Early on in his career, Bertrand Russell was not the
peacenik he later became.
He was a vocal advocate of an American pre-emptive strike (involving the newest, most thorough devices available: big nuclear bombs) against defenceless pre-nuclear Russia. This may seem like a rash idea; Russell, being a mathematician, considered it a Prisoner's Dilemma. Waiting for Russia to develop the technology would level the playing field.
There is one thing and only one which could save the world [from Stalin's expantionist Russia], and that is a thing which I should not dream of advocating. It is, that America should make war on Russia during the next two years, and establish a world empire by means of the atomic bomb. This will not be done.
--Bertrand Russell, The Glasgow Forward, 1945
It does makes
some kind of moral sense, if you overlook the fact that Russia would have changed from a bunch of happy families into a collection of smouldering craters.
Luckily, anyone important enough to do anything about it tucked Russell's letters neatly away for later consideration in the circular file.
Source: Prisoner's Dilemma by William Poundstone, 1992