Transcript
Jamie Rubin (0:02)
This is a Global Player original podcast.
Christiana Amanpour (0:08)
Putin has been talking up now a new and very menacing weapons system specifically designed to penetrate U.S. missile defenses.
Jamie Rubin (0:17)
I remember being woken up one night.
Christiana Amanpour (0:19)
When India did it in Washington.
Jamie Rubin (0:20)
When India did it, I was the spokesman of the State Department and I always hated the idea that the administration was taken by surprise.
Christiana Amanpour (0:27)
And indeed you were.
Jamie Rubin (0:28)
And I was, but I pretended I wasn't.
Christiana Amanpour (0:30)
There was a trip that reporters from all over the world were invited to go to North Korea because they were beginning to engage again. And on that trip, we sat on a little hill and we watched them blow up that famous cooling tower. This weekend he announced that he would militarily intervene in Nigeria if the government there did not stop what Trump said were the anti Christian attacks. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the latest episode of the X Files with me, Christiana Manpour and Jamie Rubin. I am a CNN correspondent and presenter, anchor, whatever you want. Been in the field for quite a few years, decades, and now have my own show where I try to hold leaders accountable for the maelstrom that's happening out there where I used to be reporting. So let us get started. Are we back in the cold? Is a nuclear confrontation something that is likely? Are we going to start testing nuclear weapons again? And we will also talk about Africa, because Africa is now a battleground in terms of resources and competition for influence by China and the uae. The United States seems to be a little on the side, but the president has threatened to intervene militarily in Africa. We will give you the latest on that and we will have our recommendations. So two weeks ago on this very, very podcast, my recommendation was Katherine Bigelow's latest war film, House of Dynamite, which imposited the notion of a potential nuclear strike on the United States. My question to you is, has Putin been watching it and is art or is real life now imitating art? I can't believe the coincidence, Jamie, of all, you know, Putin, Trump talking about nuclear tests again.
Jamie Rubin (2:22)
Well, you know, they say truth is stranger than fiction. And on the Trump era and the Putin era, truth is stranger than fiction. Look, the, the film was riveting for those who watched it. And it posed a question that has been there all the time, but people just didn't think about it. And that is the risk of nuclear war. That's the issue that I think, you know, got me politicized. I was a young man, we were roughly at the same time during the Reagan era. And I thought there was a 50, 50 chance of the world being blown up by nuclear weapons. So I got involved in studying, researching, and learning every single thing I could about nuclear weapons and nuclear arms control as a way of hopefully making some change in the world. But one thing that hasn't changed is that once nuclear weapons were tested and became part of the arsenals of Russia, the Soviet Union, the United States, China, Britain, France, the risk of total destruction of our civil has always been there. We just don't talk about it very much. And what I think Katherine Bigelow wanted was precisely this, a discussion to return. Because the premise of the film is a truthful fact. Fact. Not a truthful fact, a real fact. And that is the possibility of missile launching against the United States cannot necessarily be destroyed by any defense system. And if it did get through, the destruction would be massive.
