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Annie Jacobsen on Nuclear War - a Second by Second Timeline
1k Plays7 months ago
Annie Jacobsen joins the podcast to lay out a second by second timeline for how nuclear war could happen. We also discuss time pressure, submarines, interceptor missiles, cyberattacks, and concentration of power. You can find more on Annie's work at https://anniejacobsen.com
Timestamps:
00:00 A scenario of nuclear war
06:56 Who would launch an attack?
13:50 Detecting nuclear attacks
19:37 The first critical seconds
29:42 Decisions under time pressure
34:27 Lessons from insiders
44:18 Submarines
51:06 How did we end up like this?
59:40 Interceptor missiles
1:11:25 Nuclear weapons and cyberattacks
1:17:35 Concentration of power
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Transcript
Introduction and Book Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Future of Life Institute podcast. My name is Gus Docker and I'm here with Annie Jacobson. Annie is an investigative journalist and the finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the author of, I think, six books on history. Is that right, Annie?
00:00:17
Speaker
This is the seventh, yes it is. This is the seventh. What we're talking about today is your latest book, which is called Nuclear War, A Scenario. So what is that scenario? What do you do in this book? Just introduce it to us. Yes, I'm going to set it up by talking for a brief second about those first six books, because that's what led me to nuclear war. And when I say that, I just mean this in sum. I write about war and weapons.
00:00:46
Speaker
national security and secrets. And every one of those books on the CIA, on the Pentagon, on specific military bases, on CIA paramilitary programs, hundreds of people in each book, all of those books all fundamentally come down to one thing.
00:01:06
Speaker
to prevent or deter nuclear war. You know, how many octogenarians who dedicated their lives to national security, be it, you know, as the director of science and technology at the CIA or a general at the Pentagon have said to me, Annie, my life was about preventing World War III and we did it. These are the Cold Warrior speaking, right? And so here we find ourselves, the younger generation,
00:01:36
Speaker
at this time and place, this moment in history. And I wonder, what if deterrence fails? What if this idea of prevention doesn't hold?
00:01:50
Speaker
What if someone launches a nuclear weapon?
Questioning Nuclear Deterrence
00:01:55
Speaker
And that became the premise of this book, Nuclear War a Scenario. I interviewed scores of national security folks who've dedicated their lives to this issue, very close to the president, presidential advisor, STRATCOM commander, CIA director, White House chief of staff, to find out from them the ticking clock scenario
00:02:19
Speaker
of how this would unfold. And I'm literally shocked, and I wrote the book. Would you question this concept of the turns? What led you to question that concept?
00:02:32
Speaker
Inside Baseball, national security people like myself and probably yourself love to kind of go inside to YouTube videos of Stratcom commander testifying for Congress, et cetera, et cetera. And certainly during the pandemic with a little extra time on my hands and with a president in office that many individuals here questioned
00:02:56
Speaker
the fundamental concept of sole authority. So this idea came back to the fore, into the discussion. And I noticed a lot of STRATCOM commanders and deputy commanders and whatnot talking about deterrence. And the sort of more inside baseball I got, meaning I would look at like more private
00:03:17
Speaker
not classified, but private events among military people. I noticed, and I quote them in the book, of course, these, you know, for example, the deputy director of Stratcombe saying, you know, deterrence holds kind of like this with this authoritative voice. But if it doesn't, everything unravels. And that word unravels began to haunt me.
00:03:43
Speaker
What does that unraveling look like? And the number one most shocking original out of the gate, oh my God, is just how fast it all unravels. And that's why
00:03:59
Speaker
The ticking clock scenario concept I think is so terrifying and hopefully so effective because the point of this book is not to unnecessarily terrify people, it's to realistically inform people of just what a razor's edge we all stand on because suddenly this idea of certain authoritarian leaders or dictators are talking about the possibility of nuclear use.
00:04:28
Speaker
I think it's worth sketching what the terms means in kind of traditional terms. How have we thought about the terms? What does it mean? And yeah, before we talk about why we should question the concept. Absolutely. And I'm with you on that because, you know, one of the things is like the nomenclature, the kind of esoteric language around nuclear weapons, I find is set up to intimidate people. It's set up to kind of divide people between, you know,
00:04:58
Speaker
us and them, and I had not previously been in us. It's like, and I find that dangerous. And so you can really break things down easily. And by the way, the sources that I work with are usually the smartest people in the room. And what I have found over the course of my reporting career is actually the smartest people in the room, if you ask them,
00:05:23
Speaker
will explain things very simply because they can. It's like Einstein said, you know, if you really know what you're talking about, you should be able to explain it to a child. Right.
Rogue Nuclear Launch Scenario
00:05:33
Speaker
We're all children here when it comes to nuclear weapons and we have to be adults. Right. So deterrence to deter.
00:05:40
Speaker
basic word we all learned in high school, like to prevent, right? But here's another thing I'll say to our listeners here is that many people have heard of the concept of mad, right? Mutual assured destruction.
00:05:57
Speaker
And many people go, oh, yes, I'm familiar with that concept. That's why there is no nuclear war, mutual assured destruction, which folds right in there with the concept of deterrence. Meaning, you know, one side, let's just use the US and Russia, one side has
00:06:15
Speaker
a stockpile of nuclear weapons pointed at the other guy. And the other guy, in this case Russia, has a stockpile of nuclear weapons pointed at the other. And each side would be absolutely mad to launch a nuclear weapon because of mutual assured destruction. It would guarantee that we would all die.
00:06:38
Speaker
But of course, you and I both know that after you come up with the concept of mad, then other concepts follow first strike, you know, and then it becomes game theory on its head about how to outfox mutual assured destruction. True.
00:06:57
Speaker
What you do in the book is walk through a timeline of events and maybe tell us about what is the scenario you're envisioning here. Who's launching a nuclear attack against who? One of the most interesting and disturbing ideas I came across when I was deciding what makes the most sense to have the scenario happen, once I began to learn
00:07:21
Speaker
how it unfolds in literally seconds and minutes and then hours, was, well, what is the plausible ignition? Because many authors, and certainly fiction authors, because remember this is a nonfiction book,
00:07:38
Speaker
it's been called dystopian nonfiction because how it ends is with nuclear winter. So many people have written hypotheticals about how it could happen, right? If Russia does this or China does this, but I was less interested in that, in the political gaming out of it, of the how I was more interested in if-ness happens, if deterrence unravels, boom.
00:08:02
Speaker
And that's why it begins in the first fraction of a second, which is when United States' incredible satellite technology can first see the nuclear launch. So the way I came to the idea, you asked how to start it.
00:08:17
Speaker
who starts it, was in a discussion I had with Richard Garwin. And if you're not familiar with Richard Garwin, Richard is now 93, maybe he's 94, and he drew the plans for the world's first thermonuclear weapon. Everyone's familiar with Edward Teller, and they call him the father of the hydrogen bomb, thermonuclear bomb.
00:08:40
Speaker
when in fact, Richard Garwin, when he was 23 years old, drew the plants. And this is actually not even written in some of the most famous books about the hydrogen bomb because it wasn't declassified or known until about 10 years ago, right? But Richard Garwin unequivocally drew those plants. And in a discussion that we had about this, he raised the concern with me of kind of the madman theory, the idea
00:09:09
Speaker
that there are people, and Garwin specifically mentioned Napoleon, who follow this logic of a premoi le deluge, which is like after me, the flood. You know, if I die, may everyone die.
