly close to the precipice before...

I read that as "codpiece" rather than "precipice." Talk about disturbing.
posted by Foosnark at 11:46 PM on May 30, 2009


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