if you want to reduce the number of nuclear weapons the U.S. has in its stockpile, it may actually make sense to improve the ability of the U.S. to produce new weapons.
If you’ve reduced the stock but increased that rate at which new warheads can be produced, have you actually made the situation any safer?
To the extent that increasing the production rate funges for maintaining a stockpile from a strategic perspective, aren’t the two also interchangeable from a risk-of-catastrophe perspective?
(I suppose one could argue that the risk of terrorists getting their hands on part of a stockpile is greater than the risk of them seizing control of production facilities. But it’s not obvious to me that that’s necessarily the case, and also I would have guessed that risk of weapons falling into the hands of terrorists is only a small percentage of the total risk from the stockpile.)
If you’ve reduced the stock but increased that rate at which new warheads can be produced, have you actually made the situation any safer?
To the extent that increasing the production rate funges for maintaining a stockpile from a strategic perspective, aren’t the two also interchangeable from a risk-of-catastrophe perspective?
(I suppose one could argue that the risk of terrorists getting their hands on part of a stockpile is greater than the risk of them seizing control of production facilities. But it’s not obvious to me that that’s necessarily the case, and also I would have guessed that risk of weapons falling into the hands of terrorists is only a small percentage of the total risk from the stockpile.)