Cohn went into the experience as an avowed nuclear disarmament activist, but soon found it nearly impossible to put forth a perspective based on nuclear disarmament.

Her essential conclusion was this: Within the bounds of Technostrategic Discourse, the reference point is not human beings but weapons. In other words, when using this language, it's impossible to articulate a perspective that reflects human and ecological concerns, since the weapons are inherently the subject of everything you say. As Cohn writes, "there is no way to talk about human death or human societies when you are using a language designed to talk about weapons. Human death simply is 'collateral damage' -- collateral is the real subject, which is the weapons themselves."

So it with these articles about the RRW. The author, Haninah Levin, addresses technical issues such as the labs' struggles to increase "performance margin" and their alteration of the "change-control discipline" paradigm. Levin relates the official history -- emphasis on official, since what's official and what's true are usually mutually exclusive in this case -- of the Stockpile Stewardship Program and how it evolved into the RRW.

Levin then frames the debate regarding the desirability of the RRW around the issue of plutonium pit aging. Some say plutonium pits erode relatively quickly over time, so we need to create new ones. Others -- and these are the author’s chosen critics of the RRW, mind you -- say the pits actually are “reliable,” so there's actually no need to create new ones. At the extreme critical edge of the perpsectives presented here are those who say it won't be possible to create new warheads without first testing them; thus, we might want to at least think twice about pushing forward with the RRW.

The overriding concern of all of these parties is maintaining or increasing the "reliability" of the US nuclear weapons stockpile. What makes this a fitting illustration of Cohn's thesis is that "reliability" is virtually a synonym for "capacity to inflict death and destruction" in this context; yet, even to these critics of the RRW, maintaining the highest nuclear weapons "reliability" is an unquestionable good.

Again, the well-being of nuclear weapons -- not people or the ecology -- are always the point of reference in Technostrategic Discourse.

Personally, I'm not opposed to the RRW because I view it as a faulty way of maintaining the "reliability" (again, read: destructive power) of US nuclear weapons, but rather because I want to see the US work toward the elimination of all its nuclear weapons. The RRW will lead us down a twisted path heading somewhere in the opposite direction. The RRW is yet another technical and intellectual framework to allow the US nuclear weapons complex to retain nuclear weapons as the centerpiece of US foreign policy for many years to come.

I'm also opposed to the RRW because all evidence points to its central purpose being the creation of a vast new generation of more destructive nuclear weapons, with the likely consequence of pushing the world into a new nuclear arms race. The first RRW pits are slated to replace "aging" pits in the W76 Trident warheads, which are in the midst of a $2.5 billion upgrade. Meanwhile, the US has been upgrading many of its delivery systems, Re-Entry Vehicles (another piece of Technostrategic jargon if ever there was one), and other nuclear weaponry components for years. Unless you believe it's purely a coincidence that this country has poured billions of dollars into upgrading all of its components for nuclear weaponry, and is now spending billions of dollars to build hundreds of new nuclear warhead explosive triggers, you start to get an idea of what the RRW is really for: outfitting upgraded nuclear weapons with upgraded plutonium pits, as part of a major upgrade in the US nuclear weapons stockpile at large.

Linton Brooks, chairman of the National Nuclear Security Administration (the main agency charged with overseeing US nuclear weapons programs), described the purpose of the RRW thusly in a speech before the East Tennessee Economic Council in March:

“In 2030, our Responsive Infrastructure can also produce weapons with different or modified military capabilities as required. The weapons design community that was revitalized by the RRW program can adapt an existing weapon within 18 months and design, develop and begin production of that new design within 3-4 years of a decision to enter engineering development – again, goals that were established in 2004. Thus, if Congress and the President direct, we can respond quickly to changing military requirements.”

Just as the Stockpile Stewardship Program was not really about stockpile stewardship, but was moreso about researching and designing new nuclear weapons, the RRW is not totally about replacing existing warheads, but moreso about creating a family of new and more destructive ones. Even Linton Brooks, whose job description as head of the NNSA inherently entails lying and equivocating to serve the interests of the nuclear weapons complex to the maximum degree, comes close to admitting as much. Yet, this elementary truth about the RRW is significantly marginalized in the Techno Strategic discourse-laden pieces at DefenseTech, and it’s scarcely been brought up in any mainstream media coverage of the issue to date.

In making this critique of arms control discourse, by no means do I mean to imply that we should fail to learn the dominant techno-speak of the nuclear weaponeers. To the contrary, I think this language is essential to learn, at least partially, but only to the extent that we recognize its inherent limitations and incorporate it as part of our strategy to achieve nuclear disarmament. And, if our primary goal is nuclear disarmament, by no means should we ever endorse a Techno-Strategic analysis of an issue as important as the RRW.