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From: ken@ihuxq.UUCP
Newsgroups: btl.followup,net.politics
Subject: Do: Re: Mi: BTL takes the lead
Message-ID: <388@ihuxq.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 17-Nov-83 13:08:24 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxq.388
Posted: Thu Nov 17 13:08:24 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 19-Nov-83 01:46:04 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, Il
Lines: 26


 the folks who are against a nuclear arms freeze argue so
vehemently about the evils of unilateral disarmament?  Their points are
quite valid, especially concerning the insidious and invidious nature
of Russian foreign policy, but I don't understand what that all has to
do with a nuclear arms freeze.  It seems to me that if we stopped
building atomic weapons for a while, even unilaterally, we'd still have
enough to scare the Russians with for a long time.

Actually, I don't understand why anyone with enough computer smarts to
read netnews could dismiss the following scenario:  More & more nukes
built leads to more & more deployment, closer & closer to the physical
borders of each superpower.  At some critical distance, the time between
launch and impact will be too short to investigate intruder alerts by
hand--it will be done entirely by machine.  Even now, the alerts are
computer generated, but there is sufficient time to review the data.
So, when the "friend or foe" decision is reduced to an algorithm,
how sure are you that the program (which can't truly be tested in peacetime)
will have no bugs?  Please don't bring up "War Games."  WW III will not
be started by a computer with delusions of godhood; it may be started
because deep in the guts of some very critical code, some programmer forgot
to add a "1", or left out a case entirely.  Haven't you?
-- 

ken perlow
..ihnp4!ihuxq!ken
bell labs @ naperville, IL