THE ECONOMIC GAMES BEHIND NUCLEAR DETERRENCE

Practical [military] men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual in-
fluences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist1

DO NUCLEAR WEAPONS MAKE US SAFER? DOES MAD WORK?

The U.S. President wants a world free of nuclear weapons. The U. N. Security Coun-
cil, on September 24, 2009 adopted a resolution, unanimously approved by heads of
all countries present, that said working toward a nuclear free world was a worthy
goal. The Russians most recently published National Defense strategy has all but
eliminated nuclear deterrence from its strategic posture.

Yet, in the U.S., the Pentagon has recently completed a draft Nuclear Posture Review
that claims thousands of nuclear weapons are still necessary for extended deterrence.
Nuclear hawks and nuclear optimists abound, proclaiming that nukes are still
needed. They claim that nuclear deterrence makes the world a safer place. Who is
right? Who is wrong in this debate? Is nuclear deterrence still necessary in the world
today? Does nuclear deterrence really work?

In the brief that follows, we discuss nuclear deterrence as a major component of na-
tional defense strategy from its foundational roots in economic game theory and ra-
tional choice theory. From this vantage, nuclear deterrence as a major component of
U.S. national defense strategy leaves a lot to be desired.

THE UTILITY OF NUCLEAR DETERRENCE

During 2008, the nations of the world spent nearly $1,500 billion (U.S.) on their mili-
tary forces for the purported purpose of national defense.2 In the past 64-years, since
the end of WWII, the total spent on national defense globally is around $60,000 bil-
lion. One consequence of this massive, ongoing diversion of global resources (hu-
man, economic, scientific and technological capital) from meeting basic human needs
is the continued immiseration of many billions of the earth’s human population and
the the neglect of pressing critical global environmental, social, and economic issues.
As President Dwight Eisenhower stated in 1953:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in
the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold
and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending
the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The most obvious weakness to allocating so much of the world’s capital to national
military preparedness is that it often fails to protect nations from the war and de-
struction it is supposed to prevent.

Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) and its variants such as Massive Retaliation and
Minimal Deterrence 3 are all based on economic game theory developed by John von

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Neumann (1903-1957) and Oskar Morgenstern (1902-1977) in their 1944 work on Sub-
jective Expected Utility theory (SEU) in Theory of Games and Economic Behavior.

Sometime in the early 1950s after the first Teller-Ulam design thermonuclear weapon
was invented (“the H-bomb”), von Neuman proposed a First Strike on the Soviet Un-
ion using thermonuclear weapons. He advocated this because his economic game
theory calculations indicated that this move was the best strategy. Although many in
the military agreed with von Neumann that a First Strike was necessary, President
Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969), intimately familiar with the uncertainties of war,
rejected this strategy and asked for an alternative strategy. Herman Kahn (1922-1983),
a RAND analyst at the time, came up with an alternative strategy - the game of nu-
clear deterrence. 4 Kahn’s version of nuclear deterrence was called Mutual Assured
Destruction (MAD). Today, nuclear deterrence comes in many flavors.

MAD, Massive Retaliation and Minimal Deterrence are all economic game strategies
of deterrence through counter-force.5 As the force being used is nuclear weapons,
these games are collectively described as a game of nuclear deterrence. It was origi-
nally designed as a two-party game, to be played by the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. The
assumption was that if both sides in a two-party game have adequate deterrence,
then neither side will strike first if by launching an attack, the attacker would be de-
stroyed in a counterattack. This game has three assumptions: (1) approximate parity
so that neither side has an advantage for First Use, (2) both sides have enough infor-
mation that they can make informed, rational decisions as the game progresses, and
(3) the players are rational. Nuclear optimists add another assumption: (4) the game
can be played indefinitely through time.

Provided these assumptions hold, the MAD version of nuclear deterrence was
thought to place the parties in a Nash Equilibrium where neither party would ration-
ally choose First Use of nuclear weapons. 6 The world would be safe from nuclear war.
All that was required is that both sides possessed nuclear weapons, could survive an
initial attack, and could counterattack. Nukes make the world safer. Defense Secre-
tary Robert McNamara (1916-2009) first described ‘Assured Destruction’ to the
American public in the early 1960s.

