First-Strike Stability: A Methodology for Evaluating Strategic Forces

TL;DR — RAND R-3765-AF. The framework for asking whether a nuclear posture makes striking first rational.

RAND, Project AIR FORCE, R-3765-AF.

The question is not who would win but whether the structure of the forces rewards going first — the condition under which a crisis becomes self-accelerating. Kent and Thaler build a formal way to score a posture on that axis rather than on raw counts.

The intellectual move generalises: it is an argument about incentive structures under uncertainty, and it reads as such.

Where this came from

• Will Manidis’s “most underrated PDF” thread

100 pages. A copy is archived locally against link rot; the header links the original source.