Yeah, I agree he was pretty wrong. But I think that a big part of the story is that he saw at the time politicians on both sides talking about nuclear war as a winnable fight (he quotes politicians on this extensively in his 1958 speech on the topic), and this made him think that one side would eventually pull the trigger. In reality, the concept of mutually assured destruction and nuclear wars being unwinnable eventually became common wisdom among politicians, and then nuclear sabre-rattling went down. And I think that’s downstream of the fact that military tech in fact didn’t improve that much, and no one yet managed to build a reliable response to nukes + ICBMs.
So you think the Great Stagnation manifested that quickly (it’s generally taken to start in the 70s), and in military tech to boot? (to develop better ICBM interception). That feels a bit implausible to me since nuclear bombs became so much more powerful. It feels more like an offense-defense balance intrinsic to the technology + coordination of exactly the type that he didn’t expect (the ABM treaty capping defense systems). But I feel a bit out of my depth here.
Yeah, I agree he was pretty wrong. But I think that a big part of the story is that he saw at the time politicians on both sides talking about nuclear war as a winnable fight (he quotes politicians on this extensively in his 1958 speech on the topic), and this made him think that one side would eventually pull the trigger. In reality, the concept of mutually assured destruction and nuclear wars being unwinnable eventually became common wisdom among politicians, and then nuclear sabre-rattling went down. And I think that’s downstream of the fact that military tech in fact didn’t improve that much, and no one yet managed to build a reliable response to nukes + ICBMs.
So you think the Great Stagnation manifested that quickly (it’s generally taken to start in the 70s), and in military tech to boot? (to develop better ICBM interception). That feels a bit implausible to me since nuclear bombs became so much more powerful. It feels more like an offense-defense balance intrinsic to the technology + coordination of exactly the type that he didn’t expect (the ABM treaty capping defense systems). But I feel a bit out of my depth here.