A foundational premise of von Neumann and Morgenstern’s neoclassical approach

to economic game theory is the assumption that the decision maker either uses or
acts ‘as if’ he was able to use, a specific, unique probability distribution. This is the
rational choice theory.7 In rational choice theory 'rationality' simply means that a per-
son reasons before taking an action. The framework for ‘reason’ that a person uses is
typically utility as measured by costs against benefits before taking any action.

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ASSUMPTIONS OF THE RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY

The rational choice theory assumes a number of things about reality in order for the
theory to hold true and for the calculations of probabilistic decision states (IF that
occurs, THEN this will happen, WITH this probability).

The first assumption of the rational choice theory is that the system being analyzed is
linear. That is, the system is not complex and does not exhibit emergence. 8 This sim-
plifying assumption to real life enables the analyst to calculate a probabilistic forecast
(normal distribution) of a optimal decision state in all instances.

The second assumption of the rational choice theory is that the system being ana-
lyzed is subject to stationarity. That is, past history of the system can be used as data
input to develop a model for how the system may behave in the future. Again, this
greatly simplifies the process for calculating forecasts of future system states.

The third assumption of the rational choice theory is a philosophical premise about
reality that stems from Enlightenment thinking. There are two parts to this assump-
tion: (a) reality can be adequately modeled rationally with the tools of mathematics
and analysis; and (b) since humans will behave rationally in any economic situation,
this rational behavior can therefore be modeled. Thus, there are built-in assumptions
about the knowability of human behavior, how humans will make decisions in times
that are both ‘normal’ and in times of crisis, and that limits of the Real are ‘defined’
by what is ‘rational’ (i.e. knowable through the tools of mathematics and science). For
example, the use of backward induction in game theory requires that all future play
will be rational (i.e. subject to economically calculated utilities). 9

The fourth assumption of rational choice theory is a belief in certius paribus. That is
the system being analyzed can be ‘walled-off’ from other, interacting systems and the
decision-space adequately described, all things being equal when , of course, every-
one knows that this is merely a simplifying assumption to make the analysis easier.

RATIONAL CHOICE THEORY ASSUMPTIONS NO LONGER VALID

Today, we are aware that all four of these assumptions of the rational choice theory
are incomplete or wrong. Economic and strategic systems are nonlinear, complex sys-
tems that exhibit emergence. The strategic situation being analyzed is just as likely to
display nonergodicity and non-stationarity as to be ergodic10 and exhibit stationarity.
Recent work in psychology suggests that humans do not always behave with ration-
ality. Thus, new insights from behavioral economics question the premise of rational
choice theory. Maybe most importantly, recent work in physics and mathematics has
proven that all decision-states may not be modeled and that the Real may not be fully
described or known via analysis and mathematics. Certius paribus is frequently used
in arguments and typically is of little concern when the consequences of the decision

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are small. But, when the consequences of a decision involve the future of life on the
planet, the use of this simplifying analytical technique is mere habituated intellectual
deceit; hubris of the most pernicious nature.

UNCERTAINT Y, PROBABILITIES & A CALCULUS FOR DECIS IONS

Actually, it was John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) in his work, A Treatise on Probabil-
ity (1921) that offers maybe the first non-additive, non-linear decision theory. He de-
fines uncertainty as U=f(w) {0,1}. U is the value of uncertainty. w is the weight of the
evidence. As w increases U decreases. When w=o are situations of ignorance or com-
plete uncertainty. When w=1, a point estimate value for U probability may be calcu-
lated. Otherwise for any values between 0 and 1, an interval value of imprecise prob-
ability represents U. The interval {0,1} is sometimes referred to as p (rho) which meas-
ures the degree of confidence (ambiguity) in the decision maker’s information base.
Keynes argued that uncertainty must refer to a state of the world where 0<w<1, not
that the world is adequately described by w=1 (certainty) or w=0 (uncertainty).

