← Hasan Minhaj Doesn't Know
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- [00:00]
Hussan
Did you all see this? Recently, Trump was asked if he would use military force to take Greenland, and then he replied no comment. We really are living in unprecedented times. I read this ominous tidbit on Ground News, which is Today's sponsor and HMDK's favorite independent news source. Ground News is a platform that shows a breakdown of publications reporting on a story, evaluating their typical biases and factuality. Now, it's not about eliminating bias. This is important. We all have biases. It's just about being a more informed consumer of the news. While most headlines shown on Ground News were pretty straightforward, one stuck out to me. Trump has lost his mind. Greenland rages at greedy Americans now. I quickly realized Ground News rated the news source as mixed factuality. But remember, mixed factuality doesn't always mean false. So let's cut through the noise together. Go to groundnews.com hustan to subscribe and get 40% off the Unlimited Access Vantage plan. That's just five bucks a month with my discount. Go to groundnews.com/husson Today, Valentine's Day has become quite the racket. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to celebrate with my boo. But I don't want a mandatory eight course tasting menu. Especially as someone with dietary restrictions, I'm looking at you, pork and alcohol. That is why I am making Bina dinner this year for Valentine's Day and it's never been easier. Now that I can use Whole Foods as my one stop shop. Whole Foods has anything you could possibly want for a romantic meal. Fresh herbs, sustainably wild, caught or responsibly farmed seafood, and antibiotic free steaks. Because nothing is more romantic than antibiotic free steaks. And don't skip dessert. This is arguably the whole point of the entire holiday. They've got heart shaped cakes and my favorite chocolate covered strawberries. Plus I can get my girl a bouquet of flowers. They even have arrangements in vases already. Are you hearing this? They're in vases. I don't have to arrange the flowers or go to multiple stores. It's the perfect way for us busy professionals to be thoughtful or for lazy people to seem thoughtful. Taste the love all month at Whole Foods Market. And Happy Valentine's Day.
- [01:58]
Annie Jacobson
Lemonade.
- [02:02]
Hussan
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. 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 in 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.
- [02:31]
Annie Jacobson
Kim Jong Un unleashing an ominous warning. The whole of the US Mainland is within our firing range. President Trump announced the United States will resume testing nuclear weapons.
- [02:42]
Hussan
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 hair 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 scared the out of me. And this interview will scare the 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 going to 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.
- [04:20]
Annie Jacobson
A ballistic missile cannot be redirected and it cannot be recalled.
- [04:25]
Hussan
What the impact would be of even a small nuclear exchange.
- [04:29]
Annie Jacobson
Once nuclear war begins, it only ends one way. Nuclear Armageddon.
- [04:35]
Hussan
And what the aftermath of a nuclear war would look like.
- [04:37]
Annie Jacobson
The survivors would envy the dead.
- [04:40]
Hussan
And of course, it's all interspersed with some of my patented ADHD tangents. Where are you guys? Grabbing lunch with the four star General Cheesecake Factory. Marcelo Hernandez from snl. Hilarious. A ragtag group of dinosaurs that make it to the Great Valley. Okay, with these amazing human Interest stories are building things that are cake.
- [04:57]
Annie Jacobson
I don't know, is it cake?
- [05:00]
Hussan
So strap on some adult diapers because Annie is about to seriously up your. Enjoy your day.
- [05:10]
Annie Jacobson
Hurry right away, no delay.
- [05:12]
Hussan
Stop there.
- [05:13]
Annie Jacobson
Make your daddy glad you have had such a laugh.
- [05:18]
Hussan
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?
- [05:28]
Annie Jacobson
A 1 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 is in a line of sight, is set on fire. So you have one mile 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, okay? 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 30ft 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. 1760 nuclear weapons that we have on ready for launch status.
- [07:04]
Hussan
We would unload the whole clip, the whole arsenal.
- [07:07]
Annie Jacobson
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 blotting out the sun's rays for 8, 9, 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.
- [07:48]
Hussan
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. It.
- [08:07]
Annie Jacobson
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.
- [08:27]
Hussan
Right.
- [08:27]
Annie Jacobson
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.
- [08:41]
Hussan
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.
- [08:56]
Annie Jacobson
Warning and without any warning.
- [08:58]
Hussan
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?
- [09:13]
Annie Jacobson
I learned in my reporting, and you know, keep in mind, I 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.
- [09:49]
Hussan
Oh, it's not just like an Internet comment that became popular. These are the real consequences.
- [09:53]
Annie Jacobson
These are the consequences in any, any situation where strategic nuclear weapons are launched.
- [09:58]
Hussan
Just the very notion of, hey, why didn't you text me before you launch the nukes? And the delta of the consequences is, oh, civilization as we know it would be over. That's way too big.
- [10:11]
Annie Jacobson
It is so big. And you know, look, the whole process of writing and reporting this book was astonishing for me. I began really working on nuclear war 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?
- [10:28]
Hussan
Yeah.
- [10:29]
Annie Jacobson
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 sub commanders, they agreed to talk to me.
- [10:47]
Hussan
Why? Why did they do that?
- [10:49]
Annie Jacobson
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 like, maybe we spoke too soon.
- [11:26]
Hussan
Let's, let's actually make it a little tactile here, okay. In November 2024, Russia fired an intermediate range ballistic missile into Ukraine. It wasn't nuclear, but why was this so scary?
- [11:36]
Annie Jacobson
Good for you for pointing out probably the most, like, dangerous moment in the 21st century, in my opinion and the opinion of others.
