Nuclear Posture Quotes

“Nuclear posture is the incorporation of some number and type of nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles state's overall military structure, the rules and procedures governing how those weapons are deployed, when and under what conditions they might be used, against what targets, and who has the authority to make those decisions. Nuclear posture is best thought of as the operational, rather than the declaratory, nuclear doctrine of a country; while the two can overlap, it is the operational doctrine that generates deterrent power against an opponent. To put it bluntly, states care more about what an adversary can credibly do with its nuclear weapons than what it says about them.”
― Vipin Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict

“The basic point is that nuclear postures matter to the pattern of conflict a state experiences. Not only do regional powers select different strategies and postures, but those choices have critical implications for their ability to deter armed attacks. Nuclear weapons may deter, but they deter unequally.”
― Vipin Narang, Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict

“The Soviets had ... built an early warning radar system with computer linkages using a primitive kind of AI code-named Oko. On September 26, 1983, ... the system malfunctioned and reported 5 incoming ICBMs from the United States. Oko alarms sounded and the computer screen flashed "LAUNCH." Under the protocols, the "LAUNCH" display was not a warning but a computer-generated order to retaliate.
Lieutenant Colonel Stanislov Petrov of the Soviet Air Defense Forces saw the computer order and had to choose immediately between treating the order as a computer malfunction or alerting to senior officers, who would likely commence a counterattack. Petrov was Oko's codeveloper and knew the system made mistakes. He also estimated that if the attack were real, the U.S. would use far more than 5 missiles. Petrov was right. The computer had misread the sun's reflection off nearby clouds as incoming missiles.”
― James Rickards, MoneyGPT: AI and the Threat to the Global Economy

“The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis came well before the current age of AI, yet computers were in use and technology played a critical role in the form of U-2 spy plane photos that showed Soviet missile installations in Cuba. Protocols and standard operating procedures were in place, ... Still, it was human judgment as displayed in Khrushchev's letter to Kennedy and Kennedy's decision to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey and Italy that defused the crisis. ... human judgment, not computers and processes, avoided nuclear war. It's instructive that the one case, albeit fictional, in which nuclear war resulted was [the movie] "Fail Safe," where a computer malfunction had the last word and attempts at human intervention by the president and the commander's wife failed due to strict adherence to protocols. ... Delegation of attack decisions to AI, however sophisticated, greatly increases the risk of nuclear war.”
― James Rickards, MoneyGPT: AI and the Threat to the Global Economy