Shared information is the primary thing I was getting at. I used idea spread since different government bureaucracies had different ideas of how nuclear weapons should be used in the case of war, and if SAC's plans were well known at the highest levels of government when they were first made, they likely would not have persisted as long, and been replaced with better ideas.
The book I cite, but which may be hard to find online (Danger and Survival) goes through many policy ideas which weren't considered by high level policy makers, but which may have been beneficial in retrospect and which were sometimes thought of by others, but not put forward to policy makers.
Shared information is the primary thing I was getting at. I used idea spread since different government bureaucracies had different ideas of how nuclear weapons should be used in the case of war, and if SAC's plans were well known at the highest levels of government when they were first made, they likely would not have persisted as long, and been replaced with better ideas.
The book I cite, but which may be hard to find online (Danger and Survival) goes through many policy ideas which weren't considered by high level policy makers, but which may have been beneficial in retrospect and which were sometimes thought of by others, but not put forward to policy makers.