#778 - Annie Jacobsen - Just How Likely Is A Global Nuclear War?

0:00How many nukes are in existence right now?

0:0512 ,500 approximately. And where does that number come from? How do we know that that's the number? Yeah, well there are nine nuclear -armed nations. And the way we know the specifics of them is thanks to a group here in the United States called the Federation of American Scientists. They have an organization within that called the Nuclear Notebook Group, led by a guy called Hans Christensen and they do all the counting for us. The one variable would be North Korea because they don't have any form of transparency and so it's guessing when it comes to what we think North Korea has. Who are the nine?

0:49The nine are the obvious Russia, America, UK, France, India, Pakistan, China, North Korea, Israel. Australia, no? No. Wow. How do we know that countries aren't giving a United States organization purposefully under reported numbers to make us think that they've got fewer that they've gotten rid of it that they've de -escalated. What in fact they forgot loads. Well some of the treaties which are like being threatened right now ask for transparency and also inspection and so like For example, people go to Russia on our side and vice versa. Things can get held up when there's direct conflicts right now.

1:51But it's amazing. In my book, I take the readers from nuclear launch to nuclear winter. And I have these little sort of nerdish history breaks where I give you some of the details like this. But mostly I stay out of the policy both behind nuclear non -proliferation and also the policies that could lead to nuclear war because I really want the readers to know like this is what happens. And the things you're asking me are super important because they have to do with sort of preventative ideas. You know, this idea that if we are more transparent with one another and I'm talking about the nuclear armed nations, there's going to be.

2:34communication on some level. Yeah, it's interesting. I wonder if it's true. I wonder if 12 ,500 is the actual number. It would make complete sense. Cyber, subterfuge, and hacking of chips and getting it like the most obvious, like the original cyop conspiracy, lying. Like why not just lie about it. Hide them, put them in a place that it's not like treaties and I don't know. When it comes to nuclear war or the potential destruction of your country. Something tells me there's a lot of incentives to not be super transparent. I'll give you an example. North Korea, the CIA will tell you that North Korea has 50 nuclear weapons, but some private organizations, some NGOs, non -governmental organizations will tell you that number is as high as 130.

3:28So that gives you an example of like how accurate that number may or may not be. 70 ,000 was the number we were at when we peaked. That's right, 1986. Right. What happened to you deconstruct? Yeah. Abombed you, you'd sell it for parts, do you keep the depleted uranium core to make a nuclear reactor? What do you do? I mean, what a great question. And what an interesting concept of where does all that nuclear material go. There's a plant in Texas called Pantex, and that's where they do that. And it is so profoundly classified, and not a lot of people know about it. And it's almost certainly on, you know, everybody's nuclear strike target list, because can you imagine the mayhem that would ensue if you struck that?

4:26There's just so many precariously dangerous situations. It feels like any site that has to do with anything that touches a nuclear weapon becomes radioactive, like literally and figuratively. Where are most of America's nukes? Are they on land? Are they at sea? Have we got any data in space? Okay, so I map out the triad. America has what's called the triad. And what a great place to begin because it's like so much of what I try to do in this this book is demystify. It's often said here in America that the nuclear weapons belong to the nuclear priesthood, the PhD priesthood. And there's kind of an almost, it seems like a foolhardy attempt to keep the layman out, to keep regular people like you and me from really knowing these things.

5:18But interestingly, when you look at them, they're very simple. And because America is a democracy, a lot of ours information is transparent. So, for example, the defense department puts out a very thick monograph, which almost no one reads. I have read, you can read, which tells you exactly these numbers and it explains what is called the nuclear triad. And it's such an interesting place to start. And you realize actually things are easier than you think, nuclear triad. Oh, three, okay. So we have silos, underground silos. We have a submarine force and then we have a bomber force. And the silos, there are 400 of them across America.

6:02And believe it or not, every single one of them is targetable. Every single one of them you can locate it used to be on an old map. Now it's GPS. Then the submarines are just crazy to learn about. I mean, they are called the hand -madeans of the apocalypse with good reason. There are 14 of them. They're nuclear -armed, nuclear -powered. submarines. Satellites can't see them. They just cruise around underwater, like loaded with nuclear weapons. Each one has as many as 90. And that's enough to take out like not a city, like not a continent, but arguably civilization because 90 nuclear weapons almost certainly sets off nuclear World War III.

6:49One does, right? Okay, so then the last part of the triad is the bomber force. We have 66 six bombers. Those are the B2s that are very famous. That looks like a flying wing. And then the old school B52s and those drop gravity bombs. The interesting spooky thing about that third part of the triad is that it's the only part of the triad, the nuclear triad that can be recalled. So it's almost certainly what the president sends first. In other words, the ICBMs, the ballistic missiles that launch out of the silos and the sub -launched ballistic missiles in the submarines, once they are launched, they cannot be redirected or recalled.

