ARMS-D-Request@MIT-MC.ARPA (Moderator) (12/19/85)
Arms-Discussion Digest Wednesday, December 18, 1985 4:41PM
Volume 5, Issue 65
Today's Topics:
Missing issues...
Arms Control and the Prevention of War
Re: Arms-Discussion Digest V5 #49
Tying up the loose ends
The Founding Fathers and LOW
Re: Jastrow's claim
Re: Jastrow's claim
SDI software (meets Captain Crunch)
"Nuclear Event Detector"
Lengthlengthlengthlengthlengthlength
Thw law protects the vigilant before those who sleep on their rights
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Date: Mon 16 Dec 85 11:02:39-EST
From: Herb Lin <LIN@MIT-XX.ARPA>
Subject: Missing issues...
Due to a foul-up on my part, Issues 51 and 52 were never sent; they do not
exist.
sorry.
Herb
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 85 11:31:45 EST
From: alpert@harvard.HARVARD.EDU (Richard Alpert)
Subject: Arms Control and the Prevention of War
American railroad companies missed a great opportunity when they
declined an offer made by the United States Government which would
have given them a monopoly of the nation's airlines. They were, they
claimed, railroad men in the railroad business. IBM took a great step
forward when realizing that they were not in the business of making
business machines but in the business of handling information.
The thrust of any movement to prevent the destruction of humanity must
not focus too closely on the technical aspects of the means by which
such a deed might be accomplished. Of course, these details are
important, but are short-lived when one considers the life span of the
larger issue, that of conflict resolution. The healthy debate over
the legality of LOWC, for example, merely will be replaced by yet
another question when the next technological step has been taken.
(I do realize that the result of such a debate might well be the
prevention of the accidental destruction of the Earth, though.)
We ought to devote more energy to seeing that social structures
advance at at least some linear factor of the rate of technological
development. If only one nation still believes that THE way to solve
international conflicts is by killing people and destroying
landscapes, our arguments for arms control will continue as long as we
continue to exist, only the names of the arms and the magnitude of the
consequence of their use will change. Ultimately, we are not in the
business of limiting arms. We are in the business of redefining the
means by which conflicts may be resolved.
Richard Alpert
alpert@harvard.edu
------------------------------
From: ulysses!gamma!mb2c!eed092!root@ucbvax.berkeley.edu
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 85 08:15:28 est
Subject: Re: Arms-Discussion Digest V5 #49
Excuse please! I do not normaly read much of the arms
discussion but I could not help but notice a series of
comments about applying neuclear power to cruise
missles... Has anyone bother to find out how much
sheilding the drive will need before it stops being
lethal to the launch crew?? Has anyone bothered to look
at the logistics of servicing a hot drive??
It seems to me the fastest way we could end the arms
race is to adopt such a silly thing.. We would spend
more time, money,and effort in taking care of the thing
than it was worth. Then the S.U. would get a good
belly laugh out of our super-high-tech white elephant.
flame as you will
ron tribble
mb2c!eed092!ron
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 85 13:37:35 EST
From: Clifford Johnson <GA.CJJ at Forsythe>@MIT-MC.ARPA
Subject: Tying up the loose ends
| Huh?? Sunk subs don't report thru WWMCCS at all -- why is it
| relevant? I'm totally confused...
Sorry, I was trying to be funny by illustrating how confusions
could arise. The point is that whatever the signalling system,
it might be the system that's gone wacky rather than 3 subs. sunk.
However, if I amend my LOWC definition to include "surprise"
somehow, this and many other examples are overcome. Have to think
this through some more ...
| I regard the Nov 79 false tape incident as a test of a
| "massive surprise attack"; indeed, some number of tests do simulate
| large scale attack..
The Nov 1979 incident was not 'end-to-end', i.e.
missile-sensor/radar-communications-NORAD/screens.
| | I meant if the SU sent a msg to the US on the hot line and also
| | announced in the US that they had declared war on the US. Then what?
|
| Then it's up to the Pres, my theory does not apply, that's a
| conclusive commencement.
|
| But under my scenario, no hostilities have commenced -- i.e., no one
| has been killed or planes shot, or anything!
But this comes under a wartime category. I exclude both declared
war and actual fighting scenarios.
To: LIN@MIT-MC.ARPA
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 85 13:38:15 EST
From: Clifford Johnson <GA.CJJ at Forsythe>@MIT-MC.ARPA
Subject: The Founding Fathers and LOW
In response to Sam McCraken's doubting that unconstitutionality
applies to LOWC, first, I should repeat that I am not challenging
in my action any preemptive (first use) or second use. I am
"permitting" LOWC after either commencement of hostilities OR
declared state of war. (This assumes I don't go for the
no-first-use-by-one-decision-maker theory in the refiling.)
