Angry Planet - Nuclear War and Imagining the Unimaginable

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

The U.S. is spending $2 trillion to overhaul its nuclear weapons. China is building ICBM silos in the desert. Russia has spent the last ten years talking about its fancy new nukes. After decades of drawdown, the world’s great powers are reversing course and rebuilding their nuclear arsenals. We have forgotten the power and terror of these weapons.W.J. Hennigan of The New York Times wants the world to remember. On this episode of Angry Planet, Hennigan discusses the Time’s new series: At the Brink. He’s spent the last year interviewing experts about the threat of nuclear war. His reporting asks its reader to imagine the unimaginable.Nuclear War Is Called Unimaginable. In Fact, It’s Not Imagined Enough.How America Made Nuclear War the President's DecisionSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. Well, can you introduce yourself and tell us about the work that you're here to talk to us about today? Sure. My name is Bill Hennigan. I am a national security writer for the New York Times Opinion section. So we met in New Mexico last year, and I was reading this piece, I was rereading it this morning over breakfast, and I was wondering, we went to the Trinity site, and I was just wondering what you were thinking when we were there, when we were at that place where the first sneak was tested. Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, for me, that was almost like kind of a, like a religious pilgrimage type of thing, you know, because there is just so much, you know, in that place because, you know, you read up, you read through history, you know, of course you got the Oppenheimer film and all the rest of that. But there's just, you think about everything, all the dominoes that were ticked off after, after that moment in 1945 with the birth of the bomb. And so, you know, I just tried to kind of, you know, think about that. And I tried to envision, you know, because it's, it's a, you know, it's a starkly beautiful place, right? I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, in the, in the, uh, summer months, so it was, it was hot, but, um, you know, you can see the rolling hills in the distance and, you know, you can kind of, you know, envision the, the, the, the, the shadow or, or, or the sound, the resonating off of, off of that. So, um, I don't know. I try to soak that in as

much as I could and just kind of think about, you know, all the things that have, that, that, that happened in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and, and, um, all the geopolitics at play ever since that moment. Um, yeah. So you've written this thing, which is part of a series. How many for the New York times, um, just kind of like, I don't want to say it's nuclear war 101, but it's almost like a refreshing of. of the topic

kind of updating it for modern audiences and really using some excellent reporting to kind of put it in the place in time we are now how many can you kind of walk us through this first piece it's time to protest nuclear war again and then I'm wondering how many more of these there are going to be in the series

sure so the the first story the brink is it's a combination. First, we had a lot of fresh reporting about the fall of 2002, when fears within the Biden administration were at its pinnacle about potential nuclear use. You remember that Ukraine was, you know, retaking territory that was lost to Russian forces.

And, you know, there was a feeling within U.S. intelligence. that, you know, if they, if they were able to break through Russian lines, you know, Putin would be, there was about, it was as high as 50% chance that Putin would would use a smaller, and I use small in air quotes. Tactical nuclear weapon. Tactical nuclear weapon to halt their advance to ensure the safety of, you know, thousands of, of Russian soldiers in Kersan, Kharkiv in the east. And so I take people through that and kind of how what the thinking was within the administration and how they rushed supplies and equipment into Eastern Europe to get over

the border into Ukraine and also the diplomatic, the feverish diplomatic push to get, you know, not only our allies, but our adversaries to also, you know, apply that pressure to ensure that the, you know, the 79-year nuclear taboos remains in place. And, but the other thing, you know, that we did was explain to readers what a tactical weapon, what the use of a tactical nuclear weapon would be like. And for that, you know, I drew on, I, you know, the first thing I did when I got hired by the times is I went to, you know, Hiroshima Nagasaki and I spoke with survivors and got their experience, their personal experiences of what occurred there. A lot of that I integrated into that scenario that I wrote. And then I was able to also draw on years and years of of scientific studies, environmental and economic modeling that, you know, drew on, you know,

what would occur. And so everything that's in those scenarios is not, you know, it's not from Bill Hennigan's head. It's all based on things that I either heard or I read. And, you know, at the end of the article, I have a, a. link there that allows readers to kind of see the number of studies that we drew upon. What I wish that we could do right now, and we can't, unfortunately, is show people the graphics and illustrations that go with the piece.

Boy, did they do a great job. What did you think? I mean, were you part of designing that stuff? Yeah. Yeah, so it was a chicken or egg thing, right? because, you know, ultimately I wrote this through and then they built the graphics off of, off the words that I wrote. And yeah, I, you know, I am continually impressed and bold over by the, by the work that the team and opinion does. I felt, you know, I read articles for a living, you know,

And I've never seen the sort of production that went into that, into the Brink article. I am just so thankful. And, you know, it's meant to be immersive for readers. So that, you know, continues to push them along to to read through the whole thing. And I know, you know, this is the thing about this. It's like writing about nuclear conflict is not easy for a number of reasons. but, you know, people not have a natural aversion to wanting to read about this topic. And, you know, to a large extent, too, I'm also mindful of the fact that writing about nuclear issues and nuclear war is almost abstract for people, you know, almost too cinematic, you know, like the asteroid that destroys the Earth kind of thing.

