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diff --git a/books/2018.page b/books/2018.page new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3497fd6 --- /dev/null +++ b/books/2018.page @@ -0,0 +1,30 @@ + +The Doomsday Machine, by Daniel Ellsberg +-------------------------------------------- + +First half is a personal narrative of Ellsberg's investigations into nuclear +command and control and general war planning issues, particularly in the pre- +and early ICBM period (when the Soviets has very few ICBMs, but many US leaders +thought they had thousands), up to the Cuban missle crisis. + +Second half is a history, starting before WW2, of how "strategic bombing" +developed as the status quo of large scale warfare (at least by the USA and +allies), cumulating in the normalization of strategic nuclear bombing +infrastructure. + +"Fire insurance executives, who were experts in averting the spread of fires +(to keep rates down), proved inventive in advising how to reverse that +process. American economists [...] came to London air headquarters as experts +in how an economy worked, how it hung together and what its nodes of +interdependence or bottlenecks were, and thus how it could be dismanteled by +bombing. This gradually merged with the unacknowledged quest of Bomber Command: +how to destroy a city." (p252) + +"Sam, war is killing people. When you kill enough of them, the other guy quits" +-- Curtis LeMay + +A Vast Machine +----------------- + +Shadow Libraries +------------------- |