← Truth in the Barrel
Truth in the Barrel
In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen
00:40:26
Truth in the Barrel | Devil’s Cut | In Conversation With Annie Jacobsen Amy and Denver talk to Annie Jacobsen, writer or television’s Jack Ryan series and author of “Nuclear War : A Scenario” about our status regarding nuclear...
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- [00:01]
Amy McGrath
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Denver Riggleman
FOREIGN.
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Amy McGrath
Welcome to Truth in the barrel devil's cut. I'm Amy McGrath with Denver Riggleman. Today we are talking more about nuclear weapons and nuclear war. Why? Because it is super important issue that we need to understand a lot more about. If you take us back to the Cold War, we had two nations that built up massive arsenals of nuclear weapons that could be launched in the air, they could be launched from the ground or from the ocean. And we had massive arsenals of bigger and bigger bombs. Okay. And over time it in the 1960s, we had serious leaders in this country and in the Soviet Union that decided, hey, this isn't smart. The destructive power of these weapons is so big that a war itself would destroy all of us. So let's try to limit some of these weapons. And that was the start of arms control. And so you might think, well, the Cold War is over and so we don't have to deal with this stuff anymore. That is not true. We have actually multiple threats and a very complex world with China and Russia having nuclear weapons, rogue states like North Korea now having nuclear weapons, the potential for Iran. And in the current age of Donald Trump, we have our allies and partners now thinking they might need to get nuclear weapons. And so we have to talk about all of this stuff. So joining us today is an amazing author of a book called Nuclear War A Scenario. Her name is Annie Jacobson. And we're going to bring her in to talk about nuclear weapons. And what Americans need to know right.
- [02:36]
Annie Jacobson
Now doesn't get better than this.
- [02:39]
Amy McGrath
And there she is. Welcome to our special guest, Annie Jacobson, author of Nuclear War A Scenario. And I'll just start out. I'm not going to ask the first question, Annie. Denver is going to do that. But I just have to tell you, I've studied nuclear weapons for a long time and your book was the best book I have ever read that could really portray the destructive power of these weapons to everyday Americans. So thank you for being on our.
- [03:11]
Denver Riggleman
Show, Andy, thank you so much for.
- [03:13]
Annie Jacobson
Having me And Annie, I tell you, you know, reading the book you brought me back, I'll tell you that, because you know my background, United States Air Force to nsa, then I did Joint Special Projects. So when you were talking about def smack, talking about global strike at StratCom, when you were talking about Cheyenne Mountain, when you're talking about Peterson, when you're talking about Fort Belvoir, when you're talking about the ADF in Denver at Buckley, I. I've been to all those places. And your research, the way that you actually threaded it and how those multiple commands and multiple lines of communications work. Annie, well done. I. Well done. You know, and so my first question, I want to throw out a question so that you can go where you want to go, but I hope you're excited about this. So, you know, Amy and I have both written books. We know it's. It's a bit of a timeline. So I have a bit of a question after looking at everything you did in your book, you know, talking about the chaos, fog of war, chain of command issues, when you're going to confusion right in your actual lines of communication or how your orders are processed, all the things that me and Amy have done on tabletops, you know, our whole life. If you wrote the book and started it today, which you've already seen in the first four and a half months of the Trump administration, I know if you have been asked this yet, Annie, but if you wrote the book today, do you think it would even have more elements of chaos? Do you think you would still structure it the same? Or have you seen things since you've written the book during the Trump administration that lead you to believe that maybe you were onto something in some of the things that you were actually identifying in your book?
