Political Science Has Its Own Lab Leaks
When ideas get out from academia into the wild, they
can be surprisingly dangerous.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/03/political-science-dangerous-lab-leaks/
Paul Musgrave notes:
Theories are only as sound as their assumptions. The
Cold War was never as stable or simple as Schelling advertised. Far from the
world of perfect knowledge and well-calibrated risk that Schelling envisioned,
errors and misperceptions abounded, not least during the Cuban missile crisis,
which was even more dangerous than it appeared at the time. Organizations in
charge of nuclear weapons suffered numerous near-catastrophic accidents, and
the U.S. government even underestimated the potential effects of a nuclear war.
Even in Schelling’s war games, policymakers proved far more reluctant to
escalate tensions than his theories suggested they should have been.