7:33And so once they launch, that is endgame. Yeah, that's scary. That being said, something tells me that using the B -52s and the B2s, you've got to ready the pilots. I have to presume that you basically have a 24 -7 crew of nuclear missile carrying plane pilots permanently on base 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and the alarm goes off, and they are in the plane to plane to fuel, they're on the ground, they're ready to go, etc., etc. I mean, how long is it going to take a plane to get from wherever it is to to Moscow to be able to because you got to be over the top of the target if you're using gravity You've got to be over the top of the target Well, you're absolutely right and that's why the bombers get sent first But they almost will have no role and I interviewed pilots who are who you know fly these aircraft and who have trained for this as you said Constantly through across all the decades that they have been in existence and yet they almost certainly don't play a role because by the time they would get to a target.

8:45For example, we keep the B2 bomber very close to Pyongyang, right? For this reason. But very close means a five -hour flight. And when you're talking about nuclear war happening in seconds and minutes, not days, not hours and weeks, or hours and days. You know, one pilot said to me, the chances are you would get there after the war has commenced and you would have no way to refuel in air because so many of these aircraft need that capacity. So you're refueling capacity. Yes, it is, they are all suicides, but I mean, nuclear war is one big giant suicide. What? You said, I saw you write about how Russian and Chinese submarines regularly sneak up to within a couple of hundred miles of the United States coasts.

9:45What was that thing about something to do with the grapefruit on the moon? Right, right, right. Okay. So, the Michael Conner, Admiral Conner, the former commander of America's nuclear submarine force. Not somebody who usually goes on the record or talks to journalists. He shared with me this stunning analogy, which is that it's harder to find a submarine under the sea than it is to find a grapefruit sized object in space. So that's how stealthy submarines are. And yes, thank you for noticing that detail in the book because I was shocked to come across in a defense department budget request of all things.

10:35A map, a sonar map demonstrating the pathways of Soviet or sorry Freudian slip there of Russian and Chinese submarines coming up along America's coast just a few hundred miles else out. And that is enough to keep you up at night if all of the rest of it isn't. What are the most likely steps to a mistaken nuclear war in your opinion? Well, you know, missed it, right? So there's this famous quote which I use whereby the UN Secretary General Antonio Guteraz says we are one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear apocalypse. And so there is a lot of room for error, right? Where you're, you know, there's a lot of room for mistakes.

11:27But there's also a lot of room for the madman scenario. And that's what I use in the book whereby a nuclear armed nation makes a rogue launch against the United States. For reasons that we never know, that remains unanswered because the world ends before anyone gets that answer. But it is according to sources I interviewed, a plausible scenario, you know, a nihilistic madman with a nuclear arsenal. So be it a mistake, be it a misunderstanding, be it a madman. We are really on the brink of catastrophe here, which is like, I think the calling, you know, the sort of clarion call to have all of us talking about this, thank you for having me on your show because your show is, you know, listened to by all kinds of people, not just policy wonks and people that seem to be obsessed with the sort of geopolitical maneuvers of everyone.

12:30Nuclear war, you know, it's important to all of us. Well, it's not going to discriminate whether you're a policy one or a defense department person, everybody's going to feel the impact. Okay. So someone fires a nuke. What happens from there? Take us through the timeline from button of first nuke gets pushed. Let's say that it's from North Korea and it's going to be aimed at the US. Yeah. And this is like, this is that second by second telling the top, the ticking clock scenario that as I was reporting the book initially, wasn't sure how I was going to actually tell the story, and then once I began to really learn the specifics of this, it became only the taking clocks in area, because as you say, it's a sequence.

13:20It just happens once nuclear launch happens, it all goes from there. And so the way it begins, interestingly, is in space. And that is because the United States has spent trillions of dollars over the past decades being aware of when anyone launches a nuclear missile, when anyone launches a ballistic missile, when anyone launches a missile at all. What's a ballistic missile? What's it giving me to Iraq? So, and it's a great question because we hear a lot about strategic weapons versus tactical weapons. right? So tactical nukes. That's what you hear Vladimir Putin threatening now when he's talking about using a tactical nukes.