And I felt like these, the graphics that were done in such a way that really was able for people to kind of envision something like this occurring. for them. And it also at the same time, you know, slaps the table to say, you know, that we can't allow this to happen. We need to be more active. We need to demand that our politicians pay more attention to these issues because it's not been thought about for seriously, you know, for a generation. It's so funny because I think Matthew and I have sort of different views on this. And I think this piece helps me to understand things a little more realistically. I think Matthew genuinely believes that this could happen and may happen and is genuinely concerned. And I'm like, so tell me I'm wrong and just how wrong I am. Well, I mean, I hope you're right. You know,

I think everybody hopes you're right. And I think, you know, one of the things that I heard, you know, I had a number of conversation from within the administration. and within the military about this period of time. And this was the first time that in my reporting career, I reported on national security issues for 15 years, that I actually, you know, people were actually, it was a palpable fear about the potential use of a nuclear weapon. And I think, you know, it's easier to kind of dismiss the fact that this is not going to occur when you're talking about, you know, H bombs and, you know, the end of Los Angeles and, you know, Manhattan's wiped, vaporized or these sorts of things because, oh, this would never occur, right?

But, you know, that's kind of the, why, you know, the tactical weapon route. I mean, I followed where the reporting took me, of course, on that. But the tactical weapon is far more understandable. It's, you know, even though. Define that for us real quick. What is a tactical versus a strategic nuke? Sure, that's a great point. So, a tactic, both of these definitions are, you know, they're not rigid.

They're, you know, subjective to a large degree. But what we, everybody in this world understands is that, in the nuclear world, understands is that, you know, a tactical weapon is like a mid-range, you know, intermediate range, shorter range weapon that would be with a lower yield, you know, likely to be in the single, you know, so half of a Hiroshima type bomb, or even less, could be even sub-kilaton, whereas a strategic weapon is a long range intercontinental, you know, over-the-ocean range hydrogen bomb, you know, city, these so-called city-busting weapons.

And so, you know, the way that it's been conveyed in media, in film and, and, and, and, TV and so forth has been, you know, H-bombs, you know, it hasn't been these, these lower, lower-yield weapons. And, you know, I think we, it's important to point out that, you know, when we say lower yield, people do might just think, oh, that's just a big bomb, right? But, but let's, the biggest weapon, the biggest conventional weapon, the most powerful in the conventional arsenal is, the GBU 43, you know, the, you know, so. called Mother of All Bombs, which was, you know, used several years ago in Afghanistan on an ISIS tunnel complex. And the, the explosive yield is 11 tons of TNT. Okay. And so if you're

talking about even a half of a kiloton weapon, you know, so fractions of, you know, the 16 kiloton weapon that was used in Hiroshima. You're talking about something that's 50 times larger than the largest conventional weapon. And it's not just the explosive power, of course, as we know, it would be the radiation and the ripple effects of breaking that taboo and the fear that would set in among societies and governments about what's going to happen next because once that escalation begins,

once that threshold is passed through, there's no telling what can be the end of that. And I think, you know, again, to circle back to what your question, you know, I think that the risks of nuclear use are

are low. You know, in the paradox of the Ukraine conflict, it's it's, you know, when you Ukraine is on the march, and they're retaking territory, the risk of a nuclear use rises. But when Russia is on the march, it lowers. And right now, Russia is on the front foot here, and it's low. But it's not just Ukraine. You know, if the momentum swings in Ukraine's favor, this risk will rise, of course. But, you know, it's not just Ukraine. We have to look to, you know, future conflicts on the Korean Peninsula. And the Taiwan Straits, you know, even in the Middle East to a degree with a RANSA enrichment, you know, all of these have nuclear components that are worth thinking about and trying to steer away from, of course.

And Jason, I would also say that a big part of what has kept, what has lowered the temperature since we were kids, it's like when it was in the mid-80s, there were something like 70,000 weapons, I believe. And now we're down to like just under 13,000, right? That we are as far as best count. There's been, there was a series of drawdowns and treaties, most specifically between the United States and the Soviet Union and then the, and then afterwards the Russian Federation, that kind of established stronger nuclear taboos and saw a huge arms reduction. And now we're living in a world where most of that is gone. And new start expires in 2026, and it sure doesn't look like it's going to get renewed.

