WEBVTT - Part Five: The Men Who Might Have Killed Us All

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<v Speaker 1>Also media, and we're back.

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<v Speaker 2>It's behind the Bastards. This is our special episodes on

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<v Speaker 2>the guys who built the nuclear doomsday machine that could

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<v Speaker 2>kill us all at any moment. Episode five, The end

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<v Speaker 2>is finally in sight. That could be literal. Margaret Kiljoy,

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<v Speaker 2>Welcome back to the program. How you doing.

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<v Speaker 3>I'm doing great. I've gone full circle. I've accepted that

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<v Speaker 3>this is reality, and I am just very happy to

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<v Speaker 3>get to live in these times.

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<v Speaker 2>It's great that you got to that point because actually

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<v Speaker 2>the next ten pages are all Warhammer. Oh I just

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<v Speaker 2>stopped writing about nukes at a certain point, but you

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<v Speaker 2>can just assume that that's real.

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<v Speaker 3>Yeah, because that's what your brain does when presented with

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<v Speaker 3>this much disaster, is you're like, yeah, man, I really

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<v Speaker 3>like fantasy books.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna relax to the

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<v Speaker 2>comfort of a game where every single person is worse

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<v Speaker 2>than Hitler, Like we're Hitler would be a moderate bleeding hearts. Well,

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<v Speaker 2>let's get back to talking about this insane minute man system,

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<v Speaker 2>because we've talked about some of the shit that's crazy

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<v Speaker 2>about this, but we still have not gotten to the

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<v Speaker 2>craziest thing about this, right, Good, So we left off.

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<v Speaker 2>John Ruble has been having in nineteen fifty nine and

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<v Speaker 2>start at sixty. He's having conversations with all these Air

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<v Speaker 2>Force guys about the minute Man system, and he's come

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<v Speaker 2>up with some serious concerns about, well, how do we

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<v Speaker 2>decide when these things are fired? When you choose to

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<v Speaker 2>shoot one, how do the other nine get launched? Is

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<v Speaker 2>it really just four guys who have to turn their

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<v Speaker 2>keys in order to launch fifty missiles? Are there ways

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<v Speaker 2>they could at fifty random cities? Are there ways they

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<v Speaker 2>could accidentally get launched due to, you know, an electrical error?

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<v Speaker 3>Right?

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<v Speaker 2>These are all concerns, and the Air Force is like,

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<v Speaker 2>with the fuck are you asking questions for? You fucking nerd?

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<v Speaker 2>Get the hell out of here. Let us killed. Yeah

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<v Speaker 2>you a commie? So here's Rubelt are tell me? Yeah,

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<v Speaker 2>you got to tell me if you're a communists. Here's

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<v Speaker 2>Rubel discussing his concerns. I was curious about the procedures

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<v Speaker 2>for launching. How are the decisions to be made and

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<v Speaker 2>what happens when the launch commands are given? What if

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<v Speaker 2>you decide you really didn't want to launch the rest

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<v Speaker 2>after you've already launched some can you launch missiles one

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<v Speaker 2>at a time selectively, what if some operators decide to

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<v Speaker 2>launch without authority? Here I cite from a transcript of

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<v Speaker 2>my discussion of this matter for the John F. Kennedy Library.

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<v Speaker 2>A moment arrived in this briefing in the June of

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<v Speaker 2>nineteen fifteen. In June of nineteen fifty nine, when I

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<v Speaker 2>could ask the question I wanted to ask, when I

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<v Speaker 2>had asked Bennett in private before, but without getting a

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<v Speaker 2>satisfactory response. I had the feeling that if I asked

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<v Speaker 2>the question surrounded as I was by members of the

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<v Speaker 2>President's Science Advisory Committee panel, that I might elicit a

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<v Speaker 2>better answer. So I said something like, Bob, can you

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<v Speaker 2>describe how the missiles are launched? Now? I began to

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<v Speaker 2>think he was made uncomfortable by the question. He seemed

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<v Speaker 2>reluctant to grasp it simple meaning. And Bob gives the

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<v Speaker 2>explanation I gave you earlier about how well these guys

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<v Speaker 2>are all behind bulletproof glass, and they have guns so

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<v Speaker 2>they you know, one guy can't threaten the other, and

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<v Speaker 2>they turn their keys at the same time or close

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<v Speaker 2>to it, and that'll count as a vote to launch

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<v Speaker 2>the missile. Right the first miss and so Rebel's immediate

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<v Speaker 2>question is when you say the missiles are launched, do

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<v Speaker 2>you mean all fifty? And Bob said, well, that depends

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<v Speaker 2>on whether or not the missiles are ready, but yeah,

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<v Speaker 2>all fifty will launch. Now, this upsets everybody on the

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<v Speaker 2>President's Science Advisory Panel. These people are not These are

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<v Speaker 2>like normal people, right, These are not maniacs. These are

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<v Speaker 2>like science guys who were, you know, scared of nuclear holocaust? Right,

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<v Speaker 2>And they're like, what or guys live launch fifty missiles

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<v Speaker 2>with no one getting in the way. Really, and there's

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<v Speaker 2>no way to stop all fifty from launching once you

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<v Speaker 2>start the process of launching one. Are you serious? He was,

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<v Speaker 2>So everybody gets upset. So Bob Bob is like, now

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<v Speaker 2>in damage control mode, and Bob Bennett goes like, now, look,

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<v Speaker 2>you have to understand, this isn't as crazy as it sounds.

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<v Speaker 2>There are two modes that we can fire these in. Right.

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<v Speaker 2>One of these modes is salvo and the other is

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<v Speaker 2>ripple launch. Right, one of them launches all the missiles

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<v Speaker 2>as close as simultaneously as possible, and the other staggers them. Right,

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<v Speaker 2>does that make it better? There's two modes Margaret, there's

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<v Speaker 2>two modes. It's fine.

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<v Speaker 3>The hose has shower and jet. Yeah, not a hose.

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<v Speaker 2>You just know, Bob has not sat down with anyone

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<v Speaker 2>who is not constantly spending every second of their life

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<v Speaker 2>like touching themselves to the thought of ending humanity, right,

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<v Speaker 2>and he's just like, wait, people don't they don't know

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<v Speaker 2>there's two modes that'll fix it. I'll tell them about

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<v Speaker 2>the modes, right.

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<v Speaker 4>See.

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<v Speaker 3>I think they and its consequences have been a disaster

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<v Speaker 3>for the years.

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<v Speaker 2>It's a fucking catastrophe. Yeah, once people start thinking about

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<v Speaker 2>game again, that needs to be a bricking. If you

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<v Speaker 2>ever encounter somebody who starts talking game theory shit, just

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<v Speaker 2>brick them, you know, give them a good heart.

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<v Speaker 3>Theory says you have to brick them. That's the you

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<v Speaker 3>have to brick them.

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<v Speaker 2>It's the only way to stop these people. Yeah, all right,

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<v Speaker 2>Rubel continues quote. It turned out in pursuing the matter

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<v Speaker 2>further that if you had preset the system for a

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<v Speaker 2>ripple launch, there was no way to interrupt it. After

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<v Speaker 2>the launch command was transmitted to the silos. If the

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<v Speaker 2>first missile went then six seconds later, let us say

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<v Speaker 2>the second and after another six seconds the third, and

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<v Speaker 2>if after the twentieth missile you decide that was really

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<v Speaker 2>enough missiles, you couldn't stop the system from launching the

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<v Speaker 2>remaining thirty. According to what Bennett told us at the time,

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<v Speaker 2>Rubelle describes the committee as pretty shook by this revelation.

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<v Speaker 2>I don't think anybody had ever realized before that there

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<v Speaker 2>would be four men buried in the ground somewhere in

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<v Speaker 2>North Dakota who might someday stick their keys into four

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<v Speaker 2>little slots, turn them, and irrevocably launch fifty minutemen missiles.

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<v Speaker 3>Yeah that's life on Earth.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that's insane. The next question this inspired was under

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<v Speaker 2>what circumstances would these men get the order to turn

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<v Speaker 2>their keys? Everyone outside the Air Force assumed they'd have

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<v Speaker 2>to be a verified command from the President or a

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<v Speaker 2>designated military authority, but that wasn't physically required, and as

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<v Speaker 2>Rubel notes, the whole system was designed to remove choices

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<v Speaker 2>from civilian leadership. Quote. By design, the president could not

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<v Speaker 2>decide to launch one missile or two or a few

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<v Speaker 2>against specific targets. This was intentional. The Air Force built

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<v Speaker 2>it this way to remove choice from the president. So

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<v Speaker 2>the president, if he was asked to make that decision

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<v Speaker 2>in ten or fifteen minutes do we start a nuclear war?

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<v Speaker 2>So he would not have any option but to do it.

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<v Speaker 2>That's why they built it this way. That was conscious,

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<v Speaker 2>that was intentional.

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<v Speaker 3>Fuck.

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<v Speaker 2>So now I should note here, and this is something

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<v Speaker 2>Rebel points out, fifty of these Minuteman missiles, with the

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<v Speaker 2>standard explosive loads they had, would have meant more explosive

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<v Speaker 2>power than all of the bombs used in all of

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<v Speaker 2>the wars in human history put together up to that point.

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<v Speaker 2>Four guys could do this, and again, the whole minute

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<v Speaker 2>Man system was meant to eventually have at least a

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<v Speaker 2>thousand missiles general power. In fact, advocated for two hundred

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<v Speaker 2>squadrons a total of ten thousand missiles, all set up

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<v Speaker 2>the same way.

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<v Speaker 3>Every state gets four, every state gets four.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah. So Rubel was so frightened by all of this

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<v Speaker 2>that he dedicated his career to stopping the system as

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<v Speaker 2>it existed from being implemented. He sat down first with

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<v Speaker 2>General Curtis LeMay, than the Air Force Chief of Staff.

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<v Speaker 2>Rubelle expressed to LeMay that he believed the minute Man

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<v Speaker 2>system represented a crucial loss of civilian command and control.

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<v Speaker 2>Here's LeMay's response, command and control. Command and control, what's that?

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<v Speaker 2>It's telling the fighting man what to do. That's what

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<v Speaker 2>it is, and that's a job with a professional soldier.

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<v Speaker 2>They talk about the president, exercise and command and control?

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<v Speaker 2>What is the president? Rebel notes that le may spit

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<v Speaker 2>out the p and president a politician. What does the

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<v Speaker 2>politician know about war? Who needs a president? If there's

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<v Speaker 2>a war? Nobody. All we need him for is to

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<v Speaker 2>tell us that there is a war. We are professional soldiers,

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<v Speaker 2>will take care of the rest. Just out of his mind.

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<v Speaker 3>Hell yeah, I'm impressed that you got This is like

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<v Speaker 3>almost the worst bat. This is Schrodinger's worst bastard in

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<v Speaker 3>all right.

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<v Speaker 2>Right, yeah, absolutely, yeah, Like this man's dedication to ending

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<v Speaker 2>all life on earth is really unique in history. I mean,

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<v Speaker 2>I assume he had a Soviet counterpart, but like, I'm

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<v Speaker 2>not as familiar with them.

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<v Speaker 3>Do you think that they get like lonely, the American

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<v Speaker 3>one and the Russian one, and they have only each

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<v Speaker 3>other to talk to when they talk about their doomsday machine,

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<v Speaker 3>that they're the only people who really understand.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, man, they won't give me ten thousand missiles, bro,

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<v Speaker 2>I know, it's so hard to get enough missiles to

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<v Speaker 2>kill the whole world a thousand times over. Like, don't worry,

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<v Speaker 2>we got a bunch too, though, homie, Like, it'll be fine.

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<v Speaker 2>The no one's gonna live through this.

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<v Speaker 3>We'll do our part too, all right, as long as

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<v Speaker 3>you do your part.

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<v Speaker 2>Mm hmm. So it's here that Rubell points out every

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<v Speaker 2>detail of the minute Man system discussed so far was

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<v Speaker 2>designed per the specifications of the Air Force. This was

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<v Speaker 2>true right down to the mechanics of how turning the

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<v Speaker 2>keys led to firing the missiles, which is the scariest

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<v Speaker 2>part of the whole system. To make a complicated story

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<v Speaker 2>kind of simpler, the keys send out these electronic pulse

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<v Speaker 2>generators which travel to electronic gates, and once the get

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<v Speaker 2>the signal pat the pulse passes through the gate, it

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<v Speaker 2>advances one notch for each pulse that passes through the gate, right,

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<v Speaker 2>and if enough pulses pass through the gates, it starts

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<v Speaker 2>launching the missiles automatically.

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<v Speaker 3>Right. Oh my god, so I start You can hack

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<v Speaker 3>one position and get all four sorry, yeah.

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<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, it doesn't even have to be that. Because

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<v Speaker 2>I explained this to a friend of mine who has

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<v Speaker 2>never read a book about nukes, but who has done amateur,

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<v Speaker 2>unlicensed electrician work. And she immediately asked, hey, wait, does

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<v Speaker 2>that mean that, like, if the power goes out and

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<v Speaker 2>then comes back on, it might send a pulse and

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<v Speaker 2>advance one notch closer to firing the missiles. Wow, God,

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<v Speaker 2>you wouldn't think so, right. Clearly, anyone putting the effort

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<v Speaker 2>of putting missiles and hardened bunkers meant to a stand

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<v Speaker 2>an atom bomb would have made sure that something as

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<v Speaker 2>simple as a power outage in rural North Dakota in

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<v Speaker 2>the sixties wouldn't trigger an atomic holocaust. Only they did not.

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<v Speaker 2>They never considered it for a second.

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<v Speaker 3>My god, this.

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<v Speaker 2>Thing could have started launching fifty missiles if there was

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<v Speaker 2>a power outage or a couple of power outages. Because

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<v Speaker 2>once Rubel starts taking this to other engineers, they bring

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<v Speaker 2>this up and they start looking into how the system

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<v Speaker 2>design realized that's totally possible, Like it absolutely could have

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<v Speaker 2>happened if they had built the system the way it

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<v Speaker 2>was originally designed. And no one in the Air Force

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<v Speaker 2>even fought to look into that, Like that's how reckless

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<v Speaker 2>these pieces of shit are. Now the reason why the

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<v Speaker 2>Air Force doesn't care about this sort of thing is

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<v Speaker 2>that they are more concerned that just two guys can

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<v Speaker 2>launch a whole squadron of ICBMs if everyone else in

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<v Speaker 2>the country is killed first. So they built an automated

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<v Speaker 2>clock system. The other thing they added to this is

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<v Speaker 2>they have this automatic clock system that counts down from

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<v Speaker 2>between six hours. You can set it to like one

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<v Speaker 2>hour or six hours. You can set it to a

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<v Speaker 2>variety of times, but depending on how you set it,

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<v Speaker 2>if one command center votes to launch the missiles after

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<v Speaker 2>a limit, after whatever time you set it to, this

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<v Speaker 2>automated system will act as the second vote to fire

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<v Speaker 2>the remaining forty missiles, and Jesus right, yeah, Now, when

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<v Speaker 2>this is.

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<v Speaker 3>Explained, this is worse than I expected.

0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:48.120
<v Speaker 2>It's so bad, so fucked.

0:11:49.120 --> 0:11:55.800
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, it's so bad, like it's the Taurus firearms of

0:11:55.880 --> 0:12:00.400
<v Speaker 3>nuclear missiles. It's nuts, like to not.

0:12:00.520 --> 0:12:05.079
<v Speaker 2>Even no, not even Celtech. Yeah, they built a nuclear

0:12:05.160 --> 0:12:08.920
<v Speaker 2>cig P three twenty to go off in a cops box.

0:12:10.160 --> 0:12:13.320
<v Speaker 2>Oh man. So when all this was explained to Rubel,

0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:16.280
<v Speaker 2>the Air Force guy who's telling him this says that, like, well,

0:12:16.320 --> 0:12:19.000
<v Speaker 2>the minimum setting is fifty eight minutes, right, and we

0:12:19.040 --> 0:12:21.040
<v Speaker 2>want to have at least that much time to allow

0:12:21.040 --> 0:12:23.600
<v Speaker 2>the military to disable the system. If two men vote

0:12:23.600 --> 0:12:25.520
<v Speaker 2>to launch without warning and we decide we don't want

0:12:25.520 --> 0:12:27.920
<v Speaker 2>to launch the rest of the squadron, right, that seems

0:12:27.960 --> 0:12:31.240
<v Speaker 2>like maybe it's a safety feature. Right now, many of

0:12:31.280 --> 0:12:34.079
<v Speaker 2>these silos are hours away from anything else. That's kind

0:12:34.120 --> 0:12:36.640
<v Speaker 2>of the point. Even to this day. You can't reach

0:12:36.679 --> 0:12:38.840
<v Speaker 2>a lot of these in fifty eight minutes, you know.

