We Could All Get Nuked Tomorrow (Here's Why) with Annie Jacobsen

(soft piano music) - Lemonade. - Thanks for listening to Hussam Minhaj Doesn't Know. Listen to and follow Hussam Minhaj Doesn't Know add free on Amazon Music or just ask Alexa. Alexa, play the podcast Hussam Minhaj Doesn't Know on Amazon Music. Also, with Amazon Music Unlimited, you can now listen to your favorite music, podcasts, and audio books, all in the Amazon Music app. Listen to Hussam Minhaj Doesn't Know on Amazon Music. - I don't wanna say this because you're such an esteemed guest of ours, but you know, the whole world and everyone I know dying, it's a bit of a buzzkill. - There are currently over 12,000 nuclear weapons in the world, each one with more firepower than all of the bombs exploded and all of the wars in human history. These days, if you hear about any of these nuclear weapons at all, it's in the context of some lunatic dictator threatening to set one off. - Vladimir Putin once again raised the prospect of a nuclear strike. - In Jong Un unleashing an ominous warning, the whole of the U.S. mainland is within our firing range. - President Trump announced the United States will resume testing nuclear weapons. - I call it the N word run, run. - But the biggest danger of nuclear weapons isn't any one person. The biggest danger of nuclear weapons is nuclear weapons. These are bombs designed to kill as many civilians as possible, to burn entire cities alive. And at this moment, thousands of these nuclear weapons are on air-trigger alert overseen by tens of thousands of people who spend every day rehearsing for the end of the world. In short, everything about nuclear weapons is deeply f---ed up. And as long as they exist, none of us are safe. Now, I've never actually done a deep dive before on nuclear weapons because the subject just felt too big to wrap my head around. But then I read Nuclear War a scenario by Annie Jacobson. Annie is an investigative journalist who specializes in national security and government secrecy. And instead of using stats and figures to demonstrate the danger of nuclear weapons, she answers a single straightforward question. If a nuclear missile was fired at the United States, what exactly would happen? Her methodical, minute-by-minute account of how that scenario would play out based on her in-depth reporting and research has been terrifying readers all over the world. - It's scared the s--- out of me. - In this interview, we'll scare the s--- out of you. We all should be terrified because nuclear weapons aren't just a Hollywood script device. They are real and they work. And Tom Cruise is not gonna save us. - I know. - Although, please come on the show, Tom. I got so obsessed with Annie's book that I invited her on the show to give me a nuclear weapons 101 tutorial. She talked me through all the things most people don't understand about nuclear weapons. Like what happens when a nuclear missile is launched. - A ballistic missile cannot be redirected and it cannot be recalled. - What the impact would be of even a small nuclear exchange. - Once nuclear war begins, it only ends one way. Nuclear Armageddon. - And what the aftermath of a nuclear war would look like. - Survivors would envy the dead. - And of course, it's all interspersed with some of my patented ADHD tangents. - Where you guys grab it much with a four-star general. She's cake factory, Marcelo Hernandez from SNL. Hilarious, Ractag, group of dinosaurs that make it to the Great Valley. The best bakers with these amazing human interest stories are building things that are cake. - I don't know, is it cake? - So strap on some adult diapers because Annie is about to seriously fuck up your shit. Enjoy your day. (upbeat music) - Well, let's start with the scary stuff. Let's paint the picture. If a thermonuclear missile landed on us right now in Midtown Manhattan, what would happen? - A one-megaton thermonuclear bomb hits with such a force. First, it's a blinding light. It's 180 million degrees worth of light. It's a pulse. Everything within miles in a line of sight is set on fire. So you have one smile radius of fire that's 19 football fields of fire. Think about how long that is. Imagine everything in the line of sight catching on fire. So you immediately have this mega fire. And people have seen the nuclear mushroom cloud in Hollywood movies, right? So the stem of the mushroom. That stem is a several hundred mile an hour vacuum. I mean, a hurricane is 90 miles an hour. Sucks everything up that has been turned into combusting carbon, basically, people, things, buildings. In a nine mile radius, everything goes and you have 30 feet of rubble. The nuclear mushroom cap, this 10, 20, 30 mile wide cap is what's left of people. That's like debris of humans up there. If anyone launches on the United States, they are going to get the mother load in response. 1,760 nuclear weapons that we have on ready for launch status. We would unload the whole clip. The whole arsenal. Everybody has a launch on morning capacity or at least we in Russia do. And so if you launch, we launch. And then we're all dead. Soot's blotting out the sun's rays for eight, nine, 10 years. The result is that agriculture fails. You know, you have this incredible freezing world for a decade. And then agriculture fails and people starve to death. 72 minutes from nuclear launch to nuclear winter. And I describe it in great detail, like from Defense Department documents, by the way, like scientific facts about what happens, which should terrify everyone that we actually know such horrors, but we do. We do. So a lot of people say that we are living in the safest time in human history. People go look at modern technology, look at modern advances in health and medicine. Things are better than they've ever been. But because of nuclear weapons, are we actually living in the most dangerous time in human history, and we just don't even think about it? I think the last sentence you had is very key. We just don't think about it. It depends what you're going to think about, how you perceive the world, how you perceive your environment. I wanted to write this book, because I wanted to show in like horrific detail what does exist behind the veil, behind the curtain, if you will. Nuclear weapons are there. They are on ready for launch status. And they can go in as little as 60 seconds. So with that information, now we begin to talk about whether or not we're all safe. So we've known about nuclear weapons in the public consciousness for decades. I remember learning about it in history class and civics class. First you duck, and then you cover. How can we tell when the atomic bomb may explode? There are two kinds of attack with warning and without any warning. We think that most of the time we will be warned before the bomb explodes. What's scarier when you really think about the consequences of a nuclear weapon, if it were to go off, is a deliberate attack scarier or a misunderstanding? I learned in my reporting, and keep in mind to talk to sort of the highest level individuals who advise the president in the event that he has to make a nuclear counterattack. I learned in the reporting that it doesn't matter how nuclear war begins. If it's a misunderstanding, if it's a pointed attack, it doesn't matter how it begins. It only ends one way. And that is in nuclear armageddon. And by the way, that's language that is used among defense officials. Nuclear armageddon. Oh, it's not just like an internet comment that became popular. These are the real consequences. These are the consequences in any situation where strategic nuclear weapons are launched. Just the very notion of, hey, why don't you text me before you launch the news? And the delta of the consequences is, oh, civilization as we know it would be over. That's way too big. It is so big. And look, the whole process of writing and reporting this book was astonishing for me. I began really working on nuclear war a scenario during COVID. Someone said to me, oh, I bet the generals have a little more time on their hand like all of us to do a Zoom, right? And lo and behold, that turned out to be the case. And remember, I talked to retired generals. So if you're in current nuclear command and control, you can't talk to journalists. But these retired individuals, I'm talking about former secretaries of defense, former nuclear subcommanders. They agreed to talk to me. Why? Why did they do that? This is the great mystery. Although they did all of us a great service by doing so, I must say. Because for decades, the way in which nuclear war would unfold has been shrouded in mystery. No one wants to talk about it. And suddenly, during COVID, people spoke to me. And here's a really disturbing thought. It was often said then, oh, Annie, good you're writing about this. People have forgotten about nuclear war. And then as I was doing follow-up interviews after Russia invaded Ukraine, there was a little bit of a hesitation of maybe we spoke too soon. Let's actually make it a little tactile here. In November, 2024, Russia fired an intermediate range ballistic missile into Ukraine. It wasn't nuclear. But why was this? It's so scary. Good for you for pointing out probably the most dangerous moment in the 21st century, in my opinion