[tgsovlerkhgsel]

> there’s just better uses for a nuclear weapon, like you know, air bursting in a city.

If your choice is completely annihilating one city, or destroying even just 10% of computers (including industrial control systems) in 50% of the country, which do you think causes more damage?

Destroying even a small fraction of individual computers makes most larger systems inoperable.

Without industrial control systems, power plants can't operate. Without power, cities become unsurvivable for a majority of the population within days, industrial output becomes effectively zero, and immediate issues like starvation and resulting unrest become a much bigger priority than fighting a war. Most importantly, recovery efforts will be extremely slow without power. How do you call the supplier, or other places that might have spares, when there is no phone network, no cell phones, no Internet? How do you call the experts that could diagnose which of the hundreds or thousands of control components need swapping? How do they get the fuel for their vehicle to get to you? And food and water to survive until you put everything into place? And safety so they don't get murdered by the looters?

According to http://www.empcommission.org/docs/A2473-EMP_Commission-7MB.p..., a peak field strength of 15 kV/m is expected to cause permanent damage to computer equipment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_electromagnetic_pulse#... shows a single explosion (of unspecified yield) covering most of the US with a 25 kV/m field.

> which is the very act that triggers a full scale nuclear response because of launch-on-warning.

AFAIK the US doesn't practice launch-on-warning. Even if it did, a peaceful low earth orbit satellite launch is hard to distinguish from a not-so-peaceful low earth orbit nuke launch (unlike a conventional ICBM that's supposed to come back down). It would likely still result in nuclear retaliation, but if e.g. a dictator was already being invaded by the US, they don't necessarily have much to lose.

[jonathankoren]

You are very misinformed about how satellite launches are publicized, and about the US launch on warning policy. Even if you are too young to remember the Cold War, a simple google search will confirm this.

Again, the threat of an EMP attack is absurd, perpetuated by fundamentally not serious people.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/21/electromagnetic-pulses-...

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

> You are very misinformed about how satellite launches are publicized

Then tell me, where is the difference between North Korea saying "we will be launching this peaceful satellite of peace" and launching a spy satellite, and North Korea saying the same and launching a nuke satellite? Same orbit, same weight, contents kept secret to the best of their ability (and possibly swapped last minute in secret), same orbital timer to trigger it, only difference is whether it takes pictures or goes boom.

> and about the US launch on warning policy

https://www.armscontrol.org/act/1997-11/news/clinton-issues-... states:

Bell pointed out that while the United States has always had the "technical capability" to implement a policy of launch on warning, it has chosen not to do so. "Our policy is to confirm that we are under nuclear attack with actual detonations before retaliating," he said.

> https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/21/electromagnetic-pulses-....

This just says that a nuclear EMP attack would start nuclear war (or rather, nuclear retaliation if the EMP nuke was the only one the attacking country had/could deliver).

An EMP attack by Russia is indeed unlikely.