Tom Nichols: America Lost Its Nuclear Anxiety. That Was a Mistake.

Summary

Bulwark Takes – Tom Nichols: America Lost Its Nuclear Anxiety. That Was a Mistake.

Date: November 8, 2025
Host: Sonny Bunch (Culture Editor, The Bulwark)
Guest: Tom Nichols (Staff Writer at The Atlantic; Professor Emeritus, Naval War College)
Topic: How America lost its cultural and strategic anxiety about nuclear weapons, what that means for contemporary security, and how the new Netflix film "A House of Dynamite" reawakens those existential worries.

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Overview: Nuclear Anxiety Lost… and Its Perils

Sonny Bunch sits down with Tom Nichols to explore why America’s once-ubiquitous dread of nuclear apocalypse has faded, why that’s a dangerous societal shift, and how the new Kathryn Bigelow film "A House of Dynamite" attempts to re-stoke those anxieties. Drawing on Nichols's career in national security and teaching, the conversation tracks changing attitudes across generations, the difficulties in grasping the scale of nuclear destruction, and what Hollywood gets right (and wrong) about The Bomb.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. State of Nuclear Affairs: Then vs. Now

• Cold War Era: Known for a constant and pervasive fear of full-scale nuclear war.
• Present Day: Multipolar world with nine nuclear powers ("It's really like the ending of Reservoir Dogs, everyone just pointing a gun at each other and the first guy to pull the trigger gets everyone killed." — Tom Nichols, 02:19).
• Danger Shift: Thermonuclear holocaust between superpowers is arguably less likely, but a nuclear incident somewhere in the world is perhaps more likely than before (02:04).

2. The Vanishing of Nuclear Dread in Culture

• Nichols uses 1980s “nuclear panic” movies ("The Day After," "Threads") in teaching. Students are shocked by the graphic depictions and cultural fear.

  • "Students would ask, almost with wonder, 'What were you so scared of?'... This is a generation who worry a lot more about climate change than they do about nuclear war" (Tom Nichols, 04:45).
  • On the impact of Threads: "It would be, in its time, kind of NC17...that one really just knocked them on their heels," (05:55).

• Pop Culture Shift: Nuclear war as a theme is now considered kitsch or outdated by many young people.

• Comparisons to sci-fi (e.g., "Planet of the Apes") show generational disconnect to the metaphorical nuclear anxieties these works once evoked (07:54).

3. Hollywood, Realism, and "A House of Dynamite"

• Nichols praises "A House of Dynamite" for its realism, especially in its depiction of professionals handling crisis.

  • "Everybody in that movie talks the way people really talk in the policy world... They’re doing the right thing and acting like people really do" (Tom Nichols, 17:25).

• The film’s core scenario: An incoming ICBM, uncertainty over its origin, and professional (sometimes conflicting) deliberation over response.

  • "For the next 20 minutes, this missile is incoming... And this has happened. In 1979 and ‘80 a microchip popped... and suddenly, on the screen, there’s 2,000 incoming Soviet missiles" (Tom Nichols, 19:36; 20:19).

• The ambiguity and chaos depicted—deliberately no cartoon villains—mirrors 21st-century multipolar nuclear tension (24:01–28:10).

4. Generational Response to Nuclear Fiction & Reality

• Nichols notes younger viewers/readers lack frame of reference for the devastation, e.g., critiquing "Oppenheimer" for not visualizing nuked Japan ("I actually am glad they didn’t [show it], because those bombs were quite small by modern standards... as horrible as what happened in Japan was, a nuclear exchange now would be magnitudes worse" — Tom Nichols, 09:42).
• Classics like Fail Safe, Dr. Strangelove, Godzilla, are teaching tools but only partially bridge the empathy gap for post-Cold War generations (13:03–15:18).

5. Missile Defense: Pentagon Optimism vs. Reality

• "A House of Dynamite" depicts US missile defense as about a coin flip (61% success); Pentagon disputes this.
  • "The Missile Defense Agency has since said, no, no, our accuracy is 100%. First of all, nothing is 100%... I just think 61% was being generous" (Tom Nichols, 35:33).
  • Real-world tests are limited and highly controlled (“staked chicken tests”); in battle conditions, actual effectiveness is deeply uncertain (36:30–39:53).

6. The “Professionalism” of Modern Military & Policy Leaders

• Nichols: The film avoids caricatures; everyone is a pro, echoing his own experience briefing generals (“They are as cold as ice. They do their jobs. They train for it every day. And I thought the movie captured that really well.” — 43:17).

7. Policy Lessons & The Present Administration

• Nichols calls for seriousness in leadership regarding nuclear policy, critiquing both the Trump administration's style and broader US political complacency ("People don't seem to think that anything in the world has consequences," 47:14).
• Presidential statements equal policy; rash or unserious comments have nuclear consequences (47:14–48:53).

8. Hopefulness—and Limits to Optimism

• Nichols points out US and Russian warhead counts are far lower than during the Cold War (~1,500 now vs. 20,000+ in the 1980s)—proof that progress is possible with "skill, diplomacy, seriousness of purpose" (49:12).
• Yet, warns that ongoing public indifference, and unserious or unengaged leaders, could lead us directly back to an era of existential danger (50:00–51:30).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On generational fear:
  "You worry about the planet getting 2 degrees warmer in 30 years. I worry about the planet getting 10 million degrees warmer in the next 20 minutes." – Tom Nichols (05:35)
• On nuclear war movies:
  "I call them nuclear porn because they are so graphic... not just about showing you what a nuclear war would look like, but the culture we lived in, marinated in these images." – Tom Nichols (04:45)
• On missile defense reliability:
  "First of all, nothing is 100%. I'm sorry. A kid's slingshot does not operate with 100% efficiency or aim." – Tom Nichols (36:08) "Just because you've hit four out of four under controlled conditions, doesn't mean you hit one under pressure." – Paraphrased, 36:30–39:53
• On US military professionalism:
  "When push comes to shove, they [military leaders] are as cold as ice. They do their jobs. They train for it every day. And I thought the movie captured that really well." – Tom Nichols (43:17)
• On acting responsibly:
  "Existential dread is exhausting, but closing your eyes—we can’t be like little kids, right? Closing our eyes does not make things go away just because we can’t see them." – Tom Nichols (53:39)
• On wish for political leadership:
  "The most important thing I can do as a voter is to put sane, responsible, sober-minded people in office and not be satisfied with, you know, government by shitposting." (48:53)