and the opinion of others. Just moments ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that a Russian strike in Ukraine was carried out by "an experimental non-nuclear ballistic missile." It's not a weapon that's ever been used on a conventional battlefield Lindsey. So it's something that you would only use in a nuclear war. So those flashes of light that we see were clearly intended to send a signal. Russia, for the first time in the history of war, launches an intermediate-range ballistic missile into a hot war. Right. You're absolutely right. Now, that missile is capable of carrying a nuclear war ahead. But it doesn't have a nuclear war ahead on it. And there's no way of knowing. There's no way of knowing. And so I like you ask that question. I went to the state, I asked the Assistant Secretary of State. This is after the book published, like what? And she took me into the State Department, a facility there called the NERC, which is a bunker, essentially, where, you know, electronic beeps go back and forth between Russia and the United States for notification. The NERC's were established to help exchange arms control information, to help prevent any misunderstanding, to help prevent any miscalculation, to help prevent any misinterpretation of something like a missile launch, so that we know when the Russians are going to do a test launch or the Russians know when we're going to do a test launch. And in that situation, Lavrov, the Defense Minister, notified the U.S. State Department of the ballistic missile launch 30 minutes before, identifying that it didn't have a nuclear war ahead. Because otherwise, the U.S. could have interpreted that Russia was launching a nuclear weapon into Ukraine. But to the rest of the world, no one knew. So what do you think the Pentagon was doing when they found out? But the Pentagon is most concerned with is a strategic nuclear weapon coming into the United States. And they can tell that from the trajectory of the launch, within, you know, under 300 seconds. Immediately, the Pentagon could see that the missile, separate from having been notified. They could see that the missile was, in fact, being launched into Ukraine. But in essence, they were taking the word of the Russian government. And that's pretty terrifying. It's pretty terrifying. But I think -- But then you would have to trust the word of any government. Yes. And what's even worse about it is it's Russia saying we can do this. We can do this. And it's kind of like a schoolyard na-na-na-na-na, general killer who is the head of Stratcom, U.S. strategic command. I asked him point blank, what would happen in a full-scale nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia. And he said, "Annie, the world could end in the next couple of hours." So you knock out an episode of Severance, maybe text your mom and it's a wrap. But you wouldn't know about it. There's no texting mom because you and I are just sitting here doing a podcast. And there's a missile on the way and no one's telling us. What is launch on warning? Launch on warning is a terrifying policy that is almost exactly like it's out. We get notification, we meaning the U.S. defense department learns that there is a strategic missile coming at the United States. It's going to arrive in between 26 and 33 minutes depending on where it launched from. We have a policy called launch on warning. We do not wait to absorb the nuclear blow. We launch on the warning that it's coming. And that is why the system is set up in such a fraught manner. Why so hasty? Why can't we chill for a little bit? We cannot chill because the whole system is set up, no chilling, no chilling allowed. Nuclear war happens in seconds and minutes, not in days and hours. There's no like battle for New York City. Can't we just think.gov? Let's take a moment to work. No? The whole system is set up as a posturing, it's called deterrence. It's also referred to as mad, mutual assured destruction. Is part of nuclear deterrence letting our enemies know that basically, hey, we're fucking crazy too. That's exactly what it is. It's or it's or you could say it's if you launch you're crazier than us and it's suicide. Nobody has a launch on warning capacity or at least we in Russia do. And so if you launch, we launch and then we're all dead, so don't launch. And that's precisely what has held for 75 years. But I wanted to know, okay, what would happen if it didn't hold? Because nothing lasts forever and I had top-tier defense officials walk me through what happens. This is all deeply terrifying. Is the point of the book to get people to care because a lot of times with these huge ideas that are, you know, and I don't want to say this because you're such an esteemed guest of ours. But, you know, the whole world and everyone I know dying is a bit of a buzzkill. Is your goal to get people to care by basically saying, hey, everything you know and love will be gone? I love being an author, I love writing books and I really love when people read my books. And so I am in search of the most dramatic story possible. I write narrative nonfiction. In all of the other books that I've written about the Pentagon and the CIA, I've had many sources. They're involved in these outrageous missions and I always say, why did you do this? And they say to prevent nuclear world war three. And so it was really more of like, a thought experiment than a kind of noble, you know, gesture of my informing the world about nuclear war if I'm being candid. And then the process of me reporting this book was terrifying because I was shocked at every juncture as I think readers are as they, many people say, I read the book in one night because you kind of, even though you know what happens, five million people are dead. You can't really believe that it's happening in seconds, a minute. At every turn you're like, but how? But how? And these policies that are so obvious like launch, how about this one, hair trigger alert. We have 1,770 nuclear weapons already for launch status. But why though? I've always wondered this. Why does the United States have so many? It's called parody equal. Let's be equal. So let's be equally armed up and ready to annihilate five million people. That's the best answer I can give you. This is really something that one must not play ostrich about. Another detail that's really interesting is when you see the mushroom cloud in a history book, it's black and white, so it happened a long time ago. That's not my problem. Yeah. And I had nothing to do with it. But from what I understand, after Hiroshima, the US military made hydrogen bombs that are a hundred times more powerful than what we saw in those history books. It's really fucked up. It's the arms race. It's the nuclear arms race. I interviewed the man who made the first thermonuclear bomb detonate. Edward Teller is often seen as the father of the hydrogen bomb, the thermonuclear bomb. He thought about it. He conceived it theoretically, but he couldn't make it detonate. Richard Garwin did. Garwin, who just died a couple months ago, age 97. You interviewed him. I interviewed him at length during COVID. Garwin shared with me, yes, very specific details about things that he wasn't so loose lipped about. Advising, he advised every president since Eisenhower, and then COVID happens. And he's like, this is how I go. This is how I go. This is how we all go. What did he think was going to be the main use of this invention? He knew exactly. I asked him the pointed question, which is, do you wish you had an invented this? And he took a long pause. And he said, in true scientist form, I wish it couldn't have been invented. But he explained to me the way that I think is the best description to really understand the power of the thermonuclear weapon, as opposed to the atomic bomb, which was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He explained to me simply that a thermonuclear weapon is a two-stage nuclear weapon. And the triggering device inside the bomb is an atomic bomb. So the WIC. The WIC. To set off the big bomb is an atomic bomb. Yes. And once your mind tries to comprehend that, you go like, okay, I get it. It's like way beyond my scope. You know what this reminds me of being in science class? And when they talk about how many planets fit inside the sun, they're like 800 gigillion thousand planets are inside the sun, and I'm like, I don't fuck with the sun. Take me through this narrative. So a common misconception is, look, one nuke is going to go off and everyone will chill out. Whoever did that, that's not cool. But let's all chill out. What have you seen in your research with nuclear war scenarios that are ran by the Pentagon? It's exactly the opposite of that. I mean, if anyone is foolish enough to strike the United States of America, now we don't know. I'm not writing about what would happen in India, Pakistan, or outside of the United States. But if anyone launches on the United States, not strikes the United States launches on the United States, they are going to get the mother load in response. What does that mean? Okay. So during the Fire and Fury Trump administration, the Stratcom commander at the time, General Highton went on CNN. to do an interview. And he said, North Korea needs to know if