Carl Robeshaw
About
Nuclear weapons policy expert; leads Longview Philanthropies' nuclear weapons policy program
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Claims by Carl Robeshaw (20 of 31)
Power Outstripping Wisdom Recurs Across Tech
Nuclear weapons were the first time humanity confronted the fact that our power has outstripped our wisdom—unleashing the elemental forces that power the sun—and the Prometheus theme of creating something you are not sure you can control recurs today with biotechnology and artificial intelligence.
War Game Outcomes Depend on Who Is at the Table
In Obama-era war games of a Russian nuclear use in the Baltics, played twice, the principals (cabinet secretaries) responded with a nuclear weapon while the deputies did not—showing that nuclear-use decisions can depend heavily on who happens to be at the table advocating for what.
Nuclear Weapons Emerged Amid Eroded Constraints
Nuclear weapons entered the world during WWII when constraints on humanitarian behavior had already been washed away by atrocities on all sides—genocide, firebombings of German and Japanese cities killing tens of thousands a night—so using a weapon against civilians did not seem categorically different from what was already happening.
Pakistan and North Korea Prove the Rule
Pakistan and North Korea are the exception that proves the rule of non-proliferation: living in tough neighborhoods, they paid a huge economic and political cost—sanctions and isolation—to acquire nuclear weapons, and that very cost served as a deterrent example discouraging other countries from following.
Nuclear Weapons Originated in Fear of Nazi Germany
Nuclear weapons were not born from the Manhattan Project but from a German program, and the US only pursued the bomb out of fear that Nazi Germany might get there first; had Germany taken a different technological path the first nuclear weapons could have entered the world in Nazi hands.
Oppenheimer Film Omits Downwinder Victims
The Oppenheimer film, told from Oppenheimer's perspective, omits the second and third order effects of the nuclear age, including the roughly 500,000 people living within 150 miles of the Trinity test who were never informed before or after and continue to suffer health consequences, reflecting a collective failure of imagination around nuclear weapons.
Black Saturday the Closest Call to Catastrophe
October 27, 1962 ('Black Saturday') was the closest the world has ever come to nuclear catastrophe, with three or four near-simultaneous events—a downed U-2 over Cuba, a U-2 straying into Soviet airspace, local anti-aircraft fire on US planes against Kennedy's red line, and a nuclear-armed submarine incident—any one of which could have triggered a nuclear exchange.
Cuban Crisis Resolved by Acknowledging Vulnerability
The popular lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis—that you must demonstrate resolve at all costs because Kennedy stared Khrushchev down and won—is false; the secret deal to remove US missiles from Turkey, revealed only 30 years later, shows that what saved the world was both men acknowledging their shared vulnerability and fear, meaning both blinked.
Ninety Percent of Manhattan Budget on Fissile Material
Los Alamos was only part of the Manhattan Project; in fact 90% of the budget was spent producing fissile material—enriched uranium and plutonium—primarily at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington, an enormous engineering feat overseen by Leslie Groves that has caused lasting health and environmental effects still being cleaned up.
AI Could Make Humans Mere Button-Pushers
Even with a firm commitment to keep a human in the loop, the strong incentive to use AI to synthesize early-warning data and provide decision support could leave humans as mere button-pushers, since people are unlikely to reject the conclusions of a system that has proven 99% reliable, creating a slippery slope toward effectively delegating nuclear decisions to an algorithm.
Nuclear Taboo Restrains Even Putin
One reason Russia has not used nuclear weapons in Ukraine is the 78-year tradition of non-use—the nuclear taboo—which makes crossing that line reputationally costly, since most of the world has not taken sides and China and India have signaled Russia should not use them, meaning non-military considerations help preserve the taboo that benefits everyone.
Status Quo Means Compounding Annual Risk
The most likely future scenario is the status quo, where nuclear weapons hum along in the background while everyone pretends they don't exist, but every year carries a non-zero risk of human accident, miscalculation, technical accident, or deliberate use, so rolling those dice year after year compounds the cumulative probability of catastrophe.
Past Successes in De-escalation Exist
The risk ratchet has occasionally been reversed: in 1986 Reagan and Gorbachev agreed a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought, building shared understanding that enabled the INF treaty; and in 1991 President George H.W. Bush unilaterally took US tactical nuclear weapons off alert and off surface ships through a presidential nuclear initiative that Russia then reciprocated.
Atomic Bomb Necessity Was Postwar Propaganda
The narrative that Truman carefully weighed using the bomb versus invading is largely postwar propaganda; in reality the administration planned to both use the bomb and invade, sent both weapons to Pacific commanders to use when weather permitted, and the Nagasaki bombing three days after Hiroshima was not a well-considered strategic decision.
Why No Offshore Demonstration Bomb
A demonstration bomb in a harbor or off the coast was rejected because it might not show the full magnitude of the weapon, a dud could leave a retrievable device for the enemy, and inviting Japanese observers risked tipping America's hand if the demonstration failed.
Arkhipov Submarine Incident Nearly Started War
During the crisis a Soviet submarine being forced to surface by US depth charges nearly launched a nuclear torpedo; the captain authorized its use and two of the three required officers agreed, but Commodore Vasily Arkhipov, who outranked the captain, refused, averting nuclear war.
Bomb Used to Demonstrate Power to Soviets
Beyond ending the war, the bomb's use was partly intended to demonstrate its power to the Soviet Union and shape the post-war balance and ensure unconditional surrender without invading the home islands, even though Truman knew the imminent Soviet entry into the war would itself be the end for Japan.
Hersey's Hiroshima Changed View of the Bomb
John Hersey's reporting—slipping out of occupied Tokyo to record six survivors' human stories and reveal radiation's terrible effects—produced a 30,000-word New Yorker piece that changed how the public viewed the bomb, illustrating how a single civil-society reporter had a powerful effect on the nuclear age.
ICBM Plus H-Bomb a Step Change in Danger
The marriage of miniaturized hydrogen bombs and intercontinental ballistic missiles—weapons moving 20 times the speed of sound with no defense against them—represents a step change in danger by compressing decision-making time and putting humanity right on the brink.
Four Reasons Proliferation Stayed Limited
Contrary to 1960s predictions of 15-25 nuclear states, only nine exist because of four reasons: superpower security guarantees that bought off would-be proliferators, a system of international law and export controls raising costs, occasional counter-proliferation through military action or sanctions, and an underrated set of anti-nuclear norms causing elites to view the weapons as immoral liabilities rather than assets.
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