- [04:45]
Denver Riggleman
Okay, multiple questions. I mean, first of all, it's so great to be here with two of you who are, as you said, have done tabletop exercises like this. You guys are what I would call the real inside baseball players. And what's remarkable about that, and it's so exciting that we get to talk about this, but I'm going to preface it by saying that, you know, as a journalist and an author, and of course, this is not my first rodeo. This is my seventh book. I always write about, know a lot of rodeos. Yes. But my job is to be able to present information to we, the people of which I am one. And so when I get these, you know, words of high praise from individuals like you, it's. It's extraordinarily gratifying. Because it allows me to recognize I am doing my job, which is take the information from those in the know, the, the alpha people, if you will. Right. The highest ranking people all the way and all kinds of people throughout the chain of command and then be able to relay that information to those of us folks that really want to understand this threat that impacts all of us. As you know, spoiler alert, the end of my book, 5 billion people are dead. And so we should know and we want to know and hopefully we do know. And I've been overwhelmed by people reading this book. It's been extraordinarily well read. And not only that, in 28 countries around the world, people saying, saying, you know, I did, I had no idea. Then they say, now I know. So to answer the question specifically, I don't think I would do anything differently. And I'm gonna, we can dig into that, but I'll tell you precisely why. One of the reasons I believe my book is popular is because no one knows my politics, which doesn't mean I can't talk about them. But this issue impacts all of us. And so there's no political component of the book. It is potus. President of the United and we let people infer, and I know you guys do too, you infer and make your judgments about individuals, judgment about individuals, cognition, another important factor in a POTUS in charge of with sole presidential authority. And so what I would hope is that the book would never change. Ironically, terribly, what I demonstrate is what was true in the Cold war in the 1950s about nuclear weapons launching is true today.
- [07:25]
Amy McGrath
Yeah. In other words, the president. And one of the things that struck me also about the book and Denver's question is the president could be completely rational and like the best president we've ever had. And look, listeners know that I do not believe that the current president fits that category, but we could have the best one ever and this scenario could happen and it could happen with very rational thinking and the world could be destroyed, basically, or certainly our country destroyed, our democracy destroyed. And I just feel like one of the things that you said in your book about presidents, almost all presidents are under informed about how to wage nuclear war when it happens. Can you talk about that? Because we think that the president should know more than we do, but they don't.
- [08:28]
Denver Riggleman
You would absolutely think. I mean, and those words of wisdom, I might add, come from two former secretaries of defense whom I interviewed for the book, among scores of others, and that particular, in particular Leon Panetta, who before he was SecDef was director of CIA for listeners and before that the White House chief of staff, which gives him a breadth and scope of understanding about the President across multiple decades and multiple administrations. And that is remarkable. When Panetta said to me that indeed many presidents are under informed, that original thought was, you know, made very clear by former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry, who was very vociferous on the record about how under informed presidents are and how dangerous that is. And this is a very, it's complex when you hear something like that coming from a former SecDef. But it's also imperative because I find remarkable that individuals in their later stages of life and these, you know, I never expected to be a reporter who spends the lion's share of her work interviewing, you know, men in their 80s and 90s. And I say men because nuclear command and control, they were all men.
- [09:48]
Amy McGrath
Yeah.
- [09:49]
Denver Riggleman
In the Cold War. And so it is interesting from a sort of philosophical point of view, or all of us looking at our own humanity, when you think an older person reflects differently upon what it was like to be there and advise the president than the younger person, the younger self.
- [10:11]
Annie Jacobson
And I mean that's, it's, it's sort of brilliant to put it that way. You know, I deployed in a moment of chaos right after 9 11. Right. Annie, which is, you know, chaos. And reading the book, I thought of 9 11. I also thought of. And Annie, I'd love to talk to you sometime about the incompetence, chaos and comms of January 6th and just, you know, National Guard issues, you know, trying to get them to the Capitol that day. So I have another question and I think I sort of know as, as I'm reading through this, but I think, I think people who haven't read your book yet, which they absolutely need to read, would love to know when you're looking at the redundancies in systems and the redundancies and personnel and the way that they carve up the mission sets when it comes to not only intercepting nuclear weapons, but looking at weapons options or offensive options. As you were, as you were writing your book, you're like, my goodness, did you have any ideas where, you know what, maybe we don't need this many redundancies or were you sort of like, maybe we need more? And you know, I know that's an incredible question with somebody. Me and Amy have been in the, in chaos and trust me, we've in chaos, both of us. And sometimes you're like, my God, there's so many stupid things happening right now that there's no way we need this many freaking, you know, cooks in the kitchen. There's just too much going on in the soup. We just need a directed order. We need a directed line. This is ridiculous. But I've also had times when I got the wrong control coordinates, and if we didn't have redundancies, I would have actually killed somebody on the ground with a GPS weapon if we didn't have a redundant way of actually doing targeting. So when you look at this, I know this isn't the easiest question, but I. But I'd love to know your opinion. More or less redundancies and the context in that. And I know there's complexities there. Where did you see places you writing the book with everybody you talk to, where somebody said, you know what, Annie, we need to cut this. This is ludicrous. There's just too many cooks in the kitchen. Or are there not enough? Or is it somewhere in between?
