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Comment by belter | Hacker News Reader

If I would be US President, my first measure on day 1, would be to create a Manhattan Level top secret research program of 10 to 15 years. Budget of 50 to 100 Billion, solely dedicated to neutralize Nuclear Weapons. Nothing has higher importance.

"Neutrino beam could neutralise nuclear bombs":

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3734-neutrino-beam-co...

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Better bet would be an international new deal program to invest in renewable energy, which could help us avoid a recession, save us from being dependent on fossil fuel states and help us deal with climate change, all in one shot.

How do you know it hasn't been? I'm sure it has. So much money on defense makes it easy to fund massive projects without notice.

What will be hysterical is in fifty years when it all becomes unclassified after the new weapon has to be used outing its existence and we all learn that there was a deep state after all and they hid the existence of the weapon from Trump. I'll be long dead, but I would have enjoyed it immensely.

What would be even better is an announcement like, "The US has voluntarily destroyed all of its nuclear weapons and generators and welcomes the world to verify there is no longer any massively fisionable matter anywhere in the country. Also, along with this announcement we have constructed a 600 mile long accelerator which can instantly detect and detonate any such material found anywhere in the world, instantly. Everyone's nuclear weapons are now their own worst nightmare and we encourage all countries to rid themselves of such weapons as quickly as possible. Starting with you, Russia."

Can you imagine?

It would be a great Netflix series...but in real life I think would have to be a combination of

- Neutrino accelerators.

- EMP weapons.

- Human Engineering.

- Espionage.

- Real time tracking 24/7 of the location of government officials that could give such order.

- A type of SEAL Team 6 team ready to go anywhere and disable them.

- Most important you need an EMP solution to disable Nuclear submarines.

I was thinking about how the detection system would work. We'd send up a bunch of satellites with specific detectors on them, then we send out a burst of neutrinos which will ring all the dense fissionable material like a bell. The satellites then record the pinpoint location of where any of it is anywhere on the planet.

That could be the beginning of the novel/Netflix series/pre-announcement mystery as all the scientists in the world notice something just happened, but aren't sure what for a while...

I also love the idea of doing it all as a hoax. Like a bluff. We mock up fake demos and then convince the entire world we have this power to detonate any nuke anywhere as if we owned it... And say, "We really don't want to have to demonstrate it for real, but if we have to." And the world voluntarily disarms...

Since we are discussing ways of saving the world :-) This method would help to identify status:

"How to dismantle a nuclear bomb" (2019)

"MIT team successfully tests a new method for verification of weapons reduction."

https://news.mit.edu/2019/verify-dismantle-nuclear-bombs-092...

Doesn't this just add more pressure to compete since it tips the balance of MAD?

EDIT: removed uncited rumor

That is the argument not to do it. There are also arguments against the MAD strategy for example the assumption of a perfectly rational adversary. Not sure if can be applied here or adversaries like North Korea.

See "MAD -Criticism": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction#Cri...

I would argue for the top secret program.

I hesitate to add an opinion on this as I know that multiple generations have been conditioned to believe in MAD. I believe MAD does apply to NATO nations and for the most part would reduce the probability that NATO countries might nuke one another.

I do not however believe that Russian politicians and military recognize this concept beyond its application to NATO meaning that they would hope we believe in it. There isn't one document I can point to but rather all of their political and war history suggests they would believe a nuclear war can be won and they don't really care if half their population were wiped out. The political elites can hide in bunkers deep under ground for a very long time. They have been preparing for this since at least WWII. Add to this the evolution of smaller, faster more efficient tactical nuclear weapons and HANES EMP weapons would bolster their confidence in winning. I don't really know what winning means given they would be economically destroyed and the surviving civilian population would be starving and sick. I am just looking at this through Russian history tinted glasses.

Telling that you’d give that top priority as opposed to say quality medical care for everyone, schools, taking care of the homeless, etc.

Let's imagine a world in which nazi Germany occupied whole Europe and there was no WW2. Holocaust was finished. Jews, Slavs, Roma people, Muslims. Every "subhuman" minority gone. 50 years of 3rd Reich.

But UK got better medical care and education.

I understand that you're really passionate about Nazi Germany and are probably disappointed that the only thing which is like Nazi Germany continues to be Nazi Germany even in 2022.

Nevertheless.

Ukraine is very special and there’s no proof whatsoever that Russia is interested in conquering or attacking any EU/NATO countries. And they’ve also shown that they probably couldn’t manage it even without NATO or the nuclear deterrent.

> Ukraine is very special and there’s no proof whatsoever that Russia is interested in conquering or attacking any EU/NATO countries.

Russia wants NATO to be back into 1997 borders. Exactly because it wants to get EE countries back into its sphere of influence. If NATO allows this to happen (and there were people arguing for it) - Russia would blackmail these countries to become Russian vassals. And if they don't want to - it would invade them.

Russia already invaded Baltic states in 1991. Chechnya in 1994 and 1999. Georgia in 2008. Ukraine in 2014 and now.

It's not exactly a secret. Putin and his ideologues (Dugin for example) wrote about the need to "recreate Russian empire". The only reason they don't is because USA remains active in Europe and NATO remains a credible defensive alliance. But it's not guaranteed forever. There are political forces in US and the rest of NATO that consider it too costly.

So why do they only want Crimea?

It's about the gas that was found there.

Their current actions seems to have made NATO stronger ( eg. Finland and Sweden possibly joining). Don't believe Russian rethoric too much.

> So why do they only want Crimea?

They don't only want Crimea. They already had Crimea before this invasion. They are occupying large parts of Donetsk and Lugansk provinces and some other parts of Ukraine and they tried to siege the capital city and nearby provinces.

And why do you think they immediately took Crimea?...? It appears you're not really understanding the necessary observation I'm pointing out. I'm not talking about phase 2 here.

It's also not just about when they talked about NATO. There were already constructing ( shell of memory serves me right) gas extraction around Crimea. It was crippled during the invasion in 2014.

It could have probably replaced ALL Russian gas imports.

It’s about a new world order. The end of the transatlantic alliance and liberal world order. The expectance was for other nations to follow suite, including Germany to take over the EU under its mantle.

This was supposed to be just the beginning.

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