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Comment by tokioyoyo | Hacker News Reader

Sorry for nitpicking, but:

> If nukes were not invented yet, would it really be a good idea to build and sell them as fast as possible (in peace time, no less)?

Arguably, yes.

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Is the idea to keep the world in balance via MAD? I could see that, though it's a dangerous gamble.

From Richard Rhode's "The Making of the Atomic Bomb", I got the impression that most scientists involved thought they could manage a US or UN monopoly on nukes after the war. General Groves attempted to buy up all of the world's uranium ore. Unfortunately, it is only high grade ore that is rare; many countries have low-grade ore.

Again quite arguable, but this is the real life scenario we’re living in. Nukes have made it hard to impossible for super major powers to go in direct conflict with each other.

Except it's pretty well documented (and this is total conjecture, but if you ask me, there are probably are a bunch of undisclosed cases) to have had a good amount of close calls. With the fire-on-warning stance many powers have, it doesn't take an attack, but just enough of the appearance of it to trigger a response.

Wouldn't deliberately going from a world without nuclear weapons to a world with MAD involve giving the tech to build nukes to your worst enemy?

If only the US or UN had nukes we would't have MAD. We mostly got here through espionage

No, but in a peace time, it's a lot easier to convince someone not to use nukes than in a war when the party who has nukes has its back against the wall.

I honestly don’t know how Iran can conclude anything after this war other than to go all-in on nukes. The US has proven any deal is worthless if it can just change its mind and renege on it whenever it wants.

Who’s invading North Korea? No-one.

Furthermore if Iran had nukes already, the Israel/US bombing of Iran and even the constant bullying of Israel's neighbors by Israel might not have happened.

In this world we've had an inocculation event against use of nukes. Two were dropped, people have seen how abhorrent their use is and collectively decided that they shouldn't be used.

If in the WW2 Japan also had nukes (and delivery systems for them) they'd probably have retaliated in kind and US wouldn't let that slide too and it would have continued for some time.

If WW2 Japan also had nukes the US would never drop those two. That's the whole idea behind MAD. Probably the only thing that stopped an open conflict between the US and USSR was them being nuclear powers and both sides being scared that eventually push comes to shove.

MAD was thought of later and its theory requires that all parties know of each others' arsenal, think that their enemies aren't going to use them first and there being enough of weapons to make end quick and certain. I have hard time seeing WW2 generals who've seen horror and made horror coming to the conclusion that "they aren't going to use it unless we do, so let's not".

In that case >2 nukes would have been dropped, both US and Japan would be hurting, people would have seen how abhorrent their use is and collectively decided that they shouldn't be used.

> In that case >2 nukes would have been dropped

This is a maybe. What we’ve seen so far, no two nuclear superpowers ever nuked each other, as they know both will suffer.

With the US showing that it will elect mentally disabled people such as Trump, this doesn't seem such a wise decision.

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