- [12:04]
Denver Riggleman
So it's so interesting that you speak of systems, of systems, because that is the. The sort of. It's a big machine, and when you can really realize how many different components of the system there are, that in and of itself is astonishing. And they are all so important. When I learned Strat from interviewing a StratCom commander, there are 150,000 individuals at the ready beneath him in the chain of command. That is just a stunning number that almost guaranteed Americans don't know, because I certainly didn't know it. And writing this book was just learning one fact after the next. This is coming from someone who has studied, you know, war and weapons all her career, and yet every component of nuclear war literally stunned me. But let's break it up for listeners into two different parts, because I think they're important here. One is what happens before. And that to Amy's question, I thought when you were asking about, like, leaders and how important is it? I thought of jfk, because the Cuban Missile crisis is so well known, many amazing books have been written about it. And of course, that was a situation of the old. Cooler heads prevailed because of a president who could lead with extraordinary foresight despite having generals that were pushing him, you know, toward nuclear launch. And so. But that's all before. And I didn't want to write that book or rewrite that book. I want to write a book that was a speculative scenario based essentially on what you guys do. On what? War gaming. Nuclear war gaming. Those jealously guarded secrets inside the Pentagon that happen with astonishing regularity, I learned. And so I take the reader from nuclear launch to nuclear Winter. And in essence, to answer your specific question, redundancy at that point doesn't matter. That's what's so astonishing, I think, about reading the book. Once nuclear war begins, it only ends in nuclear annihilation. Everyone at the Pentagon knows that. Everyone knows that. No one has said to me, you know what, Annie? I'm going to change my opinion and take that back.
- [14:10]
Annie Jacobson
Yeah, yeah, you're right about redundancies going away in a nuclear winter. And I think it's so interesting when you're talking about systems of systems, and you automatically went to the differences between left of boom, boom and post boom, right? And, you know, and I think that's what's amazing about that, is that your left of boom commentary, I think, really sets up what happens, you know, when boom is coming and there's nothing we can do about it. And I think I'm gonna let Amy go to the next one because I could go, and I love that topic, but it's fantastic.
- [14:37]
Amy McGrath
I'm just curious, and you may have already touched on it, but, like, when you were writing this and researching it, what was your aha moment? Like, what. What was the thing that just kind of just blew you away? I think for me, I. I studied weapons of mass destruction at the National Defense University. I did it through the center of Weapons Mass Destruction and then again at Johns Hopkins. So it's sort of my job. At the later part of my career in the military, I was a fighter pilot in the beginning of. Beginning to middle of my career. But in the latter part of my career, my job was thinking about all the bad things that could happen to our country. I mean, that was part of what I did. I was kind of a serious person that thought through these things. So I did a lot of research on this. And I don't think there was a moment that really was my aha moment. It was just mostly over the years understanding the magnitude of these weapons and what they could do. And that's why your book is so amazing to me, because I think for the first time, even after studying all of this stuff and all the technical stuff and going through courses and all of that, that it really came home to me what. What this means. You know, and those of us, like Denver and I, who have. Have done been in the military, we tend to talk about things like targets. For example, they're not humans, they're targets. We sort of whitewash it a little bit in our language. And your book brought it to the human level. And so my question to you is, was There anything that you would like to relay to people that, like, this was the moment for me and my research, that it really hit me.
- [16:22]
Denver Riggleman
Two moments absolutely stand out. And there's an A and a B moment, a and B story, which is kind of like, you know, author lingo, when, you know, you do, as I'm the kind of author that just does interviews and interviews and interviews and reading and research. And then you find the aha moment, and then you understand a certain point in the narrative where that aha moment lives, exists. And then you almost reverse and reverse engineer everything from there. And that was, for me, doing an interview with retired General Robert Keiller, who was the commander of StratCom.
- [17:03]
Amy McGrath
Right.
- [17:03]
Denver Riggleman
And then at one point I said, just cutting right to that question that you kind of don't want to ask, but have to ask, which is what would happen in a full scale nuclear exchange with Russia? And the general said to me, annie, the world could end in the next couple of hours. And it was just a boom. And I went, oh, my God, this is coming from the STRATCOM commander. And I knew that was both the end of the third act before nuclear winter and the moment that it all begins, because that the. The sort of inescapable nature of nuclear war is what terrifies all of us. And the second moment was, I'm also a television writer. For example, I wrote the tell of the Amazon series, Jack Ryan. When you're writing tv, you learn about what's called a B story, and you have to have a B story in there to make sure that people don't leave the television set and go do their laundry. I'm talking literal and, you know, figuratively and literally.