they launch one at us, we're going to launch one back. If they launch two, we're going to launch two. Well, I drilled down on that, and that's actually not exactly what would happen. We would launch 82. They launch one, we launch 82. Why did he get it off by 80? General heightened isn't going to tell the United States public exactly what the nuclear command and control response is, but that's what it is. That is what it is. And so that's the mother load, right? And that's not the mother load. That's just 82. The mother load is 1,760 nuclear weapons that we have on ready for launch status. We would, we would unload the whole clip. If Russia launched it us, we would unlaunch the whole arsenal on them. That's how it works. That's the mother load. That's the full scale nuclear exchange that General Keeler told me about my interview with him. Do you find agency in doing this reporting or a lack of agency? Because I felt with so much of what I was reading, it was so overwhelming. I go, you know what? I got to put this down, and let me just turn on Is it Cake on Netflix? I don't know if you've seen the holiday edition. I don't know. Is it cake? Is it cake? Is it cake? Is it cake? Is it cake? Mikey Day from SNL hosts this series on Netflix called Is It Cake. Some of the best bakers with these amazing human interest stories are building things that are cake. They look real, like it looks like this mic stand. And you have to determine any Jacobson. Is this a real mic stand or is it cake? Actual like edible cake. Yes. Okay, wow. I missed this. Did they use fondant and they really recreate this? And then Mikey Day takes a knife and goes, there's three mic stands. And you go, is it mic stand A, B or C? And then A Jacobson, you would guess and then you go, it's A. Maybe we find out, is it cake? And he takes a knife. And either he hits model or it's cake. And we eat cake. So it's like nuclear war cake, nuclear war cake. That allowed you to get through the book. Well, because it's so harrowing, it's so dark, I feel the sense of powerlessness. In the sense that I can't get my dad to take his diabetes medication. And by the way, now that we know that, what do we do with the send phone? Well, the phrase that comes to mind is, you can't fix what you can't face. True for all of us, right, in our personal lives, in our political lives. Right. So it certainly is true in nuclear war. Like if you can't face the fact that this is actually could happen, then how can you possibly fix it and find a solution? Now, keep in mind, when you were born, ish, there were 70,000 nuclear warheads on the planet. Now today, there are around 12,300. So people have been talking about this. People have been moving toward disarmament. Presidents have been wanting to move away from these insane arsenals. We have moved in the right direction on some level. And now suddenly there's an about face. I call it the n-word. There are two n-words and you can't use either of them. You can't use either of them. We have more nuclear weapons than anybody. We don't do testing. We've halted it years, many years ago. But with others doing testing, I think it's appropriate that we do also. Since the book has published, we've seen the world sort of upended nations like Japan and South Korea and Germany are talking about, well, maybe we should have a nuclear bomb. And I think the book reiterates or underscores like, wait a minute, nuclear proliferation, like having more, there are nine nuclear armed nations. Having more people with nuclear weapons only increases the chance for mistake, for misunderstanding, for nuclear armageddon. Right. And I feel like books are these amazing deterrence. You can tell a story of what would happen to the world if sh*t were to go left. Do you think movies could be a powerful deterrent? Because every five to ten years there is a summer blockbuster that goes, hey, guess what? A rogue country has a nuclear weapon and sh*t is about to go left. You see the red countdown clock in the following movies. You have Crimson Tide. The sum of all fears broke in arrow. The peacemaker. Mission impossible goes protocol. Terminator 2. Terminator 3. Superman 4. The quest for peace. Oppenheimer. House of Dynamite. Who lies? So do you think Hollywood has played a significant role in helping with nuclear disarmament? Absolutely. I mean, we're all creatures of narrative. You and I are sitting here having this conversation. People listen to you, watch you because they want to hear what you have to say. We're wired to tell stories to one another. Hollywood plays a major role. And this is the story of the day after the ABC TV movie in the 80s. So set this up by the way for our younger audience. By the way, I was in 1985. Okay. So here you go. People raise the day after 1983. It's a film in 1983. You're not even conceived yet. I'm not even conceived yet. Just real quick, because I don't know if I'm going to have time to watch the movie. What is the premise of the movie? Of the day after. Yes. Oh, it's just very simple. It's like a nuclear exchange between Russia, then called the Soviet Union and the United States. That's simple. What's going on? Those are Miniman Mrs. like a test sort of like a warning. They're on their way to Russia. Reagan watches the film. I made for TV movie, by the way. Made for TV. A hundred million people watched it. It's crazy. Most of you who watch the ABC movie the day after are probably still feeling just a little numb right now. I witness an illustration of the horrors of nuclear destruction. Once the TV movie was over here at Riverside Church, volunteers passed out pieces of stationary and asked everyone to write a letter to a loved one. Volunteers then linked the White House letters into a chain to be sent to the president. Reagan watched. Now, by the way, his White House chief of staff told him not to watch it because Reagan was a nuclear hawk. He believed more nuclear weapons made us more safe. This is part of the problem, the military industrial complex. So Reagan watches it and then he writes in his White House journal, he became depressed. Think about that. The president of the United States, a nuclear hawk, suddenly realizing because of a Hollywood TV show, we're all going to die. This is madness. And what does he do? He takes action. He reaches out to Gorbachev. It was a simple proposal. One might say disarmingly simple. For the first time in history, the language of arms control was replaced by arms reduction. In this case, the complete elimination of an entire class of US and Soviet nuclear missiles. Spearheaded by those two individuals moved the arsenals from 70,000 down to the 12,300. The role that it played on the president's, I think, is so profound that it cannot be understated. What's so interesting is the movies that I watch growing up, all those movies that I listed, mission impossible, true lies. These movies are in the 90s. There was this optimism that cooler minds would prevail that somebody would get in there and just go, "Guys, we have to stop this to save the world." And what's really interesting about the day after is it's showing the opposite when cooler minds do not prevail. Absolutely. And that's what I wanted to show in my book. And that's why I take you through nuclear winter. And again, we're talking about science-based computational projection of what will happen. And this should shock people and does shock people. And so you would think would move us away from nuclear bluster, nuclear bravado. These threats that are coming out of the Kremlin. What if they packaged your book with the reissue of the day after? That could be like a cool tan. I mean, you know, Denis Villeneuve has been working on nuclear war scenario for a while. And so we'll see if he does it. He's the Dune director. Of course. It would just be an amazing take because he's an author director like Christopher Nolan writes and directs it in the hands of an author like that. I can't wait for the movie. I can't wait either. Now in the event that it doesn't come out because I don't know if you've read Hollywood as an industry is dying as well. It's going through its own day after. Just fun fact. A hundred million people watched the day after. But just for context and scale, eight hundred and eighty nine million people watched Mr. Beast. I recreated Squid Game in real life. So whatever the impact of the day after was to Ronald Reagan and the military industrial complex and Mr. Gorbachev. Just take that and nine exit with Mr. Beast. I think we need Mr. Beast to read the audio book of nuclear war or he can do it with me. We can go back and forth. So this is my page. In the YouTube thumbnail. And we'd let him make a video about him making a tactical nuke. So he goes like, I'm Jimmy aka Mr. Beast. I'm going to make a tactical nuclear weapon. And I will set it off. How we do that logistically? I don't know. But Annie, I think it's important that you meet up with Jimmy and you guys get this to the public. Make the intro. Listen, anything that gets information out to the public in a digestible way, I think is brilliant. I think that we're all creatures of of information, you know, but there's this whole, it's called the nuclear priesthood. There's this idea with many of the sort of PhDs who talk about nuclear weapons. That it's somehow above the pay grade or the the IQ of most of us, which is absurd. It's very basic and it should be understood and it can be understood. and if Mr. Beast can help, I'm all for that. - Obviously the general public has certain conceptions about what nuclear weapons are and what the consequences are. - Yes. - But I want to talk about some misconceptions. Can we do that? - Absolutely. - Let's go down the rabbit hole. Let's talk about misconception number one. Who controls nuclear weapons? 