Things that have been successfully-so-far banned before being done (very shallow research, not sure; found w/ gippities and cursorily (ha) sanity-checked):
In crime shows and books they often talk about Means, Motive, and Opportunity… I suspect at least one is missing from each example on your list.
Military Moon Bases. The opportunity requires a well established space program with regular, or at least imminent, Lunar visits. The Means is tremendous amounts of resources. Which diminishes the motive—since the higher the opportunity cost, the higher the returns need to be: what is cheaper to do on the moon than on Earth to such a point where it becomes a profitable venture?
How many of these bans have held after the technology or means to do them have become extremely viable or profitable?
I imagine it would be very easy to have a successful ban on destroying the Pyramids of Giza, this is because even demolishing one of the smaller Pyramids is a difficult and thankless task and hasn’t been attempted in over 800 years. If I may be terribly facetious, it would be incredibly easy to ban a group of typical 15 year old boys from using a Rotary Phone… if they can’t find one, stopping the same group of boys from using scatological humor, likely impossible.
I think that’s a good lens to judge them, and I agree at least some of my examples have one or more missing. I think at least several of them actually do meet the criteria though. E.g. the mining one was allegedly about to be an agreement about how much different countries could mine, or something, but at the last minute they decided instead to just ban it. The lasers one was already developed and ready to be deployed and being sold, and then it was banned. The LEO missiles one is feasible I believe, and I imagine would be hard to detect before being used (so maybe in fact some countries do have the tech ready for deployment in extreme scenarios).
Unless by “opportunity” you mean a chance to do it when no one is watching or similar, in which case I think the point is that you can remove the opportunity through international agreements.
U.S. intelligence reported on the danger of Serbian- and French-manufactured laser devices in the former Yugoslavia. Reports from Japan indicated that the cult, Aum Supreme Truth, allegedly planned to attack the Metropolitan Police Department’s main building in Kasumigaseki, Tokyo, with a vehicle equipped with some type of laser weapon before the March 20, 1995 sarin nerve gas subway attack. During the Gulf War, British ground forces were issued protective goggles because they were concerned about Russian-made lasers believed to be in service with the Iraqis. German pilots flying over the Iraqi no-fly zone were also issued laser protective goggles.The U.S. Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center has reported, “It is highly probable that laser eye injuries occurred in the Iran/Iraq war, based on numerous reports of such injuries and the known purchases of lasers for the implied purpose of weaponization. Source: https://www.hrw.org/reports/1995/General1.htm
I wonder why that ban has held?
The LEO missiles one is feasible I believe, and I imagine would be hard to detect before being used (so maybe in fact some countries do have the tech ready for deployment in extreme scenarios).
Feasible as in cheap and effective, or feasible as in merely possible? It says it in the Wikipedia article—“Its nuclear payload was drastically reduced relative to that of an ICBM due to the high level of energy needed to get the weapon into orbit” I suspect it has less to do with a ban, and more because there’s more viable alternatives available for Nuclear armed nations.
The ban on space nukes doesn’t seem to be looking good
NATO is concerned that Russia is seeking to deploy nuclear weapons in space, a development that could threaten the thousands of satellites orbiting the Earth that are crucial to defense as well as people’s daily lives, the alliance’s chief said.
is concerned that Russia is seeking to deploy nuclear weapons in space
This was forseeable when SpaceX decided to takes sides in the Ukraine conflict since Russia does not have (and probably cannot afford to create) a constellation of anything like the number of satellites in the Starlink constellation.
So what I’m hearing is that we need to ban AGI, plus ban any geopolitical play which could create an incentive to violate the ban and create AGI, plus ban any geopolitical play which could create an incentive for any of those geopolitical plays, plus ban any geopolitical play which could create an incentive for any of those geopolitical plays...
For the banning of these weapons, how much does effectiveness weigh against moral concerns? If usefulness weighs a lot, then these examples won’t generalize to TAI.
Unless there are very clear, convincing evidence that TAI isn’t controllable with current paradigm, then it will still be perceived as a highly useful tech. (Even if such evidence exists, IMO there’s high possibility that they’ll just cope harder.)