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Important Timestamps

• [02:04] — The shift from a two-player to a multipolar nuclear world
• [04:45] — Nichols reflects on teaching “nuclear panic” films and student reactions
• [09:42] — Critiquing demands for graphic realism in "Oppenheimer"
• [13:03] — The value of Fail Safe, Dr. Strangelove, and Godzilla as teaching tools
• [17:25] — Nichols breaks down the realism in "A House of Dynamite"
• [19:36] — Real historical nuclear false alarms and their lessons
• [24:01] — Realistic depiction of ambiguity and decision-making under crisis
• [35:33] — In-depth on defense missile system realities vs. mythmaking
• [43:17] — Portrayal of military professionalism, drawing from Nichols's personal experience
• [47:14] — Consequences of political irresponsibility, and why presidential words matter
• [49:12] — Nuclear reductions since the Cold War: a hopeful note
• [53:06] — The necessity of facing existential anxiety, not fleeing it

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Closing Reflection

Nichols and Bunch agree: "A House of Dynamite" doesn’t simply entertain—it revives forgotten existential anxieties about nuclear war, forces viewers to face current realities, and argues (implicitly and explicitly) for a return to seriousness in leadership and public consciousness. The episode stresses that nuclear dread wasn’t irrational—it was, and remains, a vital safeguard against sleepwalking into catastrophe.

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For listeners who missed the episode:
This is a dense, sharp, and at times sobering conversation by two experts who know their material. It’s a must-listen (or a must-read summary) if you want to understand the perils of complacency in a nuclear-armed, multipolar world—and why rekindling some of that old fear might be a civic virtue, not just paranoid nostalgia.

Transcript

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[Sonny Bunch]

Welcome back to the Bulwark Goes to Hollywood. My name is Sonny Bunch. I'm culture editor at the Bulwark, and I'm very pleased to be joined today by Tom Nichols, who is a staff writer at the Atlantic and professor emeritus of National Security affairs at the Naval War College. And we are here to discuss nuclear apocalypse. Kind of. Kind of, sort of. Tom. Tom, thanks for being on the show today. I really appreciate it.

[Tom Nichols]

Thanks for having me, Sonny. Good to be with you.

[Sonny Bunch]

So I wanted to get you on so we could discuss A House of Dynamite, which is the new movie on Netflix from Kathryn Bigelow, of course, who is the director of the Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty, a bunch of other great movies. One of my favorites, the vampire movie Near Dark. But we're not going to talk about that. We're going to talk about nuclear war today. That's a more pressing concern. And you've written about this movie. You've written about. I mean, obviously this is your kind of area of expertise is the, the, the, the nuclear situation in the world. I don't know how else to put it, really. What's, what do we call it? What, how do we describe the, the state of things on a nuclear level? What's the strategic vantage? What's, what's.

[Tom Nichols]

I wish I had a, just a clever phrase for it because, you know, in the old days we'd say the Cold War, we'd sort of go all this, you know, but now we have nine countries with nuclear weapons in various, you know, I, the way I always think of it, since we're, we're here on a movie program, is like the Ending of Reservoir Dogs with everybody standing around just pointing guns at each other, you know, and the first guy to pull the trigger is going to get everybody killed. The former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry had a good line on this. He thinks that global thermonuclear war is maybe a little less likely now, but, but he thinks that someone using a nuclear weapon somewhere is a lot more likely. So that's kind of the weird change in the situation. During the Cold War we were always about, you know, two inches from launching 20,000 weapons at each other and just melting the planet down. We still have thousands of weapons pointed at each other. I mean, you know, US and China, excuse me, and Russia alone have 3,000 weapons pointed at each other. And that's the end of the world too. But now this kind of two player game is a nine player game, used to be ten, by the way. It's always a great little bit of trivia to point out to people that white, the white South African regime had six nuclear weapons that they didn't tell anybody about. Which is always, you know, one of those things you wish you didn't know. But so, so it's an unstable multiplayer game now and it's really dangerous.

[Sonny Bunch]

And that's one of the things that this, this movie gets at. Well, we can, we can discuss the plot of it more in a second, but one of the, one of the key points is that when the missile launches, nobody's 100% sure where it came from. And we can discuss, discuss the reality of that and what it, what it would actually look like. But before we get to that, I want to, I want to talk about something you had mentioned in a piece you wrote about A House of Dynamite, which was that, you know, when you, when you were teaching nuclear relations classes to, to students that you would show them the, the, what I have always coined, and I don't mean this derogatorily just as kind of descriptive, but the, the nuclear panic movies of the, the, the 1980s movies like the Day after or Threads, which is a lesser, lesser scene here in America, but it was a BBC special about the after effects of a nuclear conflict. What was their response to seeing these movies from, you know, 1982, 83, 84, that, that sort of time period. How did they respond to them?

