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Comment by lintiness | Hacker News Reader

the historical occurrences of nuclear device detonation have nothing whatsoever to do with the chances they will be used going forward.

i find his paranoia political. we should be a lot more worried about india and pakistan having nuclear weapons than a president who uses twitter.

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Dismissive comments like these miss Perry's concerns entirely. We've been on this sleepwalk towards increasing nuclear risk long before Trump. There are many existing risks which are still inadequately addressed. Loose material being acquired by terrorists, North Korea, a Russia more openly using nuclear weapons as a threat (installing nuclear capable missiles in Kaliningrad as we speak!), the previous $1 Trillion US nuclear modernization program which while addresses many safety concerns introduces new tactical capabilities for weapons packages making them more usable.

He speaks out for concern on all of the above. The article states he hopes to meet with Trump & Mattis to work with him and give his advice.

my comment was to previous poster who used historical detonations as somehow predictive statistically. it isn't.

as to whether we should be concerned, where was this article five months ago? it's thinly veiled political commentary.

Perry has been speaking about this for many years.

http://www.wjperryproject.org/

If you want to disagree with him, then give an argument. However if you want to do a quick smear and dodge then keep repeating that it's "thinly veiled political commentary" over and over again.

Five months ago, there wasn't an increased vocalized threat of risk towards, for example, the Iran nuclear deal, or vocalized suggestions of nuclear arms proliferation increasing. There is new information now, and that needs to be factored into level of concern. Of course it's political, but that doesn't excuse new information from having an impact on risk assessment.

> where was this article five months ago?

Would three months ago count, or does it need to be exactly five? http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/30/opinion/why-its-safe-to-sc...

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