14:03That's a battlefield nukes. America doesn't even keep them. We did in the Cold War, but realized what a ridiculously bad idea it is because it means you might actually use them on the battlefield. You know, you're just going upping the scale. You go from the mother of all bombs to the nuclear tactical weapon. A ballistic missile is a warhead loaded on a rocket that can travel, it's called an ICBM, intercontinental ballistic missile, so that it can travel from one continent to the other. And it uses, you know, gravity in as much that it has three phases, okay? That's what it takes 30 minutes, three phases, boost phase, five minutes, mid course phase, 20 minutes, terminal phase, 100 seconds.

14:55That's from a launch pad in Russia, 26 minutes, 40 seconds. From Pyongyang, it's 33 minutes. I mean, I geek out on the details and have like, you know, professors of mathematics, said MIT, do the math for me, because you want to show how precise this all is, how specific the details are that the defense department works on. And so these satellite systems in space, it's called Sibbers. Again, and now, you know, everything's in an acronym. Space -based infrared satellite system, Sibbers. A constellation of satellites in Geosync, meaning it can park above an enemy nation and watch for the hot rocket exhaust on a ballistic missile launch, which it can see in less than a fraction of a second.

15:50I mean, when you really think about that this all begins in the first fraction of a second, you understand the depth and scope of what exists behind the veil of the possibility of nuclear warfare. What happens? So, micro seconds after the exhaust flares go off and it's not even left to the ground yet, satellite detects it, presumably sends that to the US. What is the sequence of events that occurs from a defense department's presidential perspective? Yep. And it all happens super fast. So literally within seconds, that data in space goes to the it goes immediately to three command sisters. And again, it becomes like very visual when you realize how simple this all is.

16:43The data goes to Shayan Mountain. We know about this from movies. It's in, it's like the nuclear bunker in Colorado beneath the mountain. It's real, it's one of three. The other one is beneath the Pentagon. It's called the National Military Command Center. And the third nuclear bunker is beneath Stratcom, US Strategic Command. That's in Nebraska. And the way it was explained to me that like made it really easy to understand, Cheyenne Mountain is like the brain. The Pentagon is the beating heart of nuclear war. And the bunker beneath Omaha, Nebraska is the muscle. And those three command centers were their partners in the space force and at various different command centers Begin to interpret this data And so it takes only 50 seconds from launch for the machines people call them AI I call them Meana machine learning to start calculating is that missile headed toward Moscow or Honolulu?

17:53Is the missile headed towards San Francisco or is it headed toward the east coast? And 150 seconds later, that information becomes clear. And by then, can you imagine what has been going on in those three command centers and all the hundreds of thousands of people that are working on this issue? Again, behind the veil 24, 7 ,365. And so it becomes simply a matter of minutes before the President of the United States is notified about all this. And that comes to me directly from two former Secretaries of defense here in the US who are saying this is how it works. Letting the president know that very soon he's going to have to make a decision about counterattack, about how to respond.

18:44And that sets in motion this crazy policy called launch on warning, which requires the President of the United States to launch nuclear weapons in response to a rogue attack. It's called a bolt out of the blue attack before nuclear weapons actually hit the United States. Said differently, we don't wait to absorb a nuclear blow. We launch. And that has to do with what we just talked about the nuclear silos. The theory is that whoever is launching at the United States will try and take out the nuclear silos. So we can't respond. So therefore we must respond, which gets you into this sort of, or well in, understanding, understanding of how or well in all of this is.

19:32And by the way, now I've only taken you through the first few minutes. Okay. The language that you used there, you said that the president will have to make a decision and that it is kind of the president's duty to do this launch on warning. But all of that stops at the glass floor that is the president's right finger or him saying yes or in the affirmative type thing. It seems to me like there is still a human decision element of this in the US. So it sounds like what you're saying is that you believe that perhaps the president would choose not to launch nuclear weapons. No, it's not a completely automated system, absolutely outside of the bounds of human decision, that there is still a point at which, and maybe 999 times out of a thousand, the president would hit the button, but that there is still this kind of like arbitrary odd integration of the president into the system.

20:41Absolutely. I mean, it is not what is called an executive order. The launch on warning is policy. It's not an executive order. And it is the president's decision and only the president's decision yet. So if you had an incredibly tempered, incredibly peaceful, incredibly fill in the blank president who just simply was unwilling to launch nuclear weapons. You're absolutely right. Interestingly, you're the only person who has posed this. It's the bridge. It's the totally war -cooked Brit in me that doesn't want to have a nuclear winter. So I had a guy called Andrew Bostamante on the show who's ex -CIA.

