The president of Pakistan tells Seymour Hersh why his army won’t do anything silly with nuclear weapons:
Our Army officers are not crazy, like the Taliban. They’re British-trained. Why would they slip up on nuclear security?
Not
entirely
convincing, given that every military coup in Pakistan’s history has been led by a British-trained general. Worse still if you start to wonder precisely which tips they might have picked up:
…until they were retired in 1998, the RAF’s nuclear bombs were armed by turning a bicycle lock key. There was no other security on the bomb itself.
Meanwhile Bruce Sterling has started his annual state of the world interview, an open Q&A which he concocts a grotesque (but plausible) interpretation of the zeitgeist. Always brilliant, it’s especially entertaining this year because his contrarian instincts compel him to be optimistic while everybody else is full of gloom. So far, he’s completely failing.