Why would mutually assured destruction remain in place? Superpower A would be in a position to build things in space (e.g. a Sonnengewehr) that negate terrestrial deterrents and provide a decisive strategic advantage. I don’t see how Superpower B’s ASI could justify such a development.
More worryingly, the assumption that the ability to inflict damage on human populations remains a meaningful strategic lever post-ASI rests on the contemporary logic of people being a requirement for industry, for combat, for maintaining a minimum living standard for the population and for producing the next generation. Once warfare can be fully automated, the strategic calculus looks very different.
Presumably superpower B will precommit using their offense-dominant weapons before the retaliation-proof (or splendid first strike enabling) infrastructure is built. It’s technically possible today to saturate space with enough interceptors to blow up ICBMs during boost phase, but it would take so many years to establish full coverage that any opponent you’re hoping to disempower has time to threaten you preemptively. It also seems likely to me that AIs will be much better at making binding and verifiable commitments of this sort, which humans could never be trusted to make legitimately.
As far as whether the population remains relevant, that probably happens through some value lock-in for the early ASIs, such as minimal human rights. In that case, humans would stay useful countervalue targets, even if their instrumental value to war is gone.
This assumes a solution to the alignment problem that creates massive, legible strategic penalties for the ASI. If human rights were to become a terminal value for the ASI, then the contingencies at the heart of deterrence theory become unjustifiable since they establish conditions under which those rights can be revoked, thus contradicting the notion of human rights as a terminal value.
If human rights were to become a terminal value for the ASI, then the contingencies at the heart of deterrence theory become unjustifiable since they establish conditions under which those rights can be revoked, thus contradicting the notion of human rights as a terminal value.
I’m a bit unclear on what this is means. If you see preserving humans as a priority, why would threatening other humans to ensure strategic stability run against that? Countervalue targeting today works on the same principles, with nations that are ~aligned on human rights but willing to commit to violating them in retaliation to preserve strategic stability.
Assuming that issuing such threats isn’t itself a violation of human rights, if you genuinely see preserving humans as a terminal value, then you would not follow through on such a threat because a counterstrike would result in the opposite of what is demanded by your values. You could say that not following through on such a threat would weaken your strategic position due to a loss of credibility, but in this case you would be subordinating human preservation to credibility preservation, and thus to strategic calculus. If you sacrifice your terminal value for something else, then it wasn’t really your terminal value.
Two reasons for why deterrence works today are 1. countries do not treat human preservation as such as a terminal value, and 2. countries treat their adversary’s population as a negative value to the extent that it can be mobilized against them, thus making a counterstrike desirable.
Why would mutually assured destruction remain in place? Superpower A would be in a position to build things in space (e.g. a Sonnengewehr) that negate terrestrial deterrents and provide a decisive strategic advantage. I don’t see how Superpower B’s ASI could justify such a development.
More worryingly, the assumption that the ability to inflict damage on human populations remains a meaningful strategic lever post-ASI rests on the contemporary logic of people being a requirement for industry, for combat, for maintaining a minimum living standard for the population and for producing the next generation. Once warfare can be fully automated, the strategic calculus looks very different.
Presumably superpower B will precommit using their offense-dominant weapons before the retaliation-proof (or splendid first strike enabling) infrastructure is built. It’s technically possible today to saturate space with enough interceptors to blow up ICBMs during boost phase, but it would take so many years to establish full coverage that any opponent you’re hoping to disempower has time to threaten you preemptively. It also seems likely to me that AIs will be much better at making binding and verifiable commitments of this sort, which humans could never be trusted to make legitimately.
As far as whether the population remains relevant, that probably happens through some value lock-in for the early ASIs, such as minimal human rights. In that case, humans would stay useful countervalue targets, even if their instrumental value to war is gone.
This assumes a solution to the alignment problem that creates massive, legible strategic penalties for the ASI. If human rights were to become a terminal value for the ASI, then the contingencies at the heart of deterrence theory become unjustifiable since they establish conditions under which those rights can be revoked, thus contradicting the notion of human rights as a terminal value.
I’m a bit unclear on what this is means. If you see preserving humans as a priority, why would threatening other humans to ensure strategic stability run against that? Countervalue targeting today works on the same principles, with nations that are ~aligned on human rights but willing to commit to violating them in retaliation to preserve strategic stability.
Assuming that issuing such threats isn’t itself a violation of human rights, if you genuinely see preserving humans as a terminal value, then you would not follow through on such a threat because a counterstrike would result in the opposite of what is demanded by your values. You could say that not following through on such a threat would weaken your strategic position due to a loss of credibility, but in this case you would be subordinating human preservation to credibility preservation, and thus to strategic calculus. If you sacrifice your terminal value for something else, then it wasn’t really your terminal value.
Two reasons for why deterrence works today are 1. countries do not treat human preservation as such as a terminal value, and 2. countries treat their adversary’s population as a negative value to the extent that it can be mobilized against them, thus making a counterstrike desirable.