An aggressor's first strike will try to take out as many of yours as possible, only the ones that survive will be available for a counter-strike. So the more you start out with, the better the deterrent. Its the guy who plans to shoot first who can afford to go on the cheap. He only has to hit your silos, and have just a few left over. His silos will be empty. In fact, he doesn't need silos at all if he's planning on shooting first.

And look out for the honest guys. They have every incentive to lie to themselves. Its the DIShonest guys who realize when they have to abandon a tall tale because people are not likely to believe it any more. The True Believers will never run out of excuses.

No, there are already enough examples of wasteful spending without having to come up with theories about the SST. For example, we put highly accurate silo-busting MIRVs on our submarine-launched missiles (a first-strike weapon on a purely defensive, counterstrike, MAD-type delivery system) simply because it made our defense contractors rich. About the same time, we canceled an upgrade of our hardened silos (a purely defensive, second-strike weapon) to pay for it.

Only great restraint by Soviet war planners prevented them from launching a preemptive attack. If I had been in their shoes, I would have looked at the evidence and taken the first swing.