Biochemical weapons: These are only useful against civilians and pre-modern armies. Modern armies can easily afford equipments to protect against these.
(I saw this article mentioned somewhere in another LW post. When I see TsviBT’s shortform I immediately recalled this article, so I wrote this post.)
Space nukes and LEO missiles: In space there’s no cover, they’re easily detectible. Without air, dodging maneuver cost significant dv. This means overall less survivability than ground / sea based nukes.
Deploying missiles in LEO also requires a more complicated trajectory than traditional ground / sea based missiles, which cost more dv. If they need to stay in space for a long time, then reliability and maintainence also becomes a serious problem.
None of these strong enough military, strategic or economic incentives. Sorry, you just can’can’t solve collective action problems by wanting it badly enough. That s not how it works.
? I think you’re imagining that I’m saying something, but I don’t know what? I’m not saying banning AGI is easy, would work, or is very comparable to these examples, if that’s what you mean?
LEO missiles are advantageous, and blinding lasers were developed and ready for deployment before being banned, IIUC.
Indeed. Like, if someone did a serious writeup on these lines, a lesson may very well be “nothing remotely like a preemptive AGI ban has ever happened, because all these examples have properties XYZ”, and that would be interesting!
I think LEO nuclear missiles haven’t been done because they aren’t militarily useful, not because of what diplomats write in treaties. If we wanted to actually destroy an enemy with nuclear missiles, submarine-based nuclear missiles, which we already have, are better—the submarine can get close to the target, resulting in very short flight times, and can often attack from many directions, all without being detectable until the moment the missile leaves the water. Anyone with a decent telescope can look up and figure out which satellites are monitoring the weather or transmitting messages versus which ones might be missiles. LEO missiles also wouldn’t fulfill the primary function of an ICBM, which is to absorb hostile nukes. An adversary who wanted to launch nukes at us would have to take out 400 silos in the middle of nowhere with their nukes before even thinking about hitting American cities. A satellite can be taken out with conventional weapons, it would not force the enemy to deplete their nuclear arsenal. As a matter of military strategy, putting nuclear missiles on satellites just isn’t a very good idea. The treaties only happened because the generals didn’t want it anyway.
I’m less familiar with the blinding lasers thing, but I’m also having trouble seeing the point. Armies can still just shoot people, which is both easier to do and more effective.
The objections River made apply to the thing you linked, too: namely to stay in a low-earth trajectory for any significant fraction of one orbit requires a speed of 28,000 km/h and more importantly all of that speed must be tangential (“horizontal”). It is expensive in energy to get rid of that tangential component of momentum, and most of it must be gotten rid of in order for the warhead to intersect the Earth’s surface with any accuracy.
(Yes, ICBM’s reach that speed, too, or close to it, but only when the direction of travel is close to straight down. I.e., the tangential component of velocity never gets above a few 1000 km/h.)
Yes, it gets a lot cheaper to get rid of speed when the vehicle is designed to interact with the atmosphere like the Space Shuttle was, as opposed to just shooting through it like a bullet or an ICBM warhead is, but that does not support your point (Tsvi) because such vehicles are the subject of intense study by all the advanced militaries (under the name “hypersonic glide vehicle”) and I have seen no signs that any nation is willing to forswear investment in or deployment of this new class of weapons.
In the decades during which hypersonic glide vehicles were infeasible, River is probably correct in asserting that there was no military advantage to be got from either nukes on satellites or fractional orbital bombardment systems.
Oh, I misread that then. I think my thesis is still the same—it doesn’t look like it provides much actual strategic benefit. If the goal is to actually hit the enemies cities, submarine-based missiles seem at least as good. If the goal is to draw enemy missiles away from our own cities, an ICBM is just as good. The lack of a use case explains not building them. The treaties aren’t doing any extra work there.
