> If killing-technology advances to the point that one person can kill seven billion, we will have a major problem on our hands.

Don't we already have the technology for that? I see no technical reason that prevents totally automating the execution of launch commands for existing nuclear arsenals (i.e. building literal, not figurative, nuclear button).

The issue is that academics in other countries do not have qualms like yours, which could eventually give those countries a destabilizing competitive advantage. From the OP:

> America’s adversaries understand this. China is tightly integrating its defense establishment with startups, companies, and academia in “military-civilian fusion.” Russia, Iran, and North Korea have also fused those activities.

So the question is: will it be an improvement over the current status quo if one or more of those countries gains military edge over the US? Will things be better if, say, the US lacks the military technology to repulse a conventional invasion of Taiwan by the PRC, because Chinese scientists developed better stealth coatings or better missile seekers, while the American ones said "I'd rather not"?

> Don't we already have the technology for that?

Some would argue that we have a major problem on our hands ;).

Regarding, "I'd rather not", the point is well-taken. I'm probabilistically alive because my grandfather, who had orders to ship out the time of Japan's surrender, did not participate in an invasion of Japan. I live in a country whose political system endures in part because of the dedicated active service of more than a million citizens and in part because of the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of lives to the cause.

When I say, "I'd rather not." I hope to lead by example. The weapons we have are sufficient to cause the end of days, which seems like enough. I don't mind if the tools I build have some military use -- making a better bandage keeps anyone who happens to be leaking blood alive. I do mind if the primary purpose of my work has lethality in mind.

I'm a precision-measurement experimental physicist, and the thing we do is optimize. I believe it would be corrosive to my soul if the goal of my daily optimization is the death of another person -- a person with a mother, a father, friends, loved ones, and perhaps children. So long as the world is at peace (and one can readily argue that it is not, or that battles are won before they are fought), I will not make weapons. If I have to make weapons, they will be good ones.

"Once upon a time, in the very earliest days of interplanetary exploration, as unarmed human vessel was set upon by a warship from the planet Kzin-home of the fiercest warriors in Known Space. This was a fatal mistake for the Kzinti, of course; they learned the hard way that the reason humanity had decided to study war no more was that humans were so very, very, good at it." -- from the jacket of the anthology 'Man-Kzin Wars'.

Or, to draw an idea from the cultural history of China:

"Weapons are instruments of fear; they are not a wise man's tools.

He uses them only when he has no choice.

Peace and quiet are dear to his heart.

And victory no cause for rejoicing.

If you rejoice in victory, then you delight in killing;

If you delight in killing, you cannot fulfill yourself."

Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 31 (https://www.wussu.com/laotzu/laotzu31.html)

Current events such as the US-China trade war, rising inequality between the haves and have-nots, the upcoming financial crisis, the increasing military strength of China (with "military-civil fusion") and its emergence as a superpower, decreasing respect for the rule of law from politicians, and the polarisation between the left and nationalist right parties strongly parallel the buildup in the 1930s preceding World War II.

You say it would be corrosive to your soul to optimise death of currently living human beings. However, if those humans were trying to wipe out your mother, father, friends, loved ones, children and perhaps the rest of the world, by optimising their death you would be optimising the chance of the human race to survive. From that perspective, you would not delight in killing, but delight in preserving the peace and quiet which could only be achieved by cutting out the cancerous tumor which threatens the whole body of humanity.

Then again, who's the cancerous tumor here - the West or the East?

Perhaps it would help if we stopped dubbing other people as cancerous tumors?

I was reading about the decisions behind the nuclear bombings of Japanese cities near the end of WWII.

I wonder how it felt being a physicist that contributed to the Manhattan Project after those droppings.

By the way, the Wikipedia pages are in interesting study in how to downplay certain... aspects.

The issue there is that declaring conventional war on someone who is making WMD's means you losing really quickly. So you need WMD's to ensure you can stand against them. And therein lies the entire history of military development. You can't enforce anything without force. And he who has the most force has the advantage.

Declaring conventional war on someone who has WMDs, especially if they have a lot of them, is a fool's game. Blocking them from making them, if they don't already have them, is a different story.

The US and its coalition partners went to conventional war to stop Iraq from developing WMD. How well did that work out? WMD development is mostly done in secret so we'll usually never have hard evidence of what any country is doing. It's just a totally unrealistic proposal.

This was claimed for propaganda purposes and never substantiated, afaik.

Exactly! Which is precisely why ISL’s proposal would never work in the real world. Countries would falsely claim that their enemies were secretly building WMDs.