This Can't Be Good

Two things: 1. He's right because he's pretty much saying what I've been saying only I didn't write a book because I'm incapable. 2. He has written a book and wants it to sell.

Fred Iklé, a Nixon-era arms control veteran and mentor to the current generation of nuclear “hawks”, has an apocalyptic vision of the future.

However, as a contrarian who confounds his neo-conservative admirers, he is also highly critical of the Bush administration’s handling of threats to the US, and calls the “global war on terror” a serious mistake.

Hopefully for mankind, Annihilation from Within: The Ultimate Threat to Nations, his latest book, will not become another classic to follow his 1971 Every War Must End, credited in 1991 by General Colin Powell, then chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, with inspiring him to bring to closure the first Gulf war. What he calls the “sad message” of his latest work is that the accelerating advance of technology far outpaces the zig-zag development of social and political frameworks that act as controls and brakes.

“We are spreading the dark side of technology,” he tells the FT, describing the “curse of dual use” where, in biotechnology and development of superhuman intelligence in particular, scientists may inadvertently be sowing the seeds of future destruction to be wrought by anarchists or revolutionary groups.

Sixty years ago the US contemplated maintaining a monopoly on nuclear technology, he notes as an example. Just this month the Senate approved giving nuclear assistance to India.

“This is a mistake,” he says.

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