Despite the example cited, Lincoln was notrious in his early
term for flouting Congress re military action. However, such
action came not under War Powers but under keeping internal
peace clauses. Here's the Great Emancipator on LOW:
"What constitutes the bulwark of our ... liberty and independence?
It is not our frowning battlements, our bristling sea coasts, our
Army and our Navy. These are not our reliance against ... tyranny
... Our reliance is in the love of liberty which God has planted in
our bosoms. (Edwardsville, Sept. 11, 1858.)
"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means
shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some trans-Atlantic
military giant, to step the ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!
All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, ... could not
by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track in the Blue
Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the
approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it
must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If
destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and
finisher. (Springfield, Jan. 27, 1838.)
"Let us strive to deserve, as far as mortals may, the continued care
of Divine Providence, trusting that, in future national emergencies,
he will not fail to provide us the instruments of safety and
security." (Springfield, July 6, 1852.)
Note that Lincoln doesn't say the Blue Ridge couldn't be blown up,
but states a subtler truth valid to this day. A more meaningful
constitutional analysis hinges on the very clearly stated
republican principal that one man should not be able to propel
the nation into war:
"The main report of the one debate which explicitly considered
allocation of the war-making power occupies little more than one
page out of the 1,273 which contain the printed records of the
Convention. ... Despite the paucity of prior debate and the
ambiguity of the resolutions sent to it, the Committee on Detail had
little trouble in allocating the war-making power. Randolph and
Wilson each prepared draft constitutions which assigned the power
"to make war" to the legislature. The draft reported by the
committee to the Convention on August 6 followed the same scheme.
... At the same time, the committee made the executive, now
denominated the President, the Commander in Chief of the armed
forces. ... After the committee reported, the Convention spent a
month debating and sometimes modifying its recommendations,
changing, inter alia, Congress' power "to make war" to a power "to
declare war". The Commander in Chief clause, however, was passed
unchanged and without recorded debate on August 27, 1787." (War
Making Under the Constitution: The Original Understanding, Lofgren,
Yale L.J. 81 672,675,679.)
During the debate, Elbridge Gerry remarked that he "never expected
to hear in a republic a motion to empower the President alone to
declare war". (The Records of the Federal Convention, (1911) 2 M
Farrand). Had a machine of chance been proposed for such decision,
what uproar would have arisen!
Wilson wrote that the war powers "were framed to draw the
CERTAIN conclusion that NOTHING but our national interest can
draw us into war" (Federalist #41 p.258); and (at p.269) Madison
wrote "Is the power of declaring war necessary? No man will
answer in the negative. It would be superfluous, therefore, to
enter into a proof of the affirmative."
To: LIN@MIT-MC.ARPA
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 16 Dec 85 10:15:35 PST
From: ihnp4!ihnet!eklhad@ucbvax.berkeley.edu
To arms-d-request (mod.politics.arms-d moderator)
Subject: Consistency Of Thought
Robert Allen responds to one of my articles addressing priorities,
saying essentially:
> "Nuclear reduction first, human rights second." This is ridiculous.
I (having the opposite opinion) presented some evidence to
support my position. Robert also presents some "evidence",
that is worth examining. His "evidence" has no technical merit,
but I believe many people hold these beliefs, and this is the greatest
danger to us all. Consider the focus of his reasoning:
> Personally I think that Marxism is a joke as far as political philosophy,
> but when it comes to war or Soviet expansionism, politics really plays a very
> small part as far as I'm concerned. This is my country, my apartment, my car,
> and my bank account, and as far as I'm concerned, nobody is going to take it
> away if I can help it. ...
> While nuclear war is the most horrible thing
> I can imagine, and I would view it as the end of the human race as we know it
> if it were to occur, I would rather have it than to surrender this country to
> any invader, foreign or domestic.
There are several fallacies here.
1. Note the use of the word "most" in "most horrible thing ..." above.
Yet, he prefers this (nuclear war) to another alternative (Soviet invasion).
Better look up the definition of the word most.
2. He fears the loss of his personal property, and his political institutions,
which would probably occur during a Soviet invasion.
Yet, he assumes his property and government will remain intact
throughout a nuclear war; else why the stated preference.
A basic understanding of nuclear war shows this is absurd!
It is time for all of us to realize that the U.S. is a subset of the planet,
and world security is a prerequisite to national security.
3. Consider the irony in his statement:
> ... I never
> cease to be amazed at how quick people are to give others' rights away.