- [11:46]
Hussan
Just moments. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that a Russian strike in Ukraine was carried out by, quote, 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.
- [12:09]
Annie Jacobson
Russia, for the first time in the history of war, launches an intermediate range ballistic missile into a hot war.
- [12:17]
Hussan
Right.
- [12:17]
Annie Jacobson
You're absolutely right. Now that missile is capable of carrying.
- [12:22]
Hussan
A nuclear war, but it doesn't have a nuclear warhead on it.
- [12:25]
Annie Jacobson
And there's no way of knowing. There's no way of knowing. And so I, like you asked 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.
- [12:49]
Hussan
The NERCs 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.
- [13:04]
Annie Jacobson
And in that situation, Lavrov, the Defense minister, notified the US State Department of the ballistic missile launch 30 minutes before identifying that it didn't have a nuclear warhead, because otherwise the US could have interpreted that Russia was launching a nuclear weapon into Ukraine. But to the rest of the world, no one knew.
- [13:23]
Hussan
So, so what do you think the Pentagon was doing when they found out?
- [13:26]
Annie Jacobson
What 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? Yes, within. 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 fact being launched into Ukraine. But in essence, they were taking the word of the Russian government.
- [13:55]
Hussan
And that's pretty terrifying.
- [13:57]
Annie Jacobson
It's pretty terrifying. But I think.
- [13:59]
Hussan
But then you would have to trust the word of any government. That's the terrifying.
- [14:03]
Annie Jacobson
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 na na.
- [14:12]
Hussan
Right.
- [14:12]
Annie Jacobson
General Keiller, who is the head of StratCom, US 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.
- [14:27]
Hussan
So you knock out an episode of Severance, maybe text your mom, and it's a wrap.
- [14:33]
Annie Jacobson
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.
- [14:42]
Hussan
Is launch on warning.
- [14:44]
Annie Jacobson
Launch on warning is a terrifying policy that is almost exactly like it sounds. Okay, 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.
- [15:20]
Hussan
Why so hasty? Why can't we chill for a little bit?
- [15:23]
Annie Jacobson
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.
- [15:36]
Hussan
Can't we just think.gov, let's take a moment.org. no.
- [15:41]
Annie Jacobson
You know, the whole system is set up as a posturing. It's called deterrence. It's also referred to as mad.
- [15:51]
Hussan
Mutual assured destruction is part of nuclear deterrence, letting our enemies know that basically, hey, we're crazy too.
- [16:02]
Annie Jacobson
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. Everybody 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.
- [16:31]
Hussan
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 buzz kill. Is your goal to get people to care by basically saying, hey, everything you know and love will be gone?
- [17:02]
Annie Jacobson
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 iii. 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, 5 million people are dead. You can't really believe that it's happening in seconds and minutes.
- [17:57]
Hussan
Totally at every turn. You're like, but how?
- [17:59]
Annie Jacobson
But how? And these policies that are so obvious, like, launch on warning, or how about this one? Hair trigger alert. We have 1,770 nuclear weapons on ready for launch status.
- [18:11]
Hussan
But why, though? I've always wondered this. Why does the United States have so many.
- [18:15]
Annie Jacobson
It's called parity. Equal, let's be equal. So let's be equally armed, up and ready to annihilate 5 billion people. That's the best answer I can give you. This is really something that one must not play ostrich about.
- [18:33]
Hussan
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, and I had nothing to do with it. But from what I understand, after Hiroshima, the US military made hydrogen bombs that are 100 times more powerful than what we saw in those history books. Why did they do that? It's really up.
- [18:57]
Annie Jacobson
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.
- [19:10]
Hussan
Right.
- [19:11]
Annie Jacobson
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.
- [19:19]
Hussan
You interviewed him?
- [19:20]
Annie Jacobson
I interviewed him at Lang during COVID Garwin shared with me, yes. You know, very specific details about things that he wasn't so loose lipped about, you know, advising. He advised every president since Eisenhower. And then Covid happens and you know.
- [19:37]
Hussan
And he's like, this is how I go.
- [19:38]
Annie Jacobson
This is how I go. This is how we all go.
- [19:40]
Hussan
What did he think was going to be the main use of this invention?
- [19:45]
Annie Jacobson
He knew exactly. I mean, I asked him, I asked him the pointed question, which is, do you wish you hadn't invented this? And he took a long pause and he said, in true scientist form, I wish it couldn't have been invented.
- [20:02]
Hussan
Wow.
- [20:03]
Annie Jacobson
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 those, 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.
- [20:26]
Hussan
So the wick. The wick to set off the big bomb is an atomic bomb.
- [20:30]
Annie Jacobson
Yes. And once you, your mind tries to comprehend that, you go like, okay, I get it. It's like way beyond my scope.
- [20:38]
Hussan
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 gajillion thousand planets are inside the sun. And I'm like, I don't 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?
- [21:06]
Annie Jacobson
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. I'm not writing about what would happen, you know, India, Pakistan, or, you know, 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 lode in response.
- [21:27]
Hussan
What does that mean?
- [21:28]
Annie Jacobson
Okay, so during the fire and fury, Trump administration, the STRATCOM commander at the time, General Hyten, 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.
- [21:53]
Hussan
Why did he get it off by 80?
- [21:55]
Annie Jacobson
General Hyten 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 1760 nuclear weapons that we have on ready for launch status.
- [22:17]
Hussan
We would unload the whole clip.
- [22:18]
Annie Jacobson
If Russia launched at 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 Keillor told me about in my interview with him.
