You also have to consider the other points Parenti makes. Every time the US escalated and the USSR had to play catch up, it was a burn on valuable resources for the USSR. They employed everything they could think of to burn down the USSR, both militarily and economically. Making more, bigger, better nukes, had the bonus of doing both I would imagine. Not to mention you are bringing the logic, of caring about life in general, to an equation that involves the US oligarchy. These are people that only have one thing in sight, absolute domination and ownership. I have no doubt a decent number of them had/have the mindset of "if I can't have it no one will." In addition, I'm sure some private military contractors were making a lot of money off all the construction that goes into making nukes, bases, submarines, etc.

So make more bombs, spend more money for our military contractors, build more bunkers and submarines. Force our targets to have to burn more of their own resources. This is what I imagine their thoughts processes were back then. Idk about now. I haven't kept up with what we have been doing with the nuclear stock pile as of recent.

We can argue about why make so many and that it doesn't make sense but none of that really matters because they did it. I'm just trying to give a hypothesis of what the reasons may be.

I'm sure at some level (setting aside the obvious desire to funnel public money into the MIC) there's planning for how future technology might make parts of the nuclear arsenal obsolete, and redundancy built in to compensate.

Missile interception is incredibly difficult now, but in 10-20 years? Submarines are undetectable now, but in 10-20 years (see the recent post about China developing new sub detection tech)? At least through the very limited lens of nuclear planning it makes some sense to give yourself different options to be flexible in the event one part of your strategy can be effectively countered at some point.

the actions of the US make it crystal clear that only with nukes can a country retain its sovereignty. so we're doing nuclear proliferation at the moment.

It's insanely profitable to Boeing mostly, yes.

They held (still hold) most of the contracts for the operating silos to this day. All the equipment had to be designed to withstand a first strike nuclear attack from the USSR. Not necessarily like a direct attack, but a nearby attack on its equivalent sites. 15 missile alert facilities per base. 10 missiles per alert facility. Three bases. Total 450 operational ICBMs under the ground with predetermined coordinates meant to strike at the most valuable military targets of the USSR, China, etc. (used to be more but Peacekeepers and others were dismantled).

Boeing designed a ton of proprietary equipment for these sites. Since it has to be hardened to EMP, radiation, heat, vibration, etc. it's over-engineered (and probably done well since it was the 1960/70s before full enshittification struck). Proprietary equipment, most of it classified for national security reasons, has to be within very strict guidelines, etc. Boeing basically holds a pistol to the Air Force's head with this shit. They can demand anything they want. Which is, of course, the entire point to a lot of this stuff. Enrich private corporations.

Yeah, that's what I find wild. They had what they announced was a successful test 18 months ago. Then in November there's a failure and all this news that it doesn't work? I dunno. Part of me thinks this is just the MIC rationalizing the $1T allocation to upgrade the US nuclear arsenal.