This, combined with the earlier quote, reminds me of an old saying
that involves a pot and a kettle.
I never cease to be amazed how quickly people will jeopardize the human race
as we know it, in order to preserve their property and government.
4. While addressing human rights issues, I pointed
out the fact that there are a great number of people who do not wish to die,
despite their current living conditions (i.e. communist government).
For evidence, I noted that mass-suicide does not occur in the Soviet Union.
Robert's refutation:
> I would politely ask Mr. Dahlke where the
> petition is which has "over 200,000,000 signitures on it" for people who would
> rather be "red than dead". ...
> Perhaps Mr. Dahlke would rather be red than dead,
This is logical reasoning?
The answer to your question, by the way, is "yes".
Given this, you have no right to threaten me, and 200,000,000 others
who feel the same way, just to protect your bank account.
This attitude is particularly offensive in light of argument #2 above.
5. I believe Robert knows his reasoning is based solely on emotion.
> Since you can all probably hear the "Stars and Stripes Forever" theme
> music coming up in the backround by now, I'll get off of my soapbox. It's just
> that I've worked hard for what I've got ...
I can see that Robert and I think in radically different ways,
and continued discussion is probably fruitless.
I post this, because I fear many Americans (including some of our leaders)
agree with Robert; they are just more discrete about it.
This is the one thing we must change, before arms control
agreements can be obtained.
It seems that we should establish some axioms,
before expecting any substantive arms control agreements.
Why are we negotiating? What is the primary goal?
How much are we willing to give up in order to prevent nuclear war?
It would be interesting to graph equipotential curves on the X-Y plane,
where F(X,Y) is the "desirability" of foreign policies that lead to nuclear
war with probability X, and Soviet invasion with probability Y.
I know, a simplistic model that proves nothing,
but it illustrates the differences among individuals' values.
My equipotential curves approximate vertical lines.
If someone can convince me that nuclear winter is not realistic,
or that very limited nuclear war is feasible,
my graph might change. Until then, ...
Although these graphs are inherently subjective,
the equipotential curves should always have derivatives greater than one
(absolute value), since nuclear war is objectively worse than
existence under the Soviet regime.
Yet, I would guess that Robert's graph contains horizontal lines.
Not surprising that our thoughts are orthogonal.
I would like to see Reagan's graph, or the pentagon strategists'.
it sometimes seems that they are willing to jeopardize the planet,
or at least increase the national debt, in order to reduce
the probability of a Soviet invasion from 0.002 to 0.001.
any thoughts on this?
karl dahlke ihnp4!ihnet!eklhad
------------------------------
Date: 16 Dec 85 12:53:21 PST (Monday)
Subject: Re: Jastrow's claim
From: DSchmitz.ESXC15@Xerox.ARPA
Is there any comparison between a relatively simple switching network
and a battle management system? It sounds to me a little like comparing
the technology to build an electric train with the technology to build a
particle accelerator. What's more, the switching network was developed
against a background of considerable experience in the exact functions
that the system would need to perform in order to be effective; not so
with SDI, which is blue-sky.
Dave Schmitz
------------------------------
Date: 16 Dec 85 12:53:41 PST (Monday)
Subject: Re: Jastrow's claim
From: DSchmitz.ES@Xerox.ARPA
Is there any comparison between a relatively simple switching network
and a battle management system? It sounds to me a little like comparing
the technology to build an electric train with the technology to build a
particle accelerator. What's more, the switching network was developed
against a background of considerable experience in the exact functions
that the system would need to perform in order to be effective; not so
with SDI, which is blue-sky.
Dave Schmitz
------------------------------
Date: 16 Dec 1985 1629-PST (Monday)
From: Jeff Mogul <mogul@su-shasta.arpa>
Subject: SDI software (meets Captain Crunch)
In ARMS-D 5:63, Wayne McGuire quotes from NYT 12/4/85, p. A5:
''Dr. Buchsbaum said experience with the United States telephone
system showed that the United States could develop a highly reliable
system that could function well despite occasional small failures.
'''The network as a whole is more reliable than its individual
components,' Dr. Buchsbaum said.
''Dr. Parnas took exception to this analogy, arguing that the
telephone system--unlike 'Star Wars'--has been used extensively and
does not have to work in the face of [an] enemy who is trying to make
it fail.''
I initially had the same feeling as Parnas (proof by analogy being
one of my least favorite methods) but actually he is only half right:
The phone system has been faced by an enemy, and it does fail. I knew
plenty of people in college who made telephone calls for free, because
they beat the phone system.