[Tom Nichols]

You know, I started doing it because the students I showed them to were my civilian undergraduates. I used to teach at night. I taught during the day for the Navy and at night I would teach undergraduates at Harvard Extension and during the summers at Harvard and One day, you know, I was talking about nuclear weapons and walking them through all the strategies and a young person, you know, 19, 20, almost like with wonder, what were you so scared of? What was the big deal? You know, I mean, this is a generation of young people who worry a lot more about like climate change than they do about nuclear war. And I said, okay, it's time to go back to the classics. You call them nuclear panic movies. I'm even a little harsher. I call them nuclear porn because they are so graphic. And I said, well, I'm going to show you these. Not just to show you what a nuclear war would have looked like, but to explain to you the culture that we lived in where we were absolutely marinated in these kinds of images and always reminded that this was reality. And the day after had, you know, it was shocking to them. Of course that's the United States. But threads, which is vastly more graphic. I mean it would be in its time, kind of NC17 probably, I think. I don't know what the rating is for a woman in the ruins of a city chewing through her own umbilical cord. You know what rating that gets? That one really just knocked them on their heels as it did to me when I saw it when I was, you know, 24, 25 years old. And that, that really had an impact. They were like, okay, so you know, it's not just going to be like Ukraine, but bigger or something, you know, that they, because they can't really get their. And, and that's not their fault. You can't really get your arms around what it would be like to have hundreds of millions of people dead in the next 20 minutes. You know, I always, the students would say, well, we worry about climate change. And I said climate change is a legit worry. You worry about the planet getting 2 degrees warmer in 30 years. I worry about, about the planet getting 10 million degrees warmer in the next 20 minutes. Yeah, and so it, it stunned them, you know, interestingly enough some of the other, because I did a whole course on pop movies and TV and pop culture images about a lot of things from the Cold War, spy mania and you know, paranoid thrillers and all that stuff, but they were even knocked back a little bit. You'd be surprised how many younger people have not seen the original Planet of the Apes, for example, you know, and I'm sorry, it's a 50 something year old movie, so it's gonna be a spoiler spoiler. Rosebud was a sled. But you know, when they get to the end. And Charlton Heston realizes that he's on a nuked ruined planet Earth with that majestic side of the.

[Sonny Bunch]

Of the.

[Tom Nichols]

Which, by the way, was a Rod Serling innovation. That's not in the original source material of the book. Rod Serling stuck that in there in. In his first drafts of the script. And, you know, they, they thought, oh, it was kind of cute monkeys. And know, Kim Novak and I, I'd kiss you, but you're so ugly because you humans are ugly. And then at the end, there's just like dead silence where they kind of, you know, they weren't expecting that. And I think it was a useful exercise to go through with a lot of them because I think they've just accepted that, first of all, nuclear war is yesterday's problem and that anything in the pop culture about it was just kitsch and nonsense and, you know, not really that serious. And how could we take it that serious? I used to get that all the time. You know, you were a young guy during the Cold War. Why were you just constantly so scared by this? And I said, okay, here, sit down and watch TV as if you were me in 1981.

[Sonny Bunch]

That's. That's so interesting to me because I remember when Oppenheimer came out, there was a. There was a strain of criticism that went something like the movie. The movie is a cop out because it doesn't show you the effects of the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that a lot of the times that came from kind of younger critics who were like, wow, this is, you know, this is. This is just Americans trying to feel good about themselves, which is an incredible misreading of the movie. But like I said, set. Set all that aside. Understanding, understanding the horror of that imagery and what it would. What it would show it. It feels like that should. It should be easy to extrapolate that to the rest of the world. But I guess that's not. That's not how. How they look at it. It's too localized.

[Tom Nichols]

You know, I heard that criticism. Criticism of Oppenheimer as well. And to me, Oppenheimer, I mean, it's a majestic movie in so many ways. It's a character study having, you know, it's about US domestic politics during the Red Scare, a lot of things. But it's also like a lot of nuclear movies. It's kind of a mad scientist movie, right? Why did we build these things? Because we can. I mean, Oppenheimer is the kind of. In that movie, at least he's kind of an archetype, right? Of like, you know, God rest his soul. Tom Lehrer recently died. The guy that used to do a lot of funny ditties in the 1960s. And he had a very cruel song, a really nasty song, about Werner von Braun, the Nazi scientist that we brought over to work on our space program. And there's a line in it, once a missile's up, who cares where it comes down? That's not my department, says Werner von Braun. And, you know, Oppenheimer was kind of in that. It's like, well, we have to develop this nuclear weapon, and what. What will happen when we do that? Somebody else will figure out. And I. I didn't. I thought that the movie was absolutely admirable for not kind of dragging us into Japan to say, oppenheimer is a villain. Look what he did. Look at these dead people. But there's another. And then I'll get off my soapbox about Oppenheimer, which I liked very much. But there's another interesting problem. When people said, well, they should have showed us what happened in Japan, I actually am glad they didn't, because what happened in Japan, those bombs were actually quite small. The pictures you see of the destruction look worse than they are because Japan at the time is made out of wood and rice paper. The church that was ground zero for Hiroshima is still there. It didn't. Because it was made out of stone. And I think, you know, almost if they had tried to do that, it's almost too reassuring. It's almost too reassuring. It's almost like they'd be lowballing the actual amount of damage that a real nuclear conflict in the 21st century would cause, which is one of the reasons that I think Threads in particular really got it right about sort of, you know, it's not just people dying under shattered buildings. It's, you know, there's no fuel for the next five years. There's no pesticides, there's no medicine, there's no nothing. You know, that there has to be something beyond just the initial horror of fire and blast and damage. I thought that the. The movies that really thought about this more to the day after, to some extent, but. But really, Threads was the one that kind of teased it out to say, you know, you're not just living in a world where everything's destroyed. You're living in a world where, you know, pretty much all the insulin that's ever been made is all the insulin that's ever going to be made kind of thing. And so I'm. I'm glad that Oppenheimer swerved away from that because as horrible as what happened in Japan was, a nuclear exchange now would be magnitudes worse. And I'm. And I think it would have been a disservice to tell people this is what a nuclear war looks like.

[Sonny Bunch]

Yeah. Did you go. Did you go further back at all? Did you do like, fail safe and Dr. Strangelove, or was that. How did they. How did they respond to. I mean, Dr. Strangelove is obviously a different sort of thing. You know, it's. It's a little bit more of a.

