The Wisdom of Foolishness: Taking on Nuclear Deterrence

Abstract

When I first started working in cryptography in the early 1970's, almost all of my colleagues told me I was crazy because NSA had a huge head start and, if I did anything good, they would classify it. Those arguments had validity, but with hindsight, it was very wise to take on that “fool’s errand.” This talk proposes that “tilting at windmills” might be applied to taking on the problems associated with nuclear deterrence.