- [22:30]
Hussan
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 gotta 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.
- [22:43]
Annie Jacobson
I don't know, is it cake?
- [22:45]
Hussan
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 J.K. jacobson, is this a real mic stand or is it cake?
- [23:06]
Annie Jacobson
Actual, like edible cake?
- [23:07]
Hussan
Yes.
- [23:08]
Annie Jacobson
Okay. Wow.
- [23:09]
Hussan
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 Annie Jacobson, you would guess. And then you go, it's A. And we find out is it cake? And he takes a knife and either he hits muddle or it's cake. And we eat cake.
- [23:30]
Annie Jacobson
So it's like nuclear war cake. Nuclear war cake. That allowed you to get through the book.
- [23:35]
Hussan
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 this info?
- [23:49]
Annie Jacobson
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.
- [24:00]
Hussan
Right.
- [24:00]
Annie Jacobson
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 they're 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.
- [24:38]
Hussan
I call it the N word. There are two N words and you can't use either of them. 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 others doing testing, I think it's appropriate that we do.
- [24:57]
Annie Jacobson
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.
- [25:29]
Hussan
Right? Annie? I feel like books are these amazing deterrents. You can tell a story of what would happen to the world if were to go left. Do you think movies could be a powerful deterrent? Because every five to 10 years there is a summer blockbuster that goes, hey, guess what? A rogue country has a nuclear weapon and is about to go left. You see the red countdown clock in the following movies. You have Crimson Tide, the Sum of All Fears, Broken Arrow, the Peacemaker, Mission Impossible, Ghost Protocol, Terminator 2, Terminator 3, Superman 4, Quest for Peace, Oppenheimer, House of Dynamite, True Lies. So do you think Hollywood has played a significant role in helping with nuclear disarmament?
- [26:09]
Annie Jacobson
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.
- [26:29]
Hussan
So set this up, by the way, for our younger audience. By the way, I was born in 1985.
- [26:32]
Annie Jacobson
Okay, so here you go.
- [26:33]
Hussan
Take us through this.
- [26:34]
Annie Jacobson
What is the day after 1983?
- [26:35]
Hussan
It's a film in 1983.
- [26:37]
Annie Jacobson
You're not even conceived yet.
- [26:38]
Hussan
I'm not even conceived yet. Just real quick, because I don't know if I'm gonna have time to watch the movie. What is the premise of the Movie.
- [26:44]
Annie Jacobson
Of the Day After?
- [26:45]
Hussan
Yes.
- [26:45]
Annie Jacobson
Oh, it's just very simple. It's like a nuclear exchange between Russia, then called the Soviet Union, and the United States. That simple. What's going on?
- [26:58]
Hussan
Those are Minuteman missiles.
- [27:00]
Annie Jacobson
Like a test, sort of like a warning.
- [27:04]
Hussan
They're on their way to Russia.
- [27:09]
Annie Jacobson
Reagan watches the film.
- [27:11]
Hussan
A made for TV movie, by the way.
- [27:13]
Annie Jacobson
Made for TV. 100 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. Eyewitness, 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 gonna die. This is madness, right? And what does he do? He takes action. He reaches out to Gorbachev.
- [28:15]
Hussan
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.
- [28:31]
Annie Jacobson
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 presidents, I think is so profound that it cannot be understated.
- [28:45]
Hussan
Well, what's so interesting is the movies that I watched growing up, all those movies that I listed, Mission Impossible, True Lies, these movies from the 90s.
- [28:51]
Annie Jacobson
Yes.
- [28:52]
Hussan
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 and what the consequences would be.
- [29:07]
Annie Jacobson
And that's what I wanted to show in, in in my book. And that's why I take you through nuclear winter.
- [29:13]
Hussan
Right.
- [29:13]
Annie Jacobson
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.
- [29:36]
Hussan
What if they packaged your book with the reissue of the Day After? That could be like a cool like tandem pack.
- [29:42]
Annie Jacobson
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 auteur director like Christopher Nolan writes and directs. In the hands of an auteur like that, I can't wait for the movie.
- [30:01]
Hussan
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, 100 million people watch the Day After. But just for Context and scale, 889 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 9x it with Mr. Beast.
- [30:34]
Annie Jacobson
I think we need Mr. Beast to read the audiobook of nuclear wars. Or he can do it with me. We can go back and forth.
- [30:41]
Hussan
So this is my pitch. Is the two of you.
- [30:43]
Annie Jacobson
Oh, wow.
- [30:44]
Hussan
In a YouTube thumbnail. And we let him make a video about him making a tactical nuke. So he goes like, I'm Jimmy, aka Mr. Beast. I am 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.
- [31:01]
Annie Jacobson
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 of most of us. Which is absurd, right? 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.
