Indeed. It's doubly silly, because there is a class of asteroid impact scenarios to which it could actually apply. In the 2015 PDC exercise [1] the asteroid is

Indeed. It's doubly silly, because there is a class of asteroid impact scenarios to which it could actually apply. In the 2015 PDC exercise [1] the asteroid is also split in two by the first deflection attempt (that happens a lot in these exercises, see also 2017 and 2019) and the new bulls-eye is in India. So India plans a nuclear deflection attempt, but China vows to stop it, by intercepting it if necessary, because the second deflection attempt could result in the asteroid hitting China instead. Meanwhile Iran, also in the new risk corridor, but not in the old one, threatens retaliation against the countries behind the first deflection attempt if it's hit: the Great Satan (aka the US), EU, Russia and China. Bottom line: a recurring worry in these asteroid deflection scenarios is that whoever changes the trajectory becomes responsible for hitting whatever ends up being hit, and if that happens to be a nuclear-armed country, the consequence could be WWIII. [1] https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/pdc15/ https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/pdc15/