Strange Stability: How Cold War Scientists Set Out to Control the Arms Race and Ended up Serving the Military-Industrial Complex
Cold War scientists set out to control the arms race and were absorbed by the system they meant to restrain.
Benjamin Wilson follows the physicists and strategists who moved into arms control after 1945 believing technical expertise could stabilise the nuclear standoff, and traces how that expertise was drawn into the defence establishment instead. There is a good deal here on the early Thomas Schelling, and on how deterrence theory took the shape it did.
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Tyler Cowen
Benjamin Wilson, Strange Stability: How Cold War Scientists Set Out to Control the Arms Race and Ended up Serving the Military-Industrial Complex is both interesting and has plenty of information on early Thomas Schelling and his precursors.
Source · October 2025
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