00:09:23
Speaker
And so that hypothetical, which I figured out actually terrifies everyone, or rather I should say many in Washington, is the premise. It's what is called a rogue launch. In nuclear nomenclature, it's called a bolt out of the blue attack, which is actually pretty easy for we laymen to understand because
00:09:48
Speaker
It is literally a bolt out of the blue. It's like all of a sudden there's a nuclear weapon coming our way. That is how it begins. And the first interesting thing to me to learn was we don't learn about the nuclear weapon coming our way when it destroys a city. We, the Defense Department, learn about it in the first fraction of a second after launch because of our satellite technology.
Detection and Response Challenges
00:10:18
Speaker
I was suddenly like, oh my God, you have a narrative, the mad ruler who launched, and then you have the technology. And that's what I think I do in nuclear war scenario is weave these concepts together in this horrifyingly tight knot, because that is what it is. It's just a big giant of what happens next.
00:10:40
Speaker
You mentioned that the US will know about this strike within seconds. Maybe take us through what happens within the first, say, 10 seconds or a minute, because what's really fascinating, what really struck me about this book is how quickly all of this happens. And also perhaps tell us about how we know when these different steps happen.
00:11:03
Speaker
Yes, yes. So, you know, satellite technology, we think of like we're doing this interview right now, thanks to Wi-Fi, thanks to satellite technology. Not that long ago, as in 1957, there was only one satellite and that was Sputnik. The Russians beat us into space. And now all these years later, there's something like 9,000 or more.
00:11:27
Speaker
Satellites circling the earth and yes many of them do great things like what we're doing right now and communication and GPS and television, etc, etc, etc, but
00:11:38
Speaker
The Defense Department satellites do a very specific set of satellites, which are called SIBRS, right? And that's the Space-Based Infrared System of Satellites. And what the SIBRS satellites do is they are parked, essentially, in Geosync, 22,000 miles up, one-tenth of the way to the Moon.
00:11:59
Speaker
parked there, this massive school bus sized satellite with sensors, literally the size of like a car. And they are looking down at the hotspots. They are looking down at the launch pads of the nuclear armed nations so that they know in the first fraction of a second, not even one second,
00:12:25
Speaker
when that missile launches. And of course, the obvious question is, wait, how do they know? Well, as explained to me by various missile experts, including Ted Postle, who is an amazing resource for all of this, that these satellite sensors can measure the plume on the hot rocket exhaust. So you can visualize this, suddenly it becomes a reality.
00:12:51
Speaker
You see this launch, you know, ICBM, this giant, you know, 60 foot tall missile. It's in North Korea. It's on a road mobile launcher, which itself is astonishing. The thing has, you know, 22 axles.
00:13:09
Speaker
We don't have road mobile launchers in America, by the way, but they do in Russia and North Korea. And the reason we don't have them is your average American doesn't want an ICBM driving through their town. But that's OK in North Korea. And so they have these road mobile launchers, this thing in the scenario.
00:13:28
Speaker
is taken out into a dirt field, as we have seen happen in testing, and it's launched, and the SIBRS Defense Department satellite sees it in less than a second. And there begins this absolute massive five-alarm fire alert, literally.
00:13:50
Speaker
Before we go into that, actually, I would want to know what's the probability of a false positive there? If we have the satellite looking at a launch platform for a nuclear weapon in, say, North Korea, a mobile launch platform, how do we know that we don't get a false positive such that we think there's a launch when there isn't a launch?
00:14:11
Speaker
Yes. Okay. So it's a great question. Well, first of all, most of the nuclear armed nations, like for example, Russia announced their ICBM launches to other countries. And this is true even during the Ukraine war, because no one wants to start a nuclear war by accident, right? So people let others know. And, you know, countries have been known to suspend launches during
00:14:34
Speaker
times of great tension for exactly that reason you're talking about. The exception to the rule is North Korea. If you talk to the North Korean missile experts, they will tell you North Korea does not announce its launches. They just want to be powerful. They want to flex, as we could say. So how do we know it's not a mistake? Well, they launch
00:14:56
Speaker
missiles over the sea and so the computer systems and zippers, because remember you have this satellite system in space, but it communicates with ground systems. That is why it is called a system of systems. And so the data that gets sent down to the Earth, that machine learning is set and understands, I'm speaking in layman's terms here, that the trajectory of this launch is going to send it over the sea or the trajectory of this launch is sending it into space.
00:15:25
Speaker
And that is where those first few seconds are so critical. And I literally take you through the first seconds in the book through these different locations of what happens at the Aerospace Data Facility in Colorado, what happens at Fort Belvoir in Washington, what happens at the Pentagon. Because these different alerts bring everyone who is in the nuclear command and control system into focus on this event to categorize
00:15:54
Speaker
the nature of this launch. And that is where the mechanisms of this system are just so remarkable because you realize how many people are on it, right? But also at the same time, there's absolutely no action to take except for counter-attack if it's an actual launch. I mean, we can get into the interceptor program, which is its whole other shocking discussion. But yes, those are the first seconds of launch and they are very methodical.
00:16:24
Speaker
How do we distinguish between an actual launch and something that looks to the satellites and the machine learning system like a launch? Well, there are thousands of them all the time. The Defense Department is constantly there. If you, again, the nerds sort of go deep into the Defense Department videos, they actually for
00:16:47
Speaker
released some footage from the command center beneath Cheyenne Mountain. And it's remarkable because it's actual video footage. This was done during COVID and I've never seen this before. And you can see this, you know, it looks like something out of the movies with a giant like kind of IMAX type screen with maps of the world and you can see launches going off, right? So
00:17:11
Speaker
This is satellites are being launched. Short-range ballistic missiles are launched. We have our eye on all the missiles in Ukraine and we can see what is how we, the Defense Department, can see all of this. The question is, or rather the specifics are, that the SIPR satellites are focused on those launch pads that might, or in the case of North Korea, a road mobile launcher that might launch an ICBM.
00:17:39
Speaker
It's going to be very different from what a launch looks like, you know, in Donbass. Do you think there's any probability that something that's not a launch would be picked up as a launch, like a cloud floating over the platform? Or I don't know what's realistic here, whatever it might be.
00:17:57
Speaker
this exactly happened there. In the book, I do take you, I stop the action sometimes to give you these small history lessons, right? And one of the readers said to me, I thought I would like get a rest from the horror by reading these history lessons and the history lessons themselves are terrifying for exactly that reason. So once in the early to mid 90s, Yeltsin was president, there was a launch, like sort of a
00:18:26
Speaker
It was a science project between Norway and the United States to gather some data from the atmosphere. They were looking at sort of climatology, climate issues, I believe. And this launch was mistaken by an early warning system in Russia for an ICBM launch. And this is the only known time
00:18:49
Speaker
that the Russian equivalent of the football, right? So many listeners are familiar with the fact that the president walks around with this brief, or rather his military aid walks around with a briefcase that has the nuclear launch codes in it. And Russia, because of what we call parity, has the same, essentially the same systems more or less. And that is the only time in history that
00:19:11
Speaker
The Shaget, their football is called, was opened, which is just like the razor's edge of Armageddon. And then it was determined that this was actually, as you would say, a reporting error and the Shaget was closed. Yeah, you talk about at least six close calls where we could have had nuclear attacks and nuclear war in the book. I think we should talk about those. But first, let's go back to these first critical seconds.
00:19:41
Speaker
What happens after a launch is detected? Who knows about it first? And how is that signal transmitted through the entire kind of military and governance apparatus?
Presidential Authority and Decision-Making
00:19:53
Speaker
It's amazing how fast the next big action happens. All that information has to get to these three primary command centers, which are all underground. These are the nuclear command and control bunkers. And so within seconds, the information from the
00:20:11
Speaker
from SIBRS goes to the Aerospace Data Facility. The National Reconnaissance Office works with the NSA, works with the Missile Defense Agency. There's a number of agencies that are all processing this information. The Defense Department is built on what we call redundancy. But within seconds, all the information lands at, there's a bunker beneath the Pentagon.