- [31:40]
Hussan
Apparently, dating involves asking a lot of questions. Now, I wouldn't know. I nabbed my wife the old fashioned way. I stalked her on a collegiate Bollywood dance team. But that's not everybody else's story. So yes, most agree the best way to start a relationship is by figuring out if you're compatible or not. Well, the same goes if you're hiring. You definitely want to address key questions first to see if someone could be right for your role. And that's why you need ZipRecruiter, which is today's sponsor. When you post your job, ZipRecruiter suggests screening questions to help you hone in on top candidates faster. And today you can try it for free@ziprecruiter.com Hussan ZipRecruiter also employs matching technology to help you find quality candidates immediately. You can also see who's been recently active so you know if a candidate is actively looking or if they're trying to ghost you. You can ask key questions and hire faster. With ZipRecruiter. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the the first day. You can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com Huston Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com Hussan Meet your match on ZipRecruiter this episode of HMDK is brought to you by Booking.com I love to travel, but I can't say that it's easy. My family has never been described as low maintenance. We all have different ideas of relaxing. What is fun for my 70 year old parents is the opposite of what is fun for my younger cousins. Thankfully, booking.com offers a wide array of hotels and vacation rentals across the United States, so there is something for everyone, even those who are impossible to please. I'm talking about you dad. Whether you're booking for yourself or your picky parents or da boys group chat, you can find exactly what you are booking for. For example, my number one request at a hotel or a rental is a sauna. Now I will settle for a steam room, but I got to sweat out my demons. Speaking of, my kids appreciate a touch of whimsy. A cute window seat to read on, a water slide in the pool. A massive pile of construction dirt next door. They're not picky. Dare I say if we can find our Perfect stay on booking.com, anyone can find exactly what you are booking for@booking.com booking. Yeah, book today on the site or in the app. Valentine's Day has become quite the racket. Ladies and gentlemen. I want to celebrate with my boo. But I don't want a mandatory eight course tasting menu. Especially as someone with dietary restrictions. I'm looking at you, pork and alcohol. That is why I am making Bina dinner this year for Valentine's Day. And it's never been easier. Now that I can use Whole Foods as my one stop shop. Whole Foods has anything you could possibly want for a romantic meal. Fresh herbs, sustainably wild, caught or responsibly farmed seafood, and antibiotic free steaks. Because nothing is more romantic than antibiotic free steaks. And don't skip dessert. This is arguably the whole point of the entire holiday. They've got heart shaped cakes and my favorite chocolate covered strawberries. Plus I can get my girl a bouquet of flowers. They even have arrangements in vases already. Are you hearing this? They're in vases. I don't have to arrange the flowers or go to multiple stores. It's the perfect way for us busy professionals to be thoughtful or for lazy people to seem thoughtful. Taste the love all month at Whole Foods Market and happy Valentine's Day. Obviously, the general public has certain conceptions about what nuclear weapons are and what the consequences are.
- [34:46]
Annie Jacobson
Yes.
- [34:47]
Hussan
But I want to talk about some misconceptions. Can we do that?
- [34:49]
Annie Jacobson
Absolutely.
- [34:50]
Hussan
Let's go down the rabbit hole. Let's talk about misconception number one. Who controls nuclear weapons? Because it's not who you think. Annie Jacobson, who controls nuclear weapons.
- [35:00]
Annie Jacobson
The President of the United States launches nuclear war by himself. I am the chosen one.
- [35:06]
Hussan
Somebody had to do it.
- [35:07]
Annie Jacobson
He doesn't ask permission of the Secretary of Defense, not the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and not the U.S. congress. 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 morning that's gonna take 30ish 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 SecDef 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.
- [35:54]
Hussan
I mean, this seems crazy.
- [35:56]
Annie Jacobson
It seems crazy. It is crazy. I mean, it really is insane.
- [36:00]
Hussan
But why are we cool with this?
- [36:02]
Annie Jacobson
It's the way it's been set up since 1960.
- [36:06]
Hussan
What's the rule for other countries?
- [36:08]
Annie Jacobson
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.
- [36:24]
Hussan
But the president, you know, when he goes over and then, like, Narendra Modi hugs the president and they do this and, like, they shake, does he ever just go like, hey, what's your guys's nuke itunes user agreement? Like. Like, I know what ours is, but what's yours? Because we are holding hands right now and swinging them. Can we just talk about the nuclear.
- [36:38]
Annie Jacobson
That should be said. That should be asked, but it's not okay, because it's all very, you know, behind the veil.
- [36:44]
Hussan
It's uncouth to ask.
- [36:46]
Annie Jacobson
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.
- [36:59]
Hussan
Is it safe to assume that all of these countries that I'm mentioning, India, Pakistan, Russia, they can all launch nuclear weapons unilaterally?
- [37:07]
Annie Jacobson
And when you say unilaterally, you mean one leader?
- [37:09]
Hussan
One leader can make the decision to just go, Yep, I'm pressing the button.
- [37:12]
Annie Jacobson
Almost certainly. Almost certainly it's in the hands of the. 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. With a lot of countries like China, we know almost nothing about.
- [37:26]
Hussan
In regards to the US President, what is nuclear football?
- [37:32]
Annie Jacobson
Nuclear football is that satchel that is carried around by the guy trailing behind the president at all times. He's called the military aide.
- [37:42]
Hussan
And in all four years, Annie, I.
- [37:44]
Annie Jacobson
Mean, 365 days a year, 24 7.
- [37:47]
Hussan
How close is this gentleman or person?
- [37:49]
Annie Jacobson
Always within arms, always within arm's reach.
- [37:51]
Hussan
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.
- [37:57]
Annie Jacobson
Behind the curtain, like, right there, drinking.
- [37:59]
Hussan
From a crystal geyser bottle.
- [38:00]
Annie Jacobson
A hundred percent. Always Christmas Day, Christmas day outside the bedroom. Lou Merletti, who's the Former director of the Secret Service went with President Clinton to Syria.
- [38:10]
Hussan
Yeah.
- [38:10]
Annie Jacobson
And the former President Assad, the father, he gets into the elevator with Clinton, and then the Syrian guys are like, no. You know, want the guy with the football to go somewhere else. And it was a standoff. There was no way Merledi was going to let the President separate from the football. That's his job.
- [38:30]
Hussan
And the football is basically the briefcase with the nuclear codes in it.
