Robert X. Cringely Quotes

Advances in weaponry go much faster than arms control.

Other things being equal, whether we have large or reduced armaments, the nation which is the strongest industrially is the best equipped for war, because the machine shop and the laboratory are becoming the two most important elements of military preparation.

Weapons are like money; no one knows the meaning of enough.

We can just assume they have much more and powerful, more advanced technology, all the new computers, everything could be much more easier and help them to build much more and many more nuclear weapons.

We have never practiced the policy of competitive armaments.

No nation, no matter how destitute, likes to be told how much military "security" to buy.

Military technology is like a continuing chess game, with no final move.

Americans will cheerfully forgo the luxury of new automobiles in order to assure adequate mechanized equipment for defense.

You really can’t blame the military for wanting to go to war [in Iraq]. They’ve got all these new toys and they want to know whether they work or not.

During the cold war, it was easy for the Pentagon to justify its budget, as the Soviets essentially sized our forces for us. We simply counted up their stuff and either bought more of the same or upgraded our technology.

The Cold War went on for so long that it bred a kind of worldwide military establishment. Even when budgets went down in the early and mid-nineties, it didn't really affect it.

We need to stop spending money on those weapons systems that do not advance national security.

For every security measure, there is a counter measure that breeds further insecurity. The acquisition by Pakistan or Iran of a nuclear capability neutralizes the security achieved by Israel’s own nuclear capability. Non-governmental terrorism neutralizes governmental military superiority. Chemical weapons neutralize the security of cement walls.

I do not regard the atomic bomb as a new weapon merely, but as a revolutionary change in the relations of man in the universe.

We disarm ourselves by making weapons so expensive.

The cause of war is preparation for war.

The arming of a government can really only be done by another government. To be really effective, aid must be governmental.

We must have a defense industry, we cannot depend on other countries for our defense. A defense industry in a small country like ours has to export to stay alive.

If peace should break out, what are we going to do with all these weapons.

The United States is the preeminent arms pusher worldwide.

I don't think we should be in the business of proliferating arms sales just to protect our industrial base.

Armament firms have been active in fomenting war scares and in persuading their own countries to increase their armaments.

the deterrent ratio might well shift to the Soviets so heavily, during the years of the [missile] gap, as to open to them a shortcut to world domination... Their missile power will be the shield from behind which they will slowly, but surely, advance...

Relatively weak countries, targeted as ‘rogue states’ and repeatedly threatened with military attack, are naturally desperate to achieve the deterrence that only weapons of mass destruction can provide.

The military capabilities of the United States need to be kept comfortably superior to those of present and potential enemies. But they should be measured relatively, against those enemies’ capabilities, and not against the limit of what is technologically possible or based on some vague urge to have more.