00:20:34
Speaker
There's a bunker inside Cheyenne Mountain, and there's a bunker beneath Offit Air Force Base in Nebraska, which is STRATCOM, that's U.S. Strategic Command. So the simplest way to think about this, and by the way, this is how people on the inside explained it to me, Cheyenne Mountain is the brain, okay? It's the brain that pulls it all together. The Pentagon is the beating heart.
00:20:57
Speaker
The bunker under the Pentagon was created as a war room right after World War II. Then Stratcom off at Air Force Base, the bunker beneath there, is the muscle. So they each have their individual roles, but those three command centers now within seconds after launch are on it. And why are they on it? Because the next big action that has to happen
00:21:22
Speaker
And you're like, they have to notify the president, right? So, oh my God, it just goes, boom, that's it? And yes, there now will be a few minutes of verification. But all of these individuals, specifically, no RAD commander is figuring is going to probably be the one to brief the president with SACDEF.
00:21:48
Speaker
who is most likely in the Pentagon, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, most likely in the Pentagon, with Stratcom commander kind of in the wings. If there was action to take, he would take on, and they must get ready to brief the president. Now, this has happened maybe three or four times, and I write them in the book. I've interviewed Secretary of Defense, former Bill Perry, for example, who
00:22:12
Speaker
was in one of these situations, woken up in the middle of the night where he thought he was gonna have to be brief the president and didn't, right? So the de-escalation process is now if it's gonna happen. But there are only minutes and the confirmation. So if president gets told probably around five or six minutes after launch, that's how long it takes
00:22:38
Speaker
to determine the reason to reasonably determine the trajectory of the ICBM, right? Like, is it going to over the sea? Is it headed to Hawaii? Is it going to Moscow? Or is it coming to the continental United States? And as the powers that be get ready to brief the president, then
00:22:58
Speaker
The entire system is also preparing for what must be a secondary confirmation, and that comes from the ground radar systems that are positioned around the world and have been in play since before satellite technology gave that initial bell ringer in the first fraction of a second.
00:23:23
Speaker
So in those five minutes, how much leeway is there to make a decision based on your personal sense of what's going on, as opposed to just acting in accordance with the law? I imagine that the people you're talking about now in the US governments have very strict legal responsibilities to act in a certain way.
00:23:48
Speaker
But we know that previously in history, in the USSR, for example, we've had close calls where the personal actions of key people in the chain prevented a nuclear launch. So how much leeway is there in the system and how much are the people involved acting on the strict legal requirements?
00:24:15
Speaker
I was having a discussion yesterday with a Los Alamos scientist who's also the classified historian there. And he said to me, I was having this exact question, we were talking about whether or not people or this, what he called sort of like misconception that a military person would disobey protocol. And he said to me, you have a better chance at winning Powerball than banking on someone in the nuclear command and control defying orders. That's not how it works.
00:24:43
Speaker
With that said, it's a great question. And that is something that would come up, I imagine, right before those keys turn for a US counter strike, right? But now would not be the time to debate. Now would be the time for the entire nuclear command control and communication system to be working, flexing to try and determine what the hell is going on. And then immediately followed
00:25:11
Speaker
by what actions to take. I think now's a great time to mention a really important fact here, which is presidential sole authority in the United States. If you do a Google search and you type in, can the US president launch a nuclear war? Interestingly, you get an answer that says, it says,
00:25:35
Speaker
Not really. I mean, I'm paraphrasing and it's like, it's fascinating to me that that is just fundamentally not true. Okay. So Congress did, and I cite this stuff in the book. Of course, my book has the scenario and then there's a hundred pages of notes in the back, but Congress handled this exact question. They have a congressional research service that will like look into a subject and put out an open source document for all to read. And this question came up
00:26:02
Speaker
during the Trump, North Korea fire and fury debates during his administration. And so Congress put out this report that said, yes.
00:26:11
Speaker
The President has sole launch authority. He does not need to ask anyone, not the Secretary of Defense, not the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, not Congress, period, full stop. And so you can't really say yes, sort of no. The answer is yes. That is the answer, right? And if you do watch STRATCOM commanders talk about this, there is a lot of obfuscating going on.
00:26:37
Speaker
Right. Really what it comes down to is one would hope one had a sane president who wouldn't make an unwise decision. But as I show you in nuclear war scenario, how do you even define what unwise decision is? Right. Because I take the reader through the specifics of what a strike, a nuclear strike against Washington D.C. would look like.
00:27:05
Speaker
How many people would be killed? How many people would be burned alive? And of course, this is why we have in place the concept of deterrence, full circle to our initial right, because don't do that or else we will do that to you. Right. And this is the vicious circle. From the moment the president is briefed until he has to make a decision about whether to launch a counter strike. How long does he have?
00:27:32
Speaker
Very simple answer, six minutes. We know this how, how do we know that it's six minutes exactly? Some will say it's five, some will say it's seven. The reason I use six minutes is because it's what President Ronald Reagan wrote in his memoirs, right? So it's a nice number that indicates this is what he was told and that's more or less what everyone is told. And I also think it's important to just note, anyone who starts being super corrective on numbers,
00:28:01
Speaker
Please roll your eyes because that is, in my estimation, part of the system to make people feel like you shouldn't really worry yourself about this. You're not smart enough, knowledgeable enough, informed enough. It's just hogwash. As Hans Christensen will tell you who leads the nuclear notebook with his team,
00:28:24
Speaker
and gathers all these numbers, like how many weapons are on ready for launch. These numbers are the best we can come up with, or rather not we, he and his team, and then they are put out and borrowed, but they change, right? And so it is six minutes as a concept
00:28:43
Speaker
But one of the interesting things I did was interview a lot of Secret Service agents, including a former head of the Secret Service, about how the president is moved. And this stuff is just at the razor's edge of can't be known, but what I was told what should be known and can be known. So
00:29:06
Speaker
If the president has six minutes to decide, and the secret service, the head of the president's detail decides to move him to an underground command bunker called Raven Rock,
00:29:18
Speaker
the alternative national military command center, you know, 70 miles outside DC. Well, then you have a pause in that six minute window when the president needs to decide, even though the football is with him and technically the clock is ticking, that window may be extended because Secret Service says, no, we're moving him. We're not keeping him in the underground bunker beneath the White House.
00:29:42
Speaker
Imagine a scenario where a president has to make the decision about whether to launch nuclear weapons against an adversary. Of course, he would be influenced by whether he would personally die in the situation in which he doesn't respond. But how is that handled? How is the decision made about whether to move him? And were he to stay in DC, in the White House, for example, would he die in that scenario?
00:30:10
Speaker
And as a historian, I love this question and I loved sort of picking through these details and continuing to learn them as I go. From what I understand, President Reagan and President Carter, they said, I'm going to stay with the ship, paraphrasing, right? So we know both of those presidents were going to wait it out in the White House.
00:30:34
Speaker
and let others disperse because there is a whole very significant concept during a nuclear strike, which is called continuity of government, which is where you have to keep the government running. So if the president isn't going to go, someone has to in his place. And of course I get into that in the book, but this is a great question.
00:30:54
Speaker
which I think a parallel question, which was interesting to me, I interviewed former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta for the book. And he was such an extremely valuable source for me, so generous with his time. He was also the director of the CIA and a former White House chief of staff. So he had this incredible perspective that he shared with me about how
00:31:17
Speaker
different really high ranking presidential advisors have completely different sets of information based on what their primary focus is. So he was saying as CIA director, he knew almost none of the nuclear command and control
00:31:34
Speaker
issues, certainly not to the degree he did when he was secretary of defense and he suddenly found himself visiting these places, right? And realizing, oh my God, my job is extraordinary. And then he also shared with me that most presidents, he was not the only secretary of defense to share this with me, most presidents, and I'm paraphrasing, don't want to know.