[Tom Nichols]

Strangelove because I assume they've all seen it. And I didn't want to play things for laughs. And I, I kind of dithered about Fail Safe because it's such a wonderful movie. But I decided to sign the book, which is even more intense. And then I made them write essays about it. And the response to Fail Safe was really shocking. They were like, they would come into class and they'd say, yeah, I read it, professor, but the president can't do that. And I would say, sure, you positive about that? What do you mean the President can't? The president could do anything he wants with nuclear weapons. And then we talk about. Which is why he has to have his close friend in the cockpit and doesn't want to give that assignment to just any, you know, American pilot. Again, if you haven't seen Fail Safe, I'm sorry. But yes, he destroys New York as a sacrifice twice to the Russians. So, yeah, I did go back. I actually took clips from things like them, the, the giant ant movie, because again, them, it's actually a horror movie. I mean, it, it's not just a goofy drive in movie. You have a scientist in it talking about, this is biblical justice. This is like biblical revelation that man is being punished. You know, I mean, it's a pretty heavy movie. And I also showed them clips from the original Godzilla, which is actually, you know, we. I, by the way, I, I don't know how you feel about these. I love. In fact, I should. Maybe I'll just tilt my screen. There it is. I have destroy all monsters in my office. I tried to get them to understand what a dark, creepy movie Godzilla is. And, and done less than 10 years done by a country in a country less than 10 years after an atomic attack in that country. Godzilla, you know, ends with the. A scientist committing suicide and Godzilla trudges back into the ocean. It's all very dark. The. The version Americans know with Raymond Burr, that was all spliced in later for American audiences.

[Sonny Bunch]

Yeah, it is really interesting. The evolution of Godzilla over the years has been pretty interesting, too. If you watch the 2000, what was it, 14 kind of remake in America where Godzilla is actually swimming with the American armed forces at one point. And it was just like, this is a real inversion of the metaphor of this movie, guys, I don't mean to judge what you're doing here. All right, so let's talk about House of Dynamite. Then let's move to a House of Dynamite, because, again, this is. It's awesome. Netflix. Now you can watch it. You can. You can stop listening to this and go. Go watch it and come back. Maybe that's a good thing to do, because we'll probably get into some spoilers here. The setup of the movie is pretty straightforward. I'll just. I'll just lay out the. The basics here. We follow three different vignettes. One is kind of in a situation room, one is with more military and national security officials, and then the last is with the president and the Secretary of Defense as they go through the decision process of trying to figure out who has launched a lone ICBM at the United States. They try to shoot it down, they fail to shoot it down, and then they try to decide how to respond once or before it hits the city of Chicago, which is where it's headed. Again. This is told this. This same story is told three different times from these three different point of views. It's kind of a Rashomon thing. Not really, because there's no question of.

[Tom Nichols]

It's not separate realities. It's just separate venues.

[Sonny Bunch]

It's just. It's just different POVs. Just different POVs watching this thing happen. The movie ends. We'll talk about the ending in a little bit here. I do want to avoid spoilers just for a minute so people can. Can listen to this. When you. You saw an early cut of the film, you were.

[Tom Nichols]

You.

[Sonny Bunch]

You saw an earlier. Earlier cut of the film and then wrote about it. What did you. What did you make of it when you were watching it? Because I know, I know. Look, the experts watch movies like this, and they're like, here's what you got wrong. What was your. What was your take as you were kind of going through it that first time?

[Tom Nichols]

Yeah, I mean, I've seen it. I saw early cuts twice. I had access to a shooting script before I saw the cut. So I had been staying in touch with the filmmakers for about a year. And so when I went to the first screening, I got up and I said, look, I fully expected to Have a punch list where I was going to stand up and say, you did that. You know, here's all the stuff you got wrong. Yeah, there are some artificialities in. I mean, it's a movie, you know, you. You have to drive the drama with at least some difficult choices. But one of the things that I. Well, a couple of things jumped out at me. First of all, everybody in that movie talks the way people really talk in the policy world. You know, I've worked in that world. I have briefed four stars and senators and, you know, people in government. And everybody in that environment in the movie are. They're doing the right thing, and they're acting like people really do in these kinds of environments. That was really striking to me that they got around. Nobody, you know, fail. Of course, we. I'm sure we both love Fail Safe, but of course. And there's that amazing moment where Fritz Weaver flew Freaks out right as Colonel Cassio. And then they have, you know, people in Moscow. I'm the general Hud, relieved. You know, he was overwhelmed. And none of that happens in a house of dynamite. Everybody's good at their job. Nobody loses their. You know, they do what they're supposed to do. And yet things keep going wrong. That was one thing. The. The other was that I. Especially on a second viewing, I did notice where they kind of compensated for some of these questions. You know, one of the things that you brought up early on, somebody fires one missile, and we don't know where it's from, but they. The characters talk about this. They say, was that us? Did we have a glitch? Or did somebody hack us? Or did somebody blind our satellites?

[Sonny Bunch]

Or.

[Tom Nichols]

We just did. We did a. Did a. You know, did a microchip pop somewhere? You know, you have plenty of time to figure that out later, but for the next 20 minutes, this missile is incoming. And this has happened. By the way, there have been some new documents released about a series of mistakes at NORAD that basically did come down to a microchip that happened in 79 and 80. And Harold Brown, the Secretary of Defense, kept writing to Jimmy Carter, say, I'm really concerned about this. We've screwed this up. You know, we've got to replace these things. At one point, they woke.

[Sonny Bunch]

What was the error? I'm sorry, what? We were. We were not able to see where missiles had come from or we were under attack. Okay?