- [38:33]
Annie Jacobson
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 as 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.
- [38:49]
Hussan
It has been described by a former military aide as a Denny's menu.
- [38:56]
Annie Jacobson
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.
- [39:25]
Hussan
Yes.
- [39:25]
Annie Jacobson
Which weapon 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.
- [39:45]
Hussan
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.
- [39:53]
Annie Jacobson
He has ptsd, I'm sure. Reading a Denny's menu.
- [39:58]
Hussan
What's he doing now?
- [39:59]
Annie Jacobson
I think he tweets a lot about his former experience as the mill aide.
- [40:03]
Hussan
Oh, man. He's just tweeting into the oblivion. He's like, you guys have no idea how much info I have.
- [40:09]
Annie Jacobson
I mean, that is an interesting point you raised. There are systems of classification which I bet you didn't even know exist. Like, have you ever heard of eci?
- [40:17]
Hussan
No.
- [40:18]
Annie Jacobson
Exceptionally Controlled information. You have to have a Q clearance. You have to have a top secret sei. 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.
- [40:36]
Hussan
When you were speaking to all these generals, were you impressed with their level of knowledge?
- [40:40]
Annie Jacobson
Absolutely. I mean, I, you know, as a reporter, I. I am not. I'm 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. Shall I give you one example?
- [41:35]
Hussan
Sure, please.
- [41:37]
Annie Jacobson
So, you know, 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 the 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.
- [41:55]
Hussan
Yes.
- [41:56]
Annie Jacobson
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, right? 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.
- [42:21]
Hussan
I promise you, it's not about you.
- [42:22]
Annie Jacobson
It's not gonna. They're not coming for you. They're actually gonna go over you.
- [42:25]
Hussan
You.
- [42:26]
Annie Jacobson
It's an absurd premise.
- [42:27]
Hussan
It's really. Yeah. I mean, I felt that many times in many of the allegories from the book. Because really, what you've presented, Annie, is what I call 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 this is. If I'm giving away the ending. Juliet then wakes up and is like, aww, Bae'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 out of here.
- [43:18]
Annie Jacobson
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.
- [43:32]
Hussan
And what's really interesting is in both, 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.
- [43:47]
Annie Jacobson
There's an idea in defense department nomenclature of an enemy and the enemy you kill. You know, 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, the end conclusion of my reporting on this subject is, is that you can't have this enemy approach. You know, that's where nuclear threats become so dangerous.
- [44:22]
Hussan
The clouds that 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 one misunderstanding when miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation. So what happens if the president is killed? Are there some military people that are pre authorized to launch a strike?
- [44:45]
Annie Jacobson
This is an area of the nuclear command and control architecture that I really drilled 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 and got to one of the underground bunkers so that he would be the sort of sane voice that would Prevail that would try to keep the line of succession in order.
- [45:42]
Hussan
What type of person becomes a STRATCOM commander? What's this personality type?
- [45:47]
Annie Jacobson
General Keiller was going to be a music teacher.
- [45:51]
Hussan
And then hard pivot into hard pivot. I want to play high stakes poker at the nuclear level.
- [45:56]
Annie Jacobson
Well, 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 have a nuclear war.
- [46:08]
Hussan
Precisely.
- [46:09]
Annie Jacobson
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.
- [46:19]
Hussan
And what's pinned now?
- [46:21]
Annie Jacobson
That was removed.
- [46:22]
Hussan
Now it's like the ICE Sabrina Carpenter video or something like that.
- [46:25]
Annie Jacobson
I don't know why.
- [46:25]
Hussan
Have you seen that video where it's ice but Sabrina Carpenter. No. I'll put you in jail if you're.
- [46:30]
Annie Jacobson
I haven't seen it.
- [46:31]
Hussan
And then Sabrina was like, take it down. And then now they re uploaded one and it's Sabrina Carpenter with Marcelo Hernandez. And so now the rumor is, is ICE alleging that Marcelo 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, is ICE alleging that Marcelo's illegal?
- [46:49]
Annie Jacobson
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. That's how you become a general that wants to be the head of Stratford.
- [47:05]
Hussan
And by that, just so we can be specific, deterrence will hold means cooler minds will prevail. Is that another way of saying absolutely.
- [47:10]
Annie Jacobson
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. So just know deterrence will hold, prevention will hold. But I found a clip of the deputy commander of StratCom, General Bussier, 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 Keelers of the world believe in their position, at least this is my feeling of having interviewed people in the new. The command and control architecture is that they believe deterrence will hold. What if it doesn't?
- [47:56]
Hussan
Not to escalate this, but let's go there. Let's talk about nuclear submarines. Okay, you talk about this in the book and not to get Graphic. I almost my pants. Let's take a look. A nuclear powered submarine is a nightmare weapon system. An object as dangerous to human existence as an incoming asteroid. I mean so you're basically describing the Death Star, but absolutely.
- [48:26]
Annie Jacobson
And 14 of them, we have 14 of them.
- [48:28]
Hussan
And where are they?
- [48:29]
Annie Jacobson
They are stealthily hidden around the ocean. They're not all out at sea at the same time, but they are there. And also Russia and China have these subs, North Korea has 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 substitute how close they get to America's shores and it's within a couple hundred miles.
- [49:19]
Hussan
How did you find this map?
- [49:20]
Annie Jacobson
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 publicly available it's. Publicly, it's in my book now.
- [49:30]
Hussan
I mean this is really terrifying. Like we, we just 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.