0:12:39.559 --> 0:12:42.720
<v Speaker 2>But the other problem is that the Air Force colonel

0:12:42.760 --> 0:12:45.160
<v Speaker 2>who described the way this clock system worked to Rubel

0:12:45.480 --> 0:12:47.920
<v Speaker 2>lied to him. The minimum count you could set it

0:12:47.960 --> 0:12:53.920
<v Speaker 2>to wasn't fifty eight minutes. It was zero minutes.

0:12:55.600 --> 0:12:59.600
<v Speaker 3>So you really genuinely could just automate all the minute men.

0:12:59.720 --> 0:13:04.680
<v Speaker 2>Yeah we damn near? Did we damn near? Did? Here's

0:13:04.840 --> 0:13:07.800
<v Speaker 2>rebel again. Zero could mean that only two men or

0:13:07.840 --> 0:13:11.040
<v Speaker 2>perhaps none at all, could set off the unstoppable firing

0:13:11.080 --> 0:13:14.440
<v Speaker 2>of fifty minute man missiles by accident or effectively by

0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:16.800
<v Speaker 2>designing the system this way in the event of a

0:13:16.840 --> 0:13:22.240
<v Speaker 2>series of power interruptions. So Rubel is like, oh God,

0:13:22.760 --> 0:13:25.800
<v Speaker 2>I have to do something this system. These missiles are

0:13:25.800 --> 0:13:28.120
<v Speaker 2>not active yet, these silos aren't active yet, and I

0:13:28.160 --> 0:13:30.320
<v Speaker 2>have to stop them from being made active at least

0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:33.960
<v Speaker 2>until this is fixed. Right, So he sets to work

0:13:34.080 --> 0:13:36.520
<v Speaker 2>trying to get someone at the Air Force to give

0:13:36.559 --> 0:13:39.520
<v Speaker 2>a shit about these problems. Right. He sits down with

0:13:39.559 --> 0:13:42.600
<v Speaker 2>the head of missile Development, General Shreiverer, who he described

0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:47.560
<v Speaker 2>as conspicuously disinterested in discussing the subject. Eventually, in late

0:13:47.640 --> 0:13:50.560
<v Speaker 2>nineteen sixty he manages to have lunch with the Deputy

0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:53.800
<v Speaker 2>Secretary of Defense, and while they're arguing about this system,

0:13:53.920 --> 0:13:56.680
<v Speaker 2>he's like, look, man, tell me, would you feel safe

0:13:56.720 --> 0:13:58.920
<v Speaker 2>knowing the Soviets had a system that worked the way

0:13:58.920 --> 0:14:02.880
<v Speaker 2>the minute man does? And yeah, he thought I had

0:14:02.880 --> 0:14:06.800
<v Speaker 2>a point there, but my concerns again dropped into another

0:14:06.920 --> 0:14:10.000
<v Speaker 2>organizational black hole. Everyone's just trying to push this guy on.

0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:11.720
<v Speaker 2>I don't want to deal with it. I don't want

0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:13.640
<v Speaker 2>to think about it. Why are you trying? Why are

0:14:13.640 --> 0:14:16.160
<v Speaker 2>you causing problems? Just let us build this thing and

0:14:16.160 --> 0:14:18.800
<v Speaker 2>forget about it. Man, No one else has a problem

0:14:18.840 --> 0:14:21.280
<v Speaker 2>with this. That's literally how he's being treated.

0:14:21.760 --> 0:14:24.000
<v Speaker 3>It's like, so it's not even the torment Nexus. It's

0:14:24.040 --> 0:14:26.600
<v Speaker 3>like one guy's trying to stop the torment Nexus from

0:14:26.640 --> 0:14:29.120
<v Speaker 3>being built by a bunch of people who also don't

0:14:29.120 --> 0:14:31.240
<v Speaker 3>think that the Torment Nexus needs to be. They're just

0:14:31.280 --> 0:14:31.800
<v Speaker 3>doing their part.

0:14:32.360 --> 0:14:35.480
<v Speaker 2>Torment said, come on, man, don't fuck with us. A

0:14:35.480 --> 0:14:37.520
<v Speaker 2>lot of people's jobs are on the line building the

0:14:37.520 --> 0:14:42.040
<v Speaker 2>Torment Nexus. Yeah, come on. So, as I noted Rubel,

0:14:42.120 --> 0:14:44.720
<v Speaker 2>because he's good at his job, he gets promoted regularly, right,

0:14:44.800 --> 0:14:48.040
<v Speaker 2>and in sixty one I think sixty sixty one, he

0:14:48.120 --> 0:14:50.600
<v Speaker 2>passes his job at the Strategic Warfare Office I think

0:14:50.600 --> 0:14:53.280
<v Speaker 2>it's sixty onto a guy named Martin Stern. He tells

0:14:53.280 --> 0:14:56.200
<v Speaker 2>Stern that his top priority is to change the Minuteman

0:14:56.280 --> 0:14:59.560
<v Speaker 2>launch control system and warns him, you will not get

0:14:59.560 --> 0:15:02.320
<v Speaker 2>this done unless you get a presidential directive ordering the

0:15:02.360 --> 0:15:04.640
<v Speaker 2>Air Force to do something. And Marvin has a good

0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:06.600
<v Speaker 2>relationship with some of these generals, and so he starts

0:15:06.640 --> 0:15:08.400
<v Speaker 2>at being like, that's not how you get things done

0:15:08.400 --> 0:15:10.240
<v Speaker 2>in the Air Force, right, you just gotta let me

0:15:10.280 --> 0:15:12.720
<v Speaker 2>talk to these guys. But then he starts talking to

0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:14.880
<v Speaker 2>these guys and all of these generals lie to him,

0:15:14.880 --> 0:15:17.120
<v Speaker 2>and he realizes like, oh fuck, no, they really are

0:15:17.240 --> 0:15:21.360
<v Speaker 2>refusing to fix these problems, these apocalyptic problems, and they're

0:15:21.400 --> 0:15:24.880
<v Speaker 2>trying to fast track these missiles to being activated. To

0:15:24.880 --> 0:15:27.520
<v Speaker 2>make a long story short, Rubel and several of his

0:15:27.600 --> 0:15:29.880
<v Speaker 2>friends spend the next two years of their lives shouting

0:15:29.920 --> 0:15:33.080
<v Speaker 2>at everyone who will listen about this. This culminates and

0:15:33.160 --> 0:15:35.600
<v Speaker 2>another guy at the DoD named Jim Fletcher heading a

0:15:35.600 --> 0:15:38.120
<v Speaker 2>committee that issues a report on the minute Man system.

0:15:38.520 --> 0:15:41.800
<v Speaker 2>Their research found that a very real chance that simple

0:15:41.840 --> 0:15:44.960
<v Speaker 2>power outages could cause large portions of our nuclear arsenal

0:15:45.040 --> 0:15:49.360
<v Speaker 2>to fire. The ultimate bill and this is it's because

0:15:49.360 --> 0:15:52.800
<v Speaker 2>of this commission report that we retrofit the whole minute

0:15:52.840 --> 0:15:55.960
<v Speaker 2>Man system. Right, And the ultimate bill for retrofitting the

0:15:55.960 --> 0:15:58.400
<v Speaker 2>system is hundreds of millions of dollars. Right. It's very

0:15:58.440 --> 0:16:00.640
<v Speaker 2>expensive to fix these problems, which is why the Air

0:16:00.640 --> 0:16:03.480
<v Speaker 2>Force hadn't wanted to fix them. But Rubel does win.

0:16:03.880 --> 0:16:10.160
<v Speaker 2>The most dangerous features for the economy, Yeah yeah, yeah,

0:16:10.200 --> 0:16:13.080
<v Speaker 2>real bad fucking. The stock market does not do well

0:16:13.120 --> 0:16:16.920
<v Speaker 2>when everyone's dead. Nope, Nope, doesn't do much at all.

0:16:17.640 --> 0:16:20.880
<v Speaker 2>Now Rubel does win. The most dangerous features are removed

0:16:20.880 --> 0:16:23.000
<v Speaker 2>by the time the first minute Man silo goes active

0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:25.120
<v Speaker 2>at the end of nineteen sixty one. But a big

0:16:25.160 --> 0:16:27.120
<v Speaker 2>part of why I noted all of this stuff. None

0:16:27.120 --> 0:16:29.680
<v Speaker 2>of this comes out until two thousand and eight, when Rubel,

0:16:29.760 --> 0:16:32.640
<v Speaker 2>at the end of his life, publishes a confession talking

0:16:32.720 --> 0:16:34.320
<v Speaker 2>about all this right as a way to try to

0:16:34.320 --> 0:16:37.360
<v Speaker 2>warn people. Essentially, he's warning people, nothing's really all that

0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:39.840
<v Speaker 2>much better today, right, Like, that's why he writes this,

0:16:40.320 --> 0:16:43.320
<v Speaker 2>to try to get people to understand how much danger

0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:46.560
<v Speaker 2>we're all in. And a big part of the point

0:16:46.560 --> 0:16:48.760
<v Speaker 2>of that confession is he's talking about all of the

0:16:48.840 --> 0:16:52.160
<v Speaker 2>gaps in the system of civilian control of the military

0:16:52.200 --> 0:16:54.280
<v Speaker 2>that allowed all of this to happen in the first place,

0:16:54.280 --> 0:16:58.200
<v Speaker 2>because those gaps weren't entirely eradicated by fixing this one system.

0:16:58.520 --> 0:17:01.640
<v Speaker 2>He documented a conversation one of his allies had with

0:17:01.680 --> 0:17:05.959
<v Speaker 2>another Air Force general around the same time. Quote General

0:17:06.000 --> 0:17:08.960
<v Speaker 2>Cutter told me that we had to complete the BMEWS

0:17:09.040 --> 0:17:11.679
<v Speaker 2>Ballistic Missile Early Warning System as soon as possible, and

0:17:11.720 --> 0:17:13.680
<v Speaker 2>he urged that we expanded in order to create a

0:17:13.760 --> 0:17:16.920
<v Speaker 2>highly redundant capability at each site. We must have an

0:17:16.960 --> 0:17:21.320
<v Speaker 2>absolutely reliable early warning of a missile attack. Basically, I agreed,

0:17:21.800 --> 0:17:23.720
<v Speaker 2>all would have been well if he had stopped there,

0:17:23.880 --> 0:17:26.560
<v Speaker 2>but he didn't. In words I can't precisely recall, he

0:17:26.600 --> 0:17:27.919
<v Speaker 2>went on to say that we had to have this

0:17:28.000 --> 0:17:30.960
<v Speaker 2>redundancy in the resulting high level of right reliability, so

0:17:31.040 --> 0:17:34.040
<v Speaker 2>that when we finally connected the warning system directly to

0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:37.439
<v Speaker 2>the launch button of our own ICBMs, there would be

0:17:37.480 --> 0:17:41.120
<v Speaker 2>no false alarms. I was astonished. I told him flatly,

0:17:41.160 --> 0:17:44.000
<v Speaker 2>we would not automate our response at We would not

0:17:44.080 --> 0:17:46.560
<v Speaker 2>connect the warning system directly to the launch button. We

0:17:46.600 --> 0:17:49.600
<v Speaker 2>would not, in some go to a launch on warning strategy.

0:17:49.800 --> 0:17:52.199
<v Speaker 2>We would especially not go to one that did not

0:17:52.280 --> 0:17:56.400
<v Speaker 2>have the president in the decision making. Loop Cutter coldly replied,

0:17:56.640 --> 0:17:59.080
<v Speaker 2>in that case, we might as well surrender now.

0:18:01.040 --> 0:18:04.200
<v Speaker 3>I love it. It's like no one who's ever done plumbing

0:18:04.440 --> 0:18:08.600
<v Speaker 3>or hacking. No, yeah, air gap, you need a fucking

0:18:08.760 --> 0:18:10.920
<v Speaker 3>air gap, needs for so many gaps.

0:18:11.119 --> 0:18:15.680
<v Speaker 2>Never trust a computer, don't trust people, and don't trust computers.

0:18:16.480 --> 0:18:19.240
<v Speaker 3>Every hacker is like, this is my computer that matters,

0:18:19.320 --> 0:18:22.359
<v Speaker 3>So it doesn't have the Internet right like it.

0:18:23.600 --> 0:18:26.600
<v Speaker 2>It's just it's fucking insane, like the whole Well, we

0:18:26.680 --> 0:18:28.399
<v Speaker 2>might as well surrender now. If we're not just going

0:18:28.480 --> 0:18:30.719
<v Speaker 2>to have an automatic doomsday device that goes off, if

0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:33.640
<v Speaker 2>a radar has an hallucination, why don't we just quit?

0:18:34.000 --> 0:18:38.439
<v Speaker 2>Fuck it? What's the communists like? It's fucking crazy? And

0:18:38.520 --> 0:18:41.600
<v Speaker 2>I should note that this happens later, but the Soviet

0:18:41.640 --> 0:18:45.760
<v Speaker 2>Union does devise a similar automated system called the dead Hand,

0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:49.840
<v Speaker 2>and some aspect it's kind of unclear exactly how put

0:18:49.880 --> 0:18:51.800
<v Speaker 2>together this is, but they do a version of the

0:18:51.880 --> 0:18:56.960
<v Speaker 2>same thing, right this right it is a really cool name,

0:18:57.400 --> 0:18:59.119
<v Speaker 2>but it's basically a way to guarantee that if the

0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:02.439
<v Speaker 2>US wiped out out their command and control first, that

0:19:02.680 --> 0:19:07.000
<v Speaker 2>there would be an automatic launch system in order to retaliate. Right,

0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:11.040
<v Speaker 2>It's kind of unclear exactly what got actually built, but

0:19:11.080 --> 0:19:13.840
<v Speaker 2>they this is these same conversions of all of these

0:19:13.840 --> 0:19:15.960
<v Speaker 2>same conversations happened in the USSR.

0:19:15.640 --> 0:19:17.320
<v Speaker 3>Right two, because they, if nothing else, they need the

0:19:17.359 --> 0:19:20.560
<v Speaker 3>Americans to believe they do that right right exactly, and

0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:23.280
<v Speaker 3>like everyone is worried about what the other guy is

0:19:23.320 --> 0:19:24.639
<v Speaker 3>doing and everybody's out.

0:19:24.520 --> 0:19:25.479
<v Speaker 2>Of their fucking minds.

0:19:26.400 --> 0:19:26.720
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.

0:19:26.800 --> 0:19:30.159
<v Speaker 2>Now the good news is, Margaret, it's time for ads.

0:19:31.080 --> 0:19:33.679
<v Speaker 3>Oh good, it is a nice thing that makes the

0:19:33.680 --> 0:19:35.480
<v Speaker 3>ads seem like a nice refreshment.

0:19:35.720 --> 0:19:38.960
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. Yeah, probably not going to get ads for nukes.

0:19:39.320 --> 0:19:39.800
<v Speaker 4>Huzzah.

0:19:46.480 --> 0:19:51.960
<v Speaker 2>And we're back. So the good news is this, This

0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:54.879
<v Speaker 2>is not the only kind of thinking exhibited by modern

0:19:54.920 --> 0:19:59.959
<v Speaker 2>military advisors and officers today. But general Cutters type of

0:20:00.080 --> 0:20:02.359
<v Speaker 2>thinking is not extinct at the Pentagon, and it is

0:20:02.400 --> 0:20:04.600
<v Speaker 2>still very common. I don't know if i'd say it's

0:20:04.600 --> 0:20:07.200
<v Speaker 2>completely dominant, but there are a lot of guys who

0:20:07.280 --> 0:20:11.160
<v Speaker 2>think this way who are still part of our nuclear

0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:12.760
<v Speaker 2>defense architecture, right.

0:20:13.200 --> 0:20:13.280
<v Speaker 1>This.

0:20:13.440 --> 0:20:16.640
<v Speaker 2>In fact, getting that job kind of requires that you're

0:20:16.680 --> 0:20:18.840
<v Speaker 2>at least a little bit like these people.

0:20:19.000 --> 0:20:19.200
<v Speaker 4>Right.