[Tom Nichols]

Like a microchip popped. And suddenly, you know, on the screen, there's 2,000 incoming Soviet missiles. What? So, you know, they're. That they're dealing with that as well. Like, is this real or is what we're seeing real? If it's. If it is, why didn't we see it launch? And so on. The one place I think a lot of people have trouble is that there are people in the. In the movie saying, when this. You've. This thing could be the beginning of a major attack. So, Mr. President, you have to act right away. Now, there are other people in the movie, and I think some of the critics of the film, it's like they didn't. They heard what they wanted to hear. There are other people in the movie saying, listen, this could be a dud. Don't do anything. Don't, don't. No sudden movements. But there is a compelling case laid out in there. And remember, these are not people. The president especially is not a nuclear wonk. We've never elected that kind of guy. Jimmy Carter served on a nuclear summer. He was not a nuclear strategist. So, you know, when someone says to the president, look, if we're about to lose Chicago, how long are you willing to wait to react? But of course, the answer is to react against whom? And throughout the movie, you start to see, they keep reporting, the Russians are going to a high alert, the Chinese are on alert, the Pakistanis, the Iranians. Everybody's doing very suspicious. Well, things that might make sense for them, but also could look pretty suspicious if you're in the United States about to lose a city of 9 million people. And I thought, you know, at first I thought, would anybody really. You know, because my. My inclination, if I were advising a guy like that, I'd say, don't do anything yet. But as the president keeps pointing out, that's easy for you to say. I'm leading country. 340 million people and 9 million are about to die. And it's not a very satisfying thing to come out and say, well, as soon as we know who did this. And we did that during 9 11, right? We said, we're going to find out who did this. And then we kind of went radio silent for two weeks while the Bush administration planned. But with a nuclear weapon, if that weapon was meant. And there's a wonderful conversation they have inside Stratcom in the movie about, you know, what do you think causes. Could be the Russians, could be the Chinese, or as one of them says, could be a sub commander got up one morning, founders found out his wife left him. But they do talk about if this is the pointy end of a attack, that it's meant to set us on our heels, put us into chaos, make us unable to respond by not being able to decide. And then we get hit by submarine launched missiles, cruise missiles, whatever it is that pop up out of the water. And you know, it's. I think it's a legitimate concern. I mean, if there were a nuclear weapon incoming. Yeah. You would get the President out of Washington. You would hand him the book of, you know, plans, and you'd say, we got to think about what comes next.

[Sonny Bunch]

Well, this is. So this was, when I was watching it, this was the, the big question I had. I was like, all right, why do we need to. Does there. Would, would the rush to have an. Almost a pseudo preemptive response? Because that's kind of what we're talking about here. We're talking about responding before the missile even falls. Is that what would happen? It feels, that feels wrong to me. Like you said, I lived through 9, 11. I remember, I remember what happened after that. We were like, we're going to figure out what's going on here.

[Tom Nichols]

I guarantee you there would be somebody in most administrations, certainly in this one, but remember one, I think one of the best choices Bigelow made was not to have any obvious villains or heroes here. There's no creepy Russians or diabolical North Koreans or crazy, you know, like in, remember the movie Dawn's Early Light by Don's. There's no crazy evangelical president who's going to, you know, do the work of Jesus by nuking everybody. But I, I think what the movie gets at with this artificiality, with this scenario problem is World War III may not start the way we've always planned for it to start. We've always had this kind of very structured approach that says there's going to be a war. It'll be between us Russians or us and China. There's going to be escalations. Somebody's going to use nuclear weapons in the theater of war. We're all going to go to alerts. We're going to have to, you know, what if that's not the case anymore? What if it is? You know, the North Koreans saying, we're going down and we're taking you with us. What if it is? You know, there's a, there's a moment where some, the STRATCOM commander says, well, the Russians know we'll retaliate. And he says, do they? His deputy says, do they. You know, there's, they're. They're having this major war in Europe. They're killing dissidents, murdering people. On US And NATO territory and what have we done? We see some yachts from San Tropez. That kind of bothered me. But my point is, in a, in at least some administrations and I worked with people like this, there's going to be somebody in the room telling the President to do this crazy thing. I had conversations with people when I worked back on SDI related stuff on Star wars related stuff back in the mid-80s. You know, it's partly what turned me into a nuclear dove was having conversations with people that I thought were just completely bonkers. You know, I, even, Even into the 21st century, I had routinely conversations with colleagues in the defense establishment and at think tanks. People would say, oh yeah, we could, we could do, you know, 15 or 20 nuclear use 15 or 20 nuclear weapons and it wouldn't get out of hand. To which I said, I said to one guy, that's the definition of out of hand. 20 nuclear explosions I think is pretty much out of hand. And remember that the guy who right now is the under secretary of defense for policy in this administration wrote an article arguing that if we're hit by a cyber attack that's big enough, we should respond to whoever initiated it with nuclear weapons. Now, is that crazier than the advice the President. I think that's by a long shot, crazier than the advice the President gets in a house of dynamite.

[Sonny Bunch]

Yeah.

[Tom Nichols]

And I think the people that are criticizing this scenario for being too out there, if anything, I think having studied this stuff and, you know, worked on these things for years, I actually think that the movie was pretty restrained given what actual people have actually said. And I'll give you one last example. 1995, the Norwegians launched a weather satellite and they told the Russians, we're going to, you're going to see a rocket take off from Norway. It's a weather package. But somehow the Russian high command just, you know, like deleted the email or, you know, I guess the Norwegians didn't put, please read, you know, in the subject line. Right. And this one missile from NATO territory takes off and they, they go into Yeltsin and they bring him the nuclear football, say, what do you want to do? Because of one, one launch? And they said, could be, it could be decapitating or meant to blind us or an EMP web or something. And Yeltsin said, oh, you know, pish posh. I know Bill Clinton, you can put that thing away. But yeah, I, you know, I wouldn't want to replay that scenario right now.

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[Sonny Bunch]

SL Bulwark takes in the 1980s again. You have this series of movies like the Day After Threads, War Games, Special Bulletin, Countdown to Looking Glass. You have all of these kind of, I, I, I, I have a very soft spot for Countdown to Looking Glass and a special Bulletin. But we, we can, but the, you, you have this sort of, this series of movies that is fairly explicitly a reaction to Reagan and the idea that he is going to, he is this, you know, crazy cowboy warmonger. We're going to, you know, we are going to end the world because, because of him. Do you, do you get the sense that this movie is in response to the idea of kind of growing tensions? You know, we've got Russia, Ukraine, obviously, but then China is kind of looking at Taiwan and you have North Korean efforts. You've got Iranian attempts at proliferation, India and Pakistan we barely even mentioned and that, you know, those God only knows what could happen there at any moment. It does feel like there is more ambient nuclear tension in the air now than there has been for a long time.

