So one of the involved researchers—a bona fide world-renowned genius who had made signal contributions to the design of the computers and software involved and had the utmost credibility—made the obvious suggestion. Don’t let the arms race start. … Instead, Nacirema should boldly deliver an ultimatum to the rival: submit to examination and verification that they were not developing the tech, or be destroyed.
Damn those politicians! Damn their laziness and greed! If only they’d had the courage to take over the world, then everything would have been fine!
Don’t misunderstand; that’s what’s being proposed here. Hegemony would not have been enough. You need inspectors in all the research institutions, experienced in the local language language and culture. You need air inspections of every place a pile might be constructed, quite challenging in 1945. You need to do these things not just to your rival, but to everyone who aspires to become your rival. You need your allies to comply, voluntarily or not. Whenever anyone challenges your reign openly, you have to be willing and able to destroy them utterly. You can’t miss even once, because when you do you won’t get nuclear war, you’ll get nuclear terrorism.
And you have to go on doing all this until nuclear weapons cease to be a world-ending threat. That is to say, forever.
This strategy probably is the best one for short-circuiting the Cold War. It’s still a terrible plan. Between that plan and nothing our elites made the right choice, and if they did it out of inertia instead of careful calculation then it’s not argument against them, it’s an argument in favor of inertia.
You need inspectors in all the research institutions, experienced in the local language language and culture. You need air inspections of every place a pile might be constructed, quite challenging in 1945. You need to do these things not just to your rival, but to everyone who aspires to become your rival
It’s not that difficult. Think about the flowchart of materials that go into atomic bombs. You don’t need to control everyone everywhere. What you need to control are the raw uranium ore and derivatives, specialty goods useful for things like ultracentrifuges, monitor the rare specialists in shaped explosives and nuclear physics, sample the air for nuclear substances, and so on.
There are many natural chokepoints and many steps are difficult or impossible under light surveillance: you need a lot of raw uranium ore, thermal diffusion purification requires comically much electricity, centrifuges emit characteristic vibrations, laser purification is impossible to develop without extensive experience, the USA and other nations already routinely do air sampling missions to monitor fallout from tests...
I won’t say that nuclear counterproliferation efforts have been perfect, but I will point out that a fair number of nations have had considerably difficulty getting their nuclear programs working (since he’s come up already, how well was Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program going when the issue was rendered moot by the US invasion?) and the successful members often have aid from previous members of the nuclear club & no serious interference in the form of embargoes much less active monitoring and threats from a jealous existing nuclear club member.
And you have to go on doing all this until nuclear weapons cease to be a world-ending threat. That is to say, forever.
You’re right, because clearly the status quo is totally a solution ‘forever’.
Between that plan and nothing our elites made the right choice, and if they did it out of inertia instead of careful calculation then it’s not argument against them, it’s an argument in favor of inertia.
Retrospective determinism, eh? ‘Because X did not happen, it was inevitable that X would not happen, therefore, inertia was the right choice.’ Nor is winning a lottery ticket an argument in favor of playing the lottery. (Not to mention that if inertia had been the wrong choice, we wouldn’t be here arguing about it and so one could justify any policy whatsoever. Reasoning that ‘we did Y and we survived! so Y must be a great policy’ is not a good way to try to analyze the world.)
I’d like to address your other points, but I think we have to talk about your last paragraph first.
You’re quite right; that the cold war did not end the world in our particular branch is not proof that the cold war was survivable in more than a tiny handful of possible worlds. But let me remind you in turn that “von Neumann’s plan would have been worse than the cold war” is not the same as “the cold war was safe”, “the cold war was good”, “the cold war doesn’t share any of the weaknesses of von Neumann’s plan”, or even “the cold war was terrible but still the best choice we had”. I’m arguing only that narrow thing: that our forefathers were right to reject von Neumann’s plan.
Fair enough, but a lot of the objections here seem to be based on the argument that ‘the Cold War was reasonably objectively safe (and we know so for [anthropicly biased reasons]), while unilateral strikes or ultimatums are objectively dangerous; hence the Cold War was the better choice’, while I think the right version is ‘the Cold War was objectively extremely dangerous, while unilateral strikes or ultimatums are [merely] objectively dangerous; hence the Cold War was the worse choice’. I don’t think people are directly comparing the scenarios and merely making a relative judgment.