And then there won't be a major treaty for the first time in a very long time, right? Can you talk about the treaty regime and how important that is to this topic? Yeah, you're absolutely right. You know, since 1972, and even before that, but 1972, you know, this is when there was this step down from the peak of the number of weapons in nuclear stockpiles. across the globe. And, you know, and it wasn't until the 80s that really, you know, this was the Reagan administration, which is largely looked upon because of the President Reagan's early rhetoric on the Soviet evil empire and so on and so forth. You know, but at the tail end of his administration, that's when a lot, you know, this sort of safety net of agreements was, was really hammered out

with the Soviet Union and continued by, by his successors. And so, so yeah, I mean, that's, that's everything because, you know, the thing about arms control is that it's iterative. Like every, every agreement builds on the trust and the understanding of the last one. And now, you know, all of those have dwindled the way for various reasons, you know, abrogations by the Russians in the United States. But, you know, there's a feeling that I've noticed on the American side that, you know, oh, well, arms control is only holding us back. You know, it's, it's, whereas before, you know, this was a bipartisan issue that was seen as, you know, mutually beneficial. And I feel as though that a large part of that is because there is no fear.

And fear was the basis for agreements before. I mean, you know, the INF Treaty, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Agreement, which was, you know, was the first one, the first agreement to eliminate all mid-range missiles in the world, but particularly in Europe. because these weapons were highly destabilizing, right? You'd only have five minutes to, like, decide if, you know, if they, if an adversary launched on your capital. What would, you know, and so, you know, identifying those weapons that were, you know, mutually menacing and then eliminating them, you know, that was, that was the basis of this. And I think because we've had the last 25 years of relative nuclear peace, we're just not

in tune with that. And now it seems as though we're on a path to make the same mistakes that we had of the past. And when you've talked about tactical weapons, it's also interesting because that seems to be so much more the focus for. And I would guess you're not going to get five minutes, even five minutes warning of an artillery shell, right? Yeah, I mean, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's all the, you know, there's all sorts of thinking. about this. It's a funny part of the military because, you know, so much of the military is dependent upon things that have, wars that have occurred in the past and, you know, building upon that. And, you know, the nuclear realm is, is largely still game theory. And, you know,

the feeling is that an adversary would, would, you know, wouldn't try to do this secretly. They would do this very, particularly Russia, would be like, hey, we're going to go nuclear here. This is going to happen and, you know, to be able to, you know, escalate to possibly de-escalate, you know. And the tactical weapon piece of it is, is, is, you know, fascinating because there are these proliferation. Not only do you see it with, with Russia, but, you know, China has also, you know, I understand has, has ring the Pacific with, with these potential dual use, you know, both they have conventional warheads and tactical nuclear warheads. And so, but with the United States, we've been out of the tactical nuclear game, you know,

since the fall of the Soviet Union. You know, George H.W. Bush got rid of all of the tactical. We had, you know, thousands of them in various form, you know, death charges, air to air, missiles, missile defense, you know, various weapons of this magnitude and just eliminated them. And now all we have is a hundred or so stationed, you know, the B-61s that are stationed in NATO nations in Europe. And the fascinating thing about these weapons, they're seen as being, you know, more usable. Again, I'm hitting air quotes here. but because they're not the sort of mass destructive, you know, end of the world type weapons,

they're seen as being more usable because, you know, they have these sort of military applications notionally. But essentially, they're weapons of terror and everybody acknowledges that. And, of course, you got the risk that if you use a tactical weapon, you escalate, right? I mean, that's one of the great fears. Correct. I mean, that's the, that's the big fear is, and we've had various senior military officers go in front of Congress and, or speak publicly about this. the one that's occurring that's coming into my mind is General Heighton and he talks about

these scenarios don't end well I mean I'm paraphrasing I don't know if that's a direct quote but you know whenever these things are popped off on the battlefield that they escalate to the level of thermonuclear exchange right because at a certain point

the distinction between strategic and tactical is lost right A nuke is a nuke. Yeah. And, you know, I think that anybody, and that's why the sub-kiloton weapons get into this interesting, theoretical discussion. But that's exactly right. I mean, and you remember just as recently, you know, within the last, you know, eight years or so,

I remember General Mattis, then Secretary of Defense Mattis, got in front of Congress. And he said, you know, there is no such thing as, as a tactical or non-strategic nuclear weapon. They're all strategic. So, I got to, I have a question about what, how many nukes were enough? And especially with China building up, you know, at this huge scale, right? They had like 200 and something nukes for a long, long time, which I would think would be deterrent. So how many is enough for China and why is more better? Well, I mean, I think there is a point at which you get at diminishing returns.

I don't know if I want to be on the record to say how many weapons I think that, you know, any they should should should have, you know, I do feel as though, you know, there's, I understand the argument of like, you know, even if we all agreed to dis- this, we're not in this place, okay? But let's say, geopolitically speaking, that all of these, everybody agreed that we'll get rid of all of our nuclear weapons. Well, you still have the, the facilities and the scientific knowledge of how to build these weapons. So, you know, and, you know, I've seen, you know, and there's no guarantee that all of them are eliminated or verifiable. You can't verify that because who knows if there's one in a mountain or something like that. So, you know, there is this, there's going to, the deterrent, the idea of deterrence is, is always going to remain with us to some extent of, you know, you don't do this to us because if you do so, the response will be overwhelming and not worth your effort for you, you using that weapon in the first place.