'Cause it's not who you think. Annie Jacobson, who controls nuclear weapons? The president of the United States launches nuclear war by himself. - I am the chosen one. Somebody had to do it. - He doesn't ask permission of the Secretary of Defense. Not the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and not the US Congress. - What? - And you might say, "Well, in a democracy, how is that possible?" There's not enough time. That ICBM that is coming to the United States, which triggers nuclear war, triggers launch on warning that's gonna take 30-ish minutes to get here. The ICBM Intercontinental Ballistic Missile that cannot be redirected or recalled. That's coming. And so the president has to make a decision in a six-minute window. There's no time to ask anyone else. Sure, he's gonna turn to his sectaf and ask advice. He's gonna ask the chairman what he thinks he should do, which is why I interviewed individuals that would be in those positions. But the president is in charge. - I mean, this seems crazy. It seems crazy. It is crazy. I mean, it really is insane. - But why are we cool with this? - It's the way it's been set up since 1960. - What's the rule for other countries? - Well, guess what? We don't really know. I mean, there is very limited information about, for example, India and Pakistan's nuclear command and control. It's just not known. I mean, the Federation of American scientists does a really great job at keeping us all informed to the best they can. - But does the president, you know, when he goes over and then, like, Norendra Modi hugs the president? And they do that, and they shake. Does he ever just go like, "Hey, what's your guys' nuke?" iTunes user agreement like. Like, I know what ours is, but what's yours? 'Cause we are holding hands right now and swinging them. Can we just talk about the nuke? - That should be said. That should be asked, but it's not. Because it's all very, you know, behind the veil. - It's uncouth to ask. - I mean, why not ask? Someone should ask. We know about Russia's nuclear command and control. Because we know the most about their systems because they've had nuclear weapons for the longest. - Is it safe to assume that all of these countries that I'm mentioning, India, Pakistan, Russia, they can all launch nuclear weapons unilaterally? - And when you say unilaterally, you mean. - One leader can make the decision to just go, "Yep, I'm pressing the button." - Almost certainly. Almost certainly it's in the hands of the leader of the country. And then there may or may not be some military sort of, you know, architecture involved in that, but we just simply don't know with a lot of countries. Like China, we know almost nothing about. - In regards to the US president, what is nuclear football? - The nuclear football is that satchel that is carried around by the guy trailing behind the president at all times. He's called the military aid. And in-- - For all four years, Annie. - I mean, 365 days a year, 24/7. - How close is this gentleman? Or person two-- - Always within arms. Always within arms. - So when Barack Obama was playing basketball, you know how he plays basketball on election day, there was a guy in the gymnasium, just with the briefcase. - Like behind the curtain. Like right there. - Drinking from a Crystal Geyser bottle? - A hundred percent, always. - Christmas day. - Christmas day, outside the bedroom, Lumer Letty, who's the former director of the Secret Service, went with President Clinton to Syria, and the former president Assad, the father. He gets into the elevator with Clinton, and then the Syrian guys are like, no, you know, while the guy with a football to go somewhere else. And it was a standoff. There was no way Lumer Letty was going to let the president separate from the football. That's his job. - And the football is basically the briefcase with the nuclear codes in it. - It's got the nuclear codes, but even more terrifying, it has the decisions handbook, which is also called the black book. Described to me is called the black book because it involves so much death. It has the counter strike targets. If the president is notified, you need to launch. - It has been described by a former military aide as a Denny's menu. - Buzz Patterson is that guy's name. He's the only military aide who's ever gone on the record to give an interview with Smithsonian about what's in it. And he described the black book as a list of options for the president that reads a bit like a Denny's menu. You kind of say, you know, I'll take column A with column B. You're deciding you being the president of the United States, is deciding which nuclear weapons of the triad we have ICBMs, we have submarines, we have bombers, which weapons systems to use with which weapons combination at which target. Because again, six minutes to decide that ICBM is on the way, policy requires that our weapons launch before we absorb the blow. This has to happen fast. That's why it looks like a Denny's menu. So when you and I see a menu, we can choose a breakfast grand slam. Patterson sees it, he's like, I could burn Beijing alive. - He has PTSD, I'm sure, reading a Denny's menu. - What's he doing now? - I think he tweets a lot about his former experience as the mill aid. - Oh man, he's just tweeting into the oblivion. He's like, you guys have no idea how much info I have. - I mean, that is an interesting point you raised. There are systems of classification, which I bet you didn't even know exist. Have you ever heard of ECI? Exceptionally controlled information. You have to have a queue clearance, you have to have a top secret, SCI. I mean, to be able to tweet stuff out about nuclear command and control goes right up to the razor's edge of the espionage act. Not a lot of people do it, but some do. - When you were speaking to all these generals, were you impressed with their level of knowledge? - Absolutely. I mean, as a reporter, I am not political whatsoever. I'm agnostic about politics. You would have no idea what my politics are and I do that on purpose because I want the information in the most objective, fact-based manner. The narrative will take care of itself as being dramatic. And so I talk to a lot of generals, four-star generals, people who don't normally speak to journalists because I think they worry they're going to be caught in sort of a political firestorm. That's not me. And I've written enough books that people know that about me. And so the generals that I go to, I tend to get really shocking information. I think the public becomes shocked by it. And I often go back to people and ask if I can fact-check something with them that is almost too hard to believe in the public domain. And you need the inside. Should I give you one example? - Sure, please. - So in the book, there's a situation whereby the president needs to launch a counterattack at North Korea, doing what's called a bolt-out of a blue strike against America. The president has to launch a counterattack, he launches ICBMs and SLBMs. Our ICBMs that launch from the middle of the country do not have enough range to get to North Korea in a counter-strike if they were crazy enough to launch at us, one missile. They don't have enough range to get to North Korea without flying over Russia. Think about that. Imagine if the president of the United States could even get on the phone with a Russian president and say, "Trust us, they're not, they look like they're coming for you." - I promise you, it's not about you. - It's not gonna, they're not coming for you, they're actually gonna go over you. It's an absurd premise. - It's really, yeah. I mean, I felt that many times and many of the allegories from the book. Because really what you've presented Annie is what I called the Romeo and Juliet problem. - Okay. - Remember how in Romeo and Juliet, basically Juliet takes the sleeping drug. She's like, "You know what? I'm gonna go to sleep for a little bit." Romeo pulls up and he's like, "Fuck it, give me the poison." He takes real poison, he kills himself. Juliet then wakes up, I'm sorry if I'm giving away the ending. Juliet then wakes up and's like, "Oh, Bay's dead." Then she takes a knife and kills herself. And all of this would have been fixed if both Romeo and Juliet had gone to the same drug dealer in Fair Verona said, "Give us the Ambien. Same amount, same dosage. Let's communicate like you do in a healthy relationship. Take the Ambien at the same time, go to sleep, trick our parents, wake up and we're outta here." - Great analogy, even better, what if they had a couple's therapist? - 100%. - You know, our State Department, like diplomacy, let it prevail, like let's not go there. This is a little too radical. I think that's an actually legitimate analogy. What's really