- [18:08]
Amy McGrath
Yeah.
- [18:08]
Denver Riggleman
And so I learned narratively that that's a wise approach because I want readers to stay with me. I write about really complex, deeply disturbing, esoteric, you might say, concepts that you guys are familiar with because you. These. These are your careers. But most Americans don't, can't, won't, etc. How do you make it interesting for them? So in seeking a B story, I thought, well, goodness, you know, this is gonna be very interesting when I find out how continuity of government works, how the president is rushed out of the White House and how he'll wind up at Raven Rock, which is actually the alternate nuclear command and control center from the Pentagon. You guys know that leaders don't know that it's a real place. It's not just in movies. You know, Bill Perry had spoken of it. So I called up Obama's former fema Director Craig Fugate. And in our interviews, I asked him, you know, I just confirmed you guys prepare for nuclear war. Correct. And he said, oh, yes. It is what is called a low probability high consequence event. Wow. He said, we also prepare for asteroid strikes. Wow. Okay. And then he told me a little bit about what's called population protection planning. The acronyms that. You guys are so familiar with. It. That's how FEMA prepares to help people in the event of an earthquake, of, you know, a hurricane, fire. And he said to me, annie, in the event of a nuclear war, there will be no population protection planning because everyone will be dead.
- [19:54]
Amy McGrath
Right.
- [19:55]
Annie Jacobson
It's so big, and it's hard to have a coup plan, a continuity, continuity of operations plan, right. When everybody's dead. You know, it's really difficult to do that.
- [20:05]
Amy McGrath
There's no government left.
- [20:06]
Annie Jacobson
If there was one thing. I don't know if this is a fair question, any, but you have interviewed so many people, you've looked at this process, Amy, and I know a little bit about it. If there was one function that knocked your socks off or one thing, not even like, oh, my God, it's all over. Amy's question was amazing. Was there one function in def. SMAC or STRATCOM or sbirs? When you're looking at SBIRS high and low, is there something where you're like, my God, we can do this. This function just knocks me out. Are you kidding me? Was there ever a time you're like, holy shite. That is incredible.
- [20:42]
Denver Riggleman
Absolutely. And I hope I conveyed that to readers. And I think I might have, you know, given the readability of this book. And. Okay. SBIRS is technologically astonishing. A satellite system one tenth of the way to the moon that can recognize hot rocket exhaust coming back of an ICBM from a nuclear adversary in under a second. So, yes, you know, America's technological capabilities are much to be admired. But on the flip side of that, you have the horror that the. The reason that SBIRS even exists is because an icbm, that is for listeners, an intercontinental ballistic missile that can travel from one side of the Earth to the other in approximately 30 minutes, 33 minutes precisely, from a launchpad in Pyongyang, it cannot be redirected and it cannot be recalled. I'm sure most listeners do not know that if they haven't read the book or didn't work in your world, because everyone tells me that. That I speak to that come to book signings and whatnot. No one knows about. Very few people know about sole presidential authority or launch on warning protocols. Almost no one knows that Russia's technical system, which they allege is as good as sbirs, is nowhere near the capacity their system that is in space, can mistake clouds for a rocket launch. It's profoundly dangerous. And then of course, the ultimate danger, which was a fact so astonishing I had to actually confirm it with Leon Panetta because I simply couldn't believe this is true, that an icbm, a US ICBM launched from the Middle west to hit Pyongyang, which is what would happen if a bolt out of blue attack happened against United States, a single weapon, if it was launched by North Korea. We would, if we were to launch ICBMs from the middle west at North Korea, they do not have enough range to reach Pyongyang without traveling over Russia in the moment, in situations that you are talking about are happening in seconds and minutes, not hours and days. The reality that the Russian president could think, would almost certainly think those nuclear weapons were coming for him, is almost undebatable. And that is where you could have that full scale nuclear exchange that former StratCom commander General Keiller warned me to warn you about.