The offshoot of this way of thinking about uncertainty and the calculation of prob-
abilities is that gaussian normal distribution curves rarely accurately represent prob-
abilities in real life. Neoclassical economics and game theory is based on the assump-
tion that a normal distribution fits the time series data best. Normality prevails. In-
stead, Keynes and Benoit Mandelbrot (b.1924) argued that there are many situations
where w=0 and a Cauchy-Lorenz distribution more accurately describes reality
where the mean (expected value) and variance (standard deviation) are infinite
(undefinable). 11 No one can calculate the probabilities of these outcomes with any
degree of certainty.12 Neoclassical economists and decision theorists often assume
w=1 (a point value for U may be derived) and that Gaussian distribution curves ap-
ply. Only if w=1 can one specific probability distribution apply to the decision-space
being modeled; i.e the rational actor theory.

Keynes, along with Mandelbrot, and more recently Nassim Nicholas Taleb (b. 1960),
argue that in real life w~0; the weight of the evidence in real situations is often 0 or
very close to 0 in many areas of decision making. That is, many real life systems do
not exhibit finite distributions and no expected precise estimate of probability may be
attached to a decision about this system with any degree of confidence. This does not
indicate that certain outcomes will not occur (are uncertain), only that their occur-
rence is unpredictable. It also suggests that a set of possible outcomes for a system
may never be fully complete. That is, the system may exhibit results that are un-
knowable to some degree with any amount of analysis, no matter how much money
is spent to gather evidence w. Whether for engineering or budgetary purposes, that
we fudge our models to enable decision-making does not belie the fact that the future
behavior of many of these systems (in post-modern science, the decision maker is

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always part of the system being analyzed) is unknowable with any degree of cer-
tainty.

THE INCOMPUTABILITY OF PROBABILITIES FOR RARE EVENTS

Taleb makes many of these same points in his Fooled By Randomness (2001) and The
Black Swan (2007) where he outlines Mendelbroit’s proofs of the incomputability of the
probability for consequential rare events from empirical observations ("Black Swans").
Also, from empirical studies of risk in a time series, it appears that in the process of
achieving generalizations from this data and/or deriving general rules from particu-
lar observations, hidden properties in the data are routinely missed. Decision-makers
end-up overestimating the value of rational explanations of past data, and underes-
timate the prevalence of unexplainable randomness in the data. The result is manag-
ing systems as if a black swan will never occur, even though they almost always do.

Taleb believes decision-makers ignore black swans because humans are more com-
fortable seeing reality as something structured, ordinary, and comprehensible (i.e.
rationally explainable). Taleb calls this blindness to the Real the Platonic fallacy and
argues that it leads to three explanatory distortions when developing models of real-
ity in time: (a) narrative fallacy: using retrospective historicity to ‘explain’ the past.
That is, the past occurred this way because of x, y, and z; (b) ludic fallacy: modern
probability theory, utility theory, rational choice theory, and game theory that as-
sumes a normal Gaussian distribution probability curve mistakes simple models of
reality with the Real; (c) statistical regress fallacy: believing that the structure of the
probability of x occurring that actually exists in reality can be fully developed and
described from a set of data.

Taleb also believes that people are subject to the triplet of opacity, through which his-
torical descriptions of reality is distilled even as current events are incomprehensible.
The triplet of opacity consists of (a) an hubristic illusion of understanding of current
events; (b) a retrospective distortion of historical events to ‘fit’ current socially ac-
ceptable ways of describing reality; (c) an overestimation of what constitutes ‘factual
information,’ combined with an overvaluing of the value of ‘expert knowledge’
(typically rendered by ‘experts’ possessing certain credentials, experience, or notori-
ety)) concerning the subject being discussed.

These philosophical musings, based on solid mathematical and recent empirical stud-
ies, describe some common conceptual hicups for game theorists where theory wan-
ders down alleys of infinite regress or traps decision-makers in an intractable loop
that folds back on itself with self-referentiality.

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STATIONARITY FAILS FOR UTILITY OF NUCLEAR DETERRENCE

“Stationarity in a random process implies that its statistical characteristics do not
change with time. Put another way, if one were to observe a stationary random proc-
ess at some time (t) it would be impossible to distinguish the statistical characteristics
at that time from those at some other time (t′).” Generally, the assumption of station-
arity is helpful in modeling real-world problems as it enables the use of linear
mathematical techniques to approximate the potential behavior of complex systems.
However, all complex systems exhibit nonlinear processes and emergence (results may
not be predicted from the historical, chaotic systems processes).

