The most interesting thing out of this is Russia’s threat to pull out of New START in retaliation for US sanctions, as well as Biden’s decision to cut off arms control talks. Pulling out all the stops on the US-Russia nuclear competition is dangerous enough already, but this will most likely kick off a renewed all-out three-way nuclear arms race, which is of course less strategically stable than the bilateral nuclear dynamic during the Cold War. China is already expanding its nuclear arsenal to parity, which if New START were still in effect, would’ve been 1500 deployed warheads (incidentally today the first silo field seems to have finished construction ahead of schedule). The US had hoped to rope China into its bilateral arms control agreements with Russia; well, now there’d be nothing left to rope into.
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Redwood research
In which way does this news “favour Paul-verse”?
MIRI had a strategic explanation in their 2017 fundraiser post which I found very insightful. This was called the “acute risk period”.
Yes, but I think much more useful might be for someone to do this for Chinese.
Those 3 new silo fields are the most visible but I’d guess China is expanding the mobile arm of its land-based DF-41 force (TELs) a similar amount. You just don’t see that on satellite images. The infrastructure enabling Launch on Warning is also being implemented which will make those silos much more survivable, though this also of course greatly increases the risk of accidental nuclear war. I’d argue that those silo fields are destabilizing, especially if China decides to deploy the majority of their land-based force that way, because even with a Launch on Warning posture there will be at least some use-it-or-lose-it pressure during a conflict, while the mobile and sea-based deterrent are stabilizing because they for the most part lack that issue. Similarly, hypersonic weapons including the much-discussed recent tests are stabilizing because they shatter US delusions of any protection offered by its BMD system, now and future. There are few practical differences with regular ICBM warheads besides the ability to better penetrate defences: they’re in fact slower.
The issue with China’s current SSBN (the Type 094) is twofold: more noisy and the SLBM they carry has relatively low range, so they have to venture further into the Pacific to hit much of the US mainland, both of which render it more vulnerable to detection. The upcoming 096 solves this, both being quieter and allowing it to fire from a protected “bastion” in Chinese coastal waters.
I’m willing to bet the Pentagon’s projection that China will have 700 warheads by 2027 and 1000 by 2030 will be revised upward again next year, and some in the US military seem to agree with me. In light of this I’d strongly suggest those in the community working on nuclear risks (e.g. Rethink) shift their main focus from the US-Russia scenario to China, especially with how hard everyone in the West is dying to go to war with China these days haha.
Can you give some examples of who in the “rationalist-adjacent spheres” are discussing it?
I’m aware. I’m just saying a new effort is still needed because his thoughts on alignment/AI risk are still clearly very misguided listening to all his recent public comments on the topic and what he’s trying to do with Neuralink etc. so someone really needs to reach out and set him straight.
Agree with we should reach out to him & the community is connected enough to do so. If he’s concerned about AI risk but either being misguided or doing harm (see e.g. here/here and here), then someone should just… talk to him about it? The richest man in the world can do a lot either way. (Especially someone as addicted to launching things as him, who knows what detrimental thing he might do next if we’re not more proactive.)
I get the impression the folks at FLI are closest to him so maybe they are the best ones to do that.
I’m not overly concerned with the news from this morning. In fact I expected them to raise the nuclear force readiness prior to or simultaneously to commencing the invasion, not now, which is expected going into a time of conflict/high tension from normal peacetime readiness. I had about a 5% chance this will escalate to a nuclear war going into it, and it’s not much different now, certainly not above 10% (For context, my odds of escalation to full countervalue exchange in a US intervention in a Taiwan reunification campaign would be about 75%). Virtually all that probability is split between unfavorable developments dragging in NATO and accidents/miscalculation risk, which is elevated during tense times like this (something like, if the Russians had misinterpreted the attack submarine which entered their territorial waters last week as being a ballistic missile submarine sneaking up close to launch a first strike, or an early warning radar fluke/misidentification being taken seriously when it would’ve been dismissed during peacetime, either of which could’ve caused them to launch on warning).
Unintentional nuclear exchange will have no preceding signs, but unfavorable developments will, for example a NATO shootdown of a Russian plane or Russian fire straying over the border killing NATO troops which begins an escalation spiral. If we start seeing such incidents being reported, I would tell all my LW friends to get the fuck out of NATO cities they’re living in immediately.