Just started book 3, I'm clearly being Baader-Meinhoff'd. I think the basic logic of preemptive first strikes being the universally safest response is sound, as

Just started book 3, I'm clearly being Baader-Meinhoff'd. I think the basic logic of preemptive first strikes being the universally safest response is sound, assuming the current trend continues that a species' offensive capabilities will grow faster than its defensive capabilities as it improves its mastery of physics. Even if in the short term, some civilizations are inherently friendly and some are inherently hostile, in the long term the chances of any randomly selected civilization being hostile approaches unity due to survivor bias. It's pretty similar to one of my favourite quotes, from Peter Watts: > Equidistant to the other two tribes sat the Historians. They didn't have too many thoughts on the probable prevalence of intelligent, spacefaring extraterrestrials— but if there are any, they said, they're not just going to be smart. They're going to be mean. (I'm admittedly finding a lot of the other plot points of the series, especially around how people respond to adversity, less convincing though.)