I think, you know, anybody that, you know, from the scientific standpoint of talking about, well, you know, it only takes, you know, it only takes, you know, you know, know, a few dozen age bombs to completely change the world we live in. You know, I talk about the study that was done in 2020 at the end of the story that only, you know, a hundred Hiroshima-sized bombs, if that were detonated in a urban environment, would irrequibly change the face of, you know, that would set in nuclear winter and would change the world that we live in for the next generation. So, you know, with, with millions dying of starvation and because of, you know, the inability to grow crops and so on and so forth. So, yeah, it doesn't take a lot. With the weapons that we have, you know, a lot of this conversation

has been on tactical weapons, but we're really talking about strategic weapons, and the definition of a few dozen of those, we're talking about megatons here, it wouldn't take much. So you don't need all those weapons for sure. But there is a, you know, my stockpile is bigger than yours kind of mentality that will always stay with us. And again, as we enter this era of open competition, there's going to be calls in Congress. I anticipate this for it to say, hey, Russia and China has ax amount combined. We need to have as many as they do combined.

We're already seeing the pattern for that establish, I think, with the way that Congress talks about hypersonic weapons. Right. That's exactly right. Right. Because, you know, there's a perception that they, They've outrun us already, and there's a gap, you know, the strange love. We're getting into the hypersonic gap. It's a real thing. I mean, whenever they bring, they bring someone up to talk about hypersonic weapons before one of the armed services committees, they talk about it. They say that there's a hypersonic gap. The Chinese are doing this better than us, and we have to have faster missiles or

it's all going to be over. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, sometimes, you know, I know that strange love is satire and dark humor, but it is a mirror to the way that a lot of people in positions of power, unfortunately, think about these sorts of things. Jason, I would say that from the very little I know of the Chinese perspective on this, which is not a whole lot, I would say parity with the United States is probably the goal. During the couple weird clues we have about this are during the Trump administration, as Newstart was kind of starting to crumble, Trump would repeatedly say, well, we can't renegotiate New Start because China's not involved.

And China would say, hey, we've only got a couple hundred. You all have 5,000 combined, you first. And that is also kind of when we started to get information about the buildup happening. So if I were them, and I was thinking, you know, to put myself in their shoes, it is just about getting up to where my competitors are. Yeah. I think it's, I think they're, and right, you know, the, the thing that we don't have is a lot of a visibility into how and why China is doing what they're doing. And it's been the subject of a lot of

analysis. But, you know, I just, you know, what rings true to me is, is number one, what you just said, which is, you know, you're not going to start getting into arms control agreements when you're, you know, looking up rather than looking eye to eye at, you know, your, your adversaries. And then the other thing is, is, you know, this Taiwan contingency, you know, we've, we've heard G talk about, you know, the desire to, you know, reunite with, with Taiwan by force, if necessary. And I think that they want to have a robust, you know, if that ends up escalating and the U.S. gets involved and they're, you know, certainly a nuclear component to that,

they don't want to be, um, they don't, they want to be fighting, uh, without, without, you know,

having both arms in front of them. Yeah, you don't want to be dry firing strategic nukes, right? Right. All right. Angry Planet listeners want to pause there for a break. We'll be right back after this.

All right, Angry Planet listeners, welcome back. I had a question about some of the other volunteers. more volatile parts of the world. So India, Pakistan, it wasn't that long ago that they didn't have nukes. And they certainly, they have the maimed at each other. Pakistan, according to the article that you may have heard of that you wrote, you know,

that Pakistan is also, I'm sorry, India is looking towards China. do you see any special danger coming from countries that are, you know, I mean, not the most stable. Pakistan, I would say, is not the most stable. Well, I mean, the thing, previous to the war in Ukraine and previous to, you know, North Korea's, you know, eye-watering buildup that they've had over the last 10 years, you know, the big fear was between Indian Pakistan. And, you know, a few years ago, you know, there was a missile that was launched into, you know, across the border. And, you know, thankfully that did not escalate to a thermonuclear exchange. But, you know, if you could imagine something like that happening in the mid of a crisis between those two countries, absolutely, you know, absolutely. And that's the sort of thing that we, you know, nobody wants nuclear war.

