As the North Korean crisis once again elevates nuclear war to the realm
of conceivability, Ellsberg explains how his early work in economic
decision-making was applied to ideas like “launch on warning” and “use
them before you lose them.” He also discusses the cold calculations that
measured the utility of a “first strike” against how many hundreds of
millions of civilian deaths could be considered “acceptable.”
The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner by Daniel
Ellsberg. Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from Daniel Ellsberg (Carol Leigh Scarlot Harlot / Flickr - CC by 2.0)
