1. In my opinion one of the likeliest motivations for deliberate debris would be as part of an escalation ladder in the early stages of WW3. Whichever player has weaker satellite intelligence / capabilities would have an incentive to trigger a cascade in order to destroy the advantage of their opponent. The point effectively is that space conflict is very strongly offense dominant because of debris cascades, and we know that in general offense dominant dynamics tend to be very unstable.
2. Related to your discussion of totipotence, another dynamic I could imagine in the future is MAD dynamics between a moon colony and earth, where each side has the capacity to create a debris cascade for the other. One concern is that there will not be second strike capability, and so the dynamic could be unusually unstable.
3. One concern is that space colonization is extremely trajectory dependent, so that initial forays into space colonization could have massive impacts on the far future. If so, there may be good reasons to delay space colonization as long as possible, as a “long reflection.” A debris cascade would cause a long reflection, by forcing space colonization to pause until new technologies for escape are invented. On the other hand, space colonization is also very important to hedge against catastrophic risk. So the disvalue of debris cascades may be controlled by the relative prioritization of existential risk versus better future dynamics.
On (2), I think I say a bit about this in the piece, but my guess is that it’s not much easier to launch debris from the Moon into Earth orbit, than to launch it from Earth into Earth orbit. Although the Moon has the “high ground” in some sense, you need to decelerate the debris to settle into low orbit, which requires some kind of active thrust near periapsis. My sense is that launching debris from Earth to orbit around the Moon is even harder — both because Earth is stuck in a bigger gravity well, and because the Moon is gravitationally lumpy.
(3) is an interesting point. But, as I say, I don’t think a debris cascade is very likely to actually trap civilisation on Earth for any meaningful amount of time. Somewhat more likely is if a first-mover used it to make catching up more expensive, after they themselves escape Earth. And more likely still is that it’s (as you say) conflict promoting for more prosaic natsec reasons, or the result of a conflict and ∴ evidence civilisation is in a bad state. Either way, it seems good to prevent on trajectory-improving grounds too, in my view.
1. In my opinion one of the likeliest motivations for deliberate debris would be as part of an escalation ladder in the early stages of WW3. Whichever player has weaker satellite intelligence / capabilities would have an incentive to trigger a cascade in order to destroy the advantage of their opponent. The point effectively is that space conflict is very strongly offense dominant because of debris cascades, and we know that in general offense dominant dynamics tend to be very unstable.
2. Related to your discussion of totipotence, another dynamic I could imagine in the future is MAD dynamics between a moon colony and earth, where each side has the capacity to create a debris cascade for the other. One concern is that there will not be second strike capability, and so the dynamic could be unusually unstable.
3. One concern is that space colonization is extremely trajectory dependent, so that initial forays into space colonization could have massive impacts on the far future. If so, there may be good reasons to delay space colonization as long as possible, as a “long reflection.” A debris cascade would cause a long reflection, by forcing space colonization to pause until new technologies for escape are invented. On the other hand, space colonization is also very important to hedge against catastrophic risk. So the disvalue of debris cascades may be controlled by the relative prioritization of existential risk versus better future dynamics.
On (2), I think I say a bit about this in the piece, but my guess is that it’s not much easier to launch debris from the Moon into Earth orbit, than to launch it from Earth into Earth orbit. Although the Moon has the “high ground” in some sense, you need to decelerate the debris to settle into low orbit, which requires some kind of active thrust near periapsis. My sense is that launching debris from Earth to orbit around the Moon is even harder — both because Earth is stuck in a bigger gravity well, and because the Moon is gravitationally lumpy.
(3) is an interesting point. But, as I say, I don’t think a debris cascade is very likely to actually trap civilisation on Earth for any meaningful amount of time. Somewhat more likely is if a first-mover used it to make catching up more expensive, after they themselves escape Earth. And more likely still is that it’s (as you say) conflict promoting for more prosaic natsec reasons, or the result of a conflict and ∴ evidence civilisation is in a bad state. Either way, it seems good to prevent on trajectory-improving grounds too, in my view.