I hate to keep bringing up Dr. Strangelove, but

For example, of the 12,500 targets in the SIOP at that time, one of them was slated to be hit by 69 consecutive nuclear weapons. It seems superfluous to say that this is crazy, but it is important to understand how the planning process could result in such a figure.

One misconception you may have is that the people who plan our military adventures are cold, calculating bureaucrats who comb through huge quantities of data and calculate invasions, bombings, and coups d’état with analytical precision. That would in fact be hateful and frightening.

Spreadsheets are involved and there are huge quantities of data. And bureaucrats, lots and lots of bureaucrats doing this work. But they’re all completely insane.They have abstracted the world so completely that there is no longer any connection to the ordinary evil of war; they live in another place. Remember that next time you’re watching the news and we do something tragicomic on a huge scale.

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