I recently read the screenplay to 2001.

An interesting thing mentioned in the script, but not shown in the film, is that all of the images of beautiful space ships in the early sequence of the film are in fact space-based nuclear missile launchers, and that there are 27 nuclear nations with space weapons.

I sometimes imagine what an alien visitor would think about us if they came to our planet and saw that we had such destructive technology, pointed at _ourselves_.