Sounds like some Air Force guy got paid to spitball ideas, seems fine to me. This kind of brainstorming is often effective at generating good ideas. Something l

Sounds like some Air Force guy got paid to spitball ideas, seems fine to me. This kind of brainstorming is often effective at generating good ideas. Something like “Stopping the Earth’s rotation would cause ballistic missiles to miss due to their inertia, it’s just impractical to stop the whole Earth’s rotation. What if we move the just thd target instead?” could very well give rise to sensible operating procedures like “once a hostile missile launch is detected, every mobile launch platform must change its course”. I would not be surprised if that is literally a real operating procedure on nuclear launch subs, for instance. This Ellsberg guy from RAND and this Zimbleman guy from Smithsonian then both engaged in a bit of fun XKCD-style “what if” / “do the math” speculation, that also seems fine. I don’t know what happened at the final step here that has this writer reporting on it like it’s a real proposal.