The political effects of nuclear weapons are also a serious consideration. American values have been affected. Our central government is larger, and the executive branch plays a larger role in foreign affairs. Interaction between strategic adversaries involves secrecy, and secrecy is difficult to reconcile with democracy. Many of these changes began before 1945, but enormous life-and-death decisions are nevertheless delegated to the president or his successors, and the circumstances may not permit congressional involvement. Knowledge of the details of nuclear targeting plans tends to be restricted to the military, and there have been cases in the past where a significant gap existed between military plans and what elected officials thought to be policy.

The distinction between acting parametrically on a passive world and acting non-parametrically on a world [of game theory] that tries to act in anticipation of these actions is fundamental. If you wish to kick a rock down a hill, you need only concern yourself with the rock's mass relative to the force of your blow. … By contrast, if you wish to kick a person down the hill, then unless the person is unconscious, bound or otherwise incapacitated, you will likely not succeed unless you can disguise your plans until it's too late for him to take either evasive or forestalling action.

The resultant dominant ideology is founded on the illusion that observed inequality is not to be explained in terms of the social power of one class or group over the other but, instead, is the result of different abilities, work ethic, etc. … Indeed, mainstream economics, and by association game theory, may be thought of as the highest form of this ideology …

Our world may have never before been so ruthlessly divided along the lines of extractive power between those with and those without access to productive means. And yet never before has the dominant ideology been so successful at convincing most people that there are no systematic social divisions; that the poor are mostly undeserving and that talent and application is all the weak need in order to grow socially powerful.