http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/8.64.html. These search terms have been highlighted: steven kull nuclear basic books
That it does we take more or less for granted, at least at the policy-planning level. (Our consciences, we hold, are our "private" affair.) A recent posting in the alt.fusion newsgroup castigated the opinions of people like Paul Ehrlich and Jeremy Rifkin, who have questioned whether such a thing as a "Utah tokamak" cold-fusion reactor might not be bad for us after all. "What pieces of disgusting slime they are," wrote the author. "Fortunately, with something this important they will be ignored, and, if they interfere, steamrollered." I fear his attitude, more temperately phrased, is shared by the great majority of us.
Steven Kull, a psychoanalyst, interviewed a number of DoD, military, and defense-related industry types for his recent book _Minds at War_ (New York: Basic Books, 1988). His aim in the book was to examine the psychological attitudes of nuclear strategists. Especially interesting (and chilling) was an observation he made about interviews on the subject of the big push for hard-target kill capability (GPS, Navstar, earth-penetrating warheads, etc.). Those of us who work in similarly computer-intensive milieux would do well to adapt it to our own work:
A rather curious widespread attitude was that the
United States "might as well" improve its hard-target
capability given that it had the technological ability, as
if the effort to improve such capabilities was virtually
costless. Even respondents who understood and were actually
sympathetic to concerns about the instabilities engendered
by hard-target kill capability often shook their heads as if
to say that only an overwhelming logical argument could stop
such technological developments. There was a pervasive
feeling that despite multibillion-dollar costs, building new
weapons with greater accuracy was virtually effortless,
while refraining from doing so was a gargantuan effort. Some
simply asserted that the weapon in question was a good
weapon in a technical sense and therefore should be built.
In a few cases, respondents even seemed surprised when
pushed for a stronger rationale based on strategic
considerations.
Hugh Miller, University of Toronto