I think I would have published. A potentially-productive question is “With 7 years warning, why did bad guys try it before good guys prevented it?”. Was is a question of misaligned incentives (where the good guys effectively let it happen because the public punishes for inconvenience), or different estimates of success (the good guys thought it’d never happen, although it was (in retrospect) extremely effective?
Keeping ideas/information obscure is unlikely to work—the more motivated side is going to get it first, and it’s likely to be more effective the first time it’s used than if many people anticipated it (or at least understood the vulnerability).
“With 7 years warning, why did bad guys try it before good guys prevented it?”
This came up around 9/11. Good guys have too too many things to prevent to focus on any random hypothetical more than any other hypothetical. Gwern has some writing on terrorism and it not being about terror. I leave it up to the reader to find the link.
I think I would have published. A potentially-productive question is “With 7 years warning, why did bad guys try it before good guys prevented it?”. Was is a question of misaligned incentives (where the good guys effectively let it happen because the public punishes for inconvenience), or different estimates of success (the good guys thought it’d never happen, although it was (in retrospect) extremely effective?
Keeping ideas/information obscure is unlikely to work—the more motivated side is going to get it first, and it’s likely to be more effective the first time it’s used than if many people anticipated it (or at least understood the vulnerability).
This came up around 9/11. Good guys have too too many things to prevent to focus on any random hypothetical more than any other hypothetical. Gwern has some writing on terrorism and it not being about terror. I leave it up to the reader to find the link.