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When I look at the Tsar Bomba episode, I see what could have been a pointless arms race that was fortunately averted through the use of a treaty. The US response to that is, maybe we should have some hypersonics also.
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The result is that both the Chinese and the Russians are developing fairly untested high-technology deterrence options, which include things like hypersonic warheads or drone-torpedoes-the kind of stuff that you would imagine they would do because they fear that their second strike capability is being affected by anti-ballistic missile technology. It doesn't matter if they actually think it will be effective or not. That has either genuinely spooked the Russians and the Chinese, or it's allowed their military industrial complexes to push for a lot of money. The biggest shift that's happened over the last couple of decades is that the US has invested a lot in anti-ballistic missile technology. There are big debates about whether it's better to have small weapons that you could potentially imagine using, versus very large weapons that would be so terrible that you wouldn't be tempted to use them-and your adversary would hopefully also be trying to avoid using them. Ars Technica: You mentioned in your article that there are lessons to be learned from the Tsar Bomba test and its aftermath that are still relevant today.Īlex Wellerstein: We're in the middle of a very odd arms race at the moment.