- [49:50]
Annie Jacobson
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. An 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. Yeah, 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 with an. 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. That's.
- [50:42]
Hussan
Can those missiles be pulled back?
- [50:44]
Annie Jacobson
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 Scenario, in my opinion, in addition to Mr. Beast is the President. The President of the United States. Now the current President of the United States said he read it on a podcast.
- [51:41]
Hussan
Oh, cool.
- [51:42]
Annie Jacobson
I mean, do we know if that's true? Do we know if he reads? We don't.
- [51:47]
Hussan
Who knows?
- [51:48]
Annie Jacobson
But this is what was said.
- [51:49]
Hussan
Do you believe the President read your book?
- [51:51]
Annie Jacobson
I'd like to think he did.
- [51:54]
Hussan
And he. I don't think he did. Do you remember when they asked him about the Bible? An Old Testament guy or a New Testament, probably equal. I think it's just an incredible. I just think the Bible is just something very special. You got to drop it. 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians, right? 2 Corinthians, 3, 17. That's the whole ball game.
- [52:16]
Annie Jacobson
We have all these crises brewing around the world with the opposite of cooler heads prevailing, you know, with real hot heads 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 happened. And it is so shocking to learn about this. It's the judgment of one person that prevented World War Three that just said, I'm not gonna 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 once crisis unfolds. Because that's what the Cuban Missile Crisis was.
- [53:17]
Hussan
When Joe Neanderthal the caveman battled it out with his enemy. Even primitive man soon developed a better weapon. Thus the struggle to develop weapons and counter weapons continued through the century. 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 whose 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 Arkhipov. During the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, for 13 days, the United States had a standoff with the Soviet Union after the Americans discovered that the Soviets placed nuclear weapons in Cuba. What kind of rockets missiles are 1500 miles range. We're pointing at American cities with thousands of nuclear missiles on hair trigger alert. A single miscommunication, a miscalculation or technical glitch could have triggered a full scale mission. 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. My dad was 7 years old on that day. On that day, a Soviet sub armed with a nuclear torpedo had been cut off from Moscow by radio for days, and American ships were dropping depth charges onto it. The sub's captain became convinced that World War III had started. So he ordered the nuclear torpedo prepared for launch, which would almost certainly have escalated the situation into a full blown 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 Arkhipov, happened to be on board. Okay. And he insisted that they surface the sub and await further orders. Now, here's the 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 Arkhipov may have saved the world, but mostly it was just luck. Another person who probably saved us from nuclear war is Stanislav Petrov. On September 26, 1983, in a moment of extremely high tension between America and the Soviet Union.
- [55:41]
Annie Jacobson
Frankly, this is all scary talk, but the Soviet Union means it to be.
- [55:45]
Hussan
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. But crucially, Petrov hesitated. Thank God, he hesitated. Something felt 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 red 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 2. No bad boys for life. No Bad Boys. Riders 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. Okay, okay, I'm done terrorizing you and giving you 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.
- [57:30]
Annie Jacobson
I mean, perimeter was designed long before AI was even close to, you know, 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. 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 general, 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 about finger on the button. You can be dead to have it launch. It's a great metaphor to think about what. What could happen with AI now, when 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, their computer, you know, systems talking to one another. Those could be hacked. Those could be overrun by. By or, you know, by AI and then you have a situation where you're not in control of your nuclear weapons. Not you Know if that's scary, I'll tell you something even scarier because I was doing.
- [59:04]
Hussan
I mean, we're already here, we're already.
- [59:05]
Annie Jacobson
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 Nakasoni, in addition to being terrified like you, of nuclear war, who actually read the book, suggested to me that I write, you know, 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.
- [59:50]
Hussan
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.
- [60:04]
Annie Jacobson
Okay, do you want to guess?
- [60:07]
Hussan
A thousand or so people that play dress rehearsal that almost have to do their version of stop, drop and roll.
- [60:14]
Annie Jacobson
Good guess. So far off.
- [60:16]
Hussan
Okay.
- [60:17]
Annie Jacobson
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, every, all of these individuals. There are hundreds of thousands of people involved.
- [60:41]
Hussan
Is it true that an admiral who once staffed the nuclear bunker under the Pentagon, they told you they practice three times every day telling the President that he needs to launch the nukes.
- [60:49]
Annie Jacobson
Yes. And that, do you want a little few details on that story? After the book published, I got a call from Admiral Conner who was in charge of the nuclear sub fleet.
- [60:56]
Hussan
Yes.
- [60:57]
Annie Jacobson
The handmaidens of the populace. He was in charge of them.
- [60:59]
Hussan
Yes.
- [61:00]
Annie Jacobson
And he gave me this very, you know, 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, okay, so, but where.
- [61:13]
Hussan
Are you guys grabbing lunch with the fourth general? Grand Lux Cafe factory. Like where do you go to have this conversation?
- [61:19]
Annie Jacobson
Where do you go? Well, he happens to live, of course, in, near, you know, New London, Connecticut, which is where the submarines are. We have lunch at like this, you know, seafood restaurant.
- [61:27]
Hussan
Amazing.
- [61:28]
Annie Jacobson
I thought I was going to, you know, 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, okay. I said, once a month. No, more once a week. You know, I mean, once a day. And he said, no, three times a day. There are three shifts at the Pentagon.
- [61:51]
Hussan
Oh, my God.
- [61:51]
Annie Jacobson
And they, by the way, they just go through what's, you know, 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.
- [62:07]
Hussan
What exactly are they practicing?