Rogue Scenarios and Insider Insights
00:31:58
Speaker
don't think they need to know. They have other things to worry about besides a nuclear war, which everyone wants to believe, quote unquote, will never happen. And so therein lies a huge problem because presidents may, they are briefed before they take office about all of this, but they may or may not be paying attention. And those are the words of presidential advisors, not me. That is me relaying what I was told.
00:32:28
Speaker
that presidents aren't paying attention to this critical information. I mean, think of all the things you have to hear about and think about all the things that are perhaps more pressing. And we've had decades of living with the first atomic bomb and now the thermonuclear bomb. And everyone wants to live under this idea that
00:32:49
Speaker
nuclear war will never happen. But as I pause it in the book, and as certainly Richard Garwin, who arguably knows more about nuclear weapons than anyone on the planet, shared with me that when all this began, there were two nuclear arms. Well, first there was one America, then there were two, you know, America and Russia, and now there are nine.
00:33:11
Speaker
And it is impossible not to refer to nuclear armed North Korea as anything but a rogue nation based on their behavior. They do not, you know, I want to say play nice. They do not adhere to the air quotes norms that the other
00:33:34
Speaker
nuclear armed nations allegedly play by. And that makes them very dangerous. And it is the rogue launch scenario I chose for the book because I wanted to show you how you can have these two superpowers, America and Russia, which by the way, each have one, approximately 1,700 weapons on ready for launch status, you know, essentially metaphorically aimed at one another.
00:34:02
Speaker
And I wanted to show you the errors that will likely happen based on the judgments of presidential advisors were a rogue launch to happen and the US president have to launch a counterattack. And those variables are what should terrify us all and have many more people in conversation about what to do about it.
00:34:27
Speaker
As you interview all of these people, all of these insiders, what were some of the most surprising lessons for you that you think should be publicly known? Two come to mind immediately because they are so incredibly dangerous. They shocked me when I learned them and they continue to shock me. The first is this. America has, as we've spoken about, the SIBR satellite system that can see a launch.
00:34:56
Speaker
wanting to have everything on parity on par with the United States has its own set of space-based satellite systems that look at ICBM launches.
00:35:09
Speaker
But as all the experts will tell you, the Russian systems are deeply flawed. And when I say all the experts, I didn't find a single person who would tell me otherwise. Some people said, well, they're not that flawed. Others talked about the extreme flaws. But the Russian satellite system, which is called Tundra,
00:35:28
Speaker
It doesn't have, this is kind of in layman's terms as it was explained to me, right? It doesn't have what's called look-down capability. So, SIBRS looks exactly down on the rocket and that's why it can measure its computer systems, its sensors can measure. And Tundra doesn't have this capacity and so it has to look sideways, which makes a lot of problems, as you said, with, for example, clouds or sunlight.
00:35:55
Speaker
The idea that experts that study this field meticulously believe is that Russia could mistake a launch. Let's say there was a rogue launch at the United States of one weapon,
00:36:11
Speaker
and the president decided to strike back with 80 nuclear weapons, 82, as is suggested in that situation. Russia could mistake those missile launches for hundreds of weapons, and then it looks like they're coming at Russia.
00:36:33
Speaker
Okay? Even more perilous is the second part of the equation that you asked me about, which is what I call the hole over the pole, right? Which is that US Minutemen ICBMs have to fly over Russia to get to North Korea.
00:36:53
Speaker
Imagine in a moment of nuclear crisis saying to Russia, well, trust us, they're just going over you. They're not coming at you. Okay. Even worse. And remember, we're talking about minutes now, right? Because the launch has to happen before the strike hits the United States. That is policy. It's called launch on warning. It's not launch after we absorb a nuclear attack. It's called launch on warning.
00:37:22
Speaker
So you're talking about less than 30 minutes into the scenario, the US president launches nuclear weapons, but has to tell Russia, by the way, they're not coming for you, they're just going over you. Making matters worse, what's the guarantee you can get Russia on the phone? And to anyone who says that's ridiculous, of course you could. I'm going to quote former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, during the Ukraine war, when
00:37:51
Speaker
It was mistakenly reported that a Russian missile had hit a NATO country, Poland. It was a mistake. That wasn't what happened, but that's how it was reported all over the press in real time, essentially. General Milley could not get his Russian counterpart on the phone for more than 24 hours. That is a quote from the general. Do we know why that happened? Why that enormous delay in such an important situation?
00:38:20
Speaker
Ask General Milley, right? But it tells you everything. There was a war going on and he couldn't get his Russian counterpart. So how does one want to just live in fantasy land thinking in the moment of crisis, 26 minutes after the Sibir satellite system notifies of a rogue launch, one American president can get another president on the phone instantly, different time zones, hostilities at a high,
00:38:51
Speaker
When in the timeline would the American public know about what's going on? Perhaps I should have listed that as one of the biggest shockers, right? And again, once you realize, oh my God, this is all happening in seconds and minutes, not days and weeks. But we think about FEMA here in the United States, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. And it's FEMA who gets involved when we have earthquakes or
00:39:17
Speaker
floods or Katrina, right? FEMA comes out with the sandbags and the meals ready to eat, allegedly. It's FEMA who is in charge of preparing for a nuclear war. I interviewed Craig Fugate, who was the director of FEMA under Obama. I mean, he handled dozens of hurricanes with incredible skill. What he told me shocked me.
00:39:47
Speaker
which is there is nothing to do in a bolt out of a blue attack. There is no population protection planning because everyone will be dead. This is a quote from him. It's hyperbole, but it's not hyperbole.
00:40:02
Speaker
Right? I said to him, what is your advice to the American public? And he said, you know, don't forget your morals. Hope that you stalked PDLA. So to answer your question, when does the American public know?
ICBM Flight and Submarine Strategies
00:40:17
Speaker
Well, they're going to find out when in this scenario, Washington, D.C. has just been annihilated. They're going to find out when all the comms go down.
00:40:28
Speaker
And this is around half an hour after launch. Yes. Okay, so let's go through the ICBM just really simply, okay? Because when it got explained to me this way, it was like, oh my goodness, now this makes sense, okay? Because people also think about technology is just moving so fast, but the ICBM is basically what it was in
00:40:50
Speaker
60, the late 50s. And my interest in ICBM comes from an earlier book I wrote called The Pentagon's Brain, which why the United States has its agency DARPA, which is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. And the first chief scientist was a guy called Herb York. As a journalist, you can find out a lot in someone's papers that they leave to a private library.
00:41:17
Speaker
Because inside those papers, they often leave a lot of, I don't want to say classified documents, but they leave a lot of documents that might otherwise not be so easy for someone to find. And that was certainly the case with me going to the Giselle Library down in San Diego to look at Herb York's papers, where he left everything after he died. And in those papers, I found the first known analysis of precisely how long it takes
00:41:43
Speaker
for an ICBM to get from a launch pad in Russia to the United States. Herb York hired the Jason scientists, kind of the brilliant American scientists who were in charge of solving these hard problems, and they measured it down to seconds. And this is what they came up with, 1,600 seconds from launch
00:42:05
Speaker
to annihilation. Three phases, really simple. Boost phase, mid-course phase, terminal phase. Boost phase is five minutes. We spoke about the hot rocket exhaust on the ICBM. The satellite systems can only see the ICBM in the five minutes that it's essentially burning out the back and getting rid of its boosters.
