MAD worked. We did not go to war with the USSR.
Teller was one of the influential voices that convinced Reagan to launch Star Wars.
The panoply of new weapons systems dazzled Russian war planners. In the end, they told the Politburo to sign the treaties and end the Cold War or the USSR would go bankrupt trying to counter SDI.
Teller was right both times.
The article states or at least implies that Teller’s advocacy of Operation Plowshare, and other such projects was “loony” ... I strongly disagree. Long ago we should have worked on developing well-tuned small nukes for such purposes. If they had been developed, they could now be used in other mining operations (consider substituting for “fracking”, for example, as well as to release oil from shale) in addition to Plowshare. There may have been a body of knowledge to draw on for nuclear “bunker busters”, and rendered threats such as Iran’s deep constructions moot.
I believe that Teller was a very far-seeing man in many ways.