- [23:20]
Amy McGrath
I want to take us to what's happening right now though in current nuclear policy because it is kind of wonky. We've touched on a few things like sole authority to launch and that sort of thing. But the debate right now, and Denver and I were just talking about it before you came on, Annie, is this idea that our current president has to build a Golden Dome missile defense system over America. And it's based on his idea that the Iron Dome system, which Israel has, could be expanded and we would be able to protect our country. And I just wanted to get your take on that. My, my take is that it's a bit of a, what we call a boondoggle that is a lot of money wasted and it actually has the potential to destabilize the current nuclear sort of balance that we have in the world today. But I wanted to hear what, what you think.
- [24:21]
Denver Riggleman
Yes, I think that one way of thinking and talking about the Golden Dome, which the President ordered and you know, right after taking office, asked for bids, gave 90 days for them. It's obviously very serious. Some of those bids have come in. You have SpaceX and, and Androll, among others, leading that. So clearly this is going to be, you know, very high end now, still entirely classified technologies that have to do with cubesats and concepts that very few of us certainly meet, know the technical specifications on because they're still class they're still being developed and they're obviously classified. So you have to, I have to hold both of those ideas on imbalance because no doubt the Iron Dome is not the gold. I mean, the Iron Dome that everyone wants to make the analogy is just simply a bad analogy because Iron Dome we're talking about, what's in Israel, is very effective with short range rockets and perhaps even middle range, but not long range ICBMs. And for listeners, let me just give you a detail that might allow them to kind of visualize this and bring it home instead of being a hypothetical. And then I'll go back to Iron Golden Dome. And I'm curious more about what you think, which is that, you know, as it was explained to me to MIT physicist Professor emeritus Ted Postol, the icbm, the warhead at that point that is, you know, racing toward, let's say, the United States, that the Golden Dome would, you know, defend against the warhead because all of the back of the rocket has been let loose. So it's just simply a small, literally a smallish object.
- [26:06]
Amy McGrath
Yeah.
- [26:07]
Denver Riggleman
In space, moving approximately 14,000 miles an hour, 500 to 700 miles above the Earth. And so the current system, the interceptor system, launches a rocket with a kinetic warhead in it, essentially like a giant bowling ball, if you will, metaphorically, that is going to be traveling at 20,000 miles an hour to try to take out the moving warhead. And that is why the failure rate is below 50%. It's like hitting a bullet with a bullet. That is. Those are the words of the Missile Defense Agency. And so when I think that helps listeners to understand what you're trying to deal with. And so the Golden Dome, from what I understand, is an entirely different array of systems that are in space that will identify and attack the incoming warhead, plural, because there's always MERVs involved from.
- [27:10]
Amy McGrath
Various nerves, are multiple warheads.
- [27:13]
Denver Riggleman
Yes. So the. From multiple altitudes, that is be. I mean, that alone you can understand why most of us in the room, this room, or any room, are at a serious deficiency trying to accurately discuss that. Now, I took this question to Richard Garwin, who developed the thermonuclear, who drew the plans for the thermonuclear bomb for Edward Teller when he was 23 years old. And I took this question to Ted Postal and others, and while all of them know that the old Star wars idea was, as you say, a complete boondoggle, meaning it was not. I mean, I did an interview with Charles Towns a decade, decade ago now, who invented the laser.
- [28:02]
Amy McGrath
Yeah.
- [28:03]
Denver Riggleman
And had this discussion with him. You know, I've been talking about this for a long time, and again, not getting overwhelmed with kind of nerding out on engineering statistics of which I am not capable, but rather as a metaphor to try and understand poetically, is this plot, and I don't know the answer, and neither do any of those individuals as technology advances. And that's very troubling for finances and for transparency and for democracy because we just have no idea if it's a boondoggle or if it's actually legitimate.
- [28:42]
Amy McGrath
So we don't. And neither do the Chinese and neither do the Russians. And so, you know, they have to, they have their own thinking about this. And as soon as we start doing a new program that could potentially, you know, make their missiles not work or not effective, they're going to try to counter as well. And this is why I have a concern about it as well, because I feel like the other side is going to have a say and they're going to start building more nukes or having countermeasures to the ones that they have. So I feel like it could be another arms race in that respect.
