You may already be aware of this, and/or the window of relevance may have passed, but just thought I’d mention that Toby Ord discusses a similar matter in The Precipice. He seems to come to roughly similar conclusions to you and to Sagan et al., assuming I’m interpreting everyone correctly.
E.g. he writes:
There is active debate about whether more should be done to develop deflection methods ahead of time. A key problem is that methods for deflecting asteroids away from Earth also make it possible to deflect asteroids towards Earth. This could occur by accident (e.g. while capturing asteroids for mining), or intentionally (e.g. in a war, or in a deliberate attempt to end civilization). Such a self-inflicted asteroid impact is extremely unlikely, yet may still be the bigger risk.
This seems like an interesting and important point, and an example of how important it can be to consider issues like downside risks, the unilateralist’s curse, etc. - perhaps especially in the area of existential risk reduction. And apparently even with what we might see as one of the rare “obviously” good options!
Something I find slightly odd, and that might conflict with yours or Sagan et al.’s views, was that Ord also wrote:
One reason [such a self-inflicted asteroid impact] is unlikely is that several of the deflection methods (such as nuclear explosions) are powerful enough to knock the asteroid off course, but not refined enough to target a particular country with it. For this reason, these might be the best methods to pursue.
I don’t really know anything about this area, but it seems strange to hear that the option involving nuclear explosions is the safer one. And I wonder if the increased amount of explosives, development of tech for delivering it to asteroids, etc., could increase risks independently of asteroid-deflection, such as if it can be repurposed for just directly harming countries on Earth. Or perhaps it could reduce the safety benefits we’d get from having colonies on other moons/planets/asteroids/etc.?
Again, though, this is a field I know almost nothing about. And I assume Ord considered these points. Also, obviously there are many nuclear weapons and delivery mechanisms already.
You may already be aware of this, and/or the window of relevance may have passed, but just thought I’d mention that Toby Ord discusses a similar matter in The Precipice. He seems to come to roughly similar conclusions to you and to Sagan et al., assuming I’m interpreting everyone correctly.
E.g. he writes:
This seems like an interesting and important point, and an example of how important it can be to consider issues like downside risks, the unilateralist’s curse, etc. - perhaps especially in the area of existential risk reduction. And apparently even with what we might see as one of the rare “obviously” good options!
Something I find slightly odd, and that might conflict with yours or Sagan et al.’s views, was that Ord also wrote:
I don’t really know anything about this area, but it seems strange to hear that the option involving nuclear explosions is the safer one. And I wonder if the increased amount of explosives, development of tech for delivering it to asteroids, etc., could increase risks independently of asteroid-deflection, such as if it can be repurposed for just directly harming countries on Earth. Or perhaps it could reduce the safety benefits we’d get from having colonies on other moons/planets/asteroids/etc.?
Again, though, this is a field I know almost nothing about. And I assume Ord considered these points. Also, obviously there are many nuclear weapons and delivery mechanisms already.