Weapons in Space Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of SDI
direct.mit.edu
direct.mit.edu
With the recent advancements in AI and space technology, space militarization may become the top existential threat we as human beings face, probably topping both climate change and the depletion of essential resources.
[1] https://direct.mit.edu/books/book-pdf/2369358/book_978026237...
The ~100 Emad ballistic missiles Iran fired would be in in that class.
The basic tenant of a lot of the games we play are of attributing past actions to another agent. If there is no attribution, playing fair makes less sense.
Hacking, media manipulation ops, and commodity drones can be used in a way that does not reveal the origin. That means that there cannot be retribution or, more perversely, it can mean incorrect attribution and retribution.
This lowers the cost of aggressive acts substantially.
I don't have a solution to it but I hope there is one.
Maybe if people move towards the actions with plausible deniability, it reduces the risk of major (attributable) action being taken
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S156625352...
But then again - lets imagine having a few thousand missiles in space that are remotely controllable. So any nation state actor(maybe less) could conceivably take them over and retarget them at a whim.
That sounds fun.
You could perhaps use them to strike satellites or space stations but as designed, they would not reach the ground.
The idea that making your strategic adversary overspend on weapons development might be a good thing also sounds like a post-hoc justification. An enemy who spends more resources on weapons is more dangerous, and places global stability in peril, even if you have invincible defences yourself. And all the more so if you don't have invincible defences because your research program was a bluff and never intended to be deployed in the first place!
Kissinger became aware during the SALT negotiations of how much the Soviets were misinformed about US nuclear capabilities, and that they tended to overestimate. That imbalance helped him negotiate those treaties. One can assume the State Dept. would want to keep that advantage if they could. The USSR was also concerned about how they would defend themselves against a Western attack. If they weren't they wouldn't be making these treaties. Everyone assumed that if war broke out both sides would be wiped out. The point of the arms race wasn't to win in a war, it was to see who would fold first.
Don't forget that "SDI" was an umbrella. If you had some project and could slap that tag on it you were guaranteed a substantial contract for it. That you could get away with promising an arbitrary delivery date made it that much more of a cash cow. And the Pentagon was fine with that since it would never need to be finished. It only had to look convincing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Development_Agency#NDS...
If it was a bluff then great, because the USSR fell apart.
From https://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/2017/01/did_sta...:
> The evidence suggests that although the Soviet Union expressed serious concerns about U.S. missile defense program, SDI was not a decisive factor in advancing arms control negotiations. Instead, the program seriously complicated U.S.-Soviet arms control process. SDI also failed to dissuade the Soviet Union from investing in development of ballistic missiles. The Soviet Union quickly identified ways to avoid a technological arms race with the United States and focused on development of advanced missiles and anti-satellite systems to counter missile defenses.
Comment : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20854234
Scanned news page : https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2199&dat=19800707&id=...
It talks about out-spending to force negotiation.
Schelling established, at length, that perfect defence will be interpreted by an adversary as the inevitable first stage in making the first strike, and while him and Kissinger had their disagreements about real politics when it came to the core theory I believe they were aligned.
Schelling’s books get widely misinterpreted but are very readable, and anyone wanting more should go straight to the source. Ignore what other people said he said.
There is no reason to think "SDI was a ruse to make USSR overspend".
The Soviet Union experienced a period of liberalization prior to its "parade of sovereignties". Its citizens demanded freedom and would eventually obtain some of it.
He was an old man with a preference for fake "hollywood" style realities over his own reality, and he was afraid of dying to nuclear weapons. He wanted a magic cope blanket so that he could keep role playing god
In the cold war we were all saved by de-escalation and SALT. The US going on record that they want to strangle the Chinese leads to inevitable conflict.
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Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but if that be the case, why should Americans "care much" about anything not in the US?
Just saying, you can't expect to get what you yourself won't even give.
I am all for cooperation in solving common problems.
There are some batshit crazy people here. Think mass shootings in walmarts, targets and the occasional black church every now and again. Those people get into power, they won't be satisfied with just walmart shootings. Fairly certain they'd try to take down all the "enemies of freedom". Which would be, pretty much, anyone they say is an "enemy of freedom". MidEasterners, Jews, Asians, South Americans, anyone in Europe to the left of themselves ideologically. Pretty much everyone.
Christian nationalists represent an existential level threat not only to the US, but everyone on the planet. If they come to power, the best outcome would be Russia and the US go at it and obliterate each other. Ridding the rest of the globe of both centers of foolishness.