00:42:29
Speaker
After five minutes, it enters mid-course phase, and now it will fly between 500 and 700 miles above the Earth at, you know, 15,000 miles an hour to the other side of the world. At which point, for the last 100 seconds, it will be in what's called terminal phase, which is pretty obvious what it is. It reenters the atmosphere,
00:42:51
Speaker
the warhead arms and detonates. And that is the end. So 26 minutes and 40 seconds. Now, North Korea geographically is a little different. I had Ted Postle, the missile expert, do the math. It's about 33 minutes, right? So that's approximately the amount of time it takes.
00:43:14
Speaker
And that is absolutely known in nuclear command and control. And so from the first fraction of a second, 30 minutes later, it's the first target. And we haven't even begun to talk about what submarines do, which almost no one out there in the general public, including me, formerly, before writing this book knew, which is that a submarine can sneak up on the coast and launch a nuclear weapon in minutes. And this is just like a shocking truth that no one wants to talk about.
00:43:44
Speaker
So this is all happening in minutes to maybe 30 minutes, at least it's happening in under an hour. This is something that struck me about the book was how you segment the progression of this nuclear attack timeline into segments of 24 minutes, three of those, and then into 24 months.
00:44:05
Speaker
So what we're talking about here is something that happens extremely suddenly but then transforms the world and the effects are felt for much longer than 24 months. But the fact it's sudden and then there's a long aftermath. Let's actually take the point about submarines because that's pretty interesting. How do submarines change the kind of strategic aspects of defending against nuclear weapons?
00:44:32
Speaker
Yes. OK, so I'm going to take you to the president's briefing to to get to this submarine issue. Right. Because again, president maybe not. I mean, certainly one would hope the president knows what the nuclear triad is. But do most people reading this book before? No, nuclear triad triad means three. Right. When the president is told you need to launch nuclear weapons in a counterattack, this weapon is coming at us. It's going to be here in less than 30 minutes. This isn't policy launch on warning.
00:45:02
Speaker
the football gets opened. That is the suitcase, the satchel that is constantly with the president, also with the vice president. And inside of that is something called the Black Book. And the Black Book contains information about the nuclear triad, the weapons that are available to the president and what targets he should hit. And they've been predetermined
00:45:26
Speaker
based on different rogue countries that might attack the United States. And then how many people would will die? That's basically the three things the president learns in those seconds before he gives the order of which strike he wants to choose. And so you describe or you call it the black book. Is it is it an actual book? How often is this information updated?
00:45:49
Speaker
The Black book is so secret, it has never no president. They're called presidential emergency action directives.
00:45:58
Speaker
No, nothing has ever been leaked. It has never made its way into the public domain. A few individuals have spoken of it. A very few, right? A mill aide once talked about how it was like a Denny's menu. That's how he described it. And you choose, you know, I'll have this with that and give me that on the side. Okay. And that's pretty much the only information we have.
00:46:21
Speaker
Los Alamos declassified the origin story of the football for this book for me to share with the public. I'll let readers read about that in the book. But in real time, to answer your question, what does it look like? We don't know. Dr. Glenn McDuff at Los Alamos told me it's called The Black Book because it involves so much death.
00:46:42
Speaker
Two of my sources, Ted Postle, the missile expert, I used to advise for the Navy. He has seen the Black Book, John Wolf, Thalwandrit View, who was President Obama's National Security Advisor on nuclear weapons. He has seen the Black Book. They don't talk about it. There's no reason for them to.
00:46:59
Speaker
you can imagine what is in there. But the nuclear triad is what we're getting at here, right? So America has three weapon systems. We have 400 ICBMs. These are in underground silos. We have 66 bombers that carry multiple nuclear weapons. And then we have 14, what are called Ohio class,
00:47:29
Speaker
nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered submarines. And the president can use all three. So the bombers are the only element of the triad that can be recalled. So they're almost certainly sent out first. But they will take several hours to get where they're going. And by then, this will all be over.
00:47:47
Speaker
The ICBMs once launched can't be recalled. They are known to be the first weapons to be used because they will involve what is called use them or lose them strategy, meaning because the location of our US ICBMs are public domain.
00:48:05
Speaker
they will be the first targets hit by the Russians. Our submarines, of which there are 14, there are several out at sea at any given time. We never know where they are. Even the people, the only people who know where they are are the people on board. And they're there out at sea for 70 days at a time. And they're just like zooming around the oceans ready to launch.
00:48:33
Speaker
And one particular note to give listeners of like just how close these submarines can get to the United States. And again, this has been debated. Oh my God, they can't get that close. This is hyperbole. For one of the first times ever, the Defense Department recently released a map showing, so you cannot find a submarine in real time. They are unlocatable, which makes them
00:48:58
Speaker
are generally called the handmaidens of the apocalypse, because you can't know where they are. And this is simply because they're under the surface of the sea, and so you can't see them from satellites, yeah? Absolutely. Satellites can't see them. And because they're nuclear powered, they can just motor around without ever having to surface, right? Until they come back to port. But the Defense Department, in its budget requests, sort of trying to
00:49:26
Speaker
notify Congress of why it needed so much more money for the nuclear triad, released sort of after the fact map. You can see through these different seabed systems, tracing systems we have called SOSUS, you can see where they have been, right? And they show, there's a map, I reprint a copy of it in the book, and it's just shocking when you realize how close the submarines, both Russia and China can get
00:49:53
Speaker
to America's coast, and then you're talking about minutes from launch to strike. Is there any way to defend against submarines like that? No. There isn't any way to deter except for having submarines with missiles point at the countries that are, yes. And this is a rabbit hole where you sort of, I mean, when we talk about this, it almost seems
00:50:20
Speaker
You almost want to stutter and mutter, like, wait, what? And then you kind of go back to another question. I mean, and I don't mean you, I mean me, I mean anyone who is new to this issue. And then you have to say, well, why do we have all the other weapons if those weapons can end the world? Well, exactly. And then we can get into the wonky discussion of deterrence and mutual assured destruction. And believe me,
00:50:43
Speaker
trillions and trillions untold sums of money, because these numbers are most partially classified, have been spent building weapon systems, unbuilding weapon systems. At one point, we had 60,000 nuclear weapons on the planet, right? Now it's maybe 12,500. It's the military industrial complex at its heart.
00:51:06
Speaker
I think we have to remind ourselves that this system of nuclear weapons is not rationally designed from a top-down by a group of people right now. It's evolved over time. It has been dependent on historical accidents and coincidences and initial trajectories that have then been developed further. And so now we're in the situation we are in now due to not entirely
00:51:36
Speaker
rational circumstances. I think that is a brilliant assessment and what a great reminder at this point in this interview to actually bring that up because looking from the top down, looking in arrears, it just seems absolutely apocryphal and implausible. And yet, as I take the reader in the book back in, once upon a time after World War II, there was essentially three nuclear weapons. Los Alamos was almost shuddered.
00:52:05
Speaker
Right. And as the historians at the lab take me through these numbers of how, you know, then suddenly
Doomsday Preparations and Defense Limitations
00:52:14
Speaker
1949, Russia had the bomb. We'll wait a minute. Now we have to have more bombs. And then you see the numbers escalate, you know? And it becomes, like you said, you can see how it's sort of like a series of actions based on what was happening in the world at the time. And the difficulty we face now is exactly, as you said so eloquently, that we have arrived here
00:52:43
Speaker
And the world is very, very, very different. And yet the idea that you could just make all the nuclear weapons go away is just as apocryphal as all of them existing. It is a true conundrum. But the only answer, I believe, is not to play ostrich, like to put your head in the sand.