Well, maybe there are some people, but, you know, nope, mostly everybody agrees they don't want nuclear war. And there's all these chucks and balances to ensure that this will not occur. But the thing is, is that, you know, the nature of humanity, you know, humanity is that these sorts of mistakes happen at inflection points that you cannot game out. And so say that, you know, that sort of inadvertent missile fire, you know, went across a border and that was interpreted amid this crisis to be, you know, the first salvo in a war, you know, that envelopes us all. We're all affected by that. And so, you know, that goes back to what we were talking about before. That's why these agreements are so essential and having these lines of communication. You know, I, I say this, you know, there was a lot of fear and loathing about North Korea launching a observation satellite, you know, and, you know, and, you know, and who knows about the, you know, the, how well of the definition that they have and all that. But my feeling is, is that's a good thing. You know, all, all nuclear powers should have as much intelligent, you know, intelligence

gathering capability that they can so that they are not misinterpreting, um, what's happening on the ground. You know, I think that's essential. Right. I think this is an important point that often gets lost when we talk about these agreements is what the enforcement regime actually looks like, which is not just America going over to your country and walking through your ICBM silos, but also, you know, Russia coming to us and walking through ours and us reporting to them. It is a two-way street.

So absolutely. And I, you know, I end the essay on the NERC, the National Reduction. National Nuclear Risk Reduction Center. Exactly. Okay. Thank you for that. I'm so thankful that you have that at your fingertips. Because the, in the State Department, because this whole facility, you know, was designed to, you know, relay the various messages.

between, you know, the Soviet Union, then Russia and the United States. And so this is sort of like metadata, okay? And that might not sound like much. But like when you're looking, when you're observing, you know, our national technical means of verifying whether or not, you know, Russia is in line with the treaty, you know, you're getting, you're getting messaging from the Russians saying, hey, you know, we're going to do. maintenance on, you know, at this site and you're going to, you know, so the activity that you're observing, you can, you can see. This is what they're doing. In the absence of having metadata like that, you know, you might interpret that as being some sort of preparation for use or something. And so, you know, having that free exchange of that information only benefits both nations.

And, you know, now with Putin, since he suspended the treaty in February of last year, none of that data is coming through. And everybody, you know, so we're back to the bad old days of like, oh, well, what's, you know, what's going on here? What are they up to? Yet's a lot of tea leaf reading, which is kind of where the, which was what I thought was kind of the most fascinating part of the beginning of the article. You're talking about Tiger team and just the Biden administration scrambling and trying to set up a team that will decide if a Duke went off. What was the process for that like? Because I really, that was probably my favorite part. Oh, thanks.

Watching, like watching this administration try to figure all this out in real time. Yeah. So, you know, it's been, what, 30 years since like the foremost mind. of, in national security are dedicating their brainwadage to, you know,

gaming out what, what this would look like. And, and right. So, four days after the invasion in 22, Jake Sullivan writes a memo and, and directs the NSC to formulate this Tiger team to be,

to come up with us, you know, a playbook, essentially of, and they call it the playbook within the administration, of various contingencies. So, you know, say a tactical weapon is used, you know, what are the diplomatic and military levers that we need to pull in order to de-escalate this or, you know, to provide

President Biden with options on to pursue on. And so, or a strategic weapon. What if a strategic weapon is used? What if a dirty bomb is used? And these, you know, that, that's, they drew on very, you know, not just, military, not just intelligence, you know, but outside scientific experts as well who could talk about the radiation effects and really get into this sort of these sorts of topics that haven't been discussed since the Cold War and haven't been thought of in real terms

since then. And, you know, within a matter of months, they were able to cobble together, you know, this having, you know, a robust package of. of options for the president. And I understand, you know, that work is ongoing. I mean, it continues to be worked on and refined as this conflict progresses. So is that, so what do we do? What's in this playbook? Do you have any idea at this point?

Well, as I said, I have a, I, you know, I wasn't allowed to thumb through it, unfortunately. No. No. How surprising. I did ask. As a good reporter, way. Yeah. But yeah, so, so, you know, that that playbook deals very specifically with, with the Ukraine

conflict. I understand that other playbooks have also been put together with, you know, in a Korean contingency and a Taiwan contingency, not just from a nuclear point of view where the Ukraine was very focused on that. But those conflicts, if they occur, have nuclear components, as we discussed. You know, what's the path forward? I mean, I feel like, you know, we're really at a place where there's going, we're destined to have this open competition between nuclear power states. You know, it's, it's, that's not a, that's not a good thing for everyone.

But what I can say is on the bright side of things is that, you know, during those dark period in the Cold War, you know, in the 80s, when everybody, you know, in 83, for instance, you know, you're talking about, you know, the day after the film, the ABC film that, you know, scared the bejesis out of everybody, you know, millions of people that watch it across the United States. and, you know, evil empire and the able Archer incident and the downing of the Korean airline and so on and so forth, where, you know, fears were high about what was going to happen. But it took something like that to, you know, this, the sort of high tension point to, to, for people in power, to understand what are we doing and to begin walking it, walking it back and establishing, you know, know, these, that safety net. So I do feel as though that, you know, nations are going to have to recognize that, oh, this wasn't just, you know, this wasn't just done for cameras and, uh, political, uh, point scoring. You know, this, this was done for, for all of us. This was, this was, mutually beneficial, um, for all nations, uh, to have this, this sort of safety, infrastructure established. So something terrible is, I'm going to have to happen.

