Conversations Before Midnight: ICBMs are Ridiculous

Intercontinental ballistic missiles – known as ICBMs – are still ridiculous. This was the message from VCDNP Research Associate Noah Mayhew at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ annual event, Conversations Before Midnight. Mr. Mayhew spoke at the event as the recipient of the Bulletin’s Leonard M. Rieser Award, which he was awarded for his July 2021 article “A millennial’s view: ICBMs are ridiculous”, also published in the Bulletin.

In his remarks, Mr. Mayhew reminded viewers of the exigency of the article: that ICBMs are a particularly dangerous leg of the nuclear triad, they are unnecessary for the United States to maintain a credible nuclear deterrent, and the exorbitant cost of the nuclear modernization project is unjustifiable. He placed particular emphasis on the financial cost of the ongoing modernisation of the US nuclear arsenal, arguing that there are many better uses for this money.

Mr. Mayhew also noted that since the article was published, the spectre of nuclear use has become more visible due to Russia’s “thinly veiled threats” in the context of its invasion of Ukraine. He argued that this development should “remind us how to fear nuclear war” such that no such war ever occurs. He also argued that the first step towards mitigating this threat is through diplomacy, rather than aggressive posturing.

Concluding, he recalled the words of US President John F. Kennedy in the year following the Cuban Missile Crisis:

Let us not be blind to our differences--but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.