00:53:03
Speaker
and be like, that will never happen because, you know, for the first time since the Cold War ended, we have a Russian president who is actually has mentioned the possibility of nuclear use. We have North Korea saying that the Americans are trying to, you know, and I'm paraphrasing, but essentially he said the Americans are trying to start nuclear war on the Korean peninsula. You know, the UN secretary general,
00:53:32
Speaker
recently said in a very significant speech, we are just, and I'm paraphrasing him, but we are one miscalculation, one misunderstanding away from nuclear annihilation. He added, this is madness. It must stop. And that's why I hope people read the book.
00:53:51
Speaker
I think in public consciousness, the issue of nuclear war or nuclear attacks has gotten less attention since the end of the Cold War, because people have been living under the threat of nuclear war for decades now, and it hasn't happened. The conclusion is, well, maybe this wasn't as big of a deal as we heard about it being in the 60s.
00:54:14
Speaker
But as you mentioned, there's a lot of worrying developments in the world that point towards nuclear risk being higher now than perhaps at any point in the last two decades.
00:54:30
Speaker
And a nuclear war couldn't be farther from a war of attrition. It is not a war of attrition. The book takes place over 72 minutes, right? And when I did an interview with a former STRATCOM commander, General Keeler, and he said to me, yes, Annie, the world could end in a few hours. I was just astonished at that kind of truthful reality coming from someone
00:54:59
Speaker
who would be the point man for the president, right? Because when the president, as we spoke of earlier, the Secretary of Defense, he advises the president. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff advises the president. They're not in the decision-making chain, right? They're advisors. And then
00:55:20
Speaker
They tell the president essentially, here's what you are required to do. And then the president speaks to the Stratcom commander through the bunker under the Pentagon, right? There's a chain of command I take people through of like how the actual order comes down. But then the Stratcom commander, you know, escapes from his bunker. He runs out to the tarmac. He gets on what's called a doomsday plane.
00:55:52
Speaker
command bunker in the sky that will fly around while America is absorbing these nuclear strikes. You know, while tens of millions of people are burning to death in a nuclear Holocaust, the Defense Department's Stratcom commander and his team will be up in the air directing nuclear strikes against enemy nations from the Doomsday Plane because the comms have been set up that way since the Cold War.
00:56:12
Speaker
I mean, that is what it is called in the military because it is the
00:56:21
Speaker
you know, using very old school technology to actually communicate with the nuclear triad. We spoke of redundancy earlier. This is what redundancy is. The command bunker at the Pentagon can be obliterated as it is in the scenario I write. And the doomsday plane can continue to deliver launch codes.
00:56:42
Speaker
What is their mission? The mission of the Doomsday Plane is to make sure that the US retaliates. But I'm guessing the reasoning for having such a plane and having that plane have that mission is to make sure that no enemy actually launches an attack on the US in the first place.
00:57:00
Speaker
So it seems like the US should communicate the existence of this plane and the existence of submarine capabilities as widely as possible. But how widely is this known? And it all seems a bit insane to me that imagine being in that plane and thinking about your mission as your countrymen are annihilated.
00:57:24
Speaker
I mean, it is, but you raised a really interesting question here, which is when these systems were first put in place in the 50s, the nuclear superpowers, Russia and America, were, you know, I mean, with spies everywhere and just like obsessively learning
00:57:42
Speaker
sometimes miss, you know, incorrectly so what the other side was doing. And so we have evolved, the two superpowers have evolved with eyeballs on one another. So almost everything America has, Russia has as well, right? So the mutual assured destruction of it is essentially legit, right? Because so there's no question that Russia command and control doesn't know about the doomsday plane and about, I mean, they know everything, let's just assume, right? But
00:58:12
Speaker
maybe North Korea doesn't. What is known about North Korea is so thin, it is shocking. You can read an open source defense intelligence agency report. So the DIA is essentially the Pentagon CIA. It's internal intelligence source. They have a really interesting several hundred page dossier on what North Korea is capable of and it gives you a real
00:58:40
Speaker
window into what we don't know. And if you read all that and interview DIA people as I did, and then also interview people in the civilian sector, there's a brilliant analyst named Michael Madden, who is probably the world's expert on Kim Jong Il himself, right? And he understands how that dictatorship works almost better than anyone from looking at photographs and reading North Korean newspapers and
00:59:09
Speaker
talking to spies, right? And what he, and I write in the book, what he shares with us, what he knows, it is so little, right? Like, we don't know what is known. And that is incredibly dangerous because it leaves a lot of room for supposition mixed with paranoia. And when you have paranoia in the mix,
00:59:56
Speaker
incoming nuclear weapons, destroy them before they hit mainland US or any other country. And so you could pour money into developing a purely defensive technology. This isn't an aggression towards China or Russia. This is more or actually purely for defensive purposes.
00:59:59
Speaker
all is lost
01:00:20
Speaker
Then we have the technical issues of why this might not be the perfect solution. Why isn't this kind of the holy grail of defense against nuclear?
01:00:31
Speaker
I mean, I'm with you that you're, you know, in layman's terms and sort of poetic terms, you can really imagine exactly what you're talking about with like offense, defense, the sword and the shield, right? The nuclear missiles are just basically a giant technological sword. And this idea of an interceptor missile, people sometimes think of Israel's iron dome, right, is the giant shield. And we see that on television, the rockets coming in from Hamas and the iron dome is able to
01:00:58
Speaker
you know, functions like a big bubble, like a big shield. Well, that is just simply not the case with the interceptor missiles. Starting with the fact that as we spoke of earlier, there are roughly 1,700 ready for launch nuclear weapons on either side, Russia, US. Okay. And when I say ready for launch, meaning most of them are deployed
01:01:21
Speaker
And an ICBM can be launched in 60 seconds. Literally, that's why they call them Minutemen, right? I mean, there's other reasons they're called Minutemen, but that's one of them. Once the subs get the command to launch, it takes them about 14 minutes.
01:01:35
Speaker
to get that sub-launched missile launched. So the interceptor, if there's 1,700 of these just ready to go, let's even say 1,000 of them ready to go. Well, there are a grand total of 44 interceptor missiles in the US arsenal. So how's that going to work? Because in a nuclear launch, you don't launch one unless you're a rogue nation.
01:02:02
Speaker
if you're Russia or you launch the mother lode, you launch all of them because you are trying to take out the other side. And so how is 44 missiles going to take out a thousand? And that doesn't even get into the failure rate of the interceptor missiles at one point in a 10 year period, let's say 10 years ago, when these new interceptors were being developed, right? And we launched them at Vandenberg Air Force Base and we fly them over the Pacific Ocean.
01:02:31
Speaker
to Kwajalein Atoll, where that's where we get the data of how the launch is going. Well, and we try the interception. Something like only nine out of 20 were successfully hit. That's a very low success rate. And also, I found the technology involved in these interceptor missiles really interesting. And I'm just going to give listeners a quick idea, right?
01:02:56
Speaker
the interceptor missile launches, and then the item that is actually going to allegedly intercept this incoming ICBM warhead. And by the way, at that point, it's no longer a giant 60-foot missile, it's a warhead, okay?
01:03:12
Speaker
The nuclear weapon is inside a warhead, which is now in mid-course phase. And inside of that warhead, there are almost certainly multiple decoys to try to fake out what is about to kill it. And the vehicle that is in the nose cone of the interceptor missile is called an exo-atmospheric kill vehicle, which is just a fantastic menacing sounding name, right?
01:03:42
Speaker
But think about it, it's this tiny kinetic, it's like a BB gun. It doesn't have any explosive. It's going to use its own kinetic energy going 20,000 miles an hour up in space to try and hit
01:03:59
Speaker
a warhead that is moving at 15,000 miles an hour. Literally someone in the Defense Department called it trying to hit a bullet with a bullet. So that's what you're going to trust defense on, the shield defense on. And by the way, I can't even begin to tell you how many billions of dollars American taxpayers have spent. And a recent congressional report revealed that this whole program
01:04:26
Speaker
had problems, air quotes. And so now it's kind of like on strategic paths, whatever that means.
