This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
An undercurrent of anxiety about Iran being nuclear-latent has come to my attention lately - I think I noticed it via Warographics on Youtube? In brief, they have fissile material, but thus far haven't demonstrated a complete device which requires a casing, fission initiation, etc, and the amount of max-effort work to cross that line seems small. Gun-type fission weapons are of course super-simple and reliable, the biggest problem to solve has always been the industrial capacity to refine the necessary amounts of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium. I don't know how hard the R&D and engineering problems of implosion-type weapons are, or multi-stage fission-boosted weapons, and I don't know how hard the miniaturization and operationalization problems are to create, say, a 10-KT device that is small enough to be man-portable, or rugged enough to be delivered via artillery or a ballistic reentry vehicle.
Except - isn't this old news?
Iran's been running gas centrifuge farms for a long time now, that was what Stuxnet was about, turning up the cost of operating them by abusing the bearings, ergo turning down the rate of weapons-grade uranium purification. Probably they've had multiple devices' worth of weapons-grade material for a long time. While that stockpile accumulates, it's not like the math for old designs of fusion weapons is hard to back out of modern physics, that gives you the prerequisites for your fuse engineering effort to run in parallel, up to testing with inert cores.
In summary, Iran has been "on the brink of getting access to nuclear weapons" in the same way they're claimed to be today for years. They've actively chosen not to cross that line in a way observable to Western intelligence. This is an open secret to everyone professionally in the game, and commentators of low-medium sophistication on up. So why are mutterings only surfacing now about the risk? I can only speculate it's a quiet angle of pressure against further increasing the scale of Israeli combat operations, but I don't understand to what end, or why it isn't simply being said in diplomatic meetings.
Why turn up public fear about the Iranian nuclear program? Why do it now? Why do it so subtly?
Regarding your point about weapon design: that’s the easiest part of building a nuclear weapon. Far easier than refining the fissile material. And there’s good evidence that Iran already bought the necessary weapon schematics on the black market in the late 1980s. Overall I agree that their intention and ability to get a nuke might be overstated.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link