[fa.arms-d] Arms-Discussion Digest V2 #36

daemon@ucbvax.UUCP (05/09/84)

From @MIT-MC:JLarson.PA@Xerox.ARPA  Wed May  9 01:53:24 1984
Arms-Discussion Digest Volume 2 : Issue 36

Today's Topics:

Freeman Dyson at Stanford, REM's proposal, interesting observation, 
Politics and missile defense technology, Technological vs Political 
Solutions

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Date:  3 May 1984 0719-PDT
From: CAULKINS@USC-ECL.ARPA
Subject: Freeman Dyson at Stanford
To:   armsd@MIT-MC

On Tuesday, 8 May at 7:30PM in the Terman Auditorium on the
Stanford campus Freeman Dyson will present the 4th annual
Arms Control Guest Lecture.

Dyson is a theoretical physicist at the Institute for Advanced Studies
at Princeton.  He has spoken and written widely about the ethical
dilemmas of nuclear weapons, and has recently published a new book,
"Weapons and Hope", excerpts of which appeared in the New Yorker [and
on Arms-D] earlier this year.
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Date: Thu 3 May 84 09:48:22-PDT
From: WATERMAN@USC-ECL.ARPA
Subject: comments re: REM's proposal
To: REM@MIT-MC.ARPA
cc: arms-discussion@MIT-MC.ARPA

 I think your proposal contains a very valuable synthesis which can
 appeal both to those focusing upon a freeze AND to those focusing upon
 BMD.  By first reducing numbers of missiles etc. and by pulling them
 back we would THEN be at a point where a manageable, feasible,
 bearable-cost BMD system could contribute to stratgeic stabilization.
 By insisting first on massive reductions, we insure that any efforts
 spent on BMD would in fact be 'aimed' at strategic-stabilization,
 not strategic-superiority.
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Date: Thu 3 May 84 10:00:15-PDT
From: WATERMAN@USC-ECL.ARPA
Subject: addendum to comments on REM's proposal
To: REM@MIT-MC.ARPA
cc: arms-discussion@MIT-MC.ARPA

 REM has proposed a plan which accomodates BMD as a component, but only
 after massive arsenal reductions have been achieved. Thus BMD AFTER
 A FREEZE could be a stabilizing factor.  In order to go forward in the
 BMD direction under any scenario, it is probably necessary (??) to
 abbrogate previous treaties intersecting BMD.  Hence , to effectuate
 the scenario REM proposes, it would seem necessary that a major
 multi-national long-term scenario needs to be worked out and agreed to.
 After negotiating the freeze and subsequent reductions, the earlier
 anti-weapons in space treaties should be jointly ammended. Furthermore,
 the BMD component of such a plan should be undertaken, at the outset,
 as a joint r-and-d and deployment effort under the auspices of the
 indicated collective security treaties.  
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Date: 7 May 1984 01:44-EDT
From: Herb Lin <LIN @ MIT-MC>
Subject:  interesting observation concerning strategic defense initiative 
and CTB
To: ARMS-D @ MIT-MC
cc: LIN @ MIT-MC

I find it quite curious that folks at the Livermore Labs assert on one
hand that good BMD is indeed possible in the absence of full-scale,
realistic testing, and on the other hand that a comprehensive test ban
(against testing of nuclear weapons) would be disastrous for US
security, since we would eventually not know that our nuclear weapons
were reliable in the absence of proof testing.

Question: if LLL people can't guarantee the continued performance of a
technology that has been around - and tested - for 40 years, how in
heaven's name can they claim to have confidence in any BMD system that
will jump from quiescent to fully active in seconds and that will
never be tested fully even once until an actual attack comes?

comments (especially from LLL people)?

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Date:  7 May 1984 0707-PDT
From: CAULKINS@USC-ECL.ARPA
Subject: Politics and missile defense technology
To:   armsd@MIT-MC, poli-sci@RUTGERS

In a recent Arms-D (Vol 2, Issue 35) Josh made the following comment
about a msg from Severo Ornestein to Lowell Wood about strategic
defense:

	However the problem [that an improperly applied technological
	solution to the ballistic missile defense problem is useless] is not
	confined to the American defense capabilities or political
	leadership.  It is one which is inevitable given human nature
	and a sufficiently advanced level of technology.

	From a historical perspective, a technological solution may be
	possible: such things, technological solutions to major problems,
	which drastically changed the way of life of most the population, have
	happened several times.

	To expect a political solution is laughable.  It is as foolish
	to expect the laws of political interaction to change, reversing the
	experience of millenia, as it would be to hope that the laws of
	physics will suddenly change to make fission impossible.

	The kind of power-seeking individuals who make governments and wars
	inevitable, are (I fear) a permanant part of the human condition.  The
	knowlege making possible weapons of mass destruction is so far advanced
	that it could not be destroyed without an effect as bad as the war you
	are trying to prevent.

	Head for the hills.

Unfortunately, a political solution (perhaps better described as a
psycho-social solution) is manadatory.  It appears ever more clearly
that the US and the USSR have 'cooperated' in the construction of a
doomsday machine which will, if ever used, utterly destroy both societies,
most of their populations, and possibly our entire species.  There are no
hills to head for; 'nuclear winter' and similar world-wide effects make futile
any attempt to find a safe place on the surface of the planet.