I hope I hope nothing horrible happens, but I do feel as though that that fear is what's going to have to motivate any diplomatic advance that we might have here. I got to say, I'm actually kind of impressed with humanity that an incident that happened 79 years ago has been enough to keep us from actually nuking each other out of existence. that enough people have used their imaginations to the extent that they understand that it would be a bad idea to do this. It's pretty stunning, but I will say that, you know, a lot of luck has been involved in maintaining that, right? I mean, you know, we've had a lot of close calls over the years, and it's only been because of some low-level officers making the right decision that, you know, it hasn't resulted in this

nuclear conflagration that we all fear. And, and, you know, I think technology and information is, the ability to gather information has gotten better over the years. And, you know, we're not reliant so much upon that, that trust that we, we used to be. But, you know, this is, it's still, I think it's still inherent upon governments to ensure that that its state remains that way. Why is the decision to use these or not use these in America, one person's decision? That's a good question. I think it made a lot of sense in the early days of the Cold War, particularly before, you know, spy satellites and submarines for second strike. But, you know, that power has remained with the U.S. president since 1945 when President Truman, you know, gave the OK to drop the bomb on Hiroshima in Nagasaki in August of 45.

And, you know, there's been various, there's been a lot of speculation or analysis about this. And, you know, Congress has thought about it a few times, you know, during at the end of President Nixon's administration. when he was found to be, you know, drunk because of the stress involved at the, his travails and, you know, at the end of the, or during the Trump administration as well, because of some of Trump's comments, fire and fury and all that. And, and it hasn't changed. You know, And I think, you know, when it comes to a retaliatory strike, you know, there's 30 minutes between, you know, a missile being launched on one side of the world and coming and hitting the United States. So, you know, you have to put, you have to figure that it's probably about, that means you probably have about 15 minutes decision time when you throw in, you know, having to identify whether or not this is a real attack and where it's going to hit and, you know, you know, and then having to issue the. order and that order disseminating throughout the force and being able to retaliate.

So you probably only have about this 15 minutes or less to decide whether or not to launch a counter strike. Now, I mean, to me, adding more people to that calculus doesn't make a lot of sense, right? Anybody with a significant other, you know, deciding, you know, where you want to eat tonight, it's, you know, that's not involving, you know, earth ending decision making. So in that case, okay, president has to sign off. We all voted for this person or, you know, the majority of us did. So we'll have to entrust him or her to make the right call.

When it comes to a first strike, I think that it's inherent. You know, I think it's just necessary that the Congress takes this issue and ensconces it into law, that a president will do what we all assume he or she will do, which is convene his or her top officials, these cabinet, take their advice, and then make a decision. So, you know, as I say, and in the essay, the second essay that I wrote for this, for the series at the brink, is, you know, we should ensure that two senior members of the administration have to go on record with an up or down vote on whether or not they agree. So at least two. And there are, and there very, you know, I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know all the language involved in, but it seems

relatively easy fix that we should just ensure the fact that a president is going to do the right thing and is not going to, you know, issue, cannot issue a first strike order, you know, based on a whim or, you know, whether or not they have a good day or not. Assume is doing so much heavy lifting in that statement, yes. in the case of a second strike, what does the mechanics actually look like? How does the president order up an attack? Right. So there is a official that's with the president at all times, you know, in these crisis, emergency crisis scenarios.

And, you know, you'll remember the most famous example of this is in, 9-11. You remember when George Bush was in that room with the school children, and then there was a senior official that walked over and whispered in his ear that the United States was under attack? So that, it goes from there to the president being able to go address this crisis. And, you know, you also see with the president, a uniformed military officer with a satchel. you know, a leather satchel. And, you know, that's not a gym bag or something, you know, that's not as like a change of clothes. You know, that, though, that's, that's called the nuclear football and that is with the president at all times. And it has a list of, of the various nuclear plans, you know, should, should it be necessary. A menu, if you will. Yeah. So, right, exactly. Precisely. There's a menu. So the official would tell the

president, this is happening, the president would would immediately be dispatched to his, his senior cabinet members, as well as the four-star general or admiral that's in charge of U.S. Strategic Command near Omaha, Nebraska. And they would go over that menu. They would, they would say, hey, do you want a little a three and four? You know, they would, they would go through that. They would talk about what's actually occurring on the ground. and then, you know, present the president with the options that he or she has to pursue. And then that whatever the president decided would be conveyed through the national military chain of command and would be disseminated. Oh, I missed a step.

