ARMS-D-Request@MIT-MC.ARPA (Moderator) (11/20/85)
Arms-Discussion Digest Tuesday, November 19, 1985 7:46PM
Volume 5, Issue 25
Today's Topics:
Triad Deterrent and Interservice Rivalry
cutting the pie, changing popular opinion, other ways to save us
Regulation of aircraft/spacecraft?
Krytons vs. power transistors
SDI
SDI
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Date: 1985 November 19 00:17:27 PST (=GMT-8hr)
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM@IMSSS.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject: Triad Deterrent and Interservice Rivalry
Reply-to: REM%IMSSS@SU-SCORE.ARPA (temporary until nameservers up)
| Date: Thu, 14 Nov 85 17:01 EST
| From: Jong@HIS-BILLERICA-MULTICS.ARPA
| The diversity of the Triad isn't the problem; it's the size of
| the legs. If only one service had been given nuclear weapons in
| 1945-50, we wouldn't have so many warheads now.
I don't think anybody said the Triad was a problem <straw man you're
knocking down>, rather we see the Triad as a case of redundancy, and
thus good. Indeed the size of the legs is the problem, and although
the Triad may be the reason for the size of the legs the Triad was
(and is) a necessity and thus we should try to cure the oversize legs
without destroying the Triad itself. (My opinion.)
| Dwyer's point (I think) is that the competition for more and better
| weapons was interservice rivalry more than threat response.
Yup, that's the same impression I got from him, and lacking any
contrary argument I currently believe him. (Hereby invitation for debate!)
I wonder whether the same is true in the USSR, although possibly on an
individual rather than service level, that is a particular party
official is more likely to rise in the party if his weapons are
superior to the weapons of other officials? Or is the USSR buildup
purely a response to USA buildup and fear of WW2 invasion &
casualities happening to them again? Or do they have interservice
rivalry too?? (Hereby invitation for answers.)
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Date: 1985 November 19 00:37:22 PST (=GMT-8hr)
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM@IMSSS.STANFORD.EDU>
SUBJECT:cutting the pie, changing popular opinion, other ways to save us
Reply-to: REM%IMSSS@SU-SCORE.ARPA (temporary until nameservers up)
| Date: Wed, 13 Nov 85 7:31:21 EST
| From: Bruce Nevin <bnevin@bbncch.ARPA>
| ... A posting about the `I cut,
| you choose' proposal that has been getting a lot of attention from
| politicians and statement around the world went by with just one
| response, something to the effect of `I tried that with my mother when I
| was a kid, so it can't work.'
(1) It was my sister, not my mother. (2) It doesn't work with
incessantly unfair people such as my sister (and by implications will
be very difficult with politicians and other national leaders who are
unfair usually), but it's still incredibly logical and fair and should
be proposed whenever appropriate, that is when there is something new
that must be divided and it's already been decided how to divide the
populace into halves such that each will be entitled to half the new
resource. It's harder to do it when the resource must be divided
unevenly, for example if it's to be divided between two nations whose
populations are not equal, or when the resource must be divided among
more than two parties.
Something came up just tonight (see my earlier posting) in the Leakey
series on PBS that would invalidate the cut&choose algorithm for most
world's problems. Now that we've settled lands and invested a lot in
developing them, it's very painful to pull up stakes and move
elsewhere. If the world were suddenly divided fairly today, and each
of us was ordered to move to some randomly chosen spot somewhere on
Earth, how many of us could afford to move? If we had invested a lot
in building a house, how many of us would be willing to demolish that
house to restore the land to its original state so it could be turned
over to a new developer? (Or how many of us would be willing to leave
our house there as we moved away?)
Can you come up with anything other than space resources where nobody
has already invested resources to develop the property and thus
everyone should be granted an equal share rather than letting the past
owner keep it until somebody less fortunate wages war to take it away from him?
| Has anyone anything to say about the Beyond War organization, which aims
| to get an electoral majority agreeing that war is obsolete, as a
| prerequisite to a REAL search for alternatives? (Be aware that they are
| NOT giving away the store, before you flame.)
It's one of many psychological devices worth pursuing. I hope they are
on the right track, or somebody else is. Let them pursue their
majority-opinion plan, let Foy pursue his similar convert popular
opinion plan, let you and I pursure our logical&fair negotation plan,
let Kirk Kelley pursue his simulation-game plan, etc. Let us all share
our ideas and progress reports. Hopefully some of us will prevent NucWar.
| Date: Thu, 14 Nov 85 17:15:19 EST
| From: vax135!cornell!kevin ... (Kevin Saunders) ... long line
| Subject: Nuclear Winter & Missile Basing
| I'd like to raise the question of whether nuclear winter (and
| to some extent, counterforce targeting) makes the basing of ICBM's within
| cities a rational strategy. ... an attempt at a disarming first
| strike would be much more likely to cause global calamity, inducing
| "rational aggressors" to look to more profitable enterprises.
This kind of proposal really scares me.
I fear your logic may be correct and I should argue in favor of it and
it will come to pass and ...
| Alternatives to cities would include forests, coal mines, and
| other areas containing natural resources which would burn and
| produce soot after bombing.
I think we have enough missiles we'll need all of the above to protect
them all.
Then again, somebody who doesn't believe the Nuclear Winter theory may
decide he can now kill two birds with one stone, attack the silos and
get the cities to boot, and save face too because after all it's the
stupid Americans who put their silos right next to cities and "all we
wanted to do was hit the silos, we're sorry (cough :-) (cough :-) we
had to take out the cities too".
| Date: Thu, 14 Nov 85 22:31:13 EST
| From: Herb Lin <LIN@MIT-MC.ARPA>
| Subject: Nuclear Winter & Missile Basing
| The American public would never stand for it, rational though it may be.