interesting is in Romeo and Juliet, both parties love each other. Now, are they great communicators? No. But in our Romeo and Juliet, we are not lovers per se with some of these countries. And that's where it gets really scary. - There's an idea in defense department nomenclature of an enemy, and the enemy you kill. This is like straight up military talk. An adversary is different. You have to negotiate with adversaries. You have to kind of play ball with adversaries and exist on the same earth. And I think that's what the end conclusion of my reporting on this subject is is that you can't have this enemy approach. You know, that's where our nuclear threats become so dangerous. - The clouds that's parted following the end of the Cold War are gathering once more. We have been extraordinarily lucky so far, but luck is not a strategy. humanity is just when misunderstanding, when miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation. So what happens if the president is killed? Are there some military people that are preauthorized to launch a strike? This is an area of the nuclear command and control architecture that I really drill down on and found a lot of interesting things. There's a certain way in which the order is given to the president and it's essentially only the president can give the order. What I learned in my reporting is there's also a way in which to circumvent that, which the president can give authority over to the Stratcom commander in case he does die. And then the Stratcom commander is in charge of the nuclear arsenal. So then you have military control. I did an interview with former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry who took me through his idea about what would happen and how important it was if there was a missile coming at the Pentagon, which would destroy all of it, how he would really make sure he got out of the Pentagon, got to one of the underground bunkers so that he would be this sort of sane voice that would prevail, that would try to keep the line of succession in order. What type of person becomes a Stratcom commander? What's this personality type? General killer was going to be a music teacher. And then hard pivot into? Hard pivot. I want to play high stakes poker at the nuclear level. Oh, it's, it's, okay, nuclear poker is really an interesting analogy because you are talking about a situation that can never happen. Like we can never happen. They're more precisely. Right. So it's like pre nuclear poker. But the idea at the Pentagon is deterrence will hold. I mean, that was even pinned to their Twitter feed deterrence will hold. And what's pin now? That was removed. Now it's like the ice Sabrina Carpenter video or something like that, Pen. I don't know where the video where it's ice Sabrina Carpenter. No, I have a scene. I'll put you in jail if you're. No. I haven't seen it. And then Sabrina was like, take it down. And then now they re uploaded long and it's Sabrina Carpenter with Marcello Hernandez. And so now the rumor is, is ice alleging that Marcello Hernandez from SNL hilarious. He has a new special coming out on Netflix this January. You should watch it. He's super funny. They're saying art is ice alleging that Marcello is illegal. It is absurd in one manner and it's also terrifying at the same time. But the general, you know, the deterrence part of it to finish that thought is that deterrence will hold deterrence will hold deterrence will hold deterrence will hold. That's how you become a general that wants to be the head of stratum. And by that just so we can be specific deterrence will hold means cooler minds will prevail. Is that another way of saying that? Absolutely. Meaning it's very important that we each have our arsenals pointed at one another, making very clear. We can kill you. You can kill us. No deterrence will hold prevention will hold. But I found a clip of the deputy commander of stratum general busier talking to a group of defense officials where he said deterrence will hold, but if it doesn't, it all unravels. And that unraveling is terrifying. And I think that the general killers of the world believe in their position. At least this is my feeling of having interviewed people in the new command and control architecture is that they believe deterrence will hold. What if it doesn't? Not to escalate this, but let's go there. Let's talk about nuclear submarines. You talk about this in the book. And not to get graphic, I almost sh*t my pants. Let's take a look. A nuclear powered submarine is a nightmare weapon system. An object is dangerous to human existence as an incoming asteroid. I mean, so you're basically describing the Death Star. Absolutely. And 14 of them. We have 14 of them. And where are they? They are stealthily hidden around the ocean. They're not all out at sea at the same time. But they are there. And also Russian China have these subs, North Korea's subs. They're called hell machines, you know, or handmaidens of the apocalypse. They are so dangerous that, you know, incoming asteroid launch of a nuclear submarine. The scariest thing I learned about the nuclear subs wasn't just that they exist and what they do and how they work and how many, you know, nuclear weapons they have on board and that they can launch in 15 minutes. I found a map showing where the Russian and Chinese subs, how close they get to America shores. And it's within a couple hundred miles. How did you find this map? I mean, these things are so classified, but this was in a defense department budget request. And I print a copy of it in the book because it's publicly available. It's publicly, it's in my book now. I mean, this is really terrifying. Like we basically have a bunch of DIY asteroids that are just somewhere with invisible force fields floating around the ocean, like these doomsday testicles. That's not cool, like we didn't get to vote on this. We didn't get to vote on it and most people just don't even know about this and probably do not want to know because if you, I told you it takes 33 minutes for an ICBM to get from one continent to the next. I mean, that's bad enough. ICBM is intercontinental ballistic missile. It's going to launch. We've seen rockets. Then it just goes with the earth and gravity. And then it terminal phase it lands and it detonates 30 plus minutes. That's you can't call your mother. No one knows about, but worse than that in terms of preemptive strike is the fact that the nuclear-armed submarines can come up within, as we know from this map, I print in the book, a couple hundred miles of America's east and west coast. They have. And that means they're going to launch in under, from launch to target is under 10 minutes. Can those missiles be pulled back? A ballistic missile cannot be redirected and it cannot be recalled. No. Now, the guy who's in charge of all of this, the president of the United States, knows very little about nuclear weapons, from what I understand, from two former secretaries of defense. And I'll give you an example. It's an older example. President Reagan was talking about our sub-launched ballistic missiles. They're called SLBMs. And he said in a press conference that they could be recalled, they cannot be. So the president of the United States, not knowing the capacity of what he's in charge of, is really what I think should give a lot of people pause. And really, so if anyone should read nuclear war a scenario, in my opinion, in addition to Mr. Beast, is the president of the United States. Now, the current president of the United States said he read it on a podcast. How cool. I mean, do we know if that's true? Do we know if he reads? We don't. Who knows? But this is what was said. Do you believe the president read your book? I'd like to think he did. I don't think he did. Do you remember when they asked him about the Bible? An Old Testament guy or a New Testament guy? Probably equal. I think it's just an incredible. I just think the Bible is just something very special. You got to drop a two Corinthians. Two Corinthians, right? Two Corinthians. Three seventeen. That's the Hall of Ballgame. Hall of Ballgame. We have all these crises brewing around the world with the opposite of cooler heads prevailing, you know, with real hotheads acting with bravado. And when you learn what's at stake with nuclear arsenals, you begin to realize that bravado is a really dangerous, dangerous, perilous approach. I mean, there are a number of publicly known stories whereby nuclear launch almost happens and it is so shocking to learn about this. It's the judgment of one person that just said I'm not going to go for this. And it's based on misinformation, always, always. And so you end up feeling like in many regards, the national security apparatus is irresponsible. It's crisis unfolds because that's what the Cuban Missile Crisis was. Now, I didn't have enough time with Annie Jacobson to go down the rabbit hole of close calls with nuclear weapons, but I want to tell you more about two people who's instinct to say, hey, guys, let's just chill for a second here. May have literally saved all of humanity. The first person is Vasily Arkipov during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 for 13 days of the United States had a standoff with the Soviet Union after