Thus, in the real world, models based on stationarity (which almost all models are)
may not necessarily be used with a high degree of confidence to predict future sys-
tem states, especially if such system states are projected to occur over significant ti-
meframes (from the perspective of the system being modeled). Where the rubber hits
the road with stationarity is the growing realization that due to physical changes in
the environment being modeled, the assumption of stationarity itself is invalid. That
is, for certain decision-sates we are living in a non-stationarity world today. "This is
something completely new -- to make decisions not on facts or statistics about the
past, but on the probabilities for the future."13

BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS QUESTIONS BELIEF IN RATIONALITY

Behavioral economics advances the discussion concerning rational choice theory by
discussing the theory’s limitations when psychological principles of individual be-
havior are taken into account. For example, behavioral economic theory looks at
decision-making in light of: prospect theory (generalized expected utility of decision-
making under uncertainty), bounded rationality (satisfaction vs. maximized utility),
overconfidence, projection bias, effects of limited attention, time-inconsistent choice
(behavior not based on expected utility, but on previous historical reinforcement ex-
periences), hyperbolic discounting (changing discount rates based on length of fore-
casting period), fairness, reciprocal altruism, etc.

UNCERTAINT Y PRINCIPLE VS. GAME INFORMATION SETS

Whereas modernity assumes that rational human decisions can always reveal the
route to solving problems, post-modernity has doubts concerning rationality as a
means for solving all problems. Under post-modernity human rationality is suspect
based on work by Freud in psychology (about the strength of unconscious motiva-
tions); neurobiology, in our ability to even apprehend reality (neurobiologists suggest
that as much as 90% of stimuli reaching the human body remains unconscious [be-
low conscious detection]); and work in quantum physics that calls-to-question some
of humanity’s most cherished beliefs regarding descriptions of space and time and
causality, especially work on nonlocality and other aspects of the quantum world in-
dicate that science “is far from yielding an assured access to” all of reality. 14 What this

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new understanding of physical reality suggests is that for certain complex systems,
game information sets may be lacking crucial data to accurately represent probability
distributions of expected outcomes.

IS NUCLEAR DETERRENCE AN UNWINNABLE ECONOMIC GAME?

What we have seen is that the assumption of rational choice theory being operational
very near to the decision to employ nuclear weapons and during the conflict within
which nuclear weapons are used is highly unlikely. Instead, a more likely scenario its
that moves and counter-moves are counter-productive in that are more likely to in-
tensify reasons for First Use and increate the tempo, rather than slow the game down
or reduce First Use nuclear attack. This spiral-effect means that more people on both
sides will loose their lives in each successive move and more property damage will
occur. Using nuclear weapons adds potential the longer-term costs of ecological serv-
ices loss.

However, it is highly unlikely that through moves of violence and counter-violence

that enough individuals on each opposing side can be killed or enough property
damage can be accomplished even with the use of limited nuclear strikes to cause the
spiral of violence to cease. Some opponents will continue to fight back well beyond
the point where all infrastructure is destroyed. The game of nuclear deterrence feeds
on violence. The strength of a game intensifies. Violent moves and counter-moves
tend to produce a self-perpetuating game. A game that is unwinnable, if nuclear
weapons are used.

IF THE DETERRENCE GAME IS UNWINNABLE, WHY PLAY?

We play because it is the only game we know. We play because the game is familiar.
We play because our institutions are set-up to play this game and not another. We
play because there are short-term economic drivers for continuing to play the game
as originally envisioned. We play because nuclear deterrence is a foundational com-
ponent of a much larger game - the game of national defense - a very large strategic
game. 15 This game primarily prepares for war and engages in fighting wars through
the application of deadly force. This game is founded on a premise that nuclear and
conventional weapons provide deterrence to war. This game is a non zero sum
game. 16 The game as presently played, limited to a capacity for counter-violence, an
unwinnable game. 17

Nuclear deterrence is a chimera that results in the escalation of the manufacture of

ever more deadly conventional weaponry to avoid the use of nuclear weapons. In-
stead of limiting the risk for global war or the use of nuclear weapons, this strategic
game enables war to be used for ever more marginal conflictual situations, intensify
the trade in armaments, and create large opportunity costs as scarce capital is di-
verted from solving real economic problems to fighting limited wars. 18 The overall

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riskiness of this strategic approach is that, over time, the prospects of global war are
heightened, not lessened. If that is the case, the continued care and feeding of
doomsday machines a form of potential assisted suicide. Playing this unwinnable
game must stop.