0:20:19.480 --> 0:20:22.879
<v Speaker 2>It fairly uncommon for people who don't somewhat agree with

0:20:22.960 --> 0:20:25.879
<v Speaker 2>some of this to wind up in those positions. Rubell

0:20:25.960 --> 0:20:29.600
<v Speaker 2>points out that there was no technical auditing practice standardized

0:20:29.640 --> 0:20:32.120
<v Speaker 2>for examining the technical status of launch controls for any

0:20:32.119 --> 0:20:35.680
<v Speaker 2>of our nuclear weapons systems, and there is none today, right,

0:20:36.160 --> 0:20:39.800
<v Speaker 2>And that's a real problem. There's no one checking other

0:20:39.840 --> 0:20:42.040
<v Speaker 2>than guys like Rubel to make sure we don't build

0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:47.320
<v Speaker 2>another really flawed, suicidally flawed missile system, which the Minuteman

0:20:47.440 --> 0:20:51.119
<v Speaker 2>initially was. Now, while Rubel was fighting to reform the

0:20:51.119 --> 0:20:53.520
<v Speaker 2>minute Man system, he was part of the problem in

0:20:53.600 --> 0:20:55.680
<v Speaker 2>a different way. Right. We've just talked about him. Maybe

0:20:55.720 --> 0:20:58.199
<v Speaker 2>he saved everybody's lives. Here's him being kind of a

0:20:58.240 --> 0:21:02.360
<v Speaker 2>bastard and late night. Yeah, in late nineteen sixty, which

0:21:02.400 --> 0:21:04.200
<v Speaker 2>is right in the middle of when he's having this fight.

0:21:04.480 --> 0:21:08.200
<v Speaker 2>President Eisenhower issued an order for all three military departments

0:21:08.200 --> 0:21:12.160
<v Speaker 2>to formulate a single operational plan or PSYOP for nuclear

0:21:12.200 --> 0:21:15.119
<v Speaker 2>war like SIOP, not like a psyop, but it is

0:21:15.320 --> 0:21:17.600
<v Speaker 2>pronounced the same way, right, and this will this will

0:21:17.640 --> 0:21:19.879
<v Speaker 2>get finalized in sixty two. But they start working on it,

0:21:19.880 --> 0:21:22.560
<v Speaker 2>and they presented initially in nineteen sixty. So in late

0:21:22.640 --> 0:21:25.520
<v Speaker 2>nineteen sixty the DoD the Department of Defense, shares a

0:21:25.560 --> 0:21:28.600
<v Speaker 2>cohesive plan for nuclear war to a mix of military

0:21:28.600 --> 0:21:32.040
<v Speaker 2>personnel and selected civilian defense officials for the first time.

0:21:32.560 --> 0:21:36.560
<v Speaker 2>The Single Integrated Operational Plan or PSYOP sixty two was,

0:21:36.640 --> 0:21:40.560
<v Speaker 2>in Rubel's words, deliberately designed to inflict hundreds of millions

0:21:40.600 --> 0:21:43.840
<v Speaker 2>of deaths and uncounted casualties, mostly on in innocent civilians

0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:47.520
<v Speaker 2>in the USSR in China. This plan was presented at

0:21:47.560 --> 0:21:51.520
<v Speaker 2>an underground meeting at the SAC headquarters near Omaha, Nebraska.

0:21:51.840 --> 0:21:55.520
<v Speaker 2>General Power Stage managed a deliberately theatrical display in which,

0:21:55.520 --> 0:21:59.000
<v Speaker 2>at his command, AIDS would simultaneously set up easels and

0:21:59.040 --> 0:22:01.560
<v Speaker 2>start flipping maps over that like each new map would

0:22:01.560 --> 0:22:05.199
<v Speaker 2>show different detonations from different waves of planned strikes, you know,

0:22:05.560 --> 0:22:08.080
<v Speaker 2>five minutes, in ten minutes, twenty minutes. Right, this is

0:22:08.119 --> 0:22:10.800
<v Speaker 2>like it's an analog PowerPoint, right, he has like guys

0:22:10.840 --> 0:22:15.680
<v Speaker 2>being his PowerPoint presentation basically, Yeah, and I'm going to

0:22:15.760 --> 0:22:18.120
<v Speaker 2>quote from Rubel, because Reubella is at this meeting, right,

0:22:18.200 --> 0:22:20.879
<v Speaker 2>I'm going to quote from his description of what he

0:22:20.960 --> 0:22:23.359
<v Speaker 2>sees here. At the point in the briefing where some

0:22:23.400 --> 0:22:26.399
<v Speaker 2>bombers were described flying northeast from the Mediterranean on their

0:22:26.440 --> 0:22:29.320
<v Speaker 2>way to Moscow, General Power waved at the speaker, saying

0:22:29.480 --> 0:22:31.439
<v Speaker 2>just a minute, just a minute. He turned in his

0:22:31.480 --> 0:22:34.040
<v Speaker 2>front row chair to stare into the obscurity of uniforms

0:22:34.080 --> 0:22:36.480
<v Speaker 2>and dusk stretching behind me, and said, I just hope

0:22:36.480 --> 0:22:38.840
<v Speaker 2>none of you have any relatives in Albania, because they

0:22:38.840 --> 0:22:40.760
<v Speaker 2>have a radar station there that is right on our

0:22:40.800 --> 0:22:43.439
<v Speaker 2>flight path, and we take it out with that, to

0:22:43.480 --> 0:22:46.240
<v Speaker 2>which the response was utter silence. Power turned to the

0:22:46.320 --> 0:22:48.280
<v Speaker 2>speaker and with another wave of his hand told him

0:22:48.320 --> 0:22:51.560
<v Speaker 2>to go ahead. Just Cashry was like, by the way,

0:22:51.560 --> 0:22:54.119
<v Speaker 2>we're killing everyone in Albania immediately.

0:22:54.200 --> 0:22:56.480
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, famously our enemy Uh huh.

0:22:56.840 --> 0:22:59.960
<v Speaker 2>Hope you don't got family there, because again we knew

0:23:00.000 --> 0:23:02.120
<v Speaker 2>pok them right away. Because of a radar station. We're

0:23:02.119 --> 0:23:03.720
<v Speaker 2>just going to kill everyone in the country. Because of

0:23:03.720 --> 0:23:06.680
<v Speaker 2>a radar station, everyone in the country. We're wiping the

0:23:06.720 --> 0:23:07.480
<v Speaker 2>whole country out.

0:23:08.080 --> 0:23:09.320
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.

0:23:09.359 --> 0:23:13.440
<v Speaker 2>So, Rubel, I think we've established is a thinking man

0:23:13.680 --> 0:23:16.159
<v Speaker 2>and a man who cares about ethics. He's not a monster.

0:23:16.600 --> 0:23:18.560
<v Speaker 2>He's a part of this terrible system, but he has

0:23:18.600 --> 0:23:22.200
<v Speaker 2>a soul and he's upset. He's upset at this general

0:23:22.240 --> 0:23:25.159
<v Speaker 2>casual being, like, so we start by killing albaniact just

0:23:25.200 --> 0:23:29.360
<v Speaker 2>for shit, right, He's upset, but he doesn't say shit right.

0:23:29.400 --> 0:23:31.960
<v Speaker 2>He writes about this decades later. He writes about his

0:23:32.000 --> 0:23:35.200
<v Speaker 2>discomfort in this meeting, and that specifically, he writes about

0:23:35.200 --> 0:23:37.719
<v Speaker 2>his discomfort at the fact that SIAP sixty two quote

0:23:37.880 --> 0:23:41.760
<v Speaker 2>deliberately removed effective operational control from the president or any

0:23:41.880 --> 0:23:44.639
<v Speaker 2>other civilian or even military commander in the event of

0:23:44.640 --> 0:23:48.520
<v Speaker 2>a nuclear conflict. Now, none of this is public knowledge

0:23:48.560 --> 0:23:52.400
<v Speaker 2>for decades, right, it takes a long time. We only

0:23:52.440 --> 0:23:54.000
<v Speaker 2>know what we know because in two thousand and eight,

0:23:54.359 --> 0:23:56.960
<v Speaker 2>Rubell published his experiences as a warning to the rest

0:23:56.960 --> 0:23:59.439
<v Speaker 2>of the country, and he noted that during this meeting,

0:23:59.640 --> 0:24:02.200
<v Speaker 2>General Power and the other authors of si UP sixty

0:24:02.240 --> 0:24:06.199
<v Speaker 2>two gave an anticipated death count of five hundred to

0:24:06.240 --> 0:24:09.480
<v Speaker 2>six hundred million deaths from fallout alone in the USSR

0:24:09.520 --> 0:24:10.000
<v Speaker 2>in China.

0:24:14.920 --> 0:24:17.440
<v Speaker 3>That gets into that, like, that's like a combined death

0:24:17.480 --> 0:24:20.400
<v Speaker 3>count of every war that's ever happened. Levels ye problem, yeah.

0:24:20.400 --> 0:24:25.440
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, like right, it's got to be up there, right. Quote.

0:24:25.600 --> 0:24:28.359
<v Speaker 2>No accounting was presented of reciprocal effects in the United

0:24:28.400 --> 0:24:31.040
<v Speaker 2>States or collateral deaths and damage in many other parts

0:24:31.040 --> 0:24:33.520
<v Speaker 2>of the globe where global clouds of radioactive dust would

0:24:33.560 --> 0:24:36.159
<v Speaker 2>eventually descend. They just don't bother with that. We're not

0:24:36.200 --> 0:24:38.440
<v Speaker 2>interested in what the fallout might do. We're not interested

0:24:38.440 --> 0:24:41.399
<v Speaker 2>in the knock on effects. We're just interested in killing

0:24:41.560 --> 0:24:43.480
<v Speaker 2>half of all of the people or more in the

0:24:43.560 --> 0:24:47.480
<v Speaker 2>USSR in China, right yeah. And the way in which

0:24:47.560 --> 0:24:50.399
<v Speaker 2>Power and the other briefers talk about civilian death on

0:24:50.480 --> 0:24:55.080
<v Speaker 2>an unimaginable scale struck Rubel as ghoulish. Quote. There are

0:24:55.080 --> 0:24:58.199
<v Speaker 2>about six hundred million Chinese in China. He said, his

0:24:58.320 --> 0:25:00.639
<v Speaker 2>chart went up to half that number, three hundred million.

0:25:00.640 --> 0:25:03.199
<v Speaker 2>On the vertical axis. It showed that debts from fallout

0:25:03.200 --> 0:25:05.199
<v Speaker 2>as time passed after the attack leveled out at that

0:25:05.320 --> 0:25:09.240
<v Speaker 2>number three hundred million. Half the population of China.

0:25:10.840 --> 0:25:13.080
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yeah, they don't care.

0:25:13.400 --> 0:25:18.679
<v Speaker 2>They don't give a shit. Yeah, now I say they

0:25:18.680 --> 0:25:20.679
<v Speaker 2>don't give a shit. Someone in this meeting does give

0:25:20.720 --> 0:25:24.880
<v Speaker 2>a shit, right, And I'm gonna continue with Rubel's reminiscence.

0:25:25.480 --> 0:25:28.240
<v Speaker 2>A voice out of the gloom from somewhere behind me interrupted, saying,

0:25:28.359 --> 0:25:31.000
<v Speaker 2>may I ask a question. General Power turned again in

0:25:31.040 --> 0:25:34.000
<v Speaker 2>his front row seat, stared into the darkness, and said, yeah,

0:25:34.000 --> 0:25:36.160
<v Speaker 2>what is it? In a tone not likely to encourage

0:25:36.200 --> 0:25:39.760
<v Speaker 2>the timid What if this isn't China's war? The voice asked,

0:25:39.920 --> 0:25:41.879
<v Speaker 2>what if this is just a war with the Soviets?

0:25:42.119 --> 0:25:46.399
<v Speaker 2>Can you change the plan? Well? Yeah, General Power said resignedly,

0:25:46.640 --> 0:25:48.880
<v Speaker 2>we can, but I hope nobody thinks of it because

0:25:48.920 --> 0:25:55.000
<v Speaker 2>it would really screw up the plan. Hey, what if

0:25:55.000 --> 0:25:57.080
<v Speaker 2>we don't need to kill three hundred million people in China?

0:25:57.200 --> 0:25:58.800
<v Speaker 2>Can we like nix that part?

0:25:59.040 --> 0:25:59.159
<v Speaker 4>Well?

0:25:59.160 --> 0:26:01.560
<v Speaker 2>I hope not. That fucks up my plan. We're not

0:26:01.600 --> 0:26:03.720
<v Speaker 2>killing three hundred million people in China. That really fucks

0:26:03.760 --> 0:26:04.359
<v Speaker 2>things up for me.

0:26:05.080 --> 0:26:06.920
<v Speaker 3>We already had the banner printed, you know.

0:26:07.520 --> 0:26:09.840
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, we've got the banner printed in everything. We had

0:26:09.840 --> 0:26:12.640
<v Speaker 2>a mission accomplished board here. Come on, Yeah, you don't

0:26:12.640 --> 0:26:14.600
<v Speaker 2>want to kill three hundred million people in China. What's

0:26:14.640 --> 0:26:15.080
<v Speaker 2>wrong with you?

0:26:15.920 --> 0:26:18.640
<v Speaker 3>Yeah? But what was that? Bonus effects?

0:26:18.720 --> 0:26:22.480
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, bonus effects. Now it says something about Rubel

0:26:22.560 --> 0:26:25.200
<v Speaker 2>that it was not until this moment that he found

0:26:25.240 --> 0:26:28.560
<v Speaker 2>himself thinking about the Vonse Conference in January of nineteen

0:26:28.600 --> 0:26:31.119
<v Speaker 2>forty two, in which a group of top Nazis planned

0:26:31.160 --> 0:26:33.480
<v Speaker 2>the Holocaust. For some reason, this is one of the

0:26:33.520 --> 0:26:35.959
<v Speaker 2>most frightening moments of the Cold War to me, A

0:26:36.000 --> 0:26:38.880
<v Speaker 2>man who truly cared about protecting his country and stopping

0:26:38.920 --> 0:26:42.000
<v Speaker 2>a dangerous system from going live finds himself stuck in

0:26:42.040 --> 0:26:45.000
<v Speaker 2>a room where something many times worse than the Holocaust

0:26:45.040 --> 0:26:48.560
<v Speaker 2>is being casually planned, and he realizes, oh fuck, oh shit,

0:26:48.880 --> 0:26:51.240
<v Speaker 2>I'm like some junior SS guys sitting in the back

0:26:51.280 --> 0:26:53.639
<v Speaker 2>of the Vonse conference too scared to speak up and

0:26:53.680 --> 0:26:57.880
<v Speaker 2>ruin micro fuck fuck, I'm a not fuck like. That's

0:26:57.920 --> 0:27:00.639
<v Speaker 2>literally how he describes his recollection is like, this is

0:27:00.680 --> 0:27:02.720
<v Speaker 2>the fuck. This is so much worse than the they're

0:27:02.720 --> 0:27:09.080
<v Speaker 2>talking about skilling six hundred million people. He doesn't say shit,

0:27:09.640 --> 0:27:12.640
<v Speaker 2>he does not. He is not that kind of brave, right,

0:27:13.760 --> 0:27:15.840
<v Speaker 2>He is a work within them that's.

0:27:15.720 --> 0:27:18.920
<v Speaker 3>Like a telling human conditioned thing right, because we all

0:27:18.960 --> 0:27:21.720
<v Speaker 3>imagine ourselves saying something right now.

0:27:22.600 --> 0:27:25.760
<v Speaker 2>You want to hope you would. And I get the

0:27:25.800 --> 0:27:29.280
<v Speaker 2>feeling from his writing that Rubelle never quite forgave himself

0:27:29.320 --> 0:27:30.560
<v Speaker 2>for not right.

0:27:31.000 --> 0:27:31.280
<v Speaker 3>Good.

0:27:31.480 --> 0:27:34.399
<v Speaker 2>He shouldn't have, Yeah, he shouldn't have. This should haunt

0:27:34.440 --> 0:27:36.080
<v Speaker 2>you to the end of your days.

0:27:36.359 --> 0:27:38.960
<v Speaker 3>But he's still the most deeply human person in that room.

0:27:39.840 --> 0:27:41.960
<v Speaker 2>I'll say the second most, because we're about to talk

0:27:41.960 --> 0:27:44.480
<v Speaker 2>about someone who does speak up. There is one guy

0:27:44.840 --> 0:27:49.040
<v Speaker 2>who has who actually has some courage here. Okay, So

0:27:49.160 --> 0:27:52.600
<v Speaker 2>the day after this first meeting at the SAC headquarters,

0:27:52.680 --> 0:27:55.560
<v Speaker 2>Rubel takes part in a smaller meeting about the meeting

0:27:55.600 --> 0:27:58.000
<v Speaker 2>they just had. Right, even the military, you can't escape

0:27:58.040 --> 0:28:02.840
<v Speaker 2>meetings about meetings, you know, like that's that's that's just bureaucracy, baby.