In order for the president to activate the plans, he would, he or she would have to read from the nuclear biscuit, have a code. that confirms who they are. You know, it's not enough to see or hear them. They have to, you know, have verifiable evidence that it is them and through this code. It's like a laminated cryptographic, Pete, like thing that I think is printed every day on a special piece of machinery. Correct. Produced by the NSA. And they just updated the machine and you can go see the old one at their museum in D.C.

Oh, wow. I didn't know that. So all of this, you know, all of this whole process that I described, it takes place in a matter of minutes. And then the order goes out to the nuclear forces that are responsible for launching a counterstrike. And then, you know, weapons away. So something I was thinking about as I was reading this portion, and I always think about this when we talk about a second strike, or like thinking about the letters of last resort in Britain, if the ICBMs are already in the air,

what's the point of adding more ICBMs into the air? What's the point of doing that second strike if you've already lost? Well, if you talk to Strange Love, you know, if there's, you know, the thing is, is that, you know, the way that this is thought about is that if there's more of us than there are them, you know, we win. I don't, you know, I'm not that I ascribe to this sort of thinking, but this, this thinking exists.

I think it's, you pose a good question. And it's, it's, uh, I, I think it ultimately boils down to, to, you know, wanting to, to survive in some way, uh, a conflict and not allow your adversary to, to come, come out on scale. I hope this is never pressed. We'll never have to face something like this. But if you have to put some rationale behind it, that's my best attempt at it. And all of that decision making happens in 15 minutes. Right, right.

Yeah. I mean, it's a hard, it's an impossible thing to fathom. and any president faced with that dilemma, you know, we can only imagine that. And you have to think, I would think, you know, am I wrong? You know, is this, is this real, you know? And, you know, there are a lot of folks that say, oh, well, you should, you shouldn't, you should have to wait until the, the missile hits to ensure the fact. that, hey, we're relying on this, this technology that is not foolproof, you know,

that it might be hacked or, you know, whatever the, whatever you want to throw on that. And so it's, you know, I don't know, 15 minutes, it's like a cigarette break or something. Fate of the world. Fate of the world in a cigarette break. Well, let's all hope it's a 100, as opposed. to just your regular standard camel. So I appreciate all the time you've given us, but I just had one more thought.

I'm trying to put myself in the mindset of the U.S. president, especially the U.S. president, but any leader, who says, first strike. You know what? It's time to end the world. There are no more safeguards. that than there are for a second strike, right? I mean, that's absolutely right. So I could just get. So it's just amazing because that's, and tell me if I'm wrong, right? That means there's no real escalation

process either. I mean, you can't say, well, we have to have been involved in a war for X amount of time, X number of soldiers have to have been killed. I mean, you know, a president could wake up and still be drunk from the night before, let's say they're Nixon, and say, first strike today, I'm going with number one. And they could really do that, right? I mean, in theory, they could absolutely do that. I think the, you know, there's, the U.S. military officer can decline any, order they deem to be illegal.

So, you know, this is, I talk about this in the essay is a former general of U.S. Strategic Command, which oversees all the U.S. nuclear forces, is asked about this in front of Congress in 2017. And he says, well, you know, if there was an order, if a president issued an order and that we didn't previously discuss and there wasn't planning involved and on all that, you know, I would, you know, I would, that would, we would, we have checks and balances to ensure that that something like that doesn't agree with. But then the, uh, the congressman or, or senator, I don't remember whom, but the, the lawmaker presses him and says, well, what if it did? He goes, you know, he gets,

he grows uncomfortable in his chair. And, and he starts, you know, uh, you know, uh, you know, chuckling about it. Well, thankfully, these are all hypotheticals that we, we've never had to deal with. And to me, that's not good enough. I cover the U.S. military for years. And they plan for everything. I mean, basically everything. There's a plan out there for all sorts of contingencies. And so, you know, that's why I feel like Congress should just act on. this and just, you know, make sure that it's a law, that the thing that we, you know, assume any rational president would do and consult their best advisors, you know, is actually what he or she has to do.

I have a couple of listener questions. If we've got a few minutes, can I get a few more minutes of your time? Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Thank you. So these are listener questions, which come from the Angry Planet Discord if you'd like. You can get access to the Angry Planet Discord.

by going to angry planetpod.com and signing up. All right. Recently, this one comes from Swing Set. Recently, declassified 1970s protocol was not to destroy enemy command and control. Do you believe this is still a paradigm or has the post-Soviet Russian doctrine exposed that the most effective and least destructive path would be to destroy their leadership? Modern Russians have nowhere near the support for their government as they did in Soviet times. There won't be a Russian hero, anada. The worst thing, well, I don't know.