(Though for what it’s worth, I actually do agree with your point about AI, insofar as the analogy holds: we could get into a Cold-War-like situation and humanity would probably not enjoy the result. I just don’t think world conquest is the answer.)
Damn those politicians! Damn their laziness and greed! If only they’d had the courage to take over the world, then everything would have been fine!
Don’t misunderstand; that’s what’s being proposed here. Hegemony would not have been enough. You need inspectors in all the research institutions, experienced in the local language language and culture. You need air inspections of every place a pile might be constructed, quite challenging in 1945. You need to do these things not just to your rival, but to everyone who aspires to become your rival. You need your allies to comply, voluntarily or not. Whenever anyone challenges your reign openly, you have to be willing and able to destroy them utterly. You can’t miss even once, because when you do you won’t get nuclear war, you’ll get nuclear terrorism.
And you have to go on doing all this until nuclear weapons cease to be a world-ending threat. That is to say, forever.
This strategy probably is the best one for short-circuiting the Cold War. It’s still a terrible plan. Between that plan and nothing our elites made the right choice, and if they did it out of inertia instead of careful calculation then it’s not argument against them, it’s an argument in favor of inertia.
It’s not that difficult. Think about the flowchart of materials that go into atomic bombs. You don’t need to control everyone everywhere. What you need to control are the raw uranium ore and derivatives, specialty goods useful for things like ultracentrifuges, monitor the rare specialists in shaped explosives and nuclear physics, sample the air for nuclear substances, and so on.
There are many natural chokepoints and many steps are difficult or impossible under light surveillance: you need a lot of raw uranium ore, thermal diffusion purification requires comically much electricity, centrifuges emit characteristic vibrations, laser purification is impossible to develop without extensive experience, the USA and other nations already routinely do air sampling missions to monitor fallout from tests...
I won’t say that nuclear counterproliferation efforts have been perfect, but I will point out that a fair number of nations have had considerably difficulty getting their nuclear programs working (since he’s come up already, how well was Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program going when the issue was rendered moot by the US invasion?) and the successful members often have aid from previous members of the nuclear club & no serious interference in the form of embargoes much less active monitoring and threats from a jealous existing nuclear club member.
You’re right, because clearly the status quo is totally a solution ‘forever’.
Retrospective determinism, eh? ‘Because X did not happen, it was inevitable that X would not happen, therefore, inertia was the right choice.’ Nor is winning a lottery ticket an argument in favor of playing the lottery. (Not to mention that if inertia had been the wrong choice, we wouldn’t be here arguing about it and so one could justify any policy whatsoever. Reasoning that ‘we did Y and we survived! so Y must be a great policy’ is not a good way to try to analyze the world.)
I’d like to address your other points, but I think we have to talk about your last paragraph first.
You’re quite right; that the cold war did not end the world in our particular branch is not proof that the cold war was survivable in more than a tiny handful of possible worlds. But let me remind you in turn that “von Neumann’s plan would have been worse than the cold war” is not the same as “the cold war was safe”, “the cold war was good”, “the cold war doesn’t share any of the weaknesses of von Neumann’s plan”, or even “the cold war was terrible but still the best choice we had”. I’m arguing only that narrow thing: that our forefathers were right to reject von Neumann’s plan.
Fair enough?
Fair enough, but a lot of the objections here seem to be based on the argument that ‘the Cold War was reasonably objectively safe (and we know so for [anthropicly biased reasons]), while unilateral strikes or ultimatums are objectively dangerous; hence the Cold War was the better choice’, while I think the right version is ‘the Cold War was objectively extremely dangerous, while unilateral strikes or ultimatums are [merely] objectively dangerous; hence the Cold War was the worse choice’. I don’t think people are directly comparing the scenarios and merely making a relative judgment.
(Though for what it’s worth, I actually do agree with your point about AI, insofar as the analogy holds: we could get into a Cold-War-like situation and humanity would probably not enjoy the result. I just don’t think world conquest is the answer.)