0:28:03.280 --> 0:28:06.359
<v Speaker 2>So this smaller meeting includes the Secretary of Defense, all

0:28:06.400 --> 0:28:08.440
<v Speaker 2>of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the secretaries of

0:28:08.480 --> 0:28:11.560
<v Speaker 2>each major branch of the military, plus the Commandant of

0:28:11.560 --> 0:28:14.760
<v Speaker 2>the Marine Corps, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Speaking

0:28:14.800 --> 0:28:17.760
<v Speaker 2>on the harrowing meeting they just had, quote told everyone

0:28:17.800 --> 0:28:21.959
<v Speaker 2>that they'd done a very fine job, a very difficult job, right, So,

0:28:22.359 --> 0:28:25.080
<v Speaker 2>and that sentiment is echoed by everyone. Everyone just goes

0:28:25.080 --> 0:28:27.160
<v Speaker 2>around congratulating each other at the start of this meeting

0:28:27.200 --> 0:28:29.040
<v Speaker 2>being it was a great meeting. It was really tough,

0:28:29.200 --> 0:28:31.199
<v Speaker 2>but you guys really pulled together and came up with

0:28:31.200 --> 0:28:33.280
<v Speaker 2>a plant two six hundred million people, and I'm proud

0:28:33.280 --> 0:28:35.199
<v Speaker 2>of you. You know, it's not easy to figure out

0:28:35.240 --> 0:28:37.239
<v Speaker 2>how to kill half a billion people or more, but

0:28:37.280 --> 0:28:41.720
<v Speaker 2>you guys really got a job. Yeah. Yeah, So everyone

0:28:41.760 --> 0:28:45.720
<v Speaker 2>in the room echoes this congratulatory sentiment except for one guy,

0:28:46.400 --> 0:28:50.200
<v Speaker 2>General David M. Shoop, commandant of the Marine Corps. And

0:28:51.120 --> 0:28:53.719
<v Speaker 2>you know, the Marines. The Marines are an interesting branch

0:28:53.840 --> 0:28:57.680
<v Speaker 2>because both the chuttiest maniacs and the military and the

0:28:57.800 --> 0:29:01.760
<v Speaker 2>absolute like coolest, like best soldiers in American history, like

0:29:01.800 --> 0:29:05.680
<v Speaker 2>Smedley Butler were Marines, right, Yeah, they have a history

0:29:05.720 --> 0:29:10.680
<v Speaker 2>of producing occasionally these like really weirdly like woke generals

0:29:10.680 --> 0:29:13.640
<v Speaker 2>and stuff like Smedley Butler is a committed anti capitalist

0:29:13.720 --> 0:29:16.880
<v Speaker 2>and anti imperialist who gets very angry about being used

0:29:16.880 --> 0:29:20.200
<v Speaker 2>as a gangster for capitalism. And David and Shupe, who's

0:29:20.200 --> 0:29:22.120
<v Speaker 2>the commandant of the Core at this point, is cut

0:29:22.120 --> 0:29:25.520
<v Speaker 2>from the same cloth. He's the same kind of guy, and.

0:29:25.480 --> 0:29:28.520
<v Speaker 3>He probably seem like more like honor, like more like yes,

0:29:28.520 --> 0:29:31.000
<v Speaker 3>whatever you believe in, you're still like you're like, no,

0:29:31.040 --> 0:29:33.360
<v Speaker 3>I'm willing to risk my life to go do this thing.

0:29:33.520 --> 0:29:35.000
<v Speaker 2>That's why I joined the Marines.

0:29:35.720 --> 0:29:37.600
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, right, Like my dad was a marine. It doesn't

0:29:37.600 --> 0:29:40.280
<v Speaker 3>have entirely positive things to say about the people in

0:29:40.360 --> 0:29:41.080
<v Speaker 3>it with that, Like.

0:29:41.000 --> 0:29:44.160
<v Speaker 2>That's what I'm saying is there's they run the gamut,

0:29:44.360 --> 0:29:49.000
<v Speaker 2>you know. Yeah, but Shop is a really interesting guy

0:29:49.040 --> 0:29:51.160
<v Speaker 2>in the long history of Marine Corps commandants. He is

0:29:51.200 --> 0:29:54.040
<v Speaker 2>one of the men who earned that job title the most.

0:29:54.480 --> 0:29:56.880
<v Speaker 2>He'd been born in Indiana in nineteen oh four to

0:29:56.960 --> 0:30:00.120
<v Speaker 2>a poor family, and he was raised politically progressive and

0:30:00.200 --> 0:30:03.440
<v Speaker 2>grew into a staunch anti imperialist with a very strong

0:30:03.480 --> 0:30:07.920
<v Speaker 2>anti business outlook. He is not super sold on capitalism

0:30:08.080 --> 0:30:11.600
<v Speaker 2>and he hates imperialism. As a starving young man, he

0:30:11.720 --> 0:30:14.719
<v Speaker 2>joins the military to survive. He proves very good at

0:30:14.760 --> 0:30:17.240
<v Speaker 2>the job and is deployed twice to China during their

0:30:17.240 --> 0:30:19.760
<v Speaker 2>Civil war. He serves as a staff officer in the

0:30:19.760 --> 0:30:22.240
<v Speaker 2>Pacific during World War II until he was given a

0:30:22.280 --> 0:30:25.440
<v Speaker 2>combat command to lead the invasion of an island called Tarawa.

0:30:26.080 --> 0:30:29.800
<v Speaker 2>His forces encountered immediate and fierce resistance. His transport was

0:30:29.840 --> 0:30:32.400
<v Speaker 2>disabled before landing, and he had to wade ashore, where

0:30:32.400 --> 0:30:34.600
<v Speaker 2>he was struck by shrapnel and shot in the neck.

0:30:34.960 --> 0:30:37.800
<v Speaker 2>Despite this, he continued to organize and lead his men

0:30:37.880 --> 0:30:40.160
<v Speaker 2>from the front with a gunshot wound to the neck.

0:30:40.600 --> 0:30:42.800
<v Speaker 2>On the afternoon of the second day of the attack,

0:30:42.880 --> 0:30:46.960
<v Speaker 2>he sent a message to his divisional headquarters Combat Efficiency colon,

0:30:47.080 --> 0:30:52.880
<v Speaker 2>we are winning. Just just a badass, Like, what are these?

0:30:52.920 --> 0:30:56.880
<v Speaker 2>What of our absolute coolest battlefield commanders in the war.

0:30:57.440 --> 0:31:00.360
<v Speaker 2>Shep receives a Congressional Medal of Honor for his efforts,

0:31:00.440 --> 0:31:03.800
<v Speaker 2>right if you want to know, like, how what kind

0:31:03.840 --> 0:31:06.120
<v Speaker 2>of a badass this dude was? Like he is a

0:31:06.240 --> 0:31:08.240
<v Speaker 2>general leading from the front in such a way that

0:31:08.280 --> 0:31:10.800
<v Speaker 2>he gets a medal of Honor for his service in combat.

0:31:11.240 --> 0:31:14.240
<v Speaker 2>And he is the only man in this entire story

0:31:14.360 --> 0:31:16.800
<v Speaker 2>who gives us anything we can be truly proud of

0:31:16.840 --> 0:31:19.760
<v Speaker 2>as Americans. And I'm going to quote from Annie Jacobson's

0:31:19.760 --> 0:31:24.320
<v Speaker 2>book Nuclear War here, and this is after they're going

0:31:24.400 --> 0:31:26.920
<v Speaker 2>over the plan again to kill six hundred million people.

0:31:27.360 --> 0:31:29.720
<v Speaker 2>No one spoke up to object to the indiscriminate killing

0:31:29.760 --> 0:31:32.040
<v Speaker 2>of six hundred million people in a US government led

0:31:32.080 --> 0:31:35.400
<v Speaker 2>preemptive first strike nuclear attack. Rubel wrote, not any of

0:31:35.400 --> 0:31:38.880
<v Speaker 2>the joint chiefs, not the Secretary of Defense, not John Ruble.

0:31:39.200 --> 0:31:42.560
<v Speaker 2>Then finally, one man did, General David M. Shupe, the

0:31:42.600 --> 0:31:45.080
<v Speaker 2>commandant of the US Marine Corps, a marine awarded the

0:31:45.120 --> 0:31:47.160
<v Speaker 2>Medal of Honor for his actions in World War Two.

0:31:47.960 --> 0:31:50.320
<v Speaker 2>Shupe was a short man with rimless glasses who could

0:31:50.320 --> 0:31:52.520
<v Speaker 2>have passed for a school teacher from a rural Mid

0:31:52.560 --> 0:31:55.840
<v Speaker 2>American community. Recalled Rubel, he remembered how Shop spoke in

0:31:55.880 --> 0:31:57.920
<v Speaker 2>a calm, level voice when he offered the sole a

0:31:58.000 --> 0:32:01.120
<v Speaker 2>poising view on the plan for nuclear war. That Shop said,

0:32:01.440 --> 0:32:04.280
<v Speaker 2>all I can say is any plan that murders three

0:32:04.320 --> 0:32:06.680
<v Speaker 2>hundred million Chinese when it might not even be their

0:32:06.760 --> 0:32:09.400
<v Speaker 2>war is not a good plan. That is not the

0:32:09.480 --> 0:32:13.880
<v Speaker 2>American way. The room fell silent. Rubel wrote, Nobody moved

0:32:13.880 --> 0:32:18.200
<v Speaker 2>a muscle, nobody seconded Shoop's descent. No one else said anything.

0:32:18.560 --> 0:32:21.320
<v Speaker 2>According to Rubel, everyone just looked the other way.

0:32:23.080 --> 0:32:27.440
<v Speaker 3>Yeah fuck yeah, yeah.

0:32:27.520 --> 0:32:31.040
<v Speaker 2>At least there was one I know, at least there

0:32:31.080 --> 0:32:32.760
<v Speaker 2>was one guy being like, are you do you guys

0:32:32.800 --> 0:32:35.600
<v Speaker 2>realize how fucking evil this is? Ht you out of

0:32:35.640 --> 0:32:38.520
<v Speaker 2>your minds. You know what you're talking about killing three

0:32:38.600 --> 0:32:40.720
<v Speaker 2>million people who might not have fun, fuck all to us.

0:32:40.720 --> 0:32:41.960
<v Speaker 2>They don't even have nukes yet.

0:32:42.720 --> 0:32:47.160
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, we we killed Japan for trying to kill all

0:32:47.160 --> 0:32:48.080
<v Speaker 3>the Chanese people.

0:32:48.280 --> 0:32:51.960
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, did you not see a problem here? Yeah? Yeah,

0:32:53.600 --> 0:32:56.440
<v Speaker 2>that's not the American way. Unfortunately it is. But I

0:32:56.480 --> 0:32:59.840
<v Speaker 2>can't blame for trying to make it not be Yeah, exactly.

0:33:00.960 --> 0:33:03.160
<v Speaker 2>Shoop goes on to be a cool guy the rest

0:33:03.200 --> 0:33:06.480
<v Speaker 2>of his life. He spoke vocally against nuclear escalation during

0:33:06.480 --> 0:33:08.560
<v Speaker 2>the Cuban missile crisis, like he was a major voice

0:33:08.560 --> 0:33:10.080
<v Speaker 2>trying to be like, no, no, no, we need to

0:33:10.160 --> 0:33:13.160
<v Speaker 2>take a step back. And he was also he advised

0:33:13.160 --> 0:33:16.040
<v Speaker 2>against entering South Vietnam during the opening stages of the

0:33:16.120 --> 0:33:18.200
<v Speaker 2>Vietnam War. He was one of the few generals who

0:33:18.280 --> 0:33:20.120
<v Speaker 2>was like, this is a terrible idea and we should

0:33:20.120 --> 0:33:22.880
<v Speaker 2>not get involved at all. This is a really bad plan.

0:33:23.120 --> 0:33:23.880
<v Speaker 3>Right Yeah.

0:33:24.600 --> 0:33:27.280
<v Speaker 2>In general, he was the one sane man not afraid

0:33:27.280 --> 0:33:29.840
<v Speaker 2>to speak his mind in the entire defense establishment during

0:33:29.880 --> 0:33:32.040
<v Speaker 2>some of the maddest years of the Cold War. Right,

0:33:32.640 --> 0:33:37.200
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, thank you, general, i'd I know what this

0:33:37.360 --> 0:33:39.080
<v Speaker 2>is involved. We shouldn't do this.

0:33:39.320 --> 0:33:41.400
<v Speaker 3>Yeah. Yeah, and he.

0:33:41.480 --> 0:33:44.280
<v Speaker 2>Clearly like not afraid of confrontation, is willing to say, like,

0:33:44.320 --> 0:33:46.000
<v Speaker 2>you people are fucking maniacs.

0:33:46.600 --> 0:33:48.320
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.

0:33:48.360 --> 0:33:51.320
<v Speaker 2>But unfortunately he uh, he's the only one. So Ruebel,

0:33:51.360 --> 0:33:54.320
<v Speaker 2>who is not a fighter, not great at confrontation, one

0:33:54.320 --> 0:33:57.920
<v Speaker 2>gets the idea, does continue to push bureaucratically for a

0:33:57.960 --> 0:34:00.520
<v Speaker 2>saner nuclear posture, but he does so from within the

0:34:00.560 --> 0:34:03.640
<v Speaker 2>bureaucracy in which he was comfortable. In his two thousand

0:34:03.640 --> 0:34:06.520
<v Speaker 2>and eight report, he accused defense planners of building both

0:34:06.560 --> 0:34:09.560
<v Speaker 2>Syops sixty two and the minute Man system deliberately to

0:34:09.640 --> 0:34:12.640
<v Speaker 2>deny quote any but a go no go option to

0:34:12.680 --> 0:34:16.439
<v Speaker 2>civilian leadership. As Henry Kissinger put it in nineteen sixty one.

0:34:16.680 --> 0:34:19.080
<v Speaker 2>And this is the only time I'll quote Kissinger approvingly,

0:34:19.440 --> 0:34:23.400
<v Speaker 2>these plans offered the president just one choice quote suicide

0:34:23.480 --> 0:34:28.480
<v Speaker 2>or surrender, holocaust or humiliation. In other words, the military

0:34:28.520 --> 0:34:30.400
<v Speaker 2>has set it up that the only choice the president

0:34:30.400 --> 0:34:34.160
<v Speaker 2>gets to make is let the country get nuked or

0:34:34.239 --> 0:34:35.120
<v Speaker 2>kill everybody.

0:34:35.960 --> 0:34:36.160
<v Speaker 3>Right.

0:34:37.040 --> 0:34:39.320
<v Speaker 2>The good news is that in the early nineteen sixties,

0:34:39.440 --> 0:34:42.520
<v Speaker 2>at the very start of the Kennedy administration, is probably

0:34:42.600 --> 0:34:45.279
<v Speaker 2>the high water mark for at least the danger of

0:34:45.280 --> 0:34:48.359
<v Speaker 2>an atomic Holocaust during the Cold War. Part of why

0:34:48.360 --> 0:34:55.640
<v Speaker 2>we stepped to tell you, yeah, during the war so far. Yeah.

0:34:56.040 --> 0:34:57.880
<v Speaker 2>Part of what got us to step back from the

0:34:57.920 --> 0:35:01.400
<v Speaker 2>brink a little bit is that after the Berlin Crisis,

0:35:01.440 --> 0:35:03.560
<v Speaker 2>which is, you know, the Soviet Union tries to cut

0:35:03.560 --> 0:35:06.799
<v Speaker 2>off supplies into the chunk of Berlin that NATO is

0:35:06.840 --> 0:35:09.319
<v Speaker 2>occupying and we have to drop a bunch of shit

0:35:09.320 --> 0:35:12.160
<v Speaker 2>in by plane. Right after that, and then the Cuban

0:35:12.160 --> 0:35:16.680
<v Speaker 2>Missile crisis, Kennedy comes to realize what Rubel had known

0:35:16.719 --> 0:35:18.680
<v Speaker 2>for a while, which is that the men running the

0:35:18.719 --> 0:35:21.440
<v Speaker 2>Strategic Air Command in particular and the Air Force in

0:35:21.480 --> 0:35:25.040
<v Speaker 2>general are out of their goddamn minds. Right like that,

0:35:25.080 --> 0:35:27.239
<v Speaker 2>he starts to become Kennedy starts become very aware that, like,

0:35:27.280 --> 0:35:29.239
<v Speaker 2>these people are crazy and they're going to get us

0:35:29.239 --> 0:35:31.640
<v Speaker 2>all killed. I have to do something about the way

0:35:31.640 --> 0:35:35.160
<v Speaker 2>this system works, right, And this is arguably the best

0:35:35.160 --> 0:35:37.800
<v Speaker 2>thing he did in his presidency. One of the first

0:35:37.840 --> 0:35:39.600
<v Speaker 2>moments where this was made clear to him was on

0:35:39.640 --> 0:35:42.919
<v Speaker 2>September fifth, during Kennedy's first year in office, in which

0:35:42.960 --> 0:35:46.600
<v Speaker 2>several Air forcemen submitted a first strike study that suggested

0:35:46.719 --> 0:35:50.840
<v Speaker 2>killing fifty four percent of the USSR's population. An alternate

0:35:50.880 --> 0:35:54.319
<v Speaker 2>plan suggested just attacking Soviet military targets, which a guy

0:35:54.400 --> 0:35:57.439
<v Speaker 2>named Casin, the study author, estimated would kill only around

0:35:57.480 --> 0:36:00.800
<v Speaker 2>a million civilians. However, US casual he's from a Soviet

0:36:00.840 --> 0:36:04.239
<v Speaker 2>response ranged from basically none to seventy five percent of

0:36:04.239 --> 0:36:05.279
<v Speaker 2>the US population.

