Herman Kahn
American physicistWikipedia
42
MENTIONS
26
EPISODES
23
PODCASTS
Search complete. 42 mentions across 26 episodes found for "Herman Kahn".
Oct 21, 2026
James CorbettHOST
We all know about the Dr.
James CorbettHOST
Strange loves that existed in places like the Rand Corporation, like Herman Kahn and others who wrote about winnable nuclear wars that will be measured in mega deaths.
James CorbettHOST
But don't worry, the other side will die more than we will, and we'll be able to rebuild from the ashes, et cetera, et cetera.
James CorbettHOST
If you do not know about that, well, Here's a handy-dandy resource for you that you should consult.
James CorbettHOST
We all know about the Dr.
James CorbettHOST
Strange loves that existed in places like the Rand Corporation, like Herman Kahn and others, who wrote about winnable nuclear wars that will be measured in megadeaths, but don't worry, the other side will die more than we will, and we'll be able to rebuild from the ashes, etc., etc.
James CorbettHOST
If you do not know about that, well...
James CorbettHOST
Here's a handy dandy resource for you that you should consult.
Mark DannerHOST
The doomsday machine.
Jon ElseGUEST
Yeah, the doomsday machine, which in fact was proposed by Herman Kahn.
Jon ElseGUEST
We can talk about the dead hand in the Soviet system later, but...
Jon ElseGUEST
So, you know, I kept struggling throughout the book with deterrence.
14 MINS LATER
Jon ElseGUEST
I'm exaggerating a little bit, but that was basically it.
Jon ElseGUEST
Another...
Jon ElseGUEST
Now there were people, including the legendary Herman Kahn, who was one of the several models for Dr. Strangelove in the movie.
Jon ElseGUEST
There were people who felt that a nuclear war, a major nuclear conflict was perfectly survivable.
Rob MorrisHOST
That is the origin.
Rob MorrisHOST
The origin of the Hudson Institute is that there was this guy named Herman Kahn who was too crazy for the Rand Corporation.
Rob MorrisHOST
I
RoryHOST
think he was a genuinely highly intelligent man, though.
Rob MorrisHOST
Rand might still have tighter relationships with, I think it was... put together by the Air Force or something like that.
Rob MorrisHOST
And this was sort of the home of the eggheads, the folks who sort of talked about Cold War, talked about nuclear war.
Rob MorrisHOST
And Herman Kahn was too nuts for the Rand Corporation.
Rob MorrisHOST
I'm not sure.
Jay DyerHOST
In fact, the former Trotskyites who had fled Stalinism took up refuge in the RAND Corporation.
Jay DyerHOST
We're talking about people like Herman Kahn.
Jay DyerHOST
We're talking about people like Irving Kristol, the father of William Kristol, the fake neocon conservative.
Jay DyerHOST
This is why neoconservatives are such big fans of T-E-R-R-O-R.
Steve RosenGUEST
which is a new concept, right? Johnny Von Neumann and Tom Schelling and these people were brought to the Rand Corporation to consult.
Steve RosenGUEST
People like Herman Kahn, Albert Wallstetter, Andy Marshall were full-time staff.
Steve RosenGUEST
The Rand Corporation said, we need the best people with the best minds that we can hire.
Steve RosenGUEST
We're going to offer salaries that are 50% higher than comparable salaries in industry.
12 MINS LATER
Steve RosenGUEST
awakening of that kind as a result of not doing what we need to do to forestall it.
Steve RosenGUEST
I've talked about this before.
Steve RosenGUEST
Hermann Kant was fond of saying, suppose the British and the French had stood up to Hitler at the time of the militarization of the Rhineland.
Steve RosenGUEST
It would have been easy.
Martin KruseGUEST
So, uh, so they were extremely broad, and they were ill-defined.
Martin KruseGUEST
Uh, whereas if you go back to Herman Kahn, you actually get a, a better sense of these long-term developments that, uh, that Nesbit was actually talking about in his definition.
Martin KruseGUEST
But if you look at the way he got, got to the results and also the results, they were-- they weren't very, um, mega trendy.
Martin KruseGUEST
We're, we're living in complex society, and so everything is changing somewhat.
David A. HughesGUEST
Defence intellectuals thus provided an intellectually sophisticated form of war propaganda.
David A. HughesGUEST
Chomsky in 1967 described the writings of prominent commentators on US foreign policy such as Arthur Schlesinger, Walt Rostow, Irving Kristol, Herman Kahn and Daniel Bell as characterised by a growing lack of concern for truth and a real or feigned naivety about American actions that reaches startling proportions.
David A. HughesGUEST
The Princeton consultants were a secret group of academics and practitioners formed by CIA director Alan Dulles in the late 1950s.
David A. HughesGUEST
They played a central role in helping to prepare the 50 or so annual national intelligence estimates.
Johnny VedmoreGUEST
All my work when I was doing the Schwab series and the second one, like Dr. Klaus Schwab, the CFR, taught me to stop worrying and love the bomb.
Johnny VedmoreGUEST
or the things Herman Kahn and the Hudson Institute were looking into.
Johnny VedmoreGUEST
They were already designing technologies way beyond our time.
Johnny VedmoreGUEST
The year 2000 and the next 200 years developed the idea of loads of different technologies.
19 MINS LATER
Johnny VedmoreGUEST
Because it's like the heart is some sort of weird folded vortex.
Johnny VedmoreGUEST
And if that stops, is there some form of an anomaly which decreases weight? That was something that came into my mind when you guys were speaking.
Johnny VedmoreGUEST
But I mean... you're right we're living in a world which we can't see all of the layers of and we can only like get clues of what the layers look like but we don't really know but if we're able to predict the future and believe it this is one of the things about scientists the reason why a lot of scientists like Herman Kahn exists and is different from all of the rest is he had extreme confidence in all of his views You had extreme confidence.
Johnny VedmoreGUEST
And if you've got humans with extreme confidence, they can see what the future looks like because they're confident that they can map it out and understand it.
Mick JacksonGUEST
In the year that I, I prepped this, this movie, 1983, the Korean airliner was shot down by the Russians, Reagan gave his evil empire speech, Strategic Defense Initiative, Star Wars started.
Mick JacksonGUEST
And people, you know, like Herman Kahn in, in the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, where I, I now live, were talking about winnable nuclear war and game theory, and I, I just thought people who talk like that and people who behave like that politically and make speeches like that, they're doing that because they have no real sense, no physical sense of what a nuclear war would be like.
Mick JacksonGUEST
You know, since the, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963, there haven't been any nuclear explosions you could watch, whoever you were, a general or a politician or whatever.
Mick JacksonGUEST
They're all underground.
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