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But WarGames is a fictional movie about a mutually assured destruction scenario? And even though it was famously watched by President Reagan [0], his response w

by danso 6y ago

But WarGames is a fictional movie about a mutually assured destruction scenario? And even though it was famously watched by President Reagan [0], his response was decidedly not to abide by the philosophy of "the only winning move is not to play". Reagan presided over massive budget increases to keep up and attempt to win the arms race, including the extremely expensive but impotent "Star Wars" program [1]. Unlike "Star Wars", increasing the computational complexity and costs of mass face surveillance is not a decades-to-soon monolith project. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames#Influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames#Influence [1] https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_07-08/Reagan https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_07-08/Reagan

HPsquared 6y ago
Regarding the Star Wars program, perhaps the high cost was part of the motivation? (To saddle the opponent with similar costs)
- dylan604 6y ago
  I hear this quite often, but I just wonder if that is hindsight rewriting/spinning the situation? Did the people in charge of Star Wars program know it was a sham and knew from the beginning that's what it was, or were they really trying to build a space based defense program that turned out to be too complicated and too expensive to do?
  - jjk166 6y ago
    In reality "star wars" was a moniker applied to several different programs which were part of the Strategic Defense Initiative geared towards missile defense. Part of the Strategic Defense Initiative was the ISTO, which funded basic research at national labs, which included some promising but ultimately impractical technologies - as is typical of basic research. Tech like isomer lasers and particle weapons made headlines, while missile guidance systems and radar systems and other such technologies which were much more seriously pursued didn't. Many of the technologies developed by the SDI remain at the core of modern missile defense systems. In fact, when one looks at the history in context, SDI only started getting wound down when the soviet union stopped being a threat and thus there was no longer a need to stop a large scale nuclear missile strike; while programs got renamed and were refocused on stopping different threats, the work never really stopped. So it would be inaccurate to describe the program as either a deliberate or accidental boondoggle. That being said, ever since the very beginning of missile defense, it was always understood that the system would never be a permanently impenetrable shield. At best it might take a few years for adversaries to develop a new weapon to get through, but most likely a system would only be able to deal with a portion of targets. But the purpose of missile defense is not to raise the costs for the adversary - if now they have to launch 3 missiles to guarantee a hit where before they needed 1, you've essentially tripled their costs, not including the development of any new technology which could also be considerable. The fact is the Soviet Union did spend a substantial amount on developing technologies to defeat Star Wars, and even today China and Russia are spending significant resources developing technologies like hypersonic missiles to deal with the successor programs. So while the implication that the US purposely pursued technologies it knew would never work to trick the Soviet Union into following suit is not true, the US was trying to hurt its adversaries economically.
harrierpigeon 6y ago
I didn't watch the entire movie, just that clip- but I think that if you consider it slightly differently, the only winning move is not to launch, because everyone will die. If you don't have enough stuff to make sure everyone dies, then there is a chance of a winning move that results in some percentage of one party's population surviving and as a result they might take that chance. IMO, As a U.S. President, Reagan made the right decision to keep pushing, especially considering that he knew to some extent that the Soviets, their enemies, couldn't keep up forever financially. It's a really really cold calculation, but one that worked out. As we stand now, I think that privacy is on the losing side here, unfortunately- at the end of the day, we're up against our own and other governments, some of which have quite authoritarian regimes and have absolutely zero problems with at the very least using force to acquire funding. In WarGames, the only way to win is "not to play" when the playing field is level- this playing field is not level- to be able to beat this off, we need to be able to level the playing field somehow. Maybe I'm not smart enough or just can't see something, but I frankly don't know how that would be possible. ...holy cow, that's dark.

by danso 6y ago

HPsquared 6y ago

Regarding the Star Wars program, perhaps the high cost was part of the motivation? (To saddle the opponent with similar costs)

dylan604 6y ago
I hear this quite often, but I just wonder if that is hindsight rewriting/spinning the situation? Did the people in charge of Star Wars program know it was a sham and knew from the beginning that's what it was, or were they really trying to build a space based defense program that turned out to be too complicated and too expensive to do?
- jjk166 6y ago
  In reality "star wars" was a moniker applied to several different programs which were part of the Strategic Defense Initiative geared towards missile defense. Part of the Strategic Defense Initiative was the ISTO, which funded basic research at national labs, which included some promising but ultimately impractical technologies - as is typical of basic research. Tech like isomer lasers and particle weapons made headlines, while missile guidance systems and radar systems and other such technologies which were much more seriously pursued didn't. Many of the technologies developed by the SDI remain at the core of modern missile defense systems. In fact, when one looks at the history in context, SDI only started getting wound down when the soviet union stopped being a threat and thus there was no longer a need to stop a large scale nuclear missile strike; while programs got renamed and were refocused on stopping different threats, the work never really stopped. So it would be inaccurate to describe the program as either a deliberate or accidental boondoggle. That being said, ever since the very beginning of missile defense, it was always understood that the system would never be a permanently impenetrable shield. At best it might take a few years for adversaries to develop a new weapon to get through, but most likely a system would only be able to deal with a portion of targets. But the purpose of missile defense is not to raise the costs for the adversary - if now they have to launch 3 missiles to guarantee a hit where before they needed 1, you've essentially tripled their costs, not including the development of any new technology which could also be considerable. The fact is the Soviet Union did spend a substantial amount on developing technologies to defeat Star Wars, and even today China and Russia are spending significant resources developing technologies like hypersonic missiles to deal with the successor programs. So while the implication that the US purposely pursued technologies it knew would never work to trick the Soviet Union into following suit is not true, the US was trying to hurt its adversaries economically.

harrierpigeon 6y ago

I didn't watch the entire movie, just that clip- but I think that if you consider it slightly differently, the only winning move is not to launch, because everyone will die. If you don't have enough stuff to make sure everyone dies, then there is a chance of a winning move that results in some percentage of one party's population surviving and as a result they might take that chance. IMO, As a U.S. President, Reagan made the right decision to keep pushing, especially considering that he knew to some extent that the Soviets, their enemies, couldn't keep up forever financially. It's a really really cold calculation, but one that worked out. As we stand now, I think that privacy is on the losing side here, unfortunately- at the end of the day, we're up against our own and other governments, some of which have quite authoritarian regimes and have absolutely zero problems with at the very least using force to acquire funding. In WarGames, the only way to win is "not to play" when the playing field is level- this playing field is not level- to be able to beat this off, we need to be able to level the playing field somehow. Maybe I'm not smart enough or just can't see something, but I frankly don't know how that would be possible. ...holy cow, that's dark.