0:36:06.000 --> 0:36:07.600
<v Speaker 3>Uh huh right.

0:36:08.480 --> 0:36:11.360
<v Speaker 2>Rubell includes a note about the reactions of people in

0:36:11.360 --> 0:36:14.759
<v Speaker 2>the Kennedy administration to this horror show. Ted Sorensen, the

0:36:14.800 --> 0:36:16.960
<v Speaker 2>chief White House counsel and speechwriter who had been with

0:36:17.040 --> 0:36:20.080
<v Speaker 2>Kennedy since his earliest Senate days, was outraged when Cayson

0:36:20.080 --> 0:36:23.040
<v Speaker 2>told him about the study, shouting, you're crazy. We shouldn't

0:36:23.080 --> 0:36:25.799
<v Speaker 2>let guys like you around here. Even Moripauld was a

0:36:25.800 --> 0:36:28.800
<v Speaker 2>friend of Caseon's on the NSC staff named Marcus Raskin.

0:36:29.200 --> 0:36:31.759
<v Speaker 2>Raskin had served as foreign policy advisor to a few

0:36:31.800 --> 0:36:35.200
<v Speaker 2>Liberal Democratic senators and had been hired as a token leftist.

0:36:35.520 --> 0:36:38.400
<v Speaker 2>Raskin was horrified by the very existence of such a study.

0:36:38.680 --> 0:36:40.480
<v Speaker 2>How does this make us any better than those who

0:36:40.600 --> 0:36:42.840
<v Speaker 2>measured the gas ovens or the engineers who built the

0:36:42.880 --> 0:36:45.640
<v Speaker 2>tracks for the death trains in Nazi Germany, he hollered.

0:36:45.640 --> 0:36:50.439
<v Speaker 2>At one point Raskin never spoke to Cason again. Good question, yeah,

0:36:50.600 --> 0:36:56.400
<v Speaker 2>really good question. Yeah. Kennedy himself was briefed on the

0:36:56.520 --> 0:36:58.560
<v Speaker 2>likely death toll of a nuclear war, basically on the

0:36:58.560 --> 0:37:00.920
<v Speaker 2>result like he's briefed on this case and study, and

0:37:01.000 --> 0:37:04.560
<v Speaker 2>his response is characteristically eloquent. He says, and we call

0:37:04.600 --> 0:37:06.040
<v Speaker 2>ourselves the human race.

0:37:07.680 --> 0:37:11.800
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, oh fuck yeah.

0:37:11.880 --> 0:37:15.360
<v Speaker 2>The Cuban missile crisis unfolded across thirteen days in nineteen

0:37:15.440 --> 0:37:17.680
<v Speaker 2>sixty two, and it seems to have inspired Kennedy to

0:37:17.719 --> 0:37:20.800
<v Speaker 2>take action to reduce the ability of his insane generals

0:37:20.800 --> 0:37:23.880
<v Speaker 2>to destroy the world. When he imposed a blockade of

0:37:23.920 --> 0:37:26.720
<v Speaker 2>Cuba to force the USSR to remove their nukes. General

0:37:26.800 --> 0:37:31.040
<v Speaker 2>LeMay insisted on direct military intervention as the only path forward,

0:37:31.320 --> 0:37:34.160
<v Speaker 2>claiming that any attempt to solve the problem without violence

0:37:34.160 --> 0:37:37.479
<v Speaker 2>would lead to war. Look, we might have a war

0:37:37.520 --> 0:37:40.200
<v Speaker 2>if we don't get violent with these guys. You don't

0:37:40.200 --> 0:37:44.960
<v Speaker 2>want a war, do you? Quote LeMay indirectly threatened to

0:37:45.000 --> 0:37:47.200
<v Speaker 2>make his dissent public. I think that a blockade and

0:37:47.239 --> 0:37:49.000
<v Speaker 2>the political talk would be considered by a lot of

0:37:49.000 --> 0:37:51.280
<v Speaker 2>our friends and neutrals as being a pretty weak response

0:37:51.320 --> 0:37:52.520
<v Speaker 2>to this. And I'm sure a lot of our own

0:37:52.560 --> 0:37:55.000
<v Speaker 2>citizens would feel that way too. In other words, you're

0:37:55.040 --> 0:37:57.560
<v Speaker 2>in a pretty bad fix at the present time. LeMay's

0:37:57.600 --> 0:38:01.360
<v Speaker 2>words angered Kennedy, who asked, what did you say? LeMay responded,

0:38:01.400 --> 0:38:04.040
<v Speaker 2>You're in a pretty bad fix. Kenneth O'Donnell recalled in

0:38:04.080 --> 0:38:06.480
<v Speaker 2>his memoirs that after the meeting, Kennedy asked him, can

0:38:06.520 --> 0:38:09.200
<v Speaker 2>you imagine LeMay saying a thing like that? These brass

0:38:09.200 --> 0:38:11.400
<v Speaker 2>hats have one great advantage in their favor. If we

0:38:11.480 --> 0:38:13.120
<v Speaker 2>listen to them and do what they want us to do,

0:38:13.320 --> 0:38:15.160
<v Speaker 2>none of us will be alive later to tell them

0:38:15.200 --> 0:38:15.760
<v Speaker 2>they were wrong.

0:38:19.560 --> 0:38:23.480
<v Speaker 3>I better understand the like second half of the twentieth

0:38:23.520 --> 0:38:27.719
<v Speaker 3>century is a big push for pacifism on the left. Yeah, yeah, Like,

0:38:28.200 --> 0:38:29.839
<v Speaker 3>and it's one of those things you like look back

0:38:29.840 --> 0:38:31.960
<v Speaker 3>at and you're like, oh, that seems kins silly, and

0:38:32.000 --> 0:38:32.439
<v Speaker 3>you're like.

0:38:32.920 --> 0:38:36.840
<v Speaker 2>Some parts worked, some didn't, But oh yeah.

0:38:36.200 --> 0:38:37.719
<v Speaker 3>I get why people lean towards that.

0:38:38.560 --> 0:38:43.360
<v Speaker 2>Yeah yeah. And this is arguably the best thing Kennedy

0:38:43.400 --> 0:38:47.319
<v Speaker 2>does is it's during the Kennedy administration that we take

0:38:47.440 --> 0:38:51.680
<v Speaker 2>trigger control mostly and eventually entirely away from the military.

0:38:51.880 --> 0:38:52.040
<v Speaker 4>Right.

0:38:52.200 --> 0:38:56.160
<v Speaker 2>The scenario now, and this is I don't I think

0:38:56.160 --> 0:39:00.240
<v Speaker 2>it's better, but it's also differently bad. Now, some general

0:39:00.520 --> 0:39:03.280
<v Speaker 2>or some colonel or some kid in a silo couldn't

0:39:03.360 --> 0:39:05.080
<v Speaker 2>launch our arsenal.

0:39:05.400 --> 0:39:05.600
<v Speaker 4>Right.

0:39:05.960 --> 0:39:08.279
<v Speaker 2>You can't have four kids launching fifty missiles on their

0:39:08.280 --> 0:39:11.000
<v Speaker 2>own because you have to have like codes transmitted and stuff, right,

0:39:11.800 --> 0:39:16.359
<v Speaker 2>But one guy can decide to launch everything, and it's

0:39:16.400 --> 0:39:19.080
<v Speaker 2>the president. Now, that does mean we have civilian control,

0:39:19.480 --> 0:39:21.719
<v Speaker 2>and I think that's a positive step away from a

0:39:21.760 --> 0:39:25.399
<v Speaker 2>bunch of insane generals potentially having that command, or four

0:39:25.520 --> 0:39:28.040
<v Speaker 2>kids in a cornfield having that ability.

0:39:28.160 --> 0:39:28.319
<v Speaker 4>Right.

0:39:29.760 --> 0:39:33.359
<v Speaker 2>But and that is a major thing that happens under Kennedy, right,

0:39:33.480 --> 0:39:36.719
<v Speaker 2>is that command and control of our nuclear arsenal gets

0:39:36.760 --> 0:39:39.920
<v Speaker 2>shifted much further to the president, and that process continues

0:39:39.960 --> 0:39:43.120
<v Speaker 2>over the years. This is what leads to the nuclear football, right,

0:39:44.000 --> 0:39:46.239
<v Speaker 2>which I think people are generally aware of, right because

0:39:46.239 --> 0:39:49.080
<v Speaker 2>it's under Kennedy. I talked about how that Los Alamos

0:39:49.080 --> 0:39:50.880
<v Speaker 2>scientists came up with the idea to we need a

0:39:50.920 --> 0:39:53.680
<v Speaker 2>lock on these fucking things, and they figure out how

0:39:53.760 --> 0:39:57.520
<v Speaker 2>to do that during the Kennedy administration, and Kennedy gives

0:39:57.560 --> 0:39:59.920
<v Speaker 2>the order to start putting locks on our weapons, right,

0:40:01.080 --> 0:40:03.960
<v Speaker 2>which starts moving this this all, I'm YadA yading. This

0:40:04.040 --> 0:40:06.480
<v Speaker 2>takes longer to get to where we are now, but

0:40:06.560 --> 0:40:10.120
<v Speaker 2>this starts the process, right that leads to the situation

0:40:10.239 --> 0:40:12.759
<v Speaker 2>we have now where these weapons all do at least

0:40:12.800 --> 0:40:15.200
<v Speaker 2>have a lock, and where we have the football, right,

0:40:15.239 --> 0:40:18.160
<v Speaker 2>the nuclear football, which is ultimately a product of both

0:40:18.160 --> 0:40:21.120
<v Speaker 2>that scientist Agnu realizing a single private with eight bullets

0:40:21.160 --> 0:40:23.200
<v Speaker 2>was all that stood between a nuke and whoever, as

0:40:23.239 --> 0:40:25.880
<v Speaker 2>well as Rubel and his allies repeatedly insisting to their

0:40:25.880 --> 0:40:27.759
<v Speaker 2>bosses that these Air Force fuckers are out of their

0:40:27.760 --> 0:40:32.800
<v Speaker 2>goddamn minds, right, like that is you know, a really

0:40:32.800 --> 0:40:36.360
<v Speaker 2>good thing that happens here. And characteristically, when the switch

0:40:36.520 --> 0:40:39.160
<v Speaker 2>the lock is first demoed, it was presented to President

0:40:39.280 --> 0:40:41.680
<v Speaker 2>Kennedy who immediately is like, yeah, put these on everything

0:40:41.719 --> 0:40:45.440
<v Speaker 2>we can right immediately, right now, do it today. You

0:40:45.520 --> 0:40:50.360
<v Speaker 2>have no other priorities, and the military loses their fucking mind.

0:40:50.480 --> 0:40:54.080
<v Speaker 2>The faust are bombs. They put a lock, our bombs up.

0:40:54.600 --> 0:40:57.560
<v Speaker 2>The fears of one General Alfred Starbird, which is a

0:40:57.680 --> 0:41:00.880
<v Speaker 2>wild name, were summarized as follows. How is a pilot

0:41:00.960 --> 0:41:03.040
<v Speaker 2>us are four and somewhere around the world going to

0:41:03.040 --> 0:41:05.080
<v Speaker 2>get a code from the president of the United States

0:41:05.080 --> 0:41:07.840
<v Speaker 2>to ourma nuclear weapon before being overrun by a massively

0:41:07.880 --> 0:41:12.919
<v Speaker 2>superior number of Soviet troops. Okay, maybe it's this. I'm

0:41:12.920 --> 0:41:13.400
<v Speaker 2>fine with that.

0:41:13.520 --> 0:41:17.840
<v Speaker 3>Actually, yeah, a couple instead of all of us. I

0:41:17.880 --> 0:41:18.200
<v Speaker 3>don't know.

0:41:19.160 --> 0:41:22.880
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Look, I'm not casual about the lives of soldiers.

0:41:22.920 --> 0:41:26.480
<v Speaker 2>They're people too, But it's a soldier's job to potentially

0:41:26.560 --> 0:41:28.640
<v Speaker 2>die for their country, and I prefer that to the

0:41:28.680 --> 0:41:33.359
<v Speaker 2>whole world dying, including that soldier. Including that soldier, they're

0:41:33.360 --> 0:41:36.240
<v Speaker 2>not living through it all. None of these bomber guys,

0:41:36.320 --> 0:41:38.719
<v Speaker 2>all of these sac bombers know that their missions are

0:41:38.760 --> 0:41:40.640
<v Speaker 2>suicide missions. If they get the order to fly to

0:41:40.680 --> 0:41:43.000
<v Speaker 2>the USSR, they are not coming back. There won't be

0:41:43.040 --> 0:41:46.200
<v Speaker 2>anywhere to come back to, right, Yeah, although the.

0:41:46.280 --> 0:41:51.400
<v Speaker 3>Only people still alive, they'll flying from other ten minutes before. Yeah, yeah, I.

0:41:51.400 --> 0:41:53.120
<v Speaker 2>Mean that would That's how it is now, because we

0:41:53.120 --> 0:41:56.080
<v Speaker 2>have these doomsday planes that we literally call like doomsday planes,

0:41:56.080 --> 0:41:59.000
<v Speaker 2>which are these huge shielded planes that are able to

0:41:59.040 --> 0:42:02.840
<v Speaker 2>president basically can hand over control of continuing to launch

0:42:02.840 --> 0:42:06.880
<v Speaker 2>our nukes to the official in the plane because the

0:42:06.920 --> 0:42:09.439
<v Speaker 2>President's going to be dead pretty soon. Everyone is. None

0:42:09.440 --> 0:42:11.840
<v Speaker 2>of these bunkers working as well as people want to

0:42:11.880 --> 0:42:14.320
<v Speaker 2>believe they do, especially not when you're talking about multiple

0:42:14.360 --> 0:42:16.880
<v Speaker 2>thermonuclear impacts. It doesn't matter how deep. If people are

0:42:16.920 --> 0:42:20.600
<v Speaker 2>dropping multiple hydrogen bombs as they would be, or missiles

0:42:20.600 --> 0:42:24.200
<v Speaker 2>as they would be in this very few things could

0:42:24.560 --> 0:42:28.680
<v Speaker 2>could protect you. All of these fancy bunker complexes are

0:42:28.719 --> 0:42:32.480
<v Speaker 2>great if you don't get directly hit by multiple thermonuclear bombs,

0:42:32.480 --> 0:42:34.120
<v Speaker 2>but they're not going to protect you from it, which

0:42:34.120 --> 0:42:37.400
<v Speaker 2>is you're going to boil alive, right, yeah, yeah, no,

0:42:38.360 --> 0:42:41.840
<v Speaker 2>And that's anti Jacobson's Nuclear War book, which posits a

0:42:41.880 --> 0:42:44.719
<v Speaker 2>pretty chilling theory about how this could all go down.

0:42:45.320 --> 0:42:48.400
<v Speaker 2>Does have everyone dies, like everyone in command and control

0:42:48.440 --> 0:42:50.240
<v Speaker 2>is fucking dead, except for the guy in the doomsday

0:42:50.280 --> 0:42:52.200
<v Speaker 2>plane who make sure that everyone dies on the other

0:42:52.400 --> 0:42:57.600
<v Speaker 2>side of the world. That's nuclear war. Anyway. Let's have

0:42:57.680 --> 0:43:00.680
<v Speaker 2>some ads and we'll come back and finish this story. Whew,

0:43:07.640 --> 0:43:10.880
<v Speaker 2>all right, we're back. So this is what gets us.

