>The logic that "if you see someone, you must kill them" is kind of like "the first country that develops nuclear weapons must immediately deploy them against e

>The logic that "if you see someone, you must kill them" is kind of like "the first country that develops nuclear weapons must immediately deploy them against every other country, even thought that dooms the world to a nuclear winter." Except that they don't live on a planet, the weapons aren't nuclear, and they don't have spies or reconnaissance planes and satellites that can determine whether the other side really has them or not in near real time. When we were looking at the SDI, some people argued that SDI was bad because it would allow us to launch a preemptive first strike without any consequences, while other argued that that was a good reason to build it, and then use it immediately. So even in the case where we actually all live on the same planet and share the risk, some in the USA argued for what you claim is super-villain logic. That's what I though the books got dead right: humans are fucking stupid.