Things that have been successfully-so-far banned before being done (very shallow research, not sure; found w/ gippities and cursorily (ha) sanity-checked):
human cloning (may not hold)
seabed nukes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seabed_Arms_Control_Treaty)
national claims on Antarctica (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctic_Treaty_System)
mining in Antarctica (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_on_Environmental_Protection_to_the_Antarctic_Treaty)
military moon bases, space nukes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty)
low earth orbit missiles ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_Orbital_Bombardment_System, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Arms_Limitation_Talks#SALT_II_Treaty)
(questionable success, maybe some deployment before the ban) blinding laser weapons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_on_Blinding_Laser_Weapons)
There are probably several more examples of successful huge bans after warning shots / initial uses, e.g. military environmental modification (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_Modification_Convention ), and examples of questionable / mostly successful bans, e.g. exploding bullets (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg_Declaration_of_1868)
In crime shows and books they often talk about Means, Motive, and Opportunity… I suspect at least one is missing from each example on your list.
Military Moon Bases. The opportunity requires a well established space program with regular, or at least imminent, Lunar visits. The Means is tremendous amounts of resources. Which diminishes the motive—since the higher the opportunity cost, the higher the returns need to be: what is cheaper to do on the moon than on Earth to such a point where it becomes a profitable venture?
How many of these bans have held after the technology or means to do them have become extremely viable or profitable?
I imagine it would be very easy to have a successful ban on destroying the Pyramids of Giza, this is because even demolishing one of the smaller Pyramids is a difficult and thankless task and hasn’t been attempted in over 800 years. If I may be terribly facetious, it would be incredibly easy to ban a group of typical 15 year old boys from using a Rotary Phone… if they can’t find one, stopping the same group of boys from using scatological humor, likely impossible.
I think that’s a good lens to judge them, and I agree at least some of my examples have one or more missing. I think at least several of them actually do meet the criteria though. E.g. the mining one was allegedly about to be an agreement about how much different countries could mine, or something, but at the last minute they decided instead to just ban it. The lasers one was already developed and ready to be deployed and being sold, and then it was banned. The LEO missiles one is feasible I believe, and I imagine would be hard to detect before being used (so maybe in fact some countries do have the tech ready for deployment in extreme scenarios).
Unless by “opportunity” you mean a chance to do it when no one is watching or similar, in which case I think the point is that you can remove the opportunity through international agreements.
I was not aware of lasers as a weapon
I wonder why that ban has held?
Feasible as in cheap and effective, or feasible as in merely possible? It says it in the Wikipedia article—“Its nuclear payload was drastically reduced relative to that of an ICBM due to the high level of energy needed to get the weapon into orbit” I suspect it has less to do with a ban, and more because there’s more viable alternatives available for Nuclear armed nations.
The ban on space nukes doesn’t seem to be looking good
https://www.politico.eu/article/nato-chief-is-worried-about-russian-space-nukes/
This was forseeable when SpaceX decided to takes sides in the Ukraine conflict since Russia does not have (and probably cannot afford to create) a constellation of anything like the number of satellites in the Starlink constellation.
So what I’m hearing is that we need to ban AGI, plus ban any geopolitical play which could create an incentive to violate the ban and create AGI, plus ban any geopolitical play which could create an incentive for any of those geopolitical plays, plus ban any geopolitical play which could create an incentive for any of those geopolitical plays...
I have read that “mirror protein” research may quickly be added to the list https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/dec/12/unprecedented-risk-to-life-on-earth-scientists-call-for-halt-on-mirror-life-microbe-research because it may create pathogens that are uniquely “invisible” to the immune systems of all known life. There are surely topics that can be understood via simulation that should never be made an experimental reality.
For the banning of these weapons, how much does effectiveness weigh against moral concerns? If usefulness weighs a lot, then these examples won’t generalize to TAI.
Unless there are very clear, convincing evidence that TAI isn’t controllable with current paradigm, then it will still be perceived as a highly useful tech. (Even if such evidence exists, IMO there’s high possibility that they’ll just cope harder.)