- [62:09]
Annie Jacobson
They are practicing launch orders, how to give those orders and how to make it happen. And you want to. Okay, you want one more detail?
- [62:15]
Hussan
Yes.
- [62:16]
Annie Jacobson
So this hap. When this happened, Donald Rumsfeld was Secretary of Defense. Remember him?
- [62:21]
Hussan
Of course.
- [62:22]
Annie Jacobson
And usually, according to Admiral Connors, he's dead now, right? He is dead now.
- [62:26]
Hussan
Yeah, Rip.
- [62:27]
Annie Jacobson
And usually it's, oh, he died the.
- [62:30]
Hussan
Same day Zoron got elected.
- [62:32]
Annie Jacobson
Did he really?
- [62:33]
Hussan
He was right.
- [62:34]
Annie Jacobson
Yeah. No, that was Cheney.
- [62:35]
Hussan
Dick Cheney died the same day Zoran was elected. Yeah, yeah.
- [62:38]
Annie Jacobson
But normally it's like Rumsfeld's deputy goes through the motions the three times a day. But Admiral Conner told me that Rumsfeld himself came in. I want to see this happen. And so they went through it, and it involves a lot of like, sort of nomenclature, like code words and code this and code that. And he said, rumsfeld interrupted and said, no, I want it so I can understand it in regular language. Okay, sir. So they went through it with him in regular language he could understand. And he. And then he said, okay, then what? And they said, it doesn't matter. We didn't get the nukes launched because it takes. It took too long to explain it to you. So we're all dead.
- [63:17]
Hussan
Okay, so Donald Rumsfeld basically pulled this with his commanders, which is like, hey, can you explain two 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 went, my what? Let me get my reading glasses. And then I go, listen, Mr. Rumsfeld, we're all dead now.
- [63:37]
Annie Jacobson
That's exactly. That is exactly what happened, according to the former commander of the nuclear subforce.
- [63:44]
Hussan
How did Donald Rumsfeld take that info? Did he take it with a laugh?
- [63:46]
Annie Jacobson
I'm sure he was upset. I mean, he was not an easy person to get along with, from what I understand.
- [63:51]
Hussan
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?
- [64:02]
Annie Jacobson
No, absolutely not. And we can talk about nuclear winter if you want.
- [64:07]
Hussan
What is nuclear winter?
- [64:09]
Annie Jacobson
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 or 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.
- [64:55]
Hussan
Wow.
- [64:56]
Annie Jacobson
So what would happen is there would be something like £300 billion 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 ray, the soot blotting out the sun's rays. 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.
- [65:27]
Hussan
So we'd basically be the dinosaurs.
- [65:29]
Annie Jacobson
70% of species died when that asteroid hit.
- [65:33]
Hussan
Have you seen the Land Before Time animated movie about. Okay, basically a group of dinosaurs that are very courageous, led by Littlefoot. It's a ragtag group of dinosaurs that make it okay to the Great Valley.
- [65:49]
Annie Jacobson
Okay.
- [65:50]
Hussan
Your story of nuclear winter reminded me of that. And I'll be honest. Have you ever thought about what would you 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.
- [66:00]
Annie Jacobson
I mean, there's a great quote by Nikita Khrushchev, the former Soviet premier, where he says the survivors would envy the dead.
- [66:10]
Hussan
Then why do all these billionaires have these doomsday bunkers? What are they thinking they're going to be able to survive?
- [66:16]
Annie Jacobson
I mean, I have actually had conversations with those individuals. I've been sort of, like, asked, hey, could we get a little more information on this? You know, I mean, 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 Toon, 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, you know, in time. Because by the time you realize nuclear war is happening, you're under that 72 minute time you got to get to the airport to get your G5 going. I mean, it's not. There's not logistics.
- [67:02]
Hussan
It's legit.
- [67:04]
Annie Jacobson
It's legit. Forget the bags, you just run. Not even still might not get there in time. That's literal.
- [67:09]
Hussan
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, did you ever go like, this guy's a loser.
- [67:20]
Annie Jacobson
Not my place.
- [67:21]
Hussan
So you 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 have a gun.
- [67:37]
Annie Jacobson
This is why we all love zombie movies and, you know, apocalyptic dystopian movies. Because 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. Hiya, Julia. Louis Dreyfus here from the Wiser Than Me podcast. Among other things. And I've got a bit of a hot take. Our relationship to our food can feel disconnected. We don't always know how or where our food is grown. And if we throw food scraps in the garbage, we don't think about where it's going. Or at least we try not to. One way that I get back a little of that connection is by using my mill food recycler. Sure, mill has totally changed my home life in a lot of practical ways. It works automatically. You can fill it for weeks. It never, ever smells. But this is also really important. When I use mill, I'm participating in a circular system. All the food I don't eat is helping to grow the food that I do. It makes me feel like I'm part of something bigger. And that feels really, really good. And it's all so ridiculously easy. I just drop my scraps in my mill and it transforms them into nutrient rich grounds overnight. I have mine sent to a small farm, but if I wanted to, I could use them in my gard or for my backyard chickens, if I wanted backyard chickens. And I don't know, maybe I do now, maybe I don't. Anyway, maybe mill is transforming me too, just a little. If you want to feel more connected or you just want your kitchen to feel less gross, try mill's risk free trial and just live with it for a while. Go to mill.com wiser for an exclusive offer.
- [69:47]
Hussan
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.
- [69:55]
Annie Jacobson
That's from one of the only declassified nuclear war games that exists. It's called Proud Prophet. I print a copy of it in.