[Tom Nichols]

Well, you know, I asked both Catherine and Noah Oppenheim, the writer, you know, what kind of how they got there. And one of them, I think, Katherine Bigelow, I know, thinks that this is long overdue, that just this is a threat. That. And we kind of both agreed about this as a cultural matter, that it's just dropped out of the popular culture. I mean, it's one thing not to be panicked and have your hair on fire all day. It's another to go. I'm trying to think of the last really good movie about nuclear stuff. And, you know, Dawn's Early Light was probably the last one from the Cold war, and that's 35 years ago. So the other thing that's important to point out about this movie, they actually started production, started writing this back when Biden was president. This. This was not about, you know, Trump and Putin or India, Pakistan. I think it was just this general sense that they had that Bigelow and Oppenheimer, nobody's talking about this. And we really ought to be. And we ought to, you know, in a new way. Not. Not in the. Again, not like remaking the Day after. Because then you do have to see, in a way, the Day after and Threads and Fail Safe. They were almost easier movies to make because you always had a clear path to how you ended up in a nuclear war. Now, you know, when it could be almost anything and you have. I mean, it is still. As a man of a certain age and a Cold War veteran, you know, as somebody who lived through the Cold War, it is impossible for me to comprehend that. That a regime like North Korea has ICBMs. That's the world I didn't want to live in. So I think that it wasn't. And I don't want to speak for the director or the writer. I will say that my conversations with them told me this was a more generalized issue rather than that they zeroed in on one leader or one scenario. You know, even in the days of the early 80s, I think, you know, that. That you really had that tension kind of building in the late 60s and then in the 70s. And, you know, I'm talking to a guy who's a movie expert, but as you know, in the mid to late 70s, some of that dies away and it gets replaced by films that are about government paranoia, right? President's Men, the Parallax View, you know, all of these kinds of, you know, the calls are coming from inside the house kind of movies. And I would argue that it's the late 70s, early 80s. It's not just Reagan, but a. But a renewed tension about things. Remember Poland. Even before Reagan comes in off Poland under martial law, we've had these false alerts. Big Brzezinski was the national security advisor. Not exactly a reassuring presence when it comes to these things. You know, great man, but, you know, pretty scary guy when it comes to trading punches with this, with the. With the Soviets who had, in 19, by 1979, had already invaded Afghanistan. I think when Reagan comes in and basically just, you know, turns that. He turns that 1 to 11, you know, by basically said they'll lie, they'll cheat, because they expected the Soviets expected Reagan to be Nixon.

[Sonny Bunch]

Right?

[Tom Nichols]

Yak, yak, yak. I hate communists. But then let's make a deal. And Reagan comes in and says, no, I really hate you guys. That they freak out. And that freak out kind of spreads throughout. Throughout the culture.

[Sonny Bunch]

I. All right, so let's. All right, back to. Back to House of Dynamite. The one thing that I think is causing the most discussion about, like, did it get this right? Did it get this wrong? Is the question of the nuclear interceptors. And so spoiler for the movie. One of. One of the key moments in the film is that from the. From the Alaska Air Defense Base, they launch two interceptors to take out this icbm. One of them does not deploy correctly. The other one deploys but does not intercept the missile, which I. In the film itself, they say there's a 61% chance of success. So basically a coin flip. A little bit, little bit better than a coin flip. The. The Pentagon has said this is nonsense. We are. We are much safer than this. We. If. If there's only one missile incoming, we're totally fine. Don't worry about it. Basically. What. What's your take on that?

[Tom Nichols]

Well, in terms of my punch list, I actually said to Katherine Piccolo, I said. I kind of gave her this look and I said, 61%. She said, we're using the Pentagon's numbers, which were up until then, the Pentagon's numbers. The Missile Defense Agency has since said, no, no, our accuracy is 100%. First of all, nothing is 100%. I'm. I'm sorry. You know, a kid's slingshot does not operate with 100% efficiency or aim. And turns out what they're doing. I have a piece dropping about this shortly in the Atlantic. They said, over the past 10 years, we've had four tests, and each time we hit the target. So 100%. Four tests, four hits. Well, as arms control expert Joe Sorencion and others point out, these are staked down chicken tests, right? This is like proving how accurate a shotgun is by staking a rabbit to the ground and then shooting it. But only two of those tests since 1940, since 2014, were actually against intercontinental ballistic missile style targets. And even those are highly scripted. We know when they're going to launch, we know where they're going. We're hitting a bullet with a bullet in space. The 20 tests or so since 1999 have had about a 57% accuracy, about a coin toss in terms of hitting them. And that's under the very best conditions. That's where you, that's under these completely artificial, you know, staked chicken tests, strapped down chicken tests. And I just think 61% was being generous. But even if you allow 61%, you basically are, you know, dealing with a coin toss. Especially when this, like in the circumstance of the film where this thing pops up, nobody knows where it came from. There's a great scene in the movie at Fort Greely where one of the army people starts to get really jumpy and the guy says, listen, you've got this. We practice for this all the time. We know how to do this, but no one's ever done it under battle conditions. We've never had that kind of test. We've never really stress tested this. These are very carefully scripted. I think one reason is that the Pentagon doesn't want to do more difficult tests because they don't want to have more failures. I mean, this thing I worked on, sdi, I know that it's a boondock. I think, I think it had a noble and good purpose in the 1980s, but I don't think it's something that, that's worth pursuing now. But even if you grant 60, 70%, I mean, iron Dome, which the President is fascinated by, that's meant to hit things that are lower and slower and much easier to hit. And even that has something like 80 to 85%. And as a friend of mine who was living in Israel at the time, whose building got hit by during a rocket attack, said, you know, this is one of those days where I think 85% isn't enough. So I don't, I had no problem. I personally don't believe US missile defenses are going to do much against an opponent who's going to do something more complicated than the bad guys did in a house of dynamite. I mean, they launched one missile with no decoys, no multiple launches, nothing. I mean, that that was basically the simplest possible test. And you'll notice in the movie that when somebody says, well, why don't we fire more of them? It's like, well, we only have like 44 of these things. What if this is the first? What if this is meant to be a decoy or meant to drag out a bunch of launches so that whatever comes in next has a better chance of surviving? I mean, it's, it's, it's a Rubik's Cube. And, and, you know, I don't know about you, I, I can't do a Rubik's Cube in five minutes.

