Sambal

Anyone can be broken.

If torture were so ineffective, why would it have been used by the Inquisition, the Nazis, the KGB, and the Vietcong/NVA? I think the simple answer must be that torture is effective for certain goals, as long as you are willing to tolerate its problems:

1. To truly break someone you need lots of time. That basically throws out any utility in the 24-hour nuke scenario.

2. Once someone is broken they will tell you whatever they think you want to hear, including many creative and fanciful lies, and possibly even the truth.

So if you’re willing to take the time and sift through the chaff, torture might be worthwhile as an intelligence extraction method.

What torture is really good for, though, is a behavior-modification method. That’s what the KGB was doing with it — they wanted their victims to stand up in the show trials and declare of their own free will that they were enemies of the state, that they were bad people, and that they should be punished. (Notably, the Inquisition wanted the same thing.)

Torture is effective to support propaganda efforts, not intelligence-gathering.