EMP Threats and Political Implications
01:04:33
Speaker
Is this purely a matter of cost? So just hearing these numbers, it sounds like, naively to me at least, it sounds like a misparadization to have 1,700 nuclear missiles and 55 interceptor. 44.
01:04:51
Speaker
Could the US have spent much more money on interceptors and would that have made the situation better, even with the quite bad success rate of these missiles? It's a reasonable question. There is no answer, meaning how many billions of dollars do you need to spend on something that might work?
01:05:13
Speaker
I think what is more interesting is that most people, A, most American taxpayers who have funded this don't even know about this program. And there is also a bizarre assumption that we have such a program that would actually work, right? I mean, I was at a dinner party once seated next to a very knowledgeable person who will remain nameless that even worked in government. And I had mentioned him privately, I was working on this book and he literally said to me like,
01:05:42
Speaker
That's ridiculous. Our interceptor program would take care of that. I'm paraphrasing him, but essentially that was, and I did not say anything. What do you say to that? That is a knowledgeable, literate person.
01:05:54
Speaker
who one would think knows better. But this brings us back to that discussion about people called the military industrial complex. I think it's more interesting to call it the defense contractor complex, right? And there's insiders who portend to know everything that is going on and have all the details. And then everyone else is kind of like left out in the dark or spoken down to, right?
01:06:20
Speaker
I always take so much criticism for my books, certainly will for this one too, because I try to write for the laymen. I try to write for high school students because they are important and they matter. I know I'm read by the generals of the Pentagon.
01:06:37
Speaker
But I like to be read by the little old ladies in South Dakota who also write to me. Because if you can understand the narrative, then I believe progress can be made by the people, as corny as that sounds. And so that's why I love your metaphor of the Interceptor program. Wouldn't it be great if this worked? All you need to know is just have a little bit of information to realize, A, it doesn't work.
01:07:03
Speaker
And B, it's probably not the greatest idea to just try and defend against these missiles because more missiles are being built because that is the nature of the defense contractor complex. So really you have to discuss the problem holistically.
01:07:18
Speaker
Which technologies do you see on the horizon that might upset the status quo here? You write, for example, about the electromagnetic pulse which might put some warning systems out of use. How would that work? And are there any other technologies like that on the horizon?
01:07:36
Speaker
So the first part of that question is, you know, Russia, Putin in particular has recently been announcing a whole new class of weapons, the typhoon submarine that allegedly does all kinds of crazy things and hypersonic missiles. I mean, that's a different
01:07:53
Speaker
longer conversation because really there's more than enough technology. And by the way, this technology is decades old, but it still works and there's more than enough to destroy the planet and launch us into nuclear winter in 75 minutes. So that's a whole other discussion about creating new weapon systems because they're really just meant to be more menacing in my estimation.
01:08:19
Speaker
So electromagnetic pulse is one of those subjects that most American defense analysts don't want to talk about because like politics, the issue is profoundly divided, right? There was a time after 9-11 when a group of
01:08:36
Speaker
EMP aficionados were warning the defense industry about how dangerous an electromagnetic pulse bomb could be. In very simple layman's terms, this would mean setting off a nuclear bomb 300 miles up. For example, if you did this over Nebraska, it could essentially take out
01:08:56
Speaker
the entire grid of the United States. You'd have to very specifically explode it 300 miles up in space. And the way in which that would happen was it would be carried in a satellite and then detonated. And this group of individuals who were sounding the alarm on this for what was called the EMP Commission were attacked by many of the more liberal shall we call them pundits.
01:09:24
Speaker
as being fear mongers and trying to get more money. And again, this is my estimation of just looking at the history of it. It created a real divide where people were afraid to talk about this, again, in my estimation.
01:09:40
Speaker
because you would be attacked. You were sort of with the quote unquote fear mongers or you were like some wise PhD. Well, in my research and in my interviewing the world's experts on this matter, that is a really unfortunate division of knowledge because it is not true. Meaning the EMP or what is called a super EMP is an actual legitimate real threat. Can North Korea get
01:10:07
Speaker
nuclear weapon into a satellite and have it be circling the United States? Well, yes. And I write in the book exactly why. And this is of serious concern. Richard Garwin wrote the first paper on EMP back in 1954. It's still classified. Brigadier General Gregory Two Hill, Obama's first cyber chief,
01:10:32
Speaker
also wrote a classified paper in the 80s or maybe it was the 90s, it's still classified. Both of those people assured me this is of very serious concern in the book, in sort of the third act.
01:10:48
Speaker
I write about what happens. Were an EMP, a super EMP to launch? I mean, to explode, to detonate over the United States. And it's beyond horrific. I mean, it really, really is. We'll let readers get to that point. But again, I take the readers through some of the debate around this to kind of till the soil to make aware of here's another issue that has kind of, in my opinion, purposefully been
01:11:18
Speaker
jettison to the sidelines over people worrying about having a position on it.
01:11:25
Speaker
So current nuclear controller command, how vulnerable are these systems to cyber attacks? I spoke with a nuclear expert at some point who told me that the only reason why these systems are so old that they are not vulnerable to cyber attacks. But we're trying or the US is trying to update the systems in such ways that they might become vulnerable to cyber attacks.
01:11:53
Speaker
Is that your read of the situation? You're absolutely correct about all that. The systems are incredibly old. It would make sense. You don't want to be able to hack into an ICBM. Is that a conscious decision to make these systems unhackable or harden these systems against cyber attacks or is it simply inertia in the system?
01:12:13
Speaker
Well, it has to do with your earlier point that we kind of inherited all of this as it moved along. But somebody was, you know, wise enough to not try and update the system as soon as computer technology became viable, whereas the communication system certainly are updated that way. Nuclear command control and communication and C3. The actual weaponry themselves is
01:12:38
Speaker
And again, this stuff is so incredibly classified as it should be, but in a general sense, you are correct. But here's an example of what I found fascinating, and it has to do with the guidance system of the sub-launched ballistic missiles, the SLBMs. So if you think about the technology, you've got this giant submarine. It rises to 150 feet below the surface. That's the launch depth.
01:13:04
Speaker
The order is received. The launch keys are turned. This missile, there are 20 missile tubes. There used to be 24. There are 20 missile tubes, right? Each missile has a Trident missile. Each missile carries multiple warheads. The Trident is jettisoned out of the submarine, rises to the surface of the ocean in one second.
01:13:33
Speaker
And it is there that boost phase begins. So the ignition happens. Off it goes. Let's say it's eight or nine minutes to target from someplace in the Pacific Ocean to Pyongyang in North Korea.
01:13:49
Speaker
How does it get there? What is the guidance system, I asked, right? Think about it. It's like, really, if you just stop and think, it's a real jaw-dropping moment. Well, it's star sighting. I mean, there are other technologies as well that are classified, but a star sighting system was created literally, there's a little panel in the missile that opens and it's guiding itself to its target.
01:14:17
Speaker
by the stars. And I found this astonishing that this weapon of Armageddon is relying on one of the oldest human navigation techniques. Wow.
01:14:33
Speaker
Yeah, and that it's precise enough to hit its target by navigating using the stars. That's pretty amazing. This whole scenario that you've written about is, of course, horrific.
01:14:49
Speaker
What have you learned about how we step back from the brink here? What do we do to introduce safety measures or make this whole setup that we have in the world? And here I'm not just talking about the US, I'm talking about all of these countries that we've gotten ourselves into this situation. How do we get out of it?