THE ONLY WAR TO WIN AN UNWINABLE GAME IS TO NOT PLAY

Some recommendations to get out of this perpetual war-making machine, which to-
day, has become a Doomsday Machine,19 will require:

deciding not to play the game of nuclear deterrence any longer;

inventing a new, less dangerous game to play (hopefully one that does not re-
quire nuclear weapons). For example, is deterrence even a valid notion today;

expanding the strategy of national defense beyond counter-force options;

reallocating capital away from counter-force toward an expanded concept of na-

tional defense; and

accomplishing all of this without crashing the economy as military Keynsianism is

dismantled and jobs and technological innovation is siphoned from military
hardware and adventurism toward some other national defense or national secu-
rity requirement.

ENDNOTES

1John Maynard Keynes, quoted in Justin Fox, The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk,
Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street (New York: HarperCollinsPublishers, 2009), xvi.

2 Defense budgets in 2008 were: United States - $607 billion, China - $85 billion, France - $66
billion, Britain - $65 billion and Russia - $59 billion. The world total represents an increase of
45% in military-related budgets (in constant dollars) over the past 10-years (Stockholm Interna-
tional Peace Research Institute).

3 Massive Retaliation assumes a nuclear war can be fought that is not a Total War and that one
side could ‘win’ before both sides were totally destroyed as anticipated by MAD. Limited Deter-
rence assumes nuclear weapons can be used surgically to destroy just enough of an opponent
that they give up their aggression. MAD is still the pure and final form of nuclear deterrence.

4 Deterrence as a game strategy for national defense, invented after WWII, is based on the
premise that by possessing weapons and a force structure capable of inflicting unacceptable
damage on an aggressor and making certain that all opponents are aware of this strength, it is
possible to achieve peace as opponents will surely make the rational decision not to attack a
superior force. Nuclear deterrence is seen as a limit case for deterrence strategy. Mutual As-
sured Destruction is the extreme case of nuclear deterrence. However, the failure of deterrence
for national defense may not be adequately addressed. For example, in von Clausewitz’s no-
tion of Total War, if nuclear weapons exist, it is most likely these weapons will be used, and
when used, it is most likely their use will be for mutual assured destruction, not limited use.

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5These flavors of nuclear deterrence are problematical in that current scientific studies suggest
that even limited nuclear exchanges of 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs, would have global impli-
cations with significant cooling of the earth's surface and decreased precipitation in many
parts of the world that potentially could lead to global famine. See Ira Helfand, MD, “An As-
sessment of the Extent of Projected Global Famine Resulting From Limited, Regional Nuclear
War,” Royal Society of Medicine (2007).

6 This follows from von Neumann’s minimax theorem that as long as the two rational players’
interests are completely opposed, they can settle on a rational course of action going forward
in a zero sum game. An equilibrium is forced by an interplay between self interest and mis-
trust and a strategy can be devised for playing the game where there are no regrets, no matter
what each player ultimately choses for game moves. See William Poundstone, Prisoner’s Di-
lemma (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 97.

7 Rational Choice theory also underlies the myth of rational markets and the efficient market
hypothesis, formulated first at the University of Chicago in the 1960s. The hypothesis is that
capital markets are ‘rational’ in that they properly price the value of financial instruments at
any point of time. Of course, the recent meltdown of financial markets in 2008 has exposed the
fallacy of this hypothesis and its lack of empirical backing (Fox, xv).

8 Emergence “refers to ‘the arising of novel and coherent structures, patterns and properties
during the process of self-organization in complex systems.’ The common characteristics are:
(a) radical novelty (features not previously observed in systems); (b) coherence (meaning inte-
grated wholes that maintain themselves over some period of time); (c) A global or macro ‘level’
(i.e. there is some property of ‘wholeness’); (d) it is the product of a dynamical process (it
evolves); and (e) it is ostensive - it can be perceived” (Wikipedia).

9 Backward induction simply means reasoning backwards in time at t=n, from the end of a prob-
lem or situation, to determine a sequence of optimal actions at an earlier point in the game e.g.
t=n-1. In game theory, the idea is to carry this process backwards in time from the end game
until one builds a strategy that encompasses the best action for every possible situation (the
information set), at every point of time in the future.

