Soaring, Cryptography and Nuclear Weapons

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Run time: 55:46 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1xnM3bbkCg   Posted on YouTube: May 08, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: January 04, 2010 By DU Member: bananas Views on DU: 455

 

Google Tech Talk
May 7, 2009

ABSTRACT

Presented by Martin Hellman

Nuclear weapons are the elephant in the room that almost no one talks about. This presentation therefore approaches the subject from the much less threatening -- actually downright attractive -- perspective of soaring. Risk analysis is the glue that ties the two subjects together, while my experience in developing public key cryptography provides an important lesson on the positive side.

Related links: http://nuclearrisk.org/soaring_article.php is an article that is closely related to the talk. Another link of interest is http://nuclearrisk.org/paper.pdf .

Martin Hellman is Professor Emeritus at Stanford University and co-inventor of public key cryptography.

Much more at his website http://nuclearrisk.org

http://nuclearrisk.org/risk.php

As explained in the paper, there is preliminary evidence that deterrence can be expected to work for about 100 years, which is far too high a risk. Aside from concern for future generations, that time horizon implies roughly a 1% chance of failure in any given year and a 10% chance of failure in any decade. With a 100 year time horizon, every 15 years is like pulling the trigger in a game of Russian roulette in which the whole world is at stake. Every 30 years is like pulling the trigger twice in that suicidal game. A sane person would never play Russian roulette even once. Neither would a sane world.

The Paper: "Risk Analysis of Nuclear Deterrence" was published in the Spring 2008 issue of the magazine of the national engineering honor society, The Bent of Tau Beta Pi.
Download PDF (1.8 MB)

New Article: "Soaring, Cryptography and Nuclear Weapons". How could three such different topics be related? Find out by reading it in PDF or HTML format.

[bananas]

1. Related article in LBN

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4209238

Obama presses review of nuclear strategy

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