Andrew D. Todd - 4/20/2006

Consulting my files, I find that I had had some brief correspondence with Glenn Reynolds back in April, 1999. What impressed me on the whole was his apparent capacity for romanticizing war. In 1999, when there was no war to speak of, or any prospect of large overseas wars, he was an enthusiast of militias, seemingly on the grounds that militias would involve large numbers of people being personally and heavily armed. Now, of course, he has become an enthusiast of Legions. What seems to be lacking from his mentality is an understanding that war is a negative-sum game, ultimately culminating in Armageddon. He seems to have a related incapacity for what Herman Kahn called "thinking about the unthinkable," that is, about the logic of total war. In particular, Reynolds seemed unable to take in the ultimate implications of war robots. As I explained to him: "Summing up, the man is ultimately a mere impediment to the missile. Playing war is rather like playing chess: it is a simple activity in which humans are increasingly obsolete."