the Americans discovered that the Soviets placed nuclear weapons in Cuba with thousands of nuclear missiles on Hair Trigger Alert, a single miscommunication, a miscalculation, or technical glitch, could have triggered a full-scale nuclear war. It all came to a head on October 27, 1962, which many historians have called the most dangerous day in the history of the world, holy fucking shit. My dad was seven years old on that day. On that day, Soviet sub armed with a nuclear torpedo had been cut off from Moscow by radio for days, an American show. were dropping depth charges onto it. The sub's captain became convinced that World War III has started, so he ordered the nuclear torpedo prepared for launch, which would almost certainly have escalated the situation into a full-blown fucking nuclear war. But the captain couldn't make the order unilaterally. He needed the consent of his political officer. Unfortunately, the political officer agreed. - Here, an extremely serious situation is developing. - Fortunately, for all of us, a third officer, the flotilla commander, Vasily Arkipov, happened to be on board, okay? And he insisted that they surface the sub in a way further orders. Now, here's crazy thing. The flotilla commander oversaw several subs, and he could have easily been on another one that day. He just happened to be on that particular sub, which let him overrule the other officers, which means, yes, Vasily Arkipov may have saved the world. Mostly, let's just look. Another person who probably saved us from nuclear war is Stanislav Petrov. On September 26th, 1983, in a moment of extremely high tension between America and the Soviet Union. - Frankly, this is all scary talk, but the Soviet Union means it to be. - Petrov was the on-duty officer at an early warning bunker near Moscow, monitoring a new satellite system designed to detect US missile launches. A little after midnight, alarms went off and the system reported that the United States just launched five nuclear missiles. At the Soviet Union. Now, according to proper protocol, Petrov was supposed to report this to his superior officers, which could have escalated extremely quickly into the Soviets launching their own nukes back in the United States. Occrucially, Petrov hesitated. Thank God he hesitated, something felled off. It didn't make sense that the United States would launch a first strike with only five missiles. So he trusted his gut and labeled it a false alarm. Even before, he knew for sure that it was. It turned out he was right. The new satellites had read sunlight reflecting off high altitude clouds as a missile launch. So if the computers had been making the decisions, we might not be here right now. No me, no you, no will Smith, no Martin Lawrence, no bad boys, no bad boys too, no bad boys for life, no bad boys right or die. Neither of these two stories were made public until years after they happened. So we have no idea how many other close calls there may have been in the past, or that could be happening today. But if you want to learn more about the ones we know about, like that time, the Air Force accidentally dropped a goddamn nuclear bomb on North Carolina, read Command and Control by Eric Schlosser and The Doomsday Machine by Daniel Ellsberg. OK, I'm done terrorizing you in giving reading assignments back to Annie Jacobson. In the future, could nuclear weapons systems be ran by AI? Because I read that Russia already has this sort of automated system. It's something called perimeter. I mean, perimeter was designed long before AI was even close to existing. And it was a ground-based sensor system. But fundamentally, it's sort of analogous to that. It was this idea that if Russia got destroyed by a nuclear, a preemptive nuclear strike, that's always what they're most afraid of. Preemptive meaning we just strike them and take out their command and control. They would have a system of ground-center sensors set up around to be able to detect that the Russian generals were no longer alive. The system, the sort of automated, early computer system would launch. That's what perimeter is. It's also called the dead hand, which is easier to comprehend. It's like, oh, you don't even need a finger on the button. You can be dead to have it launch. It's a great metaphor to think about what could happen with AI. Now, in my reporting, I was promised by all the generals and the admirals. There is no AI in the nuclear command and control. But there really is, when you think about it, because it's not just nuclear command and control. It's nuclear command, control, and communication. Meaning you have to be able to relate orders. So even if the president to the Stratcom commander through the football is a turnkey, which it is, it's an analog system. There are phone calls happening. There are computer systems talking to one another. Those could be hacked. Those could be overrun by AI. And then you have a situation where you're not in control of your nuclear weapons. If that's scary, I'll tell you something even scarier. Sure. Because I was doing-- I mean, we're already here. We're already talking about really frightening things. Why not make it scarier? I was doing a talk a couple weeks ago with General Nakasone, who is a four-star general retired, who used to be in charge of NSA and cyber command. That's what's called a dual-hatted command. Meaning one general is in charge of both. Because it's so important that there's communication between those two systems. And General Nakasone, in addition to being terrified like you of nuclear war, who actually read the book, suggested to me that I write a book dealing with AI about a scenario. And that frightened me coming from a four-star general that he thought it would be a good idea. It suggests it's a very real threat. How many people's jobs revolve around nuclear weapons and basically being the practice squad to play out dress rehearsal for what would happen if you had to press the button? OK, do you want to guess? 1,000 or so people that play dress rehearsal that almost have to do their version of Stop, Drop, and Rule. Good guess so far off. The Stratcom commander has beneath him in his command and control 150,000 people. And that's just Stratcom. So you have to remember all these different weapon systems. We have an ICBM system. We have the bombers. We have the submarines. So you've got Navy, Air Force, all of these individuals. There are hundreds of thousands of people involved. Is it true that an admiral who wants to have the nuclear bunker under the Pentagon, they told you they practiced three times every day telling the president that he needs to launch the nukes? Yes. And that-- do you want a little few details on that story? After the book published, I got a call from Admiral Conor, who was in charge of the nuclear subplate. Yes. The handmaidens of the Bockelips. He was in charge of them. Yes. And he gave me this very gracious interview. Book publishes, and he calls me up and says, let's have lunch, not something you normally get as a request after your book published. Usually the military kind of steps back and is like, OK. So where are you guys grabbing lunch with a fourth annual grandlux cafe, which is a factory? Where do you go to have this conversation? Where do you go? Well, he happens to live, of course, in your new London Connecticut, which is where the submarines are. We have lunch like this seafood restaurant. Amazing. I thought I was going to be scolded for something. And he said to me, you didn't ask me how many times a day we practice. We go through the playbook. He asked me to guess. And I was like, OK, I said, 12, once a month. No, more. Once a week, once a day. And he said, no, three times a day, there are three shifts at the Pentagon. And by the way, they just go through the moment that the launch is detected until we launch. That's what's practiced, which is kind of spooky in its own right. It's like, after that, no need to practice. What exactly are they practicing? They're practicing launch orders, how to give those orders, and how to make it happen. And you want it-- OK, you want one more detail? Yes. So this happened when this happened. Donald Rumsfeldt was Secretary of Defense. Remember him? Of course. And usually, according to Admiral Conor-- He's dead now, right? He is dead now. Yeah, RIP. And usually it's-- Oh, he died the same day Zoron got elected. Did he really? He was around-- No, that was Janey. Dick Cheney died the same day Zoron was elected. But normally, it's like Rumsfeldt's deputies goes through the motions the three times a day. But Admiral Conor told me that Rumsfeldt himself came in. I want to see this happen. And so they went through it, and it involves a lot of sort of nomenclature, like code words and code this and code that. And he said, Rumsfeldt interrupted and said, no, I want it. So I can understand it in regular language. OK, sir. So they went through it with him in regular language. He could understand. And then he said, OK, then, Martin. I said, it doesn't matter. We didn't get the mix launched, because it took too long to explain it to you, so we're all dead. OK, so Donald Rumsfeldt basically pulled this with his commanders, which is like, hey, can you explain to factor authentication to me? And they