- [70:04]
Hussan
The book war game in 1983.
- [70:06]
Annie Jacobson
In 1983. Before you were born.
- [70:08]
Hussan
Yes.
- [70:08]
Annie Jacobson
The copy I printed is just all redacted. It's just black, 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 is 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, not 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's 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.
- [71:00]
Hussan
I would hope so.
- [71:01]
Annie Jacobson
I would hope. But what's being done about it?
- [71:07]
Hussan
Your book, Mr. Beast, and we did check the movie, is available on YouTube the day after, the day after. 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. They go, I really can't do that, guys. This is too much.
- [71:40]
Annie Jacobson
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.
- [71:54]
Hussan
There's a group of people that are just ready to go and there's no, there's no doubt.
- [72:00]
Annie Jacobson
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 groupthink, you know, it's doctrine.
- [72:14]
Hussan
But this is almost individual think, which would 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.
- [72:24]
Annie Jacobson
Well, you're absolutely. I mean, 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 sub guys, those are Russian. The Russians made the individual choices to not launch. We don't have any stories of Americans, you know, 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?
- [72:54]
Hussan
I think it'd 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.
- [73:08]
Annie Jacobson
You 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 some ICBMs, some sub launched ballistic missiles, and the bombers also get sent. So that in the event someone does decide to play hero, somebody else plays bomb dropper.
- [73:49]
Hussan
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. 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 could not be used. So you can have deterrence with an even lower number of weapons. Well, then why stop there? Why not continue on? Why not get rid of them altogether? Do you believe what he's saying?
- [74:40]
Annie Jacobson
I mean, that's 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 can be done. That's the whole point of the conversation. Reduce the arsenals. We don't need thousands.
- [75:29]
Hussan
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.
- [75:38]
Annie Jacobson
We do have a new corner, 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, 193 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 armed 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.
- [76:33]
Hussan
Are 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.
- [76:59]
Annie Jacobson
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.
- [77:09]
Hussan
Yeah.
- [77:10]
Annie Jacobson
But it is not how it began. Which is the real problem at the heart of the matter when. When you think about it sort of poetically. So, in other words, the insanity of nuclear weapons is that in the 50s, 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 60s, when analysts realize there's no way to win a nuclear war, we're all going to die. Okay? Now we got this other idea, deterrence.
- [77:50]
Hussan
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.
- [77:56]
Annie Jacobson
It was your gun in the bank robber idea. Like, this is gonna really work. This is gonna help us.
- [78:01]
Hussan
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 am going to use this if you push me. And it's used as a threat to get what. What he wants.
- [78:23]
Annie Jacobson
And we all know from the Hollywood movies we've been talking about, the gun eventually goes off, Right? Somebody gets shot.
- [78:29]
Hussan
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. Everyone, the strong ones and the less than strong ones, Every option.
- [78:46]
Annie Jacobson
I keep all options on the table to prevent.
- [78:47]
Hussan
Prevent a nuclear. We also wanted to make it clear that all options are on the table.
- [78:51]
Annie Jacobson
We are not taking any option off the table at all.
- [78:54]
Hussan
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?
- [79:07]
Annie Jacobson
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. Now we're talking, in my opinion. Now we're over into a different threshold. So I would actually say, you know, even though we're talking semantics, that. 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 is. That's different to me. To me than all options are on the table.
- [79:48]
Hussan
To me, they're both nice ways of saying the same thing. You an example. All options are on the table. Try using that in your regular life. Okay, 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, right, all options are on the table.
- [80:02]
Annie Jacobson
Don't make me laugh about this stuff. That's so serious. You're absolutely right.
- [80:06]
Hussan
You know what?
- [80:06]
Annie Jacobson
It is? You're absolutely right.
- [80:08]
Hussan
And BAE would not be happy with that. She's like, what the. You mean. What does that mean?
- [80:11]
Annie Jacobson
Right, Right.
- [80:12]
Hussan
I'll tell you what option shouldn't be on the table. You're not going to. That's the option that's on the table.
- [80:17]
Annie Jacobson
Touche. 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.
- [80:26]
Hussan
That's what I'm saying, Annie, is that it's always. Look, the fact that he's doing it in a Brooks Brothers suit and someone else is doing it in court, the pajama, doesn't make the consequences to humanity any different. That's my point, Annie. 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 caved a nuclear blackmail.
- [80:49]
Annie Jacobson
In Ukraine, Vladimir Putin trying to blackmail us all into capitulating, North Korea may try to get the upper hand through nuclear blackmail.
- [80:57]
Hussan
What we saw with the Iranian regime is another example of nuclear blackmail. But isn't America also essentially doing the same thing?
- [81:05]
Annie Jacobson
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. And it's meant that way. The fact that you have an arsenal. But again, this is. 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 why do they exist? This is the catch 22.
- [81:42]
Hussan
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 it.
- [82:08]
Annie Jacobson
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 e O. He can decide. 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, you know, naive or call me over informed. One or the other. It doesn't matter. We need to reduce the arsenals. Moving toward.
- [82:55]
Hussan
I couldn't agree more. And I think the the only path forward is finding the way to have global disarmament.
- [83:02]
Annie Jacobson
We could solve the problem if we had the e. I need to get you Mr.
- [83:08]
Hussan
Beast, Jimmy aka Mr. Beast and or a president needs to sign the executive order. Yes, that's our path. That's our path. That's okay.
- [83:18]
Annie Jacobson
One or the other.
- [83:22]
Hussan
Have you subscribed to Lemonada premium yet? You can listen carefully 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.