[Sonny Bunch]

I can't do them at all. So that's, you know, this is a.

[Tom Nichols]

That was an eight point. Did I just date. We're talking 80s movies and I went right for a Rubik's Cube.

[Sonny Bunch]

Well, no, I, my, my kids have Rubik's Cubes and I still look at them. They give me, they give me hives. It's, it doesn't. They. I've never been any good at those. One thing you had mentioned in your, in your piece, just real quick. I, I think this is, this is one of the things I really liked about the movie is the depiction of the professionals in this as professionals. The professionalism versus panic. There is a, you know, there's a tendency to portray military officials, national security officials in situations like this as General Jack Ripper or whoever. And that is, that is, you know, I think that's, that's often unfair, but it's, you know, whatever. That's a movie, is a movie. This, this movie does a very good job, I think, of kind of just treating everybody as like, okay, well, this is, this is what we've trained for. This is what we're doing. You, you mentioned, you know, having dealt with people like this and basically seeing them react this way. Not specific situation, but this kind of jutting between, you know, all right, we're, we're jokey, we're joking. And now we're serious.

[Tom Nichols]

And now we're serious, right?

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[Tom Nichols]

Yeah, I especially like the moment. I mean, Tracy Letts plays this four star. He was so good Right. I mean, he's just such a good actor and he plays this four star general who's the chief of StratCom. And there's such a real moment because they're. I, again, I've. I've briefed lots of generals and admirals. I've dealt with them, you know, a good part of my career. And they can be a real pain in the ass. I mean, they can be a handful. You know, they're used to people that when their coffee cup is empty, they. Somebody fills it, you know, and there's a great moment where the national security. The deputy national security advisor is running and he's trying to briefly everybody. And let's. Son, I didn't join the Navy because I get seasick. Can you stop with all that bouncing around? And I'm like, that's exactly the kind of thing a general like that would say. And then boom, the next minute he's all business. He's. He goes from being a, you know, snippy martinet to telling the president, look, I don't have to make this decision. I'm just telling you, this is what I think, and it's not pretty. And my job is to tell you stuff that isn't pretty. And, you know, they're all. It's all business. Nobody flips out, nobody says anything crazy. You don't even have to go for a jack. Jack ripper. I mean, if you think about how often military officers are caricatured in the military, something I have never, you know, having taught military officers for years, something I've never really appreciated. You know, you ask about military officers and people see Jack Nicholson, right?

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[Tom Nichols]

I ordered the code.

[Sonny Bunch]

Right?

[Tom Nichols]

You know, bulging eyes and freaking out. That's not the way it is. These. These are not people. You know, they can be a real. Like I said, they can be a real handful administratively, but when it. When push comes to shove, they are as cold as ice. They do their jobs. They train for it every day. And I thought the movie captured that really well.

[Sonny Bunch]

Let's. All right, so, you know, kind of famously, after having seen War Games and the day after Ronald Reagan was affected by them, you know, kind of day.

[Tom Nichols]

After got to him, definitely. Yes.

[Sonny Bunch]

It changed his perspective on all this and was like, what do we. How do we. How do we. What do you. What if you were in your heart, in your. In your hope against hope, what would you hope that the current administration might take away from a house of dynamite?

[Tom Nichols]

Oh, dear. What a. What a nice underhand, slow Pitch first, I'll just point out that contrary to popular belief, Reagan was actually an abolitionist. And the movie got to him because he only had two positions on nuclear weapons, which was complete abolition or American superiority. And he actually was something of a nuclear peacenik, which people just don't believe. The only guy that ever got it right was John newhouse, who in 1990 wrote a piece in the New Yorker called the Abolitionist, where he talked about Reagan as. People really needed to understand how much Reagan really hated nuclear weapons. And that's important because that affects the rest of the administration. What bothers me about this administration is the completely kind of blithe way everybody takes their cues from the boss. He said, I'm very concerned about the nuclear. About nuclear. I don't know what it is with him. He does. He says. He doesn't say nuclear. He says nuclear. Okay. But then he does things like, well, Dmitri Medvedev, the former President of Russia, he pissed me off. So I'm moving submarines closer to Russia. I mean, that is. These are not toys. These are. These are not. This isn't a game of Battleship. You know, you don't talk about stuff like that. And if you're going to do it, you certainly don't talk about it. You do it quietly. Let the Russians notice you don't announce it. I mean, it's, it's just a. It's really an irresponsible approach. And the fact of the matter is that the top advisor, you know, in the cabinet on this is going to be Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense. We don't have, and I think people need to understand this. Again, we do not have a two man rule at the top. The Secretary of Defense is there primarily, or someone is there to say the person who just read you these codes. I am verifying that this is the President. So it's not to approve the President's choices. It's to. It's to be a second person verifying that the person doing this is actually the President of the United States. And I, I mean, I would hope that. I don't. I mean, I don't know, you know, replace Pete Hegseth, you know, create a real National Security Council instead of having a bunch of people wandering around the White House, or at least one wing of the White House that's left, instead of having Marco Rubio being the sec State and the National Security Advisor and the national archivist. But, you know, if these were people who were capable of taking these things seriously, then you wouldn't need to show them the movie. I mean, it's kind of a catch 22, really, Sonny, about what would I hope if they saw it? I would hope that they would say, hey, this stuff, you know, I think one of the things that bothers me in general about this administration and about American society today I'm going to be Andy Rooney. Be grumpy old man.

