the.com/mutual assured destruction

means A military doctrine where neither side launches a nuclear first strike because both have enough weapons left to annihilate the other in response — survival guaranteed only by the certainty that attacking means dying too.

from Coined in the mid-20th century during the nuclear arms race between the US and USSR, as strategists and game theorists worked out the grim math of deterrence — if both sides could retaliate even after absorbing a first strike, launching one became suicide, not victory. The acronym MAD was no accident; the aptness was noticed and enjoyed immediately by the policy world even as the logic itself was deadly serious.