Moving at a calmer pace would allow countries to keep the deterrent benefits of mutually assured destruction, but with a significantly lower chance of blundering into a nuclear war because, say, a bear is climbing over a fence.
Secondly, Perry and Collina make the case for nuclear powers pledging to only use nuclear weapons in retaliation – and never being first. “China's an interesting example, because it already has a no first use policy,” says Collina. “They've announced that they will not use nuclear weapons first in a crisis, and there's some credibility in that policy because China separates its warheads [which contain the nuclear material] from its missiles [the delivery system].” This means China would have to mate the two together before launching an attack, and with so many satellites constantly watching for this, presumably someone would notice.
Notably, the US and Russia have no such policy – they reserve the right to launch their nuclear weapons, even in response to conventional warfare methods. Adopting “no first use” was considered by the Obama administration, though they were never able to reach a decision.
Finally, they argue that it would be beneficial for countries to retire their land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles entirely, because they could be destroyed by an incoming nuclear attack, these are the weapons that are most likely to be deployed in haste if an attack is suspected, but not confirmed.
Another possibility would be to enable nuclear missiles to be cancelled, in the event that a provocation turns out to be a false alarm. “It's interesting because when we do test flights, they can do this,” says Collina. “If they go off course, they can self-destruct. But we don't do that with live missiles, because of the fear that an adversary will somehow get the remote controls and be able to disable them.”
And there are other ways a country’s own technologies could be used against them. As we become more and more reliant on sophisticated computers, there is growing concern that hackers, viruses or AI bots could start a nuclear war. “We believe that the chance of false alarms has gone up with the increased danger of cyber-attacks,” says Collina. For example, a control system could be spoofed into thinking that a missile is coming, which could mean a president is tricked into launching a counter-attack.
The wider problem, of course, is that nations want their nuclear weapons to be rapidly responsive and easy to use – available at the push of a button. This inevitably makes it harder to rein in their use.
Though the Cold War is long gone, Collina points out that we’re still set up for a “bolt out of the blue” unprovoked attack – when in reality, we now live in a radically different world. Ironically, many experts agree that by far the biggest threat comes from the very launch systems that are supposed to be protecting us.
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