Gregory Aldrete: belief

Transcript context

…How do you think the atomic bomb, nuclear weapons changed war? Yeah. I mean, that’s the now we can destroy the world and truly kind of destroy civilizations wholesale, and that does seem to be a new thing. I mean, no matter what the Romans did, they didn’t have that choice, that ability to think, “I can do something that will end life as we know it at least, on the planet,” and that’s a very different perspective. And I think weird and interesting moment right now, I mean, I’m getting way beyond ancient history here, but for a long time, we had this sort of stasis with the nuclear standoff, with mutually assured destruction between the US sort of block of nations and the Soviet ones, and it worked. Now, we’re entering this kind of time when a lot more countries are going to start becoming nuclear capable. We might have a resurgence of just building new weapons, platforms with China, seems very eager to expand their nuclear arsenal in all sorts of ways. So it’s unnerving time, let’s say, right now. And it’s a terrifying experiment to find out if nuclear weapons… When a lot of nations have nuclear weapons, is that going to enforce civility and peace, or is it actually going to be a destabilizing and ultimately civilization destroying?…

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