Mortal Threats 

Some weeks ago, I got a communication from the Nuclear Threat Initiative discussing the danger of governments sleepwalking into nuclear war. Yesterday, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman commented on a new book, jointly written by an admiral and an intelligence expert, titled 2034 –- a Novel of the Next World War. The war is with China, and it goes nuclear.

 The scenario is plausible. The pile of dry tinder waiting for a match to be thrown on it is Taiwan, and, in particular, technological capabilities of Taiwanese companies that China covets. Think of trains in the dark heading towards each other on the same track, still some distance away, but the engineers are distracted and under stress. Our leaders need to stay awake and think hard and work hard to avoid mortal threats, of which this is just one.