- [29:20]
Denver Riggleman
I have an important thought for this, on balance, if I may. Right. And it goes to Denver's question about how I sleep at night. And I, and I'm very, you know, I just really believe that knowledge is, is king or knowledge is queen, because if you know something, then you're at least personally empowered. You're not frustrated by, you know, a giant wall between yourself and a comprehension. And so I was asked to go to the Vatican in the fall to give, you know, in today's, you know, Pope Francis died last night. I'm not a Catholic, but, you know, what a loss. And I went to the Vatican and I spoke, I was asked to speak specifically on nuclear war scenario to the cardinals. And this idea of disarmament was the, was the premise of this. The Vatican, of course, being in pursuit of peace and so on. The golden dome, on balance and how do I sleep idea is that as I move through this world learning new information, I'm always looking for the. The. And the cardinals taught me to say that. I used to say the optimistic. And they said, oh, my dear, you're actually talking about hope. Right. So the hopeful solution. So I wonder to my own self if you can, if clearly the president, the current president, current potus, is pursuing the golden dome. That is a given. The bids are in. The money is, is, is moving. Can the current president pursue denuclearization which is his word that he's obsessed with. I've heard him say it many times, and I believe is what one like myself must focus on. Is that possible? Can you disarm to your point, Amy, about the signaling? Signaling is so powerful. You know this. Most people in. We laymen don't know it until we're actually. Oh, it's just messaging. It's just kind of what you're signaling that you're doing, and that's what you're speaking of. And so can you have the golden Dome, which is strong defense? Right. If it's not nuclear in space, if it's just technology in space. And can you pursue denucleari. Denuclearization, formerly called disarmament, at the same time?
- [31:36]
Amy McGrath
Yeah.
- [31:36]
Denver Riggleman
And I took that question to colleagues when I was asked to speak at the UN on this book a month ago. I asked them, can these two concepts exist at the same time? There is a treaty at the UN called the tpnw, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and that is the movement toward disarmament to bring back the spirit of disarmament that was begun by Reagan and Gorbachev in the 1980s. And I believe that those two pathways can be pursued at once. And I would hope my signal to the President, who I know read my book because he said it on a podcast, would be actively pursuing because we are in deep, deep, deep danger of creating an. Of ratcheting up the nuclear arms race if the denuclearization path is not pursued.
- [32:25]
Annie Jacobson
I'll tell you this. I don't know, it's almost like a knuckle dragging attempt, Annie, to recreate Reagan's STI initiative and the pressure he wanted to put on the Russians in a way that, you know, for me and Annie, it's just a. It's a weird thing about me. I do, I do think the competence matters. I don't know if this administration has that ability to affect competence on this type of decision making. And that being said, I don't want to, you know, make this too political to be honest, even though it is to me, because I've been in the room with the guy and there's no nuance in this thinking. This just doesn't mean it's just not there. And I think that's what. When Amy and I were discussing this with Golden Dome, the one thing that I want to discuss with you at some point, based on sleeping at night, which we can too, based knowledge is power. Right? It really is. And it also gives you hope Right. It was pretty amazing, you know, that you were able to speak to the Vatican. You know, I still think we try to keep a sliver of hope, but I think your book actually says that hope is not a viable course of action, which is what that is. The bottom line that I get from your book, hope is not a viable course of action. There has to be real things that happen, right. There's real issues, right, with if there's a nuclear attack, what would happen? And there's a point, there is a point of no return because there is a point that we cannot affect what happens at that time. So try not to give you ideas for your next book because now you gave me an idea is left of boom. Non kinetic deterrence and how we use cyber warfare and other things like that down the road. And if that's part of, I don't even know that's part of the golden dome thing at this point, but I would suspect it should be. But do you see more and more of a cyber warfare, more of a computer based warfare effects on nuclear weaponry and things like that? And trying to stop it left a boom before things even get off the ground. And, and for me to say that people need to know how difficult that is. I'm not talking about something that is not, not complex, you know, we're talking about something that's awful just try to affect even one cell tower. Right, but that was, my background was telephony and comms. But do you see as we're going in, I know we don't want to take all your time. Do you see non kinetic options, right, that could stop some of this, that maybe can get in the way of some of these awful, you know, stepping stones towards a nuclear attack or, or you know, something like an ICBM hitting the United States.
- [34:50]
Denver Riggleman
I'm not, I would say that's not my lane and it's, and that's not meant to dodge the question, but I will give you an alternative. Okay.
- [34:58]
Annie Jacobson
Okay.
