Nuclear game theory and its limitations - by Noah Smith

What economic theory can and can't tell us about how to avoid Armageddon

Most people who grew up in the 1980s have seen the movie War Games. In the climactic scene, an artificially intelligent computer that has been given control of the U.S. nuclear arsenal runs through a series of simulations in which it realizes that launching a global thermonuclear war against the Soviet Union would ultimately result in the destruction of both countries. When the computer realizes that the only way to win the game is not to play, the world is saved. This is, in fact, how the Cold War ended. Realizing that nuclear war was unthinkable due to Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD),…

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