lots of things could happen. Russia's a big country. But that aside, the worst thing we have to fear are dead man switches such as the K-329. Are they different enough to spare? Are they deterrent enough to spare Putin's regime? Yeah, I feel like decapitation strikes are universally understood to be, you know, highly to say, you know, the thing is you always have to have a government to negotiate with to be able to, you know, de-escalate. Whether or not that's still part of the doctrine, I can't speak on with any authority. It's not something that I've done any meaningful reporting on. And so, but I do, I do know that this is sort of, this is thought about. You know, and I think about this in terms of Kim, you know, in North Korea, because, you know, these sorts of decapitation strike has been tossed around a lot. And it doesn't, that, that, that, not having, how do you, how do you walk down a conflict if you've eliminated the one person that you know can make the decisions, uh, on, on doing that. And I think that that's, that's generally understood among the, the, uh, political types.

Whether you know, that's true on the military side, I don't, I'm not, not, I don't know if they're, everybody's convinced there. but I do feel like politicians and it could be self-serving to ensure their own survival but I do feel like there's an understanding that

that's the good for all of us. All right, I've got another set from P. Deutcher. First, from your work, how seriously should we take claims about nuclear winner? And they clarify, not saying that nuclear winter is a myth,

but more, how accurate do you think the predictions of the impact? of nuclear weapons usage have been? I mean, this is a pretty robust science, and I think that's, you know, kind of the, you know, hopefully we never have to experience something like this. And I also feel as though that we're drawing on science

and figures that are, that were, you know, of tests that occurred, you know, at a time when, you know, we have more computing power in our phones than they had in the entire room, right? So, so yeah, I mean, obviously the modeling is based on, on older data, but, you know, my feeling is in, you know, this, like, you know, we, Alan Robuck is, is one of the foremost scientists on this issue, you know, I trust him, you know, I trust, I trust, I trust this figures, of course. So, so that is something that I think, you know, should, you know, should, that I feel like is, is a reliable source.

And let's, you know, that aside, a hundred Hiroshima-sized bombs going off. You know, he was the main author on that, that nuclear winner, our study that I mentioned before, a hundred. That's not good. No better what. You know, nuclear winner or no, you know, this is, this is, that's, we don't want to be around in that post-strike world. We didn't note this at the time during the conversation,

but the place we are most concerned of a tactical is one of the grain baskets of the world, right? Yeah, and I mentioned this in the scenario because it's important to understand that, you know, let's say, you know, where they were fearing the, use of a smaller, a single kiloton type of weapon in the east of Ukraine, you know, there's a big farming, grain farming in that region. And let's just say that because of the weather that day or whatever, that those, that the crops were not affected. You know, we can go down the road if they

were, but I prefer to say, like, let's just say that they weren't. Because the fear that they were you know, somehow contaminated would be so pervasive, it be impossible to dissuade, you know, people from, you know, saying, I don't want that. I don't want anything from Ukraine being sent. And Ukraine provides grain, not only in Europe, but throughout the North Africa and in the Middle East. And so, you know, that would, that would, you know, something like that would have all sorts of ripple effects about, you know, about being able to provide food for the, for, for the world. And it's, it's a critical thing to know that it's not even just about the fact that it could be contaminated from the radiation, but that the fear among people would, would be enough to, to, you know, throw a wrench in the cogs.

All right. And this one, we kind of, we just finished talking about it, but I just want to highlight it again. And they did ask. your article about nuclear decision making, in your article about nuclear decision making, you say it's the president and only the president's decision. Is this really true? Daniel Ellsberg extensively talked about how nuclear control has been delegated

in order to counter the risk of a decapitation strike. Yeah, I mean, you know, what we know about this is, it's foggy, but, you know, the understanding that anybody who's been on the inside, and, you know, I spent a lot of time, talking to to various people about this is that, you know, that power remains with president. It's a, it's kind of a, and as I quote Jake Sullivan in the story, because I talk to him about this, and it is something that the Biden administration is looking at. They're considering, you know, adding more oversight to that process, you know, in the last year of their administration,

it's probably no coincidence. But, You know, it's seen as a kind of a theological type of issue, you know, that the president, the president has this power alone to, you know, to make that decision to use nuclear weapons. And that is all they got. And I think it's a good place to end the conversation. Great. When is the next piece in this series, Trump? Sure. So I think, you know, I'll be writing throughout the year on various issues and, you know, particularly as things come up in the news, I'll write about them. But, you know, I think you can expect, you know, one, a core, these sort of experiential articles like, like you saw with the brink. I think you can expect, you know, one of those every few months, you know, And, you know, but there will be various things in between.

But those sort of destination, you know, experiential essays that you saw with a brink, there'll be several of those throughout the year. Perfect. Thank you so much for coming on to Angry Planet and walking us through this. Oh, my pleasure. I really enjoy the conversation, guys. Thank you. That is all for this episode. Angry Planet listeners, as always.

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