0:43:10.880 --> 0:43:13.000
<v Speaker 2>The stuff with Kennedy evolves into like, you know, the

0:43:13.040 --> 0:43:15.760
<v Speaker 2>system we have today which gives the president's sole authority

0:43:15.800 --> 0:43:18.520
<v Speaker 2>to end civilization. We'll talk about that a little more

0:43:18.560 --> 0:43:20.320
<v Speaker 2>in a second, but I want to finish with Curtis

0:43:20.400 --> 0:43:24.600
<v Speaker 2>LeMay's story first in nineteen sixty four, now is Chief

0:43:24.600 --> 0:43:28.080
<v Speaker 2>of Staff of the Air Force. Curtis Lamay is still

0:43:28.120 --> 0:43:30.839
<v Speaker 2>in nineteen forty five, Curtis LeMay is in charge of

0:43:30.920 --> 0:43:35.680
<v Speaker 2>all of the US air power in Southeast Asia. Basically

0:43:36.520 --> 0:43:40.120
<v Speaker 2>during the Korean War, same deal. During the start of Vietnam,

0:43:40.520 --> 0:43:44.520
<v Speaker 2>same deal. So when in nineteen sixty four, when we

0:43:44.560 --> 0:43:48.120
<v Speaker 2>really start upping our commitment in Vietnam, he is running

0:43:48.160 --> 0:43:51.280
<v Speaker 2>things and he pushes a plan to bomb northern Vietnam

0:43:51.320 --> 0:43:54.680
<v Speaker 2>into submission. The plan is described, and I believe this

0:43:54.840 --> 0:43:58.960
<v Speaker 2>was his name for it, as the genteel du Pey Plan. Right.

0:43:59.040 --> 0:44:01.319
<v Speaker 2>I mentioned that like the polite version of the dou

0:44:01.400 --> 0:44:03.799
<v Speaker 2>Hay plan, Right, do Hay being the guy who's like,

0:44:03.840 --> 0:44:06.080
<v Speaker 2>you just kill all the civilians until they're not willing

0:44:06.080 --> 0:44:10.560
<v Speaker 2>to fight anymore. Now, there's a big battle between Kennedy's

0:44:10.560 --> 0:44:14.080
<v Speaker 2>civilian advisors who wanted the US to threaten North Vietnam's

0:44:14.120 --> 0:44:17.000
<v Speaker 2>industry but not actually blow it up immediately, So that

0:44:17.040 --> 0:44:18.719
<v Speaker 2>we blow up some of it and we make it

0:44:18.760 --> 0:44:21.480
<v Speaker 2>clear we can really cripple their industry so that we

0:44:21.480 --> 0:44:24.440
<v Speaker 2>have a negotiating hand to push for peace, right, And

0:44:24.080 --> 0:44:25.919
<v Speaker 2>I don't think we should have gotten involved in fucking

0:44:25.960 --> 0:44:28.160
<v Speaker 2>Vietnam whatsoever. I'm not saying that, like these guys were

0:44:28.200 --> 0:44:31.000
<v Speaker 2>good and ethical, but that is a much saner response

0:44:31.120 --> 0:44:34.080
<v Speaker 2>than Leamy's, because Limay just wants to send North Vietnam

0:44:34.120 --> 0:44:37.000
<v Speaker 2>back to the Stone Age, right right. Like these liberals

0:44:37.040 --> 0:44:38.520
<v Speaker 2>are like, well, we can bomb them, you know, kind

0:44:38.520 --> 0:44:40.880
<v Speaker 2>of strategically in order to exert a cost and make

0:44:40.920 --> 0:44:42.560
<v Speaker 2>them willing to come to the negotiation table. And the

0:44:42.640 --> 0:44:44.560
<v Speaker 2>May is like, what if we just fucking kill everybody.

0:44:45.760 --> 0:44:47.799
<v Speaker 2>I'm going to quote from the book Bombing to Win

0:44:47.960 --> 0:44:52.080
<v Speaker 2>by Robert Pape quote. Destroying the North's industrial economy appears

0:44:52.120 --> 0:44:54.120
<v Speaker 2>to have been valued more for its effect on civilian

0:44:54.120 --> 0:44:56.439
<v Speaker 2>morale than for reducing the flow of military goods into

0:44:56.440 --> 0:44:59.200
<v Speaker 2>the South. For instance, the rationale for closing the port

0:44:59.200 --> 0:45:01.840
<v Speaker 2>of Haiphong was not to interdict battlefield hardware, but to

0:45:01.920 --> 0:45:06.960
<v Speaker 2>weaken civilian morale, right, which keeps not working it. Yes,

0:45:07.040 --> 0:45:10.799
<v Speaker 2>you may recall none of this did. This led to

0:45:10.880 --> 0:45:14.840
<v Speaker 2>Operation Rolling Thunder, And Rolling Thunder is LeMay's baby. This

0:45:14.960 --> 0:45:17.759
<v Speaker 2>is like Operation Rolling Thunder is the genteel dou Hay

0:45:17.840 --> 0:45:20.440
<v Speaker 2>plan put into effect it is a three year bombing

0:45:20.480 --> 0:45:23.719
<v Speaker 2>campaign that resulted in what, Margaret, you want to.

0:45:23.719 --> 0:45:28.440
<v Speaker 3>Guess, no, effective destruction of the morale of the enemy.

0:45:29.280 --> 0:45:31.719
<v Speaker 2>I mean stuff was just yeah, yeah, yeah, it doesn't work.

0:45:32.719 --> 0:45:37.640
<v Speaker 2>We don't win Vietnam. In case you were unaware of that. Interesting,

0:45:38.400 --> 0:45:42.080
<v Speaker 2>This does not stop their ability to equip and support

0:45:42.120 --> 0:45:44.759
<v Speaker 2>their troops. It does not break civilian morale. It does not.

0:45:45.400 --> 0:45:48.560
<v Speaker 2>It doesn't do the trick and thiss me.

0:45:48.640 --> 0:45:51.840
<v Speaker 3>One of the main things I've learned over this epic

0:45:51.920 --> 0:45:55.400
<v Speaker 3>journey we've been on. If you had asked me, I

0:45:55.440 --> 0:45:57.600
<v Speaker 3>would have been like, well, it's probably a moral to

0:45:57.600 --> 0:46:00.840
<v Speaker 3>bomb all these enemy cities, but it probably is effective

0:46:01.719 --> 0:46:04.920
<v Speaker 3>at destroying morale. And what I have learned is that

0:46:04.960 --> 0:46:05.520
<v Speaker 3>it's not.

0:46:06.360 --> 0:46:10.120
<v Speaker 2>No, no, Well, you gotta think if like, if somebody,

0:46:10.680 --> 0:46:15.120
<v Speaker 2>for example, goes and stabs the person you love most

0:46:15.120 --> 0:46:17.319
<v Speaker 2>in the world in the gut, are you gonna like

0:46:18.040 --> 0:46:20.799
<v Speaker 2>walk away because you're demoralized, or are you gonna fuck

0:46:20.840 --> 0:46:21.560
<v Speaker 2>that person up?

0:46:21.800 --> 0:46:21.880
<v Speaker 4>Like?

0:46:21.920 --> 0:46:24.440
<v Speaker 2>Are you gonna do everything in your power to destroy

0:46:24.520 --> 0:46:25.440
<v Speaker 2>that person? Right?

0:46:25.600 --> 0:46:25.839
<v Speaker 4>Yeah?

0:46:26.400 --> 0:46:26.600
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.

0:46:26.719 --> 0:46:29.960
<v Speaker 2>I think people think similarly when their family is incinerated

0:46:29.960 --> 0:46:31.239
<v Speaker 2>from the sky.

0:46:31.360 --> 0:46:33.640
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.

0:46:33.880 --> 0:46:36.040
<v Speaker 2>But this the fact that this fails and the fact

0:46:36.040 --> 0:46:39.840
<v Speaker 2>that LeMay's plans kind of fail a lot brings me

0:46:39.880 --> 0:46:42.120
<v Speaker 2>to a key point about LeMay and all the dou

0:46:42.160 --> 0:46:44.560
<v Speaker 2>Hay acolytes who came to run our air power during

0:46:44.560 --> 0:46:45.959
<v Speaker 2>this time. These guys.

0:46:46.000 --> 0:46:48.120
<v Speaker 3>Surrealist Manray is also one of these people.

0:46:49.000 --> 0:46:54.240
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, these guys loved nukes because nukes were the only

0:46:54.320 --> 0:46:57.440
<v Speaker 2>weapon system that worked the way they thought all weapons

0:46:57.480 --> 0:47:01.160
<v Speaker 2>should work. So they always insisted on using nukes at

0:47:01.200 --> 0:47:04.520
<v Speaker 2>every corner, and when they were denied, they didn't know

0:47:04.560 --> 0:47:07.160
<v Speaker 2>how to fight a modern war well, because they only

0:47:07.200 --> 0:47:09.520
<v Speaker 2>have the one strategy and it only works if you

0:47:09.640 --> 0:47:11.839
<v Speaker 2>use nukes. So when the president says no, you can't

0:47:11.920 --> 0:47:13.880
<v Speaker 2>nuke them, then they're left leg Well, I guess we

0:47:13.920 --> 0:47:16.399
<v Speaker 2>try to use conventional bombs and it just doesn't do it.

0:47:16.600 --> 0:47:20.760
<v Speaker 2>But they don't. None of these people are actually capable

0:47:20.760 --> 0:47:24.000
<v Speaker 2>of adapting and looking their failure in the face because

0:47:24.000 --> 0:47:27.440
<v Speaker 2>they've based everything on this being how war works. And

0:47:27.440 --> 0:47:31.000
<v Speaker 2>because unless you're killing everyone, right, yes, yeah, because they're

0:47:31.000 --> 0:47:34.880
<v Speaker 2>twelve year old boys. Yeah, now, fuck, I'm ending this

0:47:35.000 --> 0:47:37.959
<v Speaker 2>story in the mid sixties, right, which there's a lot

0:47:38.160 --> 0:47:41.200
<v Speaker 2>more to talk about in terms of nukes and shit. Obviously,

0:47:41.239 --> 0:47:43.719
<v Speaker 2>after this point. But I'm ending here because kind of

0:47:43.800 --> 0:47:46.680
<v Speaker 2>by the point we're at in the story, right, Vietnam,

0:47:47.000 --> 0:47:52.400
<v Speaker 2>the tale of how our nuclear arsenal functions changes, but

0:47:52.600 --> 0:47:57.279
<v Speaker 2>not like in earth shattering ways. Right, everything gets kind

0:47:57.280 --> 0:47:59.960
<v Speaker 2>of better. Our early warning systems get better, are missile

0:48:00.160 --> 0:48:03.799
<v Speaker 2>get more destructive and reliable. Nuclear submarines are by this

0:48:03.840 --> 0:48:05.719
<v Speaker 2>point a part of the determent. We're not talking about

0:48:05.760 --> 0:48:07.560
<v Speaker 2>that all that much, but that's a major part of

0:48:07.560 --> 0:48:11.080
<v Speaker 2>the deterrent package, right, because a nuclear submarine absolutely cannot

0:48:11.080 --> 0:48:14.279
<v Speaker 2>be found, right, It's basically impossible. Like, if you have

0:48:14.400 --> 0:48:17.359
<v Speaker 2>nuclear submarines, you always have nukes out there that you

0:48:17.400 --> 0:48:20.000
<v Speaker 2>can throw back at whoever fucks with you, So it's

0:48:20.000 --> 0:48:21.680
<v Speaker 2>a guarantee that you'll be able to get some sort

0:48:21.680 --> 0:48:25.040
<v Speaker 2>of second strike. Nuclear submarines are fucking terrifying. They're the

0:48:25.080 --> 0:48:28.160
<v Speaker 2>scariest weapons human beings have ever made and probably ever

0:48:28.200 --> 0:48:31.239
<v Speaker 2>will make. Right, Like it is just death tubes. They're

0:48:31.280 --> 0:48:34.440
<v Speaker 2>fucking nightmares. I had a friend, Yeah, I have a

0:48:34.480 --> 0:48:39.759
<v Speaker 2>friend who went to Annapolis that's the Naval Academy, and

0:48:40.200 --> 0:48:44.400
<v Speaker 2>was a nuclear submarine pilot during the eighties. There's a

0:48:44.440 --> 0:48:47.279
<v Speaker 2>book called blind Man's Bluff that's about like all the

0:48:47.320 --> 0:48:49.400
<v Speaker 2>stuff that he used to do, and all of his

0:48:49.600 --> 0:48:53.080
<v Speaker 2>like stories are because what US and Soviet subs were

0:48:53.080 --> 0:48:55.160
<v Speaker 2>doing in this period of time was like d basically

0:48:55.239 --> 0:48:57.400
<v Speaker 2>one would try to like plain chicken, trying to force

0:48:57.440 --> 0:49:00.719
<v Speaker 2>the other to surface, right, so, you know, because it

0:49:00.800 --> 0:49:03.360
<v Speaker 2>was like that was kind of part of the game

0:49:03.440 --> 0:49:05.759
<v Speaker 2>that we were playing in the high seas, and so

0:49:05.840 --> 0:49:08.000
<v Speaker 2>he has all these stories of just like he and

0:49:08.040 --> 0:49:11.080
<v Speaker 2>a couple of his friends are standing and I guess

0:49:11.080 --> 0:49:13.839
<v Speaker 2>the bridge or whatever, doing a bunch of complicated math

0:49:13.880 --> 0:49:15.760
<v Speaker 2>in their heads, and if they fuck up the math,

0:49:15.960 --> 0:49:18.320
<v Speaker 2>everyone dies because they crash into something.

0:49:18.400 --> 0:49:18.560
<v Speaker 3>Right.

0:49:18.600 --> 0:49:23.280
<v Speaker 2>Like, It's like those kind of stories like sub nuclear

0:49:23.320 --> 0:49:25.960
<v Speaker 2>subs are fucking taro. But you know, once we get

0:49:26.080 --> 0:49:28.960
<v Speaker 2>nuclear subs, that's we have all three kind of arms

0:49:29.080 --> 0:49:32.400
<v Speaker 2>of our nuclear like posture. We have our ICBMs, we

0:49:32.440 --> 0:49:35.200
<v Speaker 2>have nuclear subs, we have our bombers. Right obviously we

0:49:35.239 --> 0:49:37.799
<v Speaker 2>also have like field artillery and you know, nukes and

0:49:37.800 --> 0:49:40.920
<v Speaker 2>stuff that the army can use. But nothing that happens

0:49:40.960 --> 0:49:44.439
<v Speaker 2>after this point seriously alters the fundamental calculus up until

0:49:44.480 --> 0:49:47.400
<v Speaker 2>something that's kind of more recent, and that fundamental calculus

0:49:47.480 --> 0:49:50.480
<v Speaker 2>is we and the Russians and other people China now

0:49:50.520 --> 0:49:53.319
<v Speaker 2>as well. Right, obviously, more people have nukes, but all

0:49:53.360 --> 0:49:56.239
<v Speaker 2>of the nuclear powers have a bunch of nukes ready

0:49:56.239 --> 0:49:59.200
<v Speaker 2>to fire at a moment's notice, and in both the

0:49:59.280 --> 0:50:02.160
<v Speaker 2>US and Russia, only the president gets to decide when

0:50:02.200 --> 0:50:06.520
<v Speaker 2>we use them, right, Right, That's the way it is

0:50:07.080 --> 0:50:09.720
<v Speaker 2>starting in the sixties, and that's the way it is today,

0:50:09.800 --> 0:50:11.960
<v Speaker 2>right Obviously, Like I'm not gonna talk a lot about

0:50:12.000 --> 0:50:14.880
<v Speaker 2>hypersonic missiles. That's kind of the biggest recent change that

0:50:15.000 --> 0:50:18.400
<v Speaker 2>might seriously alter a lot of calculus because it allows

0:50:18.680 --> 0:50:21.319
<v Speaker 2>a strike that potentially might not get spotted at all,

0:50:21.480 --> 0:50:24.640
<v Speaker 2>and so maybe there's no warning, which is why I

0:50:24.680 --> 0:50:26.839
<v Speaker 2>read a really fucked up war on the Rocks article.

0:50:26.920 --> 0:50:31.760
<v Speaker 2>There's basically arguing for like an automated AI like second

0:50:31.800 --> 0:50:34.560
<v Speaker 2>strike system because of the fact that, well maybe they

0:50:34.600 --> 0:50:36.040
<v Speaker 2>are able to if they blow up the president, no

0:50:36.080 --> 0:50:37.120
<v Speaker 2>one can launch the nukes back.

0:50:37.200 --> 0:50:39.880
<v Speaker 3>Right, So, no one's watched the movie war Games, That's

0:50:39.920 --> 0:50:40.319
<v Speaker 3>what I'm meaning.

0:50:40.320 --> 0:50:43.200
<v Speaker 2>No one has ever watched the movie war Actually, the

0:50:43.320 --> 0:50:46.160
<v Speaker 2>actually wargames. Literally one of the generals they quote references

0:50:46.200 --> 0:50:49.200
<v Speaker 2>Wargames in order to say that we don't have a

0:50:49.239 --> 0:50:51.280
<v Speaker 2>machine that does that right now, like this is so

0:50:51.560 --> 0:50:53.200
<v Speaker 2>they were arguing that we need to do it.