- [34:58]
Denver Riggleman
The alternative because, because my job as a author, as a journalist is to, is to write a narrative, write a compelling narrative that people read and then they say to the person, you have to read this and then they have a conversation about it and then others have conversations about it. So hope may not be an option inside the nuclear command and control the same as luck is not an option. And I would say that's more of what we've been working with. But for me, just in my own lane, hope is absolutely imperative. And so that's where I tell, and I believe in the power of the President. Unfortunately, like it or not, the American President is so powerful, his EO pen. And we're seeing that now. I mean, I've been writing about presidents since Truman, and I've been writing about EOs, and I've been writing about Title 50 and Title 10. And I know about the power of the President. And, you know, we've seen this evolve over decades, or I certainly have. And so I'm not surprised that this President is demonstrating power that has always been there. And you can really have a longer conversation. We probably should. About back to the Church Commission when Rumsfeld and Cheney were with Ford. I mean, I've written this is where this all so the path. So without digressing the power, the presidential pen is powerful. And I do believe that that is where the hopefulness lies. And I'm going to tell, briefly tell the story, the one hopeful story about Reagan.
- [36:34]
Amy McGrath
Yeah.
- [36:34]
Annie Jacobson
Because I'm ready.
- [36:35]
Denver Riggleman
I believe we can repeat itself, but Reagan was a hawk. He was a nuclear hawk. We all know this. We're old enough to know this. And he believed in nuclear weapons. He thought more nuclear weapons made Americans more safe. To your point, about, like, would cyber help all that. He was coming up with all these ideas. His staff was, you know, barraging him with new ideas. And then he watched an ABC television movie called Day After. His chief staff told him not to watch it. He did anyways. And he wrote in his White House journal that he was depressed after watching it. His words. And what did he do? He reached out to Gorbachev because he knew that you had to stop seeing the Soviet Union. It was the Cold War. The Soviet Union, the leader of the Soviet Union was the twirling mustache bad guy to every American. And Reagan changed that. He said that we had to see them as an adversary. Enemies you kill in war, adversaries you work with so that you don't have a war. And that is why the world went from 70,000 nuclear warheads in 1986 to approximately 12,300 we have today. Nuclear disarmament, I have learned from my colleagues who work in this lane, is the pathway toward getting those arsenals greatly reduced, which makes all of us safer. If that's based on hope, I will take hope as an option.
- [38:06]
Amy McGrath
Yeah. That is so amazing. And I'm going to let Denver close. But I just want to say, you know, when I read your book, Annie, and this is, this is what it looks like. This is a copy for those people who are, who are watching on YouTube. It was that book that I called my friends and family and my husband and I said, you got to read this book. You got to read this book because it was so important that people understand this scenario that could happen. And the other thing is, I felt very strongly that all members of Congress needed to read this book because they have a role, too, in this national security apparatus. And I felt like we have to have more. Not only more serious people, but people that just have a basic understanding of what this looks like, because so many of us don't really know. So I just. Thank you for writing matters. And if for people who are listening, please go out and. And buy this book, either on audio version or. Or print, because it's. If you care about our country and you care about the world, you got to be informed.
- [39:21]
Annie Jacobson
Absolutely. And Annie, Amy called me about the book. There you go. That's how. So I just will let you know. Right. And I don't think hope is a bad message to end on. So as pessimistic as I am, Annie, I don't think this is a bad message to end on. I want to say I appreciate the. The amount of research, the ability to turn into this, to a narrative that's exciting when you're talking about left of launch to launch. The fact that you can talk to individuals who've been in it and the fact that you have this amazing knowledge to talk to people who are at the ops level, like Amy and myself, whether it's on the intel or execution side is just. It's frankly amazing. It's a public service, too. And Annie, we just want to cheers to you and thank you for coming on our show. This is why we did Truth in the Barrel. To have these type of conversations without hyperbole, without going crazy, without weird memes, you know, or crazy stuff happening is. The fact is you're a sober individual with amazing research and writing skills is trying to warn the American public about something that could happen through a scenario that shows how the command and control system in the United States nuclear system works. And thank you. And I just want to again, thank you for coming on our show. It was just such a pleasure and an honor to meet you.
- [40:43]
Denver Riggleman
Thank you so much for having me and thank you for your service. We're all on the same team.
- [40:48]
Annie Jacobson
Oh, awesome. Cheers to you. Yeah, cheers.
- [40:50]
Denver Riggleman
We all are on the same team. That's what you really realize. All of us. Us, all 8 billion of us.
- [40:56]
Amy McGrath
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- [41:26]
Annie Jacobson
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