As one member, I speak for myself, I agree, it's too scary to accept
emotionally even if Spock would say it's logical.
(Random comment: I always thought SF meant Science Fiction.)
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Date: 1985 November 19 00:52:00 PST (=GMT-8hr)
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM@IMSSS.STANFORD.EDU>
Subject:Regulation of aircraft/spacecraft?
Reply-to: REM%IMSSS@SU-SCORE.ARPA (temporary until nameservers up)
| Date: Fri, 15 Nov 1985 02:29 EST
| From: "David D. Story" <FTD%MIT-OZ @ MIT-MC.ARPA>
| >>Date: Saturday, 9 November 1985 11:57-EST
| >>From: ihnp4!seismo!RUTGERS.ARPA!Carter (Bob Carter)
| > Date: Friday, 1 November 1985 16:34-EST
| > From: Dale.Amon at FAS.RI.CMU.EDU
| > Re: Senator Glenn comments
| > He suggested that rocket technology, because of it's potential use
| > as ICBM's, be internationally regulated the way nuclear technology
| > is.
In Europe, where they build safe reactors like mad, or in USA where
Friends of the Earth has virtually shut down the industry?? See below...
| > One twist of the pen, and you and I will never own a private
| > spaceship.
How about using airplanes as a model instead of reactors? Pilots need
licenses, planes must follow reasonable flight paths, weapons not
allowed on board. If we eliminated military aircraft, and inspected
not only passengers but crew for weapons, maybe we could end the
missile race? Then terrorists would have to deliver their
thermonuclear devices by boat or train, and we'd have some time to
react after the first detonation before we lost the rest of our
cities? There's a point here that it isn't H-bombs, it's deliverable
H-bombs, that is the problem. If H-bombs could be used locally to do
mining, but not delivered to the "enemy", we would end threat of
instant extinction.
| > Just imagine where aviation would be today if in the first part of
| > this century it had been regulated like the nuclear industry.
We could do without aviation in the first place (my rather drastic
opinion). Better that people communicate via electronic mail and
conferencing rather than fly all over the world physically. Diseases
would spread more slowly. Colma and South San Francisco and Foster
City (and even East Palo Alto where I live) would be quieter without
those aircraft flying over every few minutes. If we really need rapid
transit, we could build tubetrains. We don't really need global
aircraft traffic. But we do need space travel to get off this planet.
It's going to be a long time before we have a skyhook for getting into
space, and we desperately need to get some new land out there to stop
our current practice of taking land from others who already have it on
Earth. (My opinion)
| Comments Welcomed
Thank you.
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Date: 1985 November 19 01:04:41 PST (=GMT-8hr)
From: Robert Elton Maas <REM@IMSSS.STANFORD.EDU>
SUBJECT:Krytons vs. power transistors
Reply-to: REM%IMSSS@SU-SCORE.ARPA (temporary until nameservers up)
| Date: Sat, 16 Nov 85 08:52:12 PST
| From: Richard K. Jennings <jennings@AEROSPACE.ARPA>
| 2. Concerning EC (error correction?) in power transistors -- how
| does this work? Certainly in not the same way as it does in RAMs. In
| RAMs, a state is changed, in a VMOS power transistor an output spike
| could be generated.
I don't know the technology, but perhaps if you wired two of them in
series and triggered them at exactly the same moment they would both
conduct and you'd get the same effect as if you had just one, except
that a random event (cosmic ray etc.) would effect just one and you'd
avoid an accidental output spike? I know that some of those
semiconductors depend on runaway breakdown in the semiconductor to
deliver the current spike, which works fine when they are connected
directly across a low-impedance voltage source (large capacitor in
series with a low-resistance load), but might have trouble making
either one of them trigger when they are in series?? Can a
semiconductor expert / hardware hacker comment on the feasibility?
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Date: Tue, 19 Nov 85 15:11:30 EST
From: Herb Lin <LIN@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: SDI
The Strategic Defense Initiative is a Trojan Horse. I predict
that during 1986, the Reagan administration's "Star Wars"
proposal will get scaled down -- to a system for shooting down
satellites.
I believe you're right, though they don't know it yet. I don't think
ASAT will be the thing though; probably some form of limited BMD.
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Date: Tue, 19 Nov 85 15:12:16 EST
From: Herb Lin <LIN@MIT-MC.ARPA>
Subject: SDI
It is, I thought, well known that the Soviets test-fired a
neutral particle beam "weapon" several years ago. One assumes
that they are farther along by now.
There was a report of a Soviet PB weapon in 1977; mostly it received
currency in DIA and Air Force Intelligence, but was ultimately
dismissed at higher levels. It's a judgment call whether or not there
ever really was a "weapon". I am inclined to say no, or else we would
have heard lots about it by now in the current drive to boost support
for SDI funding.
If it weren't so dangerous, it would be almost amusing how
readily a lot of Americans (apparently including the President
himself) jump at the chance to bargain away strategic defense
at the negotiating table. The only logic for a strategic defense
would preclude failing to deploy it. If you read the memoirs
of high-level Soviet defectors (not ballet performers, but those
involved in the military, intelligence, or diplomatic service),
you will find that it is quite common for the Soviets to
encourage nuclear-freeze, unilateral disarmament, and anti-
defense movements in the U.S. Often this is not as overt as
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End of Arms-Discussion Digest
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