0:50:53.320 --> 0:50:54.520
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, oh my god.

0:50:55.360 --> 0:50:57.880
<v Speaker 2>And this is part of one of the one of

0:50:57.960 --> 0:51:00.959
<v Speaker 2>the things that that that I have worry about, because

0:51:00.960 --> 0:51:03.759
<v Speaker 2>I don't really think it's an immediate worry that they're

0:51:03.760 --> 0:51:07.080
<v Speaker 2>going to like give AI the ability to launch nukes

0:51:07.440 --> 0:51:10.439
<v Speaker 2>or do that. That's not my immediate worry. But they're

0:51:10.480 --> 0:51:14.720
<v Speaker 2>already integrating different machine learning tools into like the radar

0:51:14.960 --> 0:51:18.560
<v Speaker 2>systems in our early warning systems. That's the worry is

0:51:18.600 --> 0:51:21.880
<v Speaker 2>that people are being advised by these by machines that

0:51:22.640 --> 0:51:27.800
<v Speaker 2>like them, that like the minute Man, will have unanticipated

0:51:27.840 --> 0:51:31.359
<v Speaker 2>flaws that the arrogant pieces of shit who designed these

0:51:31.360 --> 0:51:35.319
<v Speaker 2>weapons refuse to consider because they cannot accept the fact

0:51:35.360 --> 0:51:37.759
<v Speaker 2>that maybe they didn't think of everything, and they will

0:51:37.800 --> 0:51:40.279
<v Speaker 2>fuck up and miss stuff and it could cause it

0:51:40.280 --> 0:51:42.680
<v Speaker 2>could cause the end of the world. Right, That's what

0:51:42.800 --> 0:51:46.080
<v Speaker 2>scares me more than like a death computer, right.

0:51:46.440 --> 0:51:50.960
<v Speaker 3>Which any hacker or wanna be hackers you would immediately

0:51:51.000 --> 0:51:53.880
<v Speaker 3>be like, oh, you can't build systems that don't have flaws.

0:51:54.120 --> 0:51:55.520
<v Speaker 3>That doesn't happen.

0:51:56.000 --> 0:51:58.680
<v Speaker 2>No, No, That's why up until very recently this was

0:51:58.719 --> 0:52:01.680
<v Speaker 2>all being done onlike the big nineteen eighties floppy discs

0:52:01.680 --> 0:52:04.400
<v Speaker 2>and everything's fucking air gapped. Is like, you want this

0:52:04.520 --> 0:52:11.160
<v Speaker 2>shit simple and reliable as possible. Yeah. Anyway, well now

0:52:11.200 --> 0:52:14.200
<v Speaker 2>it's all bluetooth. So now's yeah exactly. Well, that's the

0:52:14.200 --> 0:52:17.000
<v Speaker 2>most reliable thing in electronics is bluetooth. Everyone who has

0:52:17.000 --> 0:52:20.040
<v Speaker 2>a headset knows that. So it's important everyone know that

0:52:20.320 --> 0:52:24.000
<v Speaker 2>our launch policy from nineteen sixty four to today remains

0:52:24.200 --> 0:52:27.839
<v Speaker 2>launch on warn. Now, the USSR, to be fair to them,

0:52:28.360 --> 0:52:31.879
<v Speaker 2>officially rejected a launch on warn policy. There are grave

0:52:31.920 --> 0:52:33.799
<v Speaker 2>doubts as to whether or not that was the real

0:52:33.920 --> 0:52:36.480
<v Speaker 2>policy or propaganda. Right, A lot of people say they

0:52:36.520 --> 0:52:39.640
<v Speaker 2>were definitely launch on warn too. I think that's probably right.

0:52:39.960 --> 0:52:42.560
<v Speaker 2>I think both the US and Russia more or less

0:52:42.600 --> 0:52:44.680
<v Speaker 2>would have fired if they felt like they had a

0:52:44.680 --> 0:52:47.320
<v Speaker 2>credible warning that the other was firing. Right, Well, I

0:52:47.360 --> 0:52:48.279
<v Speaker 2>don't think either of US.

0:52:49.840 --> 0:52:51.960
<v Speaker 3>Russia needs us to believe they're launch on warn, even

0:52:51.960 --> 0:52:53.880
<v Speaker 3>if they're saying something else. They have to say it

0:52:53.920 --> 0:52:56.360
<v Speaker 3>in a way where they're like, oh, don't worry, we

0:52:56.400 --> 0:52:59.160
<v Speaker 3>would totally not launch on warn, but scare people to

0:52:59.239 --> 0:52:59.880
<v Speaker 3>thinking they would.

0:53:00.400 --> 0:53:03.399
<v Speaker 2>Well, and now since Putin's taken and this is really interest.

0:53:03.440 --> 0:53:05.040
<v Speaker 2>In the last few years, Putin has made it very

0:53:05.080 --> 0:53:07.399
<v Speaker 2>clear that the Russian Federation is now launch on warn

0:53:07.400 --> 0:53:09.399
<v Speaker 2>as well, right, So they are just straight up saying

0:53:09.400 --> 0:53:12.120
<v Speaker 2>like everyone is now launch on warn, the US and Russia,

0:53:12.120 --> 0:53:14.680
<v Speaker 2>and that's all that really matters. China's got some nukes.

0:53:15.320 --> 0:53:17.040
<v Speaker 2>I don't know as much about their system, but they

0:53:17.040 --> 0:53:19.160
<v Speaker 2>don't have near like both. The all it takes is

0:53:19.200 --> 0:53:23.799
<v Speaker 2>the US and Russia, right, Yeah, Like, you know, it's

0:53:23.800 --> 0:53:26.840
<v Speaker 2>worth being concerned about North Korea obviously, because one missile

0:53:27.239 --> 0:53:29.960
<v Speaker 2>opens the possibility that all of the missiles start flying, right,

0:53:30.000 --> 0:53:32.839
<v Speaker 2>because of the kind of cascading decision trees people will make.

0:53:33.840 --> 0:53:36.880
<v Speaker 2>But the US and Russia are by far the most

0:53:36.920 --> 0:53:41.520
<v Speaker 2>heavily armed right now. I know there's a tendency among

0:53:41.600 --> 0:53:43.759
<v Speaker 2>folks on our side of the political aisle to say,

0:53:43.800 --> 0:53:46.560
<v Speaker 2>oh my god, isn't it terrifying that Donald Trump has

0:53:46.920 --> 0:53:48.200
<v Speaker 2>the fucking nuclear football?

0:53:48.320 --> 0:53:48.520
<v Speaker 4>Right?

0:53:49.080 --> 0:53:51.600
<v Speaker 2>And I'm gonna say something controversial here, which is, I

0:53:51.600 --> 0:53:53.840
<v Speaker 2>don't think Donald Trump is less suited to make that

0:53:53.920 --> 0:53:56.799
<v Speaker 2>call than any other present, not because he would do

0:53:56.840 --> 0:53:59.120
<v Speaker 2>a good job at that, but because no one can.

0:53:59.320 --> 0:54:03.439
<v Speaker 2>Everyone is bad at this. Nobody is competent to make

0:54:03.520 --> 0:54:08.000
<v Speaker 2>that call, and it's a dangerous mistake to believe that, well, well,

0:54:08.040 --> 0:54:10.960
<v Speaker 2>Obama's would have been a good guy to have in

0:54:11.000 --> 0:54:13.640
<v Speaker 2>the seat or Biden wou No, they're all bad at this,

0:54:13.760 --> 0:54:16.200
<v Speaker 2>They would all have been terrible. No one will do

0:54:16.239 --> 0:54:18.320
<v Speaker 2>a good job if they are put in that situation.

0:54:18.920 --> 0:54:22.239
<v Speaker 2>In her chilling book Nuclear War, Annie Jacobson makes one

0:54:22.400 --> 0:54:26.200
<v Speaker 2>very important point. Several times. She quotes John Wolfstal, the

0:54:26.239 --> 0:54:29.719
<v Speaker 2>former national security advisor to President Obama, who said, no one,

0:54:30.080 --> 0:54:32.719
<v Speaker 2>not even the president, has complete knowledge of what is

0:54:32.760 --> 0:54:35.160
<v Speaker 2>going on in a crisis or in a conflict, let

0:54:35.200 --> 0:54:39.800
<v Speaker 2>alone a nuclear war. Former Secretary of Defense for Reagan,

0:54:39.880 --> 0:54:43.520
<v Speaker 2>William Perry added, many presidents come into the office uninformed

0:54:43.560 --> 0:54:46.440
<v Speaker 2>about their role in a nuclear war. Some seem not

0:54:46.640 --> 0:54:49.680
<v Speaker 2>to want to know. This is a point made several

0:54:49.680 --> 0:54:52.960
<v Speaker 2>times that presidents generally don't know much about this, even

0:54:52.960 --> 0:54:54.759
<v Speaker 2>though this football is with them at all times. They

0:54:54.760 --> 0:54:56.640
<v Speaker 2>don't like to think about it, they don't like to

0:54:56.640 --> 0:54:58.840
<v Speaker 2>ask too many questions about it. They don't like to

0:54:58.920 --> 0:55:01.319
<v Speaker 2>dwell on it. A bunch of people who were in

0:55:01.320 --> 0:55:03.279
<v Speaker 2>a position to know have said similar things that like

0:55:03.560 --> 0:55:06.759
<v Speaker 2>President's not super well informed, generally on how all this

0:55:06.880 --> 0:55:10.160
<v Speaker 2>works because it's scary. They don't like to think about it.

0:55:11.000 --> 0:55:13.120
<v Speaker 3>I don't like to think about it like this knells

0:55:13.200 --> 0:55:16.840
<v Speaker 3>firmly into the lake. Dude, things that you can't control,

0:55:16.920 --> 0:55:21.640
<v Speaker 3>you don't worry. Absolutely. If I was the president, I would.

0:55:21.400 --> 0:55:25.440
<v Speaker 2>Think about this a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'd be

0:55:25.440 --> 0:55:30.360
<v Speaker 2>sending those missiles straight to the Great Lakes. But yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:55:30.000 --> 0:55:33.120
<v Speaker 3>That's why we're that's why you're running in what twenty

0:55:33.200 --> 0:55:33.640
<v Speaker 3>thirty two?

0:55:34.320 --> 0:55:37.680
<v Speaker 2>That's right, that's right on a takeout Lake Superior.

0:55:38.400 --> 0:55:40.319
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, more like inferior.

0:55:40.680 --> 0:55:42.600
<v Speaker 2>That's right, that's right. We're going to get revenge for

0:55:42.640 --> 0:55:47.920
<v Speaker 2>those brave men on the Edmund Fitzgerald know. Anyway, Jacobson

0:55:48.000 --> 0:55:51.480
<v Speaker 2>continues talking about how unready presidents are to make these

0:55:51.560 --> 0:55:54.280
<v Speaker 2>kind of calls. Once, at a press conference in nineteen

0:55:54.320 --> 0:55:57.040
<v Speaker 2>eighty two, President Reagan went so far as to incorrectly

0:55:57.040 --> 0:56:00.680
<v Speaker 2>tell the public that submarine ballistic missiles are recalling. That's

0:56:00.719 --> 0:56:03.719
<v Speaker 2>why that myth exists. After the Berlin Wall came down

0:56:03.800 --> 0:56:06.319
<v Speaker 2>and the Soviet Union was dissolved, William Perry found in

0:56:06.360 --> 0:56:09.560
<v Speaker 2>his experience as Secretary of Defense that many people clung

0:56:09.600 --> 0:56:12.000
<v Speaker 2>to the idea that nuclear war was no longer a threat,

0:56:12.160 --> 0:56:14.640
<v Speaker 2>when in fact he now says nothing could be further

0:56:14.680 --> 0:56:18.280
<v Speaker 2>from the truth. In a nuclear war, confusion over protocol

0:56:18.320 --> 0:56:21.760
<v Speaker 2>and speed of action will have unintended consequences beyond anyone's grasp.

0:56:22.000 --> 0:56:24.080
<v Speaker 2>It will send the United States of America into the

0:56:24.120 --> 0:56:26.919
<v Speaker 2>heart of darkness that defense official John Rubel warned about

0:56:26.920 --> 0:56:30.600
<v Speaker 2>in nineteen sixty, into what he called a twilight underworld

0:56:30.640 --> 0:56:34.919
<v Speaker 2>governed by disciplined, meticulous, and energetically mindless group think aimed

0:56:34.960 --> 0:56:37.279
<v Speaker 2>at wiping out half the people living on nearly one

0:56:37.320 --> 0:56:38.480
<v Speaker 2>third of the Earth's surface.

0:56:40.719 --> 0:56:42.000
<v Speaker 3>Yeah, yep.

0:56:42.840 --> 0:56:45.640
<v Speaker 2>The fundamental issue here in terms of his Trump any

0:56:45.640 --> 0:56:49.279
<v Speaker 2>worse than anyone else on this specific issue. Theoretically, the

0:56:49.320 --> 0:56:51.200
<v Speaker 2>president is only going to be asked to make a

0:56:51.239 --> 0:56:54.000
<v Speaker 2>call on whether or not to launch our missiles if

0:56:54.080 --> 0:56:56.360
<v Speaker 2>one or more are known to have been launched towards

0:56:56.400 --> 0:56:59.120
<v Speaker 2>the US or an ally. Because of the way all

0:56:59.160 --> 0:57:02.480
<v Speaker 2>of these weapons systems work, this means that the hypothetical

0:57:02.520 --> 0:57:05.920
<v Speaker 2>president in this scenario is going about his day doing

0:57:05.960 --> 0:57:09.600
<v Speaker 2>something else and is grabbed and taken bodily like the

0:57:09.640 --> 0:57:13.040
<v Speaker 2>Secret Service. Like response teams job is to literally physically

0:57:13.120 --> 0:57:15.960
<v Speaker 2>haul him like carry him into the bunker and then

0:57:16.000 --> 0:57:18.600
<v Speaker 2>into like a chopper to get to a more secure locations.

0:57:18.640 --> 0:57:21.360
<v Speaker 2>The White House bunker isn't really all that safe, but

0:57:21.440 --> 0:57:23.560
<v Speaker 2>he will be grabbed in the middle of his day,

0:57:24.080 --> 0:57:28.080
<v Speaker 2>taken into a situation room, and told that the entirety

0:57:28.080 --> 0:57:31.000
<v Speaker 2>of Washington, DC is about to die in flames, including

0:57:31.040 --> 0:57:34.600
<v Speaker 2>nearly every member of his administration in the most likely scenarios.

0:57:34.720 --> 0:57:36.640
<v Speaker 2>He will then be told that he has between three

0:57:36.760 --> 0:57:39.880
<v Speaker 2>and six minutes to decide to launch a world killing

0:57:39.920 --> 0:57:44.560
<v Speaker 2>salvo of in most situations, hundreds to one thousand nuclear warheads.

0:57:44.920 --> 0:57:48.520
<v Speaker 2>The entire time that he struggles with this decision, military advisors,

0:57:48.520 --> 0:57:51.200
<v Speaker 2>who his entire job is to think about how important

0:57:51.240 --> 0:57:53.960
<v Speaker 2>it is that we strike back before being decapitated, will

0:57:53.960 --> 0:57:57.760
<v Speaker 2>shout for him to launch everything that we've got. No

0:57:57.800 --> 0:58:03.400
<v Speaker 2>one is qualified for that job. Yeah, the only president

0:58:03.480 --> 0:58:06.120
<v Speaker 2>we've ever had who could be argued to have stood

0:58:06.160 --> 0:58:08.800
<v Speaker 2>up to this kind of pressure was JFK. Right, and

0:58:08.920 --> 0:58:12.120
<v Speaker 2>JFK was a combat veteran, had been in some scary

0:58:12.160 --> 0:58:15.240
<v Speaker 2>situations before, and thank fucking god he was the guy

0:58:15.280 --> 0:58:17.240
<v Speaker 2>on the ground at that point in time, because it

0:58:17.240 --> 0:58:19.120
<v Speaker 2>could have been a lot worse than it was. The

0:58:19.160 --> 0:58:21.560
<v Speaker 2>Cuban missile crisis of a bunch of others. Shit, I

0:58:21.600 --> 0:58:24.479
<v Speaker 2>don't have any real faith that Obama or Biden would

0:58:24.480 --> 0:58:27.360
<v Speaker 2>have performed much better than Trump in this nightmare scenario.