go, this sends a code to your phone, and then you have to read the four-digit code, but you take that four-digit code. You type it into your Gmail. And he's like, wait, my what? Let me get my reading glasses. Exactly. And then they go, listen, Mr. Rumsfeldt, we're all dead now. That's exactly what happened according to the former commander of the nuclear subforce. How did Donald Rumsfeldt take that info? Did he take it with a laugh? I'm sure he was upset. I mean, he was not an easy person to get along with from what I understand. Let's move on to misconception number two. Nuclear weapons. They're bad. But humanity would find a way to move on. Do you agree with that? No, absolutely not. And we can talk about nuclear winter, if you want. What is nuclear winter? Nuclear winter is the theory about what happens after all the fires stop burning. After the bombs, there's no more bombs left to drop. More missiles left to launch. The fires, the hundred square mile fires by the thousands of them, loft, soot into the air. that blocks out the sun's warming rays, hence the term nuclear winter. Nuclear winter is a terrifying concept that first came to the fore in the 80s, before you were born, Carl Sagan, the famous Carl Sagan, and five colleagues wrote the nuclear winter theory, immediately the Pentagon said this is Soviet propaganda. They knew it wasn't. Wow. What happened is there would be something like 300 billion pounds of soot lofted into the stratosphere, and that would block out the sun, not just for a year as the original idea was, but for eight, nine, ten years. The sun blotting out the rays, the soot blotting out the sun's rays, the result is that agriculture fails. It's incredible freezing world for a decade, and then agriculture fails and people starve to death. So we'd basically be the dinosaurs. Seventy percent of species died when that asteroid hit. Have you seen the land before time, animated movie about basically a group of dinosaurs that are very courageous, led by Littlefoot. It's a Raktag group of dinosaurs that make it to the Great Valley. Your story of nuclear winter reminded me of that, and I'll be honest, have you ever thought about what you would do if you had to survive nuclear winter, if you had to survive it? Because I would just walk into the fire. I know I'm not built for it. I mean, there's a great quote by Nikita Krushchev, the former Soviet premier, where he says the survivors would envy the dead. Then why do all these billionaires have these doomsday bunkers? What are they thinking they're going to be able to survive? I mean, I have actually had conversations with those individuals. I've been asked, "Hey, could we get a little more information on this?" That's a reality that people believe that if they have a bunker in New Zealand or in Australia, they can withstand. Now, according to Professor Tune, those are actually two places that would still possibly have agriculture and New Zealand and Australia. But the people who have the nuclear bunkers there who live in the United States, they're just simply not going to be able to get there in their G5 in time. And by the time you realize nuclear war is happening, you're under that 72-minute time. You've got to get to the airport to get your G5 going. I mean, it's not. It's not logistics. It's logistics. It's your bag in order. It's logistics. Forget the bags. You just run. Not even. Still might not get there in time. That's literal. Yeah, yeah. Right. And then, by the way, you get to the bunker. Really, you're going to be living on Soylent for like 10 years, halfway through these conversations with these billionaires. Never go, like, "This guy's a fucking loser." Not my place. So you've thought that. And that's okay. Because my thing is, is they have these hired security guys that also protect the bunker. But who's to say those security guys wouldn't just turn on them and go, "Yeah, I'm in charge now. I haven't gone." I mean, this is why we all love zombie movies and, you know, apocalyptic dystopian movies. I think narratively, we get to see what really happens to people. I mean, it is fiction, but it's much closer to, you know, fact. The loyalties are going to go out the window. I mean, but, you know, I think it really comes down to that so many people will die in the immediacy of a nuclear war that there isn't really much time to think about any of these things once it begins, which is why we're having the conversation now. Hey, it's Julia Louis-Dreyfus from The Wiser than Meat Podcast, among other things. And I've got a little holiday wisdom for you. Hosting during the holidays means lots of cooking, and that means your trash is going to be full of smelly, rotting food, yuck. So here's the wisdom. Get a mill food recycler. I did. We've had ours for years, and it has totally transformed our kitchen. It's unbelievable how much cleaner everything is now, plus it's so easy to use. You toss in basically any food you don't eat. Peels, pits, meat, dairy bones. Last year we put in a whole turkey carcass, really. While you sleep, mill automatically dries and grinds all your food waste down to about a fifth of its size. That means at night you can fill it after a big, elaborate dinner, and by morning, they'll be room for breakfast. Nothing rots, nothing stinks, no fruit flies. And my favorite part, no more of those gross, drippy, mid-dinner garbage runs. If you want a cleaner, com, or kitchen this holiday season, go to mill.com/wiser for an exclusive offer. That's mill.com/wiser. Happy hosting. So you've dropped this line in interviews, and it has terrified me. You've said, quote, no matter how nuclear war begins, it ends in total annihilation. That's from one of the only declassified nuclear war games that exists. It's called Proud Profit. I print a copy of it in the book. War game in 1983. In 1983, before you were born. Yes. The copy I printed is just all redacted. It's just black, black, black, black. And so readers might say, well, why are you printing this for us? And the reason is, because it's declassified, it allowed a certain someone who was not military, a professor, a strategist named, he's now at Yale, Paul Bracken, to write about it. Because it's not classified anymore. He can talk about it in a general way. But reveal specifics. There were 200 people doing this war game, by the way, for two weeks. And what Bracken said is that, quote, he said, no matter how nuclear war begins, if NATO is involved, if NATO isn't involved, if China is involved, if China isn't involved, once nuclear war begins, it only ends one way, nuclear armageddon. And he said everyone left that war game, very upset. I would hope so. I would hope so. But what's being done about it? Your book, Mr. Beast, and we did check the movie is available on YouTube the day after the full rip is available on YouTube. And then, of course, there's Oppenheimer, but I feel like Chris Nolan mixed it so loud that I can't really hear the poignance of some of the dialogue. But that's what we got. Hypothetically, wouldn't someone just refuse the order? They would get the order to press the button and they go, I really can't do that. Guys, this is too much. So I put that question to a nuclear weapons engineer at Los Alamos, Dr. Glenn McDuff, who also handles their classified museum. He said, "Annie, you would have a better chance at winning Powerball." There's a group of people that are just ready to go, and there's no doubt. Well, what he was saying is there's no room to refuse the command. You become the general in charge because you know how to follow orders. That's your job. That's how the military works. It's not like group think. It's doctrine. But this is almost individual think, which should be you actually outside of your uniform think about what the consequences would be, almost an hour and a half from now, to the world. Well, the situations that we know about, and remember, we only know about ones that have sort of come about through the public domain. When General Petrov saved the day, the subguise, those are Russian. The Russians made the individual choices to not launch. We don't have any stories of Americans playing that same role, if you will. Now, does that mean those stories don't exist? I don't know. Can you imagine how many near misses there were? I think it would be an amazing thing to brag about, to be like, here are lists of Mount Rushmore Americans that are super chill. What would happen to those people legally, hypothetically if they were to say, "I can't do this." Would they get shot or something or put in jail? I don't even know. I don't know. I actually don't know. I don't believe that the system is set up that way. I suppose in the nuclear submarine, there could be a moment where one of the two guys with the keys said, "I'm not going to do this." But that's why we have what's called redundancy. That's why we have a nuclear triad. That's why if someone is crazy enough to launch on one nuclear weapon at Washington, D.C., we launch 82 in response. And there are some ICBMs, some sublaunch ballistic missiles, and the bombers also get sent. So that in the event someone does decide to play hero, somebody else plays bomb dropper. Well, that leads us to misconception number three. Misconception number three, nuclear weapons, they're