GIVE THEM AN IQ TEST
This entry was posted on 11/23/2009 4:47 PM and is filed under IQ, Nuclear weapons.
Assume that for a couple of million dollars we could have a report of IQ scores for American, Russian and Chinese engineers and scientist engaged in the nuclear weapons field. Assume further that there was a certain amount of pre-announcement publicity that generated some enthusiasm in the educated public to know what the tests revealed. The announcement day arrives: The final result is that all the scores sit on the extreme right hand of the bell curve and that the overall impression is that they are very very similar.
Before the U.S. attempts to develop a tremendously expensive, and what I believe will be an unbelievable dangerous and ultimately futile attempt to revisit 1956, when Americans were infinitely safe and Russia and China, particularly China, were infinitely vulnerable; I believe that it would make sense to do exactly what the title of the blog suggests: Give them an IQ test.
The price of the tests would be peanuts compared to the engineering costs of a new weapons system, whether offensive or defensive. And if, after the IQ tests were given and scored, the U.S. could still decide to go ahead and build the system.
If the result would be that Russian and Chinese nuclear engineers would respond to the defensive system, by "crowding it" and putting offensive systems in space, everyone would be less secure than they are now. And with the IQ scores there would be a data point suggesting that nuclear weapons finally are not about economic systems. They are about engineering talent. IQ.
Maybe it would not make a difference in anyone's thinking. But maybe it would.
More important; a benchmark would have been put on the record. In 1956 Kansas was safe; the U.S could certainly have destroyed China without a reprisal on America itself. That is no longer the case. Tonight both China and Russia could destroy Kansas. There has been a substantial decrease in Kansas' security in 50 years. Now, obviously, a retaliatory strike by the U.S. would also certainly obliterate Russia and China. But this does not alter the clear fact that Kansas is less secure than Kansas was in 1956.
In a December 11, 2009 editorial the Wall Street Journal takes Obama to task as "The Disarmament President." The criticisms run along the expected lines. The Russians have gained an advantage that they did not hold prior to the negotiations. They "secured lower ceilings on nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles, scaled back verification, and pocketed other strategic concessions."
Specifically, it appears the U.S. government would like to reduce the Russian nuclear stockpile. The magic number of permitted "delivery vehicles" in the idealized world of the American negotiators is 800. It seems to be an arbitrary, and totally absurd figure if the issue is security, when one realizes that the Kennedy administration was afraid to start a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union in 1962 when the Russians controlled a grand total of 4 to 6 intercontinental ballistic missiles. The trend line since 1962 has not favored the United States: It has favored Russia and China. The most dramatic change has to do with China, particularly because she was so utterly vulnerable to American nuclear weapons 40 years ago.
China knows something that she could not know without nuclear weapons: She knows that the United States will not send a Great Expeditionary Force to help Tibet.
ontinuing the contest to develop superiority in strategic nuclear weapons is bound to lead to increasing vulnerability for the American people. The argument 
