I disagree with the claim that the overall accident risk is going down. While it’s probably true early warning systems are getting more reliable (though the actual degree of this is really hard to gauge due to their complexity)[1], a third party (China) adopting launch on warning arguably raises the risk at least 50%, if not more due to initial kinks. Also, as many have pointed out, the emerging trilateral dynamic of three nuclear peers is unprecedented in history and less stable.
Also, what would count as an accidental nuclear war? I think e.g. the US launching a large salvo of low-observable cruise missiles deep into the Chinese mainland during a conventional war could easily be mistaken as an attack on the silo fields and trigger a nuclear launch.
What I mean by this is it’s not like EW systems have been static and only the sensors have been refined over time to make them more reliable, they have been made into ever larger informationized networks etc. and it’s not at all clear that the risk of a false alarm generated by any one part of the system is significantly lower now. For examples on how these more complex systems have more points of failure see e.g. this
I disagree with the claim that the overall accident risk is going down. While it’s probably true early warning systems are getting more reliable (though the actual degree of this is really hard to gauge due to their complexity)[1], a third party (China) adopting launch on warning arguably raises the risk at least 50%, if not more due to initial kinks. Also, as many have pointed out, the emerging trilateral dynamic of three nuclear peers is unprecedented in history and less stable.
Also, what would count as an accidental nuclear war? I think e.g. the US launching a large salvo of low-observable cruise missiles deep into the Chinese mainland during a conventional war could easily be mistaken as an attack on the silo fields and trigger a nuclear launch.
What I mean by this is it’s not like EW systems have been static and only the sensors have been refined over time to make them more reliable, they have been made into ever larger informationized networks etc. and it’s not at all clear that the risk of a false alarm generated by any one part of the system is significantly lower now. For examples on how these more complex systems have more points of failure see e.g. this