https://www.warhistoryonline.com/cold-war/refused-to-launch-... - This isn't even the incident I was searching for to reference! This one was news to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov#Incident - This is the one I was looking for.
previously no-one had spent trillions of dollars trying to convince the world that those computers were "Artificial Intelligence"
There was a time when people wanted to dig tunnels with nukes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare
The article seems to be about mining rather than tunnelling.
And the issue with the idea being? We also dig using explosives, there isn't an in-principle problem. Reading the wiki article it looks like the yields were excessive, but at the end of the day mining involves the use of things that go boom. It is easy to imagine small nukes having a place in the industry.
This relies on processes being in place to ensure that a human will always make the final decision. What about when that gets taken away?
Overall, though, the offense always wins this one because interceptors can only protect a limited area whereas missiles can go anywhere.
Patriot missiles ($7MM) take out Scuds ($3MM).
If they had, then we wouldn't be having this conversation. For all we know, there may be a vast multiverse of universes some with humans and we would only find ourselves having this conversation in one of the universes where no human pressed the button.
First, people being rubber stamps for AI recommendations. And yes, it is not unreasonable that in a dire situation, someone will outsource their judgment (day).
Second, someone at the Pentagon connecting the red button to OpenClaw. "You are right, firing nukes was my mistake. Would you like to learn more facts about nukes before you evaporate?"
[1]: https://nitter.poast.org/elder_plinius/status/20264475874910...
Humans are fundamentally lazy. The brain is an "expensive" organ to use.