This fits into a somewhat different analogy: a computerized system,
even with software that verifiably meets its specifications, will
still fail if the specs are wrong. SDI, by analogy, will fail if
the specs are far enough wrong, even if the software meets the specs
perfectly.
With this in mind, I think many people (both pro- and anti-SDI) are
talking about the wrong problem. Whether or not computer science can
produce SDI software that meets a reasonable specification, I see no
reason to believe that we can get the spec right -- especially in the
face of an clever enemy who is determined to change the reality
against which the specs were written.
In the larger debate over SDI, one issue that has been argued is whether
it is "cost-effective at the margin". This is typically understood to
mean "can they build warheads for less than it costs us to shoot them
down?" I'll raise the question "can they find bugs in our software
specification faster than we can fix them?"
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 85 17:50:19 EST
From: Will Martin <wmartin@BRL.ARPA>
Subject: "Nuclear Event Detector"
I have gotten two ads in the mail so far for a product I find very
strange. At first, I wondered if this was some kind of elaborate joke
or hoax, but the product brochures are professionally done, utterly
serious in tone, and seem to be completely legitimate. Yet, either I
just have no concept of the engineering behind the product, or the thing
really is completely incomprehensible.
It is nothing much to look at -- a circuit in a multi-pin (round pin)
package, and it is called the HSN-3000 High Speed Hybrid Nuclear Event
Detector. The first brochure I got was titled "Certified Circumvention
for Power Shutdown", and the second, largely similar, is titled,
"Certified Circumvention for Processor Shutdown/Restart". The company
making this is IRT Corporation, Electronic Systems Division, 3030 Callan
Road, San Diego, CA 92121 (619) 450-4343, x 527. Their slogan is "The
Experts in Nuclear Survivability".
In short, this thing is supposed to "protect" your computer or other
electronic doohickey in the event of a nuclear weapon detonation. I
quote: "Mounted on your cicuit board, this 14-pin dual in-line package
reliably detects the gamma pulse from a nuclear detonation and rapidly
initiates those circumvention functions necessary to protect your
electronics from damage and/or upset." [How nice. Your electronics won't
be "upset". I wonder about their operators...]
More quote: "Sensing the radiation pulse from a nuclear event, the
HSN-3000 rapidly switches the nuclear event detection (NED) signal from
its normally high state to low, allowing initiation of circumvention
functions. The threshold adjust function allows for regulation of the
trip threshold. The pulsewidth of NED is programmable from 100
microseconds to 10 milliseconds by adjustment of an external capacitor."
Hmmm. It seems you can trim it so as to ignore small and/or distant
nuclear explosions ["Gee, looka da purty fireworks on the horizon!"]
and only trigger on "annoying" or nearby bursts...
There are several more paragraphs of such technicalese, but no real
examples of use or citations of "satisfied customers".
Ahem. Aside from those cases in which your electronics are a puddle of
slag by the time this device lets them know they have something to worry
about, won't the EMP effects have completely destroyed the circuits this
is "protecting" anyway? Or is this a valid product, maybe usable in
military electronics or "hardened" sites? It just seems totally
off-the-wall to me. Anybody know anything about these sorts of things
and have comments or explanations to offer?
Will Martin
UUCP/USENET: seismo!brl-bmd!wmartin or ARPA/MILNET: wmartin@almsa-1.ARPA
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 85 18:11:17 EST
From: Oded Feingold <OAF@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: Lengthlengthlengthlengthlengthlength
IS IT POSSIBLE FOR CONTRIBUTORS TO DESIST FROM INCLUDING THE
ENTIRE MESSAGE THEY'RE ANSWERING??
I'm tired of reading everyone's sentences 5 times. This tiredness
will NOT abate once I cease my vendetta against Ronald Reagan.
Thank you.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 85 15:05:12 EST
From: Clifford Johnson <GA.CJJ at Forsythe>@MC.LCS.MIT.EDU
Subject: Thw law protects the vigilant before those who sleep on their rights
Just to make a come-back on one important point re the LOW case
I'm persuing, I'd like to respond to Elizabeth Martin's comment
"So, if you're going to waste bucks in an ultimately no-win
court case, why not donate the dollars instead to some other
worthy cause which CAN have beneficial effects such as African
Relief?"
Most importantly, I would not persue the case if there was ZERO
chance of success. That would be abuse of process. Moreover it
just such presumptuous certainty I challenge in the LOW decision.
A side benefit is the public education generated by the case,
which surely trickles into an awareness of an acute risk, and
therefore an incrementally safer world.
Besides, this isn't an endeavor to save the world. I'm out to
save my own skin.
Happy Christmas!
To: LIN@MIT-MC.ARPA
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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