10 The end state of a system is not sensitive to initial conditions i.e. the system does not exhibit
chaotic properties. Thus a natural distribution curve is a reasonable way to describe the poten-
tial states of the system over time with given probabilities.

11Cauchy distributions have fat tails that exhibit kurtosis (infrequent but extreme deviations
from the normal case). Also, the law of large numbers does not apply (measuring one instance or
a million instances will not improve a probability forecast), nor does the central limit theorem
(for large samples, the mean is normally distributed i.e. can be expressed by a gaussian distri-
bution).

12 There really is uncertainty in the world concerning the future – uncertainty that cannot be
reduced to statistical probabilities. Maybe this is what Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld,
meant by "unknown unknowns." For Keynes, this irreducible uncertainty and uncalculable
risk accounted for the instability of market economies and surprise outcomes of some game
strategies. Today, surprises are expected in some games due to work in behavioral economics.

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13See mathematical expression of stationarity at http://cnx.org/content/m11102/latest/; how

stationarity affects real-world models P.C.D. Milly, et.al., “Stationarity is Dead: Wither Water
Management?,” Science (1 February 2008): Vol. 319. no. 5863, pp. 573 - 574 at:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/ short/319/5863/573; “History Can No Longer
Guide Investors, Farmers: UN at http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-GreenBusiness
/idUSTRE57P22D20090826?rpc=60.

14 Bell’s Theorem proves nonlocality (correlation of our knowledge of the physical characteris-
tics of particles at a distance) in a quantum field. Essentially, two particles, at a distance, can
become entangled. Entanglement means that the state of one particle influences the sate of
another particle. This phenomena is described by Schrodinger’s equations. Locality is the prin-
ciple where influences ( “a set of knowable or unknowable parameters that are real numbers”)
are not propagated at infinite speed. In Nature, locality is violated. See Bernard d’Espagnat, On
Physics and Philosophy (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006), 57, 64, 175, 436.

15From the branch of social science and mathematics that describes game theory - the study of
strategic decision making in situations involving uncertainty.

16A zero sum game always has winners and losers as the size of the pie is fixed; one person’s
gain is another’s loss. A non zero sum game is a game where either party’s interests are not
completely opposed as one player’s optimal strategy may also benefit the opposing player. In
this game all may loose and none gain. (Poundstone, 51-2, 97-99).

17A game state where it is impossible for the player to win the game. The only options are re-
starting the game or stopping and deciding to play another game with different rules.

18Even fighting limited wars with conventional weaponry is expensive. E.g. the total projected
economic cost of the 2003-present Iraq War is estimated at $3,000 billion.

19 Doomsday Machine, first coined by Herman Kahn in the 1950s was a hypothetical $10 billion
“device whose only function is to destroy all of human life.” See Herman Kahn, On Thermonu-
clear War (Transactional Publishers, 2007), 144. Assuming that the enemy knew you possessed
a doomsday machine, under the game of MAD, this should serve as a deterrence to attack. To
the best of our knowledge, the U.S. never set out to built a doomsday machine, and Kahn sug-
gested it was a dumb idea to do so. However, in the 1980s, the Soviets built a doomsday ma-
chine, Perimeter (Mertvaya Ruka, Dead Hand), in response to President Reagan’s proposed
Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, Star Wars) missile defense shield.

The Soviets interpreted SDI as a First Strike system. Perimeter was designed to launch a nation-
killing attack on the U.S. automatically in response to sensor readings of radiation and impacts
on Soviet soil from U.S. warheads. First operational in 1985, the system is still live according to
some knowledgeable military sources. The Soviets kept Perimeter a secret from the U.S. and
did not consider it a deterrent to a First Strike by the U.S. Instead, Perimeter was thought of as
a fail-safe system for their own military to relax the need to launch-on-warning as even if Cen-
tral Command was wiped out, Perimeter would take over. Thus, survivability of command
structures were no longer important to retaliate. See Nicholas Thompson, “Inside the Apoca-
lyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine,” Wired Magazine 17.10 at
http://www.wired.com/print/politics/security/ magazine/17-10/m..

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