0:58:27.840 --> 0:58:30.280
<v Speaker 2>As John Ruble wrote in two thousand and eight, we

0:58:30.400 --> 0:58:33.360
<v Speaker 2>know that this mentality, given half a chance, will surface

0:58:33.360 --> 0:58:36.320
<v Speaker 2>in military and government councils. We know from recent history

0:58:36.320 --> 0:58:39.680
<v Speaker 2>that a compliant bureaucracy, military and civilian will murder six

0:58:39.720 --> 0:58:42.760
<v Speaker 2>million people in cold blood, or plan by design, build

0:58:42.800 --> 0:58:44.880
<v Speaker 2>and deploy the means to murder half of the people

0:58:44.920 --> 0:58:48.680
<v Speaker 2>on earth, probably including themselves. How come is all this

0:58:48.760 --> 0:58:52.040
<v Speaker 2>built into the human genome? A melancholy procession from stones

0:58:52.080 --> 0:58:55.160
<v Speaker 2>to atoms, a predestined progress toward the end times, the

0:58:55.200 --> 0:59:00.560
<v Speaker 2>inevitable rise of maligned leaders over compliant masses. Anyway, thanks

0:59:00.600 --> 0:59:01.680
<v Speaker 2>for listening to my podcasts.

0:59:02.440 --> 0:59:04.520
<v Speaker 4>Yeah, wow what a wait end?

0:59:06.880 --> 0:59:08.000
<v Speaker 3>Yeah? Like, what did you do today?

0:59:08.040 --> 0:59:08.200
<v Speaker 1>Oh?

0:59:08.280 --> 0:59:10.280
<v Speaker 3>I get My job is that I have to make

0:59:10.360 --> 0:59:13.200
<v Speaker 3>jokes during the as I get described the mechanism by

0:59:13.200 --> 0:59:14.120
<v Speaker 3>which the world will end.

0:59:14.760 --> 0:59:19.600
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, cool stuff, legit, I don't know. Probably should be

0:59:19.640 --> 0:59:24.120
<v Speaker 2>something people are like asking presidents to change. We could

0:59:24.200 --> 0:59:26.800
<v Speaker 2>change this. It doesn't have to be this way. It

0:59:26.800 --> 0:59:30.760
<v Speaker 2>doesn't have to be this dangerous, Like, there are other

0:59:30.840 --> 0:59:33.360
<v Speaker 2>ways this could all be designed to where we're not

0:59:34.120 --> 0:59:37.920
<v Speaker 2>permanently fifteen minutes or less away from annihilation, you know,

0:59:38.240 --> 0:59:42.040
<v Speaker 2>and if we step back, probably the Russians do at

0:59:42.120 --> 0:59:43.720
<v Speaker 2>least a little bit. You know. I don't have a

0:59:43.760 --> 0:59:45.360
<v Speaker 2>lot of faith in Buden, but I don't think he

0:59:45.400 --> 0:59:47.360
<v Speaker 2>wants to die in nuclear.

0:59:47.040 --> 0:59:49.800
<v Speaker 3>Hell fire either, and most people don't.

0:59:50.120 --> 0:59:55.760
<v Speaker 2>I think most people don't. Uh. Anyway, maybe this should

0:59:55.800 --> 0:59:58.400
<v Speaker 2>be like a voting issue that people talk about, right,

0:59:58.480 --> 1:00:01.520
<v Speaker 2>Like it's you know, climate change obviously very important, and

1:00:01.640 --> 1:00:03.720
<v Speaker 2>people it needs to be much more of an issue.

1:00:03.880 --> 1:00:06.600
<v Speaker 2>But this is up there, This is an equivalent problem,

1:00:06.800 --> 1:00:11.360
<v Speaker 2>right because this is potentially a much more thorough destruction

1:00:11.400 --> 1:00:13.120
<v Speaker 2>of the biosphere that climate.

1:00:12.880 --> 1:00:14.920
<v Speaker 3>Change will bring even quicker.

1:00:15.400 --> 1:00:17.480
<v Speaker 2>We should probably care about this a lot.

1:00:18.560 --> 1:00:27.760
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, anyway, what a good system we all have. Yeah,

1:00:28.040 --> 1:00:31.880
<v Speaker 1>it's pretty nuts. I actually recommend all the books that

1:00:31.920 --> 1:00:37.640
<v Speaker 1>I read for this, Annie Jacobson's Nuclear War A Scenario. Again,

1:00:37.680 --> 1:00:39.720
<v Speaker 1>I don't entirely agree with kind of some of her

1:00:40.120 --> 1:00:44.040
<v Speaker 1>panic about North Korea, but it's a pretty good book

1:00:44.080 --> 1:00:46.240
<v Speaker 1>on the whole about the way the system works today.

1:00:46.680 --> 1:00:49.320
<v Speaker 1>The book Fifteen Minutes is a really good look at

1:00:49.520 --> 1:00:51.840
<v Speaker 1>like basically how we got to the point where we're

1:00:51.840 --> 1:00:54.360
<v Speaker 1>fifteen minutes away from annihilation at all times. And then

1:00:54.360 --> 1:00:57.240
<v Speaker 1>Command and Control, among other things, talks about a bunch

1:00:57.240 --> 1:00:59.400
<v Speaker 1>of the different like fuck ups and errors that have

1:00:59.440 --> 1:01:02.160
<v Speaker 1>happened along the way. They're all good books.

1:01:03.680 --> 1:01:06.920
<v Speaker 3>I h the movie house a dynamite that just came

1:01:06.960 --> 1:01:09.800
<v Speaker 3>out recently. It's the one that the way specifically the

1:01:09.880 --> 1:01:13.880
<v Speaker 3>drama is just around. It's around the nuclear football, it's

1:01:13.920 --> 1:01:16.920
<v Speaker 3>around the chain of command. This relates to it and

1:01:16.960 --> 1:01:19.400
<v Speaker 3>the current one. And it's what started me, like a

1:01:19.400 --> 1:01:22.240
<v Speaker 3>couple weeks before this started thinking about being like, oh,

1:01:22.280 --> 1:01:25.760
<v Speaker 3>this isn't as like I sort of thought. I was like, oh,

1:01:25.800 --> 1:01:27.920
<v Speaker 3>we probably have like decent intercept systems if it's just

1:01:27.960 --> 1:01:32.200
<v Speaker 3>like one missile, right, you know, you're like, uh.

1:01:31.600 --> 1:01:34.360
<v Speaker 2>If it's just one maybe, But again, we don't have

1:01:34.480 --> 1:01:38.280
<v Speaker 2>decent intercept systems. None of these work nearly as well

1:01:38.320 --> 1:01:40.880
<v Speaker 2>as they're supposed to, and there are some similar problems

1:01:40.880 --> 1:01:43.560
<v Speaker 2>with at least some of the different early warning systems.

1:01:43.600 --> 1:01:45.400
<v Speaker 2>It's been this is really a problem for the Russians

1:01:45.400 --> 1:01:47.120
<v Speaker 2>because the Russians like one of the problems with the

1:01:47.160 --> 1:01:49.880
<v Speaker 2>Russian system is that it's not smart enough to know

1:01:50.080 --> 1:01:52.560
<v Speaker 2>because each of the missiles that we would be firing

1:01:52.960 --> 1:01:54.880
<v Speaker 2>launches a bunch of chafe, right, So you have the

1:01:54.880 --> 1:01:58.320
<v Speaker 2>actual warheads and ICBMs now often have multiple warheads, right

1:01:58.320 --> 1:02:02.200
<v Speaker 2>that it's called an mirv I think, and basically what

1:02:02.240 --> 1:02:04.200
<v Speaker 2>you can do, and this is particularly a case with

1:02:04.240 --> 1:02:06.800
<v Speaker 2>like a lot of the sub mounted missiles too, is

1:02:06.960 --> 1:02:09.640
<v Speaker 2>you launch one missile, but then it splits into like

1:02:09.880 --> 1:02:13.320
<v Speaker 2>multiple warheads, each of which is targeted at a different area. Right,

1:02:14.280 --> 1:02:16.440
<v Speaker 2>But also all of these missiles have what's called chaff,

1:02:16.480 --> 1:02:21.040
<v Speaker 2>which is basically like like little strips of aluminum that

1:02:21.400 --> 1:02:26.640
<v Speaker 2>come out with like the warhead in order to confuse

1:02:27.240 --> 1:02:31.160
<v Speaker 2>like its system right right, right, yeah, yeah, yeah exactly,

1:02:31.200 --> 1:02:34.320
<v Speaker 2>so that like it can protect the missile basically, but

1:02:35.000 --> 1:02:37.560
<v Speaker 2>one of the main Russian systems can't tell the difference

1:02:37.600 --> 1:02:41.000
<v Speaker 2>between that chaff and a shitload of additional missiles. So,

1:02:41.080 --> 1:02:44.720
<v Speaker 2>like say there was a situation where North Korea launched

1:02:44.760 --> 1:02:48.720
<v Speaker 2>an ICBM at somebody, and we launch a decapitation strike

1:02:48.760 --> 1:02:50.880
<v Speaker 2>at North Korea or a strike at their nuclear facilities.

1:02:50.880 --> 1:02:53.160
<v Speaker 2>That's a limited strike. We're just firing a couple of missiles.

1:02:53.760 --> 1:02:56.480
<v Speaker 2>It might look because of where North Korea is, Russia

1:02:56.560 --> 1:02:58.880
<v Speaker 2>and China might both think, oh shit, the Americans are

1:02:58.920 --> 1:03:01.400
<v Speaker 2>launching hundreds of missiles and they could be coming for us.

1:03:01.440 --> 1:03:04.320
<v Speaker 2>We don't know where they're targeted. And if the President

1:03:04.400 --> 1:03:08.080
<v Speaker 2>hasn't gotten through to both of those leaders to inform them,

1:03:08.080 --> 1:03:09.720
<v Speaker 2>and if or if they don't trust the president, right,

1:03:09.840 --> 1:03:11.160
<v Speaker 2>who knows what's going to happen.

1:03:11.880 --> 1:03:13.760
<v Speaker 3>I hate to say that HG. Wells is right because

1:03:13.760 --> 1:03:17.000
<v Speaker 3>I don't actually believe in one world government, kind of

1:03:17.000 --> 1:03:20.680
<v Speaker 3>famously with my political position, but this idea that like,

1:03:21.200 --> 1:03:24.120
<v Speaker 3>the only way out of this, besides everyone de escalating,

1:03:25.320 --> 1:03:29.600
<v Speaker 3>is better diplomacy and everyone talking to each other, and like, yeah,

1:03:29.600 --> 1:03:33.360
<v Speaker 3>I'm moving away from nationalism, moving away from guarding your

1:03:33.440 --> 1:03:37.840
<v Speaker 3>borders zealously, and moving well, I think the solution of

1:03:37.880 --> 1:03:39.720
<v Speaker 3>most problems is to get rid of national borders. But

1:03:39.800 --> 1:03:43.680
<v Speaker 3>I'm you know whatever, Yeah, I'm I'm so glad I'm

1:03:43.680 --> 1:03:44.880
<v Speaker 3>not in charge of trying to figure out how to

1:03:44.880 --> 1:03:46.920
<v Speaker 3>solve this. That's the main takeaway that I have.

1:03:47.840 --> 1:03:52.560
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, there's a couple of things we could do. Jacobsen

1:03:52.560 --> 1:03:54.040
<v Speaker 2>talks about this, like one of the things that we

1:03:54.120 --> 1:03:56.840
<v Speaker 2>don't do, but ought to because it's so hard to

1:03:57.280 --> 1:04:01.240
<v Speaker 2>basically impossible almost to stop an ICBM reliably once it

1:04:01.320 --> 1:04:04.920
<v Speaker 2>gets above a certain level, like once it gets and

1:04:05.480 --> 1:04:07.840
<v Speaker 2>in terms of like there's no real way to like

1:04:08.040 --> 1:04:10.920
<v Speaker 2>protect against the mass of ICBMs that Russia could launch,

1:04:11.240 --> 1:04:13.240
<v Speaker 2>but North Korea doesn't have all that many. And if

1:04:13.240 --> 1:04:16.200
<v Speaker 2>we were to keep like a bunch of predator drones

1:04:16.560 --> 1:04:19.800
<v Speaker 2>in the area, we could theoretically have a quick reaction

1:04:19.960 --> 1:04:22.280
<v Speaker 2>for US that could intercept an ICBM before it could

1:04:22.320 --> 1:04:23.760
<v Speaker 2>get to the point of no return where you have

1:04:23.840 --> 1:04:26.320
<v Speaker 2>no ability to shoot it down. But we just decided

1:04:26.360 --> 1:04:28.120
<v Speaker 2>not to do that. Like that got theorized and it

1:04:28.160 --> 1:04:29.720
<v Speaker 2>was like, I think it was too expensive. It's the

1:04:29.760 --> 1:04:31.800
<v Speaker 2>same thing with like, well, we could have fad batteries

1:04:31.840 --> 1:04:34.440
<v Speaker 2>to protect certain things that might be like that nuclear

1:04:34.480 --> 1:04:36.360
<v Speaker 2>plant that might be a target, but we're not. We're

1:04:36.400 --> 1:04:38.640
<v Speaker 2>just going to keep them, you know, protecting Israel. We're

1:04:38.640 --> 1:04:41.479
<v Speaker 2>not going to have them, you know, in the US

1:04:41.600 --> 1:04:44.200
<v Speaker 2>or whatever. For the most part, I mean obvious we

1:04:44.200 --> 1:04:46.520
<v Speaker 2>have a lot of those in Ukraine, and there's good

1:04:46.560 --> 1:04:50.200
<v Speaker 2>reason for that, but we don't devote It's both a

1:04:50.240 --> 1:04:53.520
<v Speaker 2>mix of none of it really works all that well.

1:04:53.560 --> 1:04:58.400
<v Speaker 2>None of our missile interception stuff is perfect. The fad

1:04:58.680 --> 1:05:00.200
<v Speaker 2>is about as good as it gets, but it it's

1:05:00.200 --> 1:05:02.800
<v Speaker 2>not good for everything. Like it could be useful against

1:05:02.880 --> 1:05:04.680
<v Speaker 2>like some of those sub based missiles, but I don't

1:05:04.680 --> 1:05:08.040
<v Speaker 2>think like it can take out ICBMs, certainly not or

1:05:08.200 --> 1:05:10.720
<v Speaker 2>certainly not a hypersonic. I don't think anything can take

1:05:10.760 --> 1:05:13.080
<v Speaker 2>out a hypersonic if it actually works the way they're

1:05:13.080 --> 1:05:18.520
<v Speaker 2>supposed to. There's just not really reliable ways to stop

1:05:19.480 --> 1:05:22.000
<v Speaker 2>a massive nuclear attack. If you get shot at by

1:05:22.040 --> 1:05:24.439
<v Speaker 2>one missile, you might be able to do something right.

1:05:24.920 --> 1:05:26.080
<v Speaker 2>That's kind of where we are.

1:05:27.960 --> 1:05:28.400
<v Speaker 1>Well away.

1:05:29.280 --> 1:05:32.080
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I love talking about it though I love me

1:05:32.160 --> 1:05:32.640
<v Speaker 2>some nukes.

1:05:33.880 --> 1:05:35.400
<v Speaker 3>The ideas of all the things that I want to

1:05:35.400 --> 1:05:36.840
<v Speaker 3>write fiction about is related to it.

1:05:36.960 --> 1:05:40.240
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Folks, get out there to go

1:05:40.320 --> 1:05:43.480
<v Speaker 2>to the Wassaw Sound, you know, look around, hike around,

1:05:43.480 --> 1:05:45.880
<v Speaker 2>get your metal detectors out. There's a couple of nukes

1:05:46.000 --> 1:05:48.160
<v Speaker 2>just waiting for a new home.

1:05:47.960 --> 1:05:48.920
<v Speaker 3>Out you know.

1:05:50.680 --> 1:05:51.440
<v Speaker 2>Nuclear power.

1:05:52.600 --> 1:05:55.720
<v Speaker 3>Uh yeah, take care of each other and tell your

1:05:55.760 --> 1:05:57.919
<v Speaker 3>friends you love them, but not in a way where

1:05:57.960 --> 1:06:00.680
<v Speaker 3>you don't get completely lost thinking about this stuff all

1:06:00.720 --> 1:06:04.600
<v Speaker 3>the time. And also podcasts cool people who did cool stuff,

1:06:04.640 --> 1:06:07.160
<v Speaker 3>which is the opposite of this, but.

1:06:08.040 --> 1:06:14.640
<v Speaker 2>You know, yeah, yeah, sweet, all right, everybody go away.

1:06:15.920 --> 1:06:18.640
<v Speaker 4>Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1:06:18.960 --> 1:06:22.200
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1:06:22.440 --> 1:06:25.640
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1:06:25.720 --> 1:06:28.880
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1:06:28.880 --> 1:06:32.960
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1:06:33.040 --> 1:06:36.720
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1:06:36.880 --> 1:06:39.120
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