The reasons for this seem clear.  Science and technology have been moving
mankind up several exponential curves of capability and power.  The up-side
potentials can be miraculous and wonderful - use of computer science to
enhance human intelligence and make each of us a worldnet-connected member
of the global village; exploitation of extra-terrestrial resources to
solve age-old shortages of energy and materials; pick your own dream and it
looks like the technology is at hand to make it real.

But then there is the down side.  As pointed out by hosts of people
from Einstein to Schell and Dyson, nuclear weapons technology
threatens our survival in every sense of the word.  I find arguments
for technological fixes to the problem unpersuasive; an effective
defensive technology can be used by an aggressor as a 'shield' to
complement the use of an ICBM first-strike 'sword' by blunting the 2nd
strike of the first-strike victim.  The problem is of course that
technology is neutral.  It can as easily be turned to evil as to good.

Even assuming that ballistic defense systems could or would be a force
for stability in the world, I am personally doubtful that the
six-orders-of-magnitude increase in destructive power caused by the
introduction of nuclear weapons can be matched any time soon by an
equivalent increase in the capability of defensive technology.

It is time for the human race to grow up.  Either we clean up our act,
or prepare for more radiation-resistant species like cockroaches to
take over.

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Date: 7 May 84 23:59:11 EDT
From: JoSH <JoSH@RUTGERS.ARPA>
Subject: Technological vs Political Solutions
To: arms-d@MIT-MC.ARPA, poli-sci@RUTGERS.ARPA

	From: CAULKINS@USC-ECL.ARPA
	Subject: Politics and missile defense technology
	[Quoting me:]
	  However the problem [that an improperly applied technological
	  solution to the ballistic missile defense problem is useless] ...

Well, I thought I was referring to the "problem" of nuclear war.
This is, admittedly, a quibble...

	Unfortunately, a political solution... is manadatory. 
	...
	It is time for the human race to grow up.  

If a political solution is impossible, it avails little to reiterate
that it is "mandatory".  It is quite obvious from Caulkins' (and
Ornstein's) writings that he hopes for some significant, thoroughgoing
sea change to occur in the political psychology of the human race in
the next few years.  This is the stuff of fairy tales.

The rest of Caulkins' letter is devoted to persuading me that this change
is necessary, crucial, important, urgent, etc, etc.  I had already assumed
that.  He spends no time exploring the issue of the required fundamental
turnaround in the makeup of the human mind.

Of course since I believe that the prospect of such a storybook ending 
is extremely remote, I won't explore it either.  What I will do is talk 
about the "real" technological solution.

My basic thesis is that there is in general a balance between the 
destructive capability of which technology is capable at a given level
of scientific knowlege, and the other capabilities at that level which
tend to offset the destructive.  [In Caulkins' terms, the "upside" and the
"downside" have tended to balance, with an edge to the "upside" as the 
general quality of life has improved.]  However, in the past half-century,
the destructive capabilities would seem to have outrun the others to some
extent.

It has been possible since at least the time of Genghis Khan for a force
under the command of one man to destroy a village utterly (and it was
done many times).  It is military technology that has first reached the
level of the "global village" in this sense--indeed in all the other
senses the technology isn't quite there.

Technology may be "neutral" in some abstract sense; actually I think it 
is closer to the truth to say that technological knowlege is neutral.
However, once you have built a particular machine, its use is fairly
limited. --Once you have developed a particular kind of machine, you have
to redevelop to use the same technological knowlege for other things.
You cannot use an automobile engine in a weed trimmer without drastic
modifications.

Thus we are confronted with the problem that destructive technology is
advanced over whatever other technology would serve to ameliorate it.
The obvious reason, obvious to me at least, is that nuclear technology
has been under government control--everywhere in the world--since its
inception.  Nuclear technology is basically a source of cheap energy.
[Please note that most of the nasty effects of a nuclear war could be
achieved by WWII style incendiary bombing, including enough smoke to
satisfy Sagan's wildest fantasy.  However, it would be prohibitively
expensive.]  Were nuclear technology in the non-military realm as
advanced as in the military, I believe that the prospect of nuclear war,
while still daunting, would not be as apocalyptic as it now seems to be.

The following is a set of guesses as to what possibilities there might be
if development of nuclear tech. were more balanced.  It surely doesn't 
cover all the bases and probably contains some red herrings.

     -- Hills (in the sense of "head for").  Nerva and/or Orion style
	rocketry would make space colonies feasible, orbital, lunar,
	and other, long before the "Cecil B DeMille" methods the
	gov't is currently using.

     -- Cheap energy.  Unmonopolized power reactors would make possible
	a considerable dispersion of the population from those so-tempting
	(target) cities.  If you are worried about global effects,
	undersea habitations would be considerably more resistant to 
	side effects (including NW).  The technology doesn't *have*
	to be nuclear, but it would help.

     -- A better popular understanding and ability to handle radiation
	hazards.  To illustrate by an extreme example, if each house had
	its own reactor, it would probably also contain geiger counters
	and iso-suits.  One assumes that radiation containment and
	nullification technology would be given a big stimulus as well.

So my technological solution is simple: rebalance technology by developing
the commercial uses of the atom.  Or any other technology, preferably all.
Most importantly we cannot allow the government to have any significant
technological lead over the market, since that's what caused the problem
in the first place.

In my mind, the imperative is to spread out.  Four hundred years ago,
it took years to sail around the world.  It was inconceivable that a
single national force might wipe out all humanity.  For humanity to
be as safe again, we must again occupy an area that it takes years to
cross.  

--JoSH
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[End of ARMS-D Digest]