[Sonny Bunch]

That's good. Go for it.

[Tom Nichols]

But to say people don't seem to think that anything in the world has consequences. Right, let's shut down the government. What could go wrong? Well, nothing. You know, there's that line, you know, the line I'm thinking of Ernest Hemingway talking about bankruptcy when one of his characters is asked, how did you go broke? And he said, gradually and then all at once. That's how government functions decline. You get a little bit of corrosion, degradation, and then things start to fail. You know, a nuclear crisis is not something where the President can pick up the phone and say, you know, Vladimir, cut it out, or put something on truth, social. That's not how any of this works. And I think it bothers me. And I. This is one reason I really think it's important for people to see the movie to say in the real world, that is a real world that is full of serious and dangerous people, things have consequences. People, you choose to lead the Pentagon, that has consequences. The way the President speaks, people forget everything the President says is policy. You don't want to live in a country where people say, well, the President just says stuff, but nobody has to take that seriously. Every time the President of the United States speaks, that is policy. So I would hope that at least maybe this White House isn't going to watch it, but I would hope that other people would watch it and say, you know, the most important thing I can do as a voter is, is to put sane, responsible, sober minded people in office and not to be satisfied with, you know, government by shitposting.

[Sonny Bunch]

That is.

[Tom Nichols]

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[Sonny Bunch]

You know, we talked, you talk about. I would, I would say, I would say that the dream of nuclear abolition is probably more realistic than this. And that is not particularly realistic. So we are, we are in bad, bad dire straits right now. It's not, not ideal around.

[Tom Nichols]

Here's the, here's the cheerful part. When I was a young guy back during the Hoover administration, when I was in college, I started college when Jimmy Carter was president and graduated when Reagan and Reagan's first term, the United States had an arsenal of about 20,000 strategic nuclear weapons. I mean, we had The Soviets had, like, 12. I mean, we were pointing 30,000 nuclear weapons at each other. And of course, I would. 1. I did one year of grad school at Harvard, where every 10 seconds, there was a demonstration in Cambridge. You know, no nukes, and you can't. But, like, I. You live in Cambridge, and you see all the bumper stickers. You know, one nuclear bomb can ruin your day. My favorite was, you can't hug a child with nuclear arms. And so I would have said, you know, if somebody had said, listen, by the time, you know, you're a grandfather, we'll be down to 1500 nuclear weapons each. I would have said, you're completely high. And yet, here we are. We've done. Can be done. I mean, Reagan, the great boogeyman of nuclear weapons, he and Gorbachev literally crushed and buried an entire class of nuclear weapons, made the world vastly safer. Of course, Trump and his guys are trying to put those weapons back and undo that. They've canceled that treaty from 1987, which is lunacy. It was. It's one of the best arms treaties we ever signed. So, you know, the bright spot is, even though it would have been unimaginable to me 35 years ago, here we are. Things are. You can do these things, but they require some. They require skill, diplomacy, seriousness of purpose. All things that I don't think this administration has. But also, I hate to say this, Sonny, I think that millions of Americans just don't have. You know, you need the public to be engaged and to say, you know, we don't want to live like this. We don't want to live with this kind of threat hanging over our heads. You know, let's do what we can do. And I think most people have just checked out because they've had 30 years of peace and prosperity, and I don't think they really want to think about this very much.

[Sonny Bunch]

Yeah, that sounds about right. All right. I always like to close these interviews by asking if there's anything. I should have asked if there. If you think there's anything folks should know about this movie, about anything we've discussed here today, or the state of the world. We got a little bit of state of the world there at the end, but anything. What did we not discuss that we should have.

[Tom Nichols]

Well, I'm glad that we didn't discuss, because I thought it was going to come up. I'm glad that we didn't discuss the ending of A House of Dynamite, because I don't want to spoil it. I don't think you should Spoil it. But I will say this. At first, you may kind of raise your eyebrows about it, but I think, given what the movie is about, there was no other way to end it. I think it had the only ending it can have, given everything that happens. Because I think otherwise it would be no matter. Without. I'm trying to do this, you know, highly redacted. I think had Biccolo had. Had. Had Bigelow chosen any other ending, that would be the only thing we'd talk about.

[Sonny Bunch]

Yep. No, I. I agree. I've heard some. I've. I've had some people complain to me about the ending. And I will just say that I think it. I think it is the perfect ending for what this movie wants to be.

[Tom Nichols]

Right.

[Sonny Bunch]

What this movie is trying to demonstrate, which is not the same as saying that it is a completely satisfying ending for some people.

[Tom Nichols]

Right.

[Sonny Bunch]

But it is. It is. I think it is. It. It works for the movie that it's trying to be. And that's all any movie can do, so. Right.

[Tom Nichols]

And as far as, you know, other things we should have talked about, I think, you know, we've. We. We've gotten there. But the world situation, I mean, what. What's left to say, you know, it's a dangerous world. It's full of nuclear weapons. This is a good movie about that. You know, other. Other than that, we get depressing. It's like, you know, sleep well. Remember that there are 1500 nuclear weapons targeted against the United States. And, you know, that's just the reality we live with every day, whether we want to think about it or not.

[Sonny Bunch]

Yeah. And most people do not. That's. Yeah.

[Tom Nichols]

I don't. Look, I don't blame them. Existential dread is exhausting, you know, but closing your eyes, we can't be like little kids, right? Closing our eyes does not make things go away just because we can't see them.

[Sonny Bunch]

Well, Tom Nichols, thank you for being on the show today. I really appreciate it.

[Tom Nichols]

Thanks, Sonny. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

[Sonny Bunch]

And my name again is. I am Sonny Bunch. I am culture editor at the Bulwark. And we will be back next week with another episode of the Bulwark Goes to Hollywood. We'll see you guys then.