not really used, though. A lot of people feel that the very premise of using a nuclear weapon is so insane that the existence of it and the consequences of it are so wild that it makes everyone go, "Hey, let's not use it." Therefore, through the transitive property, rendering nuclear weapons useless. Someone like Colin Powell has said that. Let's take a look. Yeah. The one thing I convinced myself of after all these years of exposure to the use of nuclear weapons is that they were useless. They cannot be used. So you can have deterrence with an even lower number of weapons. Well, then why stop there? Why not continue one? Why not get rid of them all together? Do you believe what he's saying? I mean, that's a completely legitimate and level-headed position coming from someone who spent their life around nuclear weapons and military command and control. I mean, without question, less nuclear weapons will make us more safe and he's suggesting we go to what is known in the sort of disarmament world as global zero. That's where there are no nuclear weapons. Then you can really get into inside baseball fights about like we have to have them because Russia would cheat or China, okay, we're far away from that. We're at 12,300 progress from 70,000 but absolutely that could be done. That's the whole point of the conversation. Reduce the arsenals. We don't need thousands. Do you in a dream scenario, Annie, would you love if America had like three? I mean, because we have a bit of a new courting problem. We do have a new courting, but you have to have parity. You need to be reducing, you know, on par with the Soviets. I mean, I spoke at the United Nations. I was asked to come speak about my book at the United Nations. What a huge honor to, you know, one hundred and ninety three diplomats from around the world. All discussing the treaty that's there called the treaty, the TPNW treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. Like Mr. Powell was talking about, okay, this idea to reduce and many of the nations have signed on more than half, but the ones who don't are the ones who have the nuclear weapons, the nine nuclear arm nations that don't want to give them up. But the idea there is that if you put enough pressure on the system and you get enough of the nations to say we don't want to have nuclear weapons in the world, ultimately the nine will have to move toward it. And I think that's the spirit in which we're really talking. Nuclear weapons useful in the sense that they're useful in the same way that a gun is useful to a bank robber. When the bank robber breaks into the bank and he holds up the gun, he doesn't intend to fire it, but the very existence of the gun means that the threat of it existing in and of itself is enough to get what he wants. Yes, although there is no analogy between a gun and a nuclear weapon, just given the scale of power. But let me tell you this, the difference here is that we have this concept of deterrence now. But it is not how it began, which is the real problem, the heart of the matter when you think about it sort of poetically. So in other words, the insanity of nuclear weapons is that in the fifties when the arsenals were being built at just insane amounts at one point in 1956, we built 3.5 nuclear weapons a day, a day. I mean, this is like talk about an arms race, okay? The idea was to fight and win nuclear war. And then only in the sixties when an analyst realized there's no way to win a nuclear war, we're all going to die. Okay, now we got this other idea, deterrence. So we thought at the time for a full decade, they were almost like Acme bombs of like we just need to make a bunch of Acme bombs. It was your gun in the in the bank robber idea. Like this is going to really work, this is going to help us. Well, I think with the bank robber case study, what I'm trying to say with the bank robber with the gun is, is he even using the gun if he never fires it? And the answer that I think is, yes, what he's showing is, I'm fucking crazy enough to use this thing. And I'm going to use this if you push me, and it's used as a threat to get what he wants. And we all know from the Hollywood movies we've been talking about, the gun eventually goes off. Somebody gets shot. I feel like nuclear weapons are used in that same way, specifically with politicians. There's basically a code phrase that presidents use to talk about this threat of using nuclear weapons. All options are on the table. Every one is the strong ones and the less than strong ones. Every other one. And I keep all options on the table to prevent a nuclear war. We also wanted to make it clear that all options are on the table. We are not taking any option off the table at all. I have heard this phrase used by a lot of American leaders. Is this phrase all options are on the table just a very nice way to say, hey, I'm willing to burn everything down. Yes and no, because if you can keep it vague and say all options are on the table, you're obfuscating. If you say I'm going to nuke you or I'm going to use nuclear weapons again, now we're talking in my opinion, now we're over into a different threshold. So I would actually say, even though we're talking semantics, but a nuclear threat is a nuclear threat. The TPNW by the way, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons at the United Nations, it prohibits the use of nuclear threats, which I think is important. I mean, Putin should not be threatening that he is going to use, that he can use a nuclear weapon. That's different to me, to me, than all options are on the table. To me, they're both nice ways of saying the same thing. I'll give you an example. All options are on the table, try using that in your regular life. If I'm going on a bachelor party with my buddies and my wife says, hey, are you going to cheat on me? And I go, look, all options are on the table. Don't make me laugh about this stuff. It's so serious. You know what it is. And Bay would not be happy with that. She's like, the fuck you mean? What's happening? I'll tell you what options shouldn't be on the table. You're not going. That's the option that's on the table. I agree with you. Yes. I mean, which is brilliant, because what you're basically saying is to, you're saying just to the rest of the world, it's like, that's what that means. That's what I'm saying, and he is that it's always, look, the fact that he's doing it in a Brooks brother suit and someone else is doing it in court, the pajama doesn't make the consequences to humanity any different. That's my point, and I mean, that's how I feel. There is this nuclear blackmail double standard. If Kim Jong-un has a nuke, or if Vladimir Putin has a nuke, we call it, quote, nuclear blackmail. Because if we came to nuclear blackmail in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin trying to blackmail us all into capitulate. North Korea may try to get the upper hand through nuclear blackmail. What we saw with the Iranian regime is another example of nuclear blackmail. But isn't America also essentially doing the same thing? I believe that you're right. And I think blackmail is a great word because it's a real cudgel, you know? It's a threat, and it's meant that way, the fact that you have an arsenal. But again, this is, it just always brings us back to the bottom line that was conveyed to me by every high-ranking person I spoke to. Nuclear weapons are insane. Nuclear war is insane. So if they are insane, why are we having this kind of a threat? Why do they exist? This is the catch 22. Do you think American generals and experts would be willing to then have the conversation that framing this as a two-sided crisis is only fair? So for example, when we talk about North Korea having nukes, we say, this is a crisis. This is a nuclear crisis. But us having over 1700 isn't a crisis. Shouldn't we be framing this issue? This is a worldwide crisis and we too are implicated. Absolutely. I couldn't agree with you more. Absolutely. But the thing is is that the military has very little say, actually zero say, in setting policy. They are following orders and they're following the architecture that exists. That's why our earlier point about Reagan the day after is so important. The president has an executive order pen, the EO. He can set policy in a manner that leapfrogs over everybody's discussion. America created the problem. We built the bomb. We can find a solution absolutely. Call me naïve or call me over informed. One or the other, it doesn't matter. We need to reduce the arsenals moving toward. I don't agree more. And I think the only path forward is finding the way to have global disarmament. We could solve the problem. If we had the EO. I need to get you. Mr. Beast. So Jimmy, aka Mr. Beast and/or A president needs to sign the executive order. Yes. That's our path. That's our path. One or the other. Have you subscribed to Lemonada Premium yet? You can listen completely ad-free and get access to exclusive bonus content you won't hear anywhere else. Like my discussion with Malala on how therapy changed her life or my convo with Mel Robbins on how her Let Them Theory applies to parenting. Tap subscribe on Apple Podcasts or head to lemonadapremium.com to sign up on any app. That's lemonadapremium.com.