Sam Winter-Levy

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361 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Mar 2026 last heard 10 Mar

Sam Winter-Levy’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Mar 2026 with 1.

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80,000 Hours Podcast · #238 – Sam Winter-Levy and Nikita Lalwani on how AGI won't end mutually assured destruction (probably) · 10 Mar 2026 podcast

Machine learning algorithms can potentially rapidly analyze data from multiple sensors to distinguish actual warheads from decoys.

These things that are kind of built to mimic the radar and heat signatures of real warheads are much cheaper to deploy.

And maybe through advancements in material science, AI might produce lighter, more agile interceptors that make weapons cheaper and more maneuverable in flight.

But AI will probably still face pretty big limits here.

There are lots of really hard technical challenges.

In particular, an AI-hardened system of missile defense

is going to depend on machine learning algorithms that are trained on large, reliable datasets regarding decoys and countermeasures.

And that's data that US adversaries just have every incentive to obscure.

And, you know, US rivals could also try to confuse AI algorithms by manipulating missile tests, including disturbances or perturbations intended to poison datasets for machine learning if they believe they're going to be observed.

And then even if AI can harden missile defense systems and improve them, none of these developments will take place overnight.

Missile defense architectures take years to develop, and U.S.

adversaries will not just stand by and watch that play out.

Again, not to bombard you with papers to put in the show notes, but Laura Griego has a pretty good paper on how this offense-defense competition is likely to play out in the missile defense domain.

And attackers just maintain really significant advantages, so they can launch from unexpected directions.

They can use hypersonic missiles, which are much more maneuverable than ICBMs.

They can overwhelm defenses with coordinated salvo attacks using large numbers of decoys.

They can directly target those defense systems if they really wanted to.

So this remains, I think most experts in this area think that missile defense remains a domain that is really tilted against the defender.

Attackers just have a lot of options here for getting around missile defense.

And I think one last thing, even in a world where you have perfect missile defense, so unlikely world, but even if you're in that world, I think states can still resort to kind of more creative delivery methods.

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