ABSTRACT
Everyone agrees that antiballistic missile (abm) is an exceedingly complex technological system. The history of initial failures of far simpler systems suggests that the probability of catastrophic failure of a defensive abm is quite high. Throughout the debate on the abm there has been a swirl of contention about the relative costs of offense and defense. People who are against abm claim that it would be relatively easy for the Chinese to develop simple and cheap penetration aids that would negate high-altitude defense. A more interesting charge against the abm is that its deployment would result in shifting the power to make life-and-death decisions from the President to low-level technicians, or even from persons to machines. The way in which the abm issue arose gave its detractors a special political opportunity. The most apparent rationale for opposing the Safeguard abm is lack of trust in the military.