Biochemical weapons: These are only useful against civilians and pre-modern armies. Modern armies can easily afford equipments to protect against these.
https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical-weapons-anymore/
(I saw this article mentioned somewhere in another LW post. When I see TsviBT’s shortform I immediately recalled this article, so I wrote this post.)
Space nukes and LEO missiles: In space there’s no cover, they’re easily detectible. Without air, dodging maneuver cost significant dv. This means overall less survivability than ground / sea based nukes.
Deploying missiles in LEO also requires a more complicated trajectory than traditional ground / sea based missiles, which cost more dv. If they need to stay in space for a long time, then reliability and maintainence also becomes a serious problem.
Other examples: chemical and biological weapons.
None of these strong enough military, strategic or economic incentives. Sorry, you just can’can’t solve collective action problems by wanting it badly enough. That s not how it works.
? I think you’re imagining that I’m saying something, but I don’t know what? I’m not saying banning AGI is easy, would work, or is very comparable to these examples, if that’s what you mean? LEO missiles are advantageous, and blinding lasers were developed and ready for deployment before being banned, IIUC.
That is indeed what I imagine you are saying. Perhaps I am inferring too much.
Indeed. Like, if someone did a serious writeup on these lines, a lesson may very well be “nothing remotely like a preemptive AGI ban has ever happened, because all these examples have properties XYZ”, and that would be interesting!
I think LEO nuclear missiles haven’t been done because they aren’t militarily useful, not because of what diplomats write in treaties. If we wanted to actually destroy an enemy with nuclear missiles, submarine-based nuclear missiles, which we already have, are better—the submarine can get close to the target, resulting in very short flight times, and can often attack from many directions, all without being detectable until the moment the missile leaves the water. Anyone with a decent telescope can look up and figure out which satellites are monitoring the weather or transmitting messages versus which ones might be missiles. LEO missiles also wouldn’t fulfill the primary function of an ICBM, which is to absorb hostile nukes. An adversary who wanted to launch nukes at us would have to take out 400 silos in the middle of nowhere with their nukes before even thinking about hitting American cities. A satellite can be taken out with conventional weapons, it would not force the enemy to deplete their nuclear arsenal. As a matter of military strategy, putting nuclear missiles on satellites just isn’t a very good idea. The treaties only happened because the generals didn’t want it anyway.
I’m less familiar with the blinding lasers thing, but I’m also having trouble seeing the point. Armies can still just shoot people, which is both easier to do and more effective.
I’m confused… it sounds like you’re talking about missiles on satellites? The thing I linked is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_Orbital_Bombardment_System
It’s a kind of missile that flies lower than ICBMs IIUC.
The objections River made apply to the thing you linked, too: namely to stay in a low-earth trajectory for any significant fraction of one orbit requires a speed of 28,000 km/h and more importantly all of that speed must be tangential (“horizontal”). It is expensive in energy to get rid of that tangential component of momentum, and most of it must be gotten rid of in order for the warhead to intersect the Earth’s surface with any accuracy.
(Yes, ICBM’s reach that speed, too, or close to it, but only when the direction of travel is close to straight down. I.e., the tangential component of velocity never gets above a few 1000 km/h.)
Yes, it gets a lot cheaper to get rid of speed when the vehicle is designed to interact with the atmosphere like the Space Shuttle was, as opposed to just shooting through it like a bullet or an ICBM warhead is, but that does not support your point (Tsvi) because such vehicles are the subject of intense study by all the advanced militaries (under the name “hypersonic glide vehicle”) and I have seen no signs that any nation is willing to forswear investment in or deployment of this new class of weapons.
In the decades during which hypersonic glide vehicles were infeasible, River is probably correct in asserting that there was no military advantage to be got from either nukes on satellites or fractional orbital bombardment systems.
Oh, I misread that then. I think my thesis is still the same—it doesn’t look like it provides much actual strategic benefit. If the goal is to actually hit the enemies cities, submarine-based missiles seem at least as good. If the goal is to draw enemy missiles away from our own cities, an ICBM is just as good. The lack of a use case explains not building them. The treaties aren’t doing any extra work there.