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Missile Defense

Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

rshowalter - 04:50pm Apr 29, 2001 EST (#2737 of 2738)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

rshowalter 2/21/01 4:28pm

Civilization changed with nuclear weapons. But nuclear weapons did not STOP history.

It has been fifty years. Another change has come upon us, also historical. It will also be irreversible, permanent so long as civilization continues.

. The internet and related electonic changes, and the changes that will follow from them, have radically and permanently increased the speed of information flow, permanently increased the amount of information available, permanently increased the speed and power with which the information can be used, and permanently, radically reduced the cost of both information and logical inference.

. The connections between information (and deception) and war, that have existed since time immemorial, are now permanently altered.

886: rshowalter 3/9/01 12:23pm
887: rshowalter 3/9/01 12:28pm
890: rshowalter 3/9/01 12:41pm

We need to take care of our vulnerabilities, which are real.

One important thing we need to do is limit the way we threaten other countries, and limit the lies we tell them , so that reasonable stability and prosperity are possible. 891: rshowalter 3/9/01 12:43pm

As systems become more complicated, the costs of lies, secrecy, and deception become greater -- and beyond a point, this happens at a rate something like the growth rate of N! with increasing N.

Our world could be radically safer, and richer, fairly quickly, if we recognized this.

Nuclear weapons are obsolete menaces, and we should take them down.

We can find cheaper, more effective, more proportionate ways to threaten each other now.

And the only "virtue" of the old nuclear terror -- a "balance" is a balance no longer. There is no "mutually assured destruction" for either side, nor can there ever be again.

Please Note: That means "first strikes" are thinkable again -- and missile defense can't workably help this.

Nuclear weapons are obsolete menaces, and we should take them down.

rshowalter - 06:17pm Apr 29, 2001 EST (#2738 of 2738)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

So rlgardner01 4/29/01 12:29pm .... no matter how nice the idea of Star Wars might seem, as James Dao set it out in Please Do Not Disturb us With Bombs ( Week in Review , p 18 Feb 11, 2001) , the fact is that it is only a false promise.

Based, so far as I'm able to find out, on frauds, some of very long standing.

I believe that this thread may be making a contribution to making those frauds clear for what they are -- because there's good reason to believe this thread is being read by responsible people, and points that, if wrong, one would expect to be contested are not being contested. rshowalter 4/25/01 6:21pm

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