01:15:12
Speaker
Well, there are many fine organizations like yours that work on these disarmament issues, on making people aware so that there can be a discussion. For me, as an investigative reporter, as a journalist, as a storyteller, I believe in the power of narrative.
01:15:30
Speaker
I believe if you can get people interested and then secretly get them educated because they work hand in hand, then people are comfortable having an opinion, having a voice. The best example that I can think of is actually in the domain of television. When I was in high school,
01:15:52
Speaker
In the early 80s, there was a television show called The Day After, which showed what a nuclear war would be like and the after effects. And something like 100 million Americans watched this. But more important, President Reagan watched it. And when he signed the treaty with Gorbachev,
01:16:16
Speaker
and nuclear weapons numbers began to drop from these insane levels to certainly something that were a lot better off than we were when there were 60,000 nuclear weapons on the planet. That is because of
01:16:34
Speaker
President Reagan and Gorbachev. And the White House called the television producers of the day after and said, just so that you know, you had something to do with this. And I find that remarkable and has a thread of optimism to it because it means that there can be in people's fear, people's horror,
01:17:00
Speaker
can actually be placed in a way that is meaningful. How that unfolds, I don't know. I mean, we have seen disarmament over the decades and how it works, but certainly something needs to change because we literally, people are writing articles in major print media left and right saying, we are closer to nuclear Armageddon than we have ever been since the Cuban Missile Crisis, and that is terrifying.
01:17:29
Speaker
That's such a fantastic piece of history. And you're right, it makes me more optimistic about the whole thing. I do wonder, however, that it's worrying that if our collective future is dependent on the decisions of very few individuals, such that had history turned out a bit differently, we might not be here, or how important are specific individuals in the history of nuclear risk?
01:17:56
Speaker
absolutely imperative. And look, it's like Shakespeare said, passed his prologue, right? And one would hope that you have sane individuals. I am not someone who writes about politics. I always write about POTUS, President of the United States. It's an office and it's a very significant office. I personally don't have public opinions about leaders. I vote
01:18:25
Speaker
I do think there is something to be said in that. It certainly allows me objectivity. And I notice among my friends and colleagues who are on both sides of the aisle, who are very vocal, whatever side they're on, they are just becoming more and more vocal. And I find danger in that because side taking
01:18:49
Speaker
You know, then we have a horse in the race and then we get stubborn and then we get an ego and then it becomes about right versus wrong. And so I do think people need to look really carefully at their own position on whether it's wise to be so vociferous about
Consequences of Nuclear Winter
01:19:06
Speaker
about leaders or whether you should go vote and vote early. I mean, that sounds very Pollyanna-ish, but at its core, I really believe in that because the leader is so important. And I find that in American politics right now, who would want that job? I mean, it's just a dreadful
01:19:24
Speaker
But you're on the other side of the pond looking at America. It must feel crazy when you see what is going on in the United States of America, how divided the country is right now in this moment, and how dangerous that is. Do you think we could reduce nuclear risk by having more diffuse responsibilities for launching a counter strike, for example, or a counter attack?
01:19:50
Speaker
If a council of three had to decide, would that make the world safer or would it simply mean that the US command and control wouldn't come to agreement and then it would be too slow to matter? Sure. These are the threading, the needle debates, right? One degree off of that, I would say that
01:20:10
Speaker
Almost universally, it is agreed among most wise individuals who are not like super hawks that the launch on warning policy that the United States maintains
01:20:26
Speaker
is reckless and dangerous and should be changed. And almost every president, by the way, in the modern era, certainly in the 21st century, has said that while running for president. But then they become president, and Lord knows what they're briefed, and that goes out the window. But in other words, even Paul Nitz, who is like one of the greatest hawks of the Cold War, who was deeply enmeshed in the nuclear buildup and the buildup of the thermonuclear weapon arsenal.
01:20:55
Speaker
He even said later in life that launch on warning is incredibly reckless. People speak of it as, you know, that's the UN Secretary, one miscalculation away because, and again, launch on warning means we're not going to wait and see if we have actually been attacked. We are going to launch within that 30 minute window. That is just a recipe for disaster.
01:21:22
Speaker
But it will be argued by people on the other side. If you remove that policy, then it will make a crazy dictator think he can strike the United States. And so then you begin to have that circular debate that people have been having for decades. I think we should end by talking about the last 24 months. So you talk about the first 72 minutes. What about the next 24 months? What happens there?
01:21:52
Speaker
nuclear winter. And what an honor and a privilege it was to interview Professor Brian Toome, who you have interviewed as well. And he, just for listeners who maybe aren't familiar with his work, and they certainly should immediately Google his 16-minute TED Talk, because it's brilliant. He was one of the original five authors of the nuclear winter theory in 1983, along with the very famous Carl Sagan.
01:22:17
Speaker
And Professor Thun has been working on this issue ever since. And nuclear winter is this idea that after a nuclear exchange, after all these weapons launch back and forth as I take you through in the book in the 72 minutes, what we haven't touched upon is the nuclear firestorms that happen that in many ways kill more people
01:22:41
Speaker
than the explosions themselves, the blast and the radiation. The firestorms, every center point has a firestorm of 100 or 200 square miles. Multiply that by a thousand. Imagine all that going into the atmosphere. This blocks out the sun and becomes what is known as nuclear winter.
01:23:04
Speaker
What I found fascinating in interviewing Professor Toon was that, as he explained to me, originally a big debate grew. Of course, the Defense Department said this is communist propaganda and many others did. And I'm sure that this actually continues to
01:23:20
Speaker
to today. Because in 1983, by all the scientists' understanding and discussion, we didn't have the same computer technology and climate modeling systems that we have today. And with the new models, as Toon and others explain, the situation is actually worse.
01:23:40
Speaker
then was initially posited. And when I say worse, you're talking about 70% of the sun going away. You're talking about places like Iowa and Ukraine having subzero temperatures. These are the mid-latitudes of the entire earth. Subzero temperatures. Agriculture failing and mass starvation as a result is something that Brian Toon talked about. Yeah. And when you think about that,
01:24:08
Speaker
it takes your breath away, right? That, you know, if you were lucky enough to survive the nuclear war, right? And as Nikita Khrushchev so famously said, the survivors will envy the dead, right? And this is what will happen in nuclear winter because it will just be a matter of starvation.
01:24:27
Speaker
It gives us an additional reason to just avoid this whole thing in the first place, as if we didn't have reason enough, but thinking about, you know, you can debate the specific numbers and how big would the climate effects be of nuclear attacks and so on. I think it gives us an additional reason at least to basically avoid nuclear war entirely.
01:24:50
Speaker
Absolutely. And I mean, Tune and others go through these scenarios whereby it isn't a massive exchange between the US and Russia, as I write in my book, but just a, you know, air quotes, small exchange between India and Pakistan, right? Meaning there's no such thing as a small, and they describe, and again, using climate models of today and data from today of what would happen to the entire planet. And this should be read by anyone who is interested in nuclear winter.
01:25:19
Speaker
And this is just a shocking reality that when we think about, you know, I'm going to reference the famous Einstein quote, which is often attributed to him, although I've never been able to actually find the original document. I hope someone will tell me if they can, you know, that he was allegedly asked.
01:25:37
Speaker
how will World War III be fought? And he said, paraphrasing, I don't know, but I know that World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones, meaning nuclear war followed by nuclear winter will send man back to its hunter-gatherer origins.
01:25:57
Speaker
And that is just a shocking riddle that man evolves to create civilizations, to create technology, to create everything that you and I enjoy today. Not perfect, but wow, you know, only to destroy it all by his own hand. Wow. That's really something to think about. Yeah, let's avoid it. Let's avoid it. Thanks for coming on. It's been very informative. I've learned a lot. Thanks for talking with me.
01:26:26
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me.