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Soaring, Cryptography, and Nuclear Weapons
Martin Hellman sends in a pointer to his essay that uses analogies from cryptography and the sport of soaring in an attempt to draw people in to thinking about the risks of nuclear weapons. Quoting: "... I did a preliminary risk analysis which indicates that relying on nuclear weapons for our security is thousands of times more dangerous than having a nuclear power plant built next to your home." Hellman is best known as co-inventor (with Diffie and Merkle) of public key cryptography, and has worked for over twenty-five years to reduce the threat posed by nuclear weapons. He is also a glider pilot with over 2,600 logged hours. Hellman adds, "Readers needing a break can go to some photos of the Sierra Nevada mountains taken from my glider."
...who's takeaway from the article is that we need to build more nuclear plants?
Must have been a stack overflow somewhere. /BOFH reference
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
FWIW, the British secret service discovered public-cryptography several years before. Hellman et al just introduced it to the public. See Schneier's Applied Cryptography .
The thing is, if you all don't have nuclear weapons, and I covertly do, I win.
This is my sig.
If the dangers from owning your own nukes are so serious, why haven't we destroyed the world yet - even with some of the so-called religious fundamentalist whackos that people are so afraid of in the White House?
Honestly, all this fear running around and western democracies - and the Russians - are the ONLY ones who have managed them responsibly. We haven't blown the world up, and the worst are some "near misses" which didn't produce anything. Shoot, we're farther away now from nuclear war between major powers than we have been since before the Cold War.
Point fingers at Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, and their ilk. Leave the rest of us out of it. They're the nuclear "powers" to be afraid of, and we should raise defenses against their armament which are overwhelming - not detente.
"...I did a preliminary risk analysis which indicates that relying on nuclear weapons for our security is thousands of times more dangerous than having a nuclear power plant built next to your home."
Yeah...I would love to see how he produced that "risk analysis" statement. I guess, since nuclear reactors are virtually not dangerous at all with todays technology, it can be said that something that is only a little dangerous (relying on nuclear weapons for security, which has worked for almost 60 years) can be a thousand times as dangerous, because 1000 * 0 = 0.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Jordan_Gatling
In 1877, he wrote: "It occurred to me that if I could invent a machine - a gun - which could by its rapidity of fire, enable one man to do as much battle duty as a hundred, that it would, to a large extent supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease [would] be greatly diminished."
Sounds a lot like this, from TFA:
Since World War III would mean the end of civilization, no one would dare start it.
The thing is, just as many bodies lie in the dirt since the invention of the machine gun, and armies are effectively as big as ever. Also, this invention has been used to commit COUNTLESS atrocities that wouldn't have been as possible before it was introduced.
My point is simple, focusing on the WEAPON is futile. In the hands of men anything will eventually be turned to evil. You have to assume the worst case when dealing with weapons and humanity. This is also why you basically HAVE to participate in the arms race. The opposite choice is elimination.
pro-israel or anti-israel
pro-usa or anti-usa
you should be against iranian proliferation
there's this weird alien line of thought out there that goes like this: "if the usa has nukes, why shouldn't iran?"
what that thought represents is tribal nationalistic thinking trumping common sense
common sense holds that NO ONE should have nukes. so proliferation is bad, for whomever. the most logical approach to iranian proliferation then is this: "i am against iran having nukes, AND i am against the usa having nukes"
but this whole "i support iran having nukes, to balance out the usa" is a level of stupidity beneath respect
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
They don't call it a Diffie-Merkle-Hellman exchange, who the hell is this Merkle guy?
The whole point of nuclear weapons is to overtly have them; if your possession of them is truly "covert," you don't win a damn thing. Even Israel's nuclear program was an open secret for years because it allowed them to gain the effects of deterrence without openly proclaiming that they had a nuclear arsenal. But nobody seriously believed they didn't have one.
I think, perhaps, the person you quoted meant invasions by the military forces of actual countries.
It'd be more of an infiltration of the US by illegal aliens than an invasion. Invasions are rather obvious and hostile affairs.
Non-state actors aren't the target of MAD policies. They generally don't care what sort of destruction they face. A state, on the other hand, has to worry about the continuance of the state.
Psycho with a nuke: not deterred by MAD.
Rogue state with a nuke: leaders still probably not deterred by MAD.
Developed stable state with a nuclear arsenal: welcome to club MAD.
Plus I'm quite sure most (by surface area) of the US would be quite willing (and eager) to sink both coasts into the ocean to quell a fifth column threat.
For several years Saddam bombed Iran (military and civilians) with Chemical weapons, handed to him by Rumsfeld. Iran demonstrated the capability to make similar weapons but emphasized that use of WMDs even in retaliation to enemy's action is against religious principals.
Now you are suggesting that Iran would nuke the second most sacred Islamic religious site after Mecca in a suicidal mission?!!
I also argued against the existence of any suicidal tendencies among Iranian leaders in previous comments which hopefully will shed some light on your distorted view of reality.
the principle of MAD (mutually assured destruction) worked in the cold war between the usa and the ussr because russian leaders did not want to see dead russian children and american leaders did not want to see dead american children
meanwhile, iran is a theocracy
the deeply religious believe the afterlife is a glorious reward for the righteous, an eden. in its war with iraq, iran sent children with little wooden keys around their necks to clean up minefields. the keys were the keys to heaven. how is a death a deterent for those who see death as a reward? how do you deter iranian leaders when they think dead iranian children are in a better place?
a theocracy with a bomb should give everyone a special pause
iran with the bomb is different and unique when considering any other country that currently has the bomb
iran really should not get the bomb. no theocracy should
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Are you talking hypothetically, or realistically?? I can promise you that if a state launched an ICBM, we'd have nukes popping out of our silos likely before their missiles started re-entry. The US is ready within an extremely short period (a time I can't say) to retaliate against any missle strike.
Likewise, let's say they launch from around Channel Islands and take out LA in minutes from initial launch, there are crews 24/7 waiting in Silo's to turn key and launch. Economy, and conventional forces have no play. All it takes is an Executive Branch decision, a few minor, procedural events, and several hundred thousand people reach the temperature of the sun in a few minutes half way across the world.
With regards to EMP, do some googling for the term "survivable" and you'll see we've been fielding systems for decades that are designed to make it through the EMP. I'll give you one example to start, MILSTAR EHF satellites.
I think that's overstating it a bit. The rational reasons for not reprocessing fuel revolve around the following issues:
1. Transporting used fuel to the reprocessing center and back.
2. Production and separation of enormous quantities of Plutonium, which needs to be carefully guarded due to proliferation and terrorism risks.
3. Some hazards in the reprocessing itself. There have been several serious accidents in reprocessing plants, for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorp_nuclear_fuel_reprocessing_plant#2005_leak
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accident
(and other incidents)
4. Reprocessing only really starts to make good economic sense if you bring fast breeder reactors online, and those have safety issues of their own.
Something like the IFR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor) might substantially reduce these risks, but until an advanced breeder reactor is actually built and operated for a significant period, it's hard to say how safe they really are, and whether they'll make economic sense.
No, it was a minor incident.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"