21:28His first job was as a nuclear silo operative. Yeah, I'm just earlier. He was one of the two guys with the keys. I'm gonna guess that you have worked out about every hour, round about on the hour or so alarm goes off, keys go in, code gets put in, they have no. Can you just run us through it? Because that was one of my favorite stories that he taught me about how like willing dissenters and stuff, basically because of the network of the 400 silos and they're and you don't know if yours is actually going or not. Can you just explain kind of how all of that works? I'm sure, I mean, listen, I'm a journalist and the first hand witness is always better than the second hand storyteller, which is me.

22:11So I'm sure that his account of it is riveting and I will watch it. I have spoken to misleaders who describe exactly that. And yes, there are protocols in place so that they don't make an error, so that a misleer can't go rogue and decide to do something. But what there isn't in place is a system in between the president and the misleer. So in other words, once the president says, once the president gives the launch order, the sequence begins. There's no dissent. There's no room for dissent. And I asked And the Los Alamos classified historian Glenn McDuff, a variation on your question to me. Like, would we see someone refuse, whether it's anyone below the president, let's say, even the Stratcom commander or down to the Missileir?

23:08And he said to me, Annie, I would recommend you'd have better chances winning the Powerball then to have someone in the nuclear command and control apparatus defy authority. Yeah, so what I learned from Andrew upon issuing of, in fact, before we get to issuing, 400 Missile silos ish around the US in each of those at all times there are two operatives with keys around their neck. They have alarms that go off, firing alarms that go off, where they have to, keys go in, code, get input, they press a button. That happens about 24 times a day. They have no idea whether that is a false alarm or a real world activity.

24:04Also, if only Only one of the 400 puts the code in and turns the key, all of them fire because they're networked together. So you would need to have 399 and then one more willing dissenters. You also have the peer pressure of the other person with the key. You also have this sort of trained almost like a Pavlovian response where we've continued to do this and we've continued to do this. But one day you could get the alarm, come through, you know, another day at work, put the code in, turn the key, and then he'd, and go, oh fuck, you have no idea what you're aiming at. You have no idea why it's been fired.

24:48You're just there to do that thing. And that, to me, it is sort of distributed system. If anyone fires, then all of them fire. You only need the code to go in into one of these silos. So yeah, I think the powerball analogy probably stands up. So those are some pretty incredible details. I'm going to have to drill down on those because I'm not familiar with them, but that is kind of shocking. Okay. Once you launch, you can't recall, is it possible to intercept a nuke as it's coming toward us? I've heard about hypersonic missiles. They sound faster than ICBMs. Can we fire a thing at their thing and knock it out the sky?

25:28I. Interestingly, an ICBM is hypersonic, right? So all of this business of hypersonic is just in my opinion. Great advertisement for the military industrial complex to have new weapons. No one I know thinks hypersonic missiles have really much to are going to change much of anything in terms of defense. They're certainly going to spend a lot more money for taxpayers. What is interesting that you pointed out is about the myths behind the Interceptor Program. I myself was at a dinner party when I was reporting this book. Seated next to a very knowledgeable person who when I said, you know, I'm writing Zidana, he said, oh, Annie, you know, we have an Interceptor Program for that.

26:11And I didn't want to correct him. There has to be a female version of the mansplaining concept. I haven't figured it out yet, but I didn't want to correct him. I figured I'll just give him a copy of my book. because that is absolute fantasy. You know, this idea that America's interceptor system is anything like, for example, Israel's iron dome is just simply not true. We have 44 interceptor missiles total. Four of them are at Van and Berg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara. Forty of them are in Alaska. And they too are like ballistic missiles, okay? So imagine Russia's 1 ,674 deployed nuclear weapons ready to launch in seconds or minutes, coming at the United States up against 44 interceptor missiles.

27:10Presumably the interceptor missiles aren't under the same restriction and jurisdiction that the nuclear disarmament slowly winding down your thing consists of. So if that's the case, why don't you just have like a million of them? Is it costly? Is it hard to make? Is it storage? You're absolutely right. And inside of the vehicle that takes out the nuclear warhead, by the way, is just a kinetic, there's no, there's no explosives in it. It's simply hitting. It's an object called an exo atmospheric kill vehicle. How's that for a mouthful? Okay. And that is just simply going to collide with the nuclear warhead.

27:51One hopes. One of them, by the way, is going 14 ,000 miles an hour. The other one's going 20 ,000 miles an hour. This is taking place 500 miles in space. Okay. So even the Missile Defense Agency, the spokesperson there said, yes, it is like taking out a bullet with a bullet. That's their quote. Yeah. Okay. And the success rate is between 40 and 55%. So to answer your question, does it really make sense for anyone to have, you know, thousands of these on ready for launch status to maybe strike incoming? It's madness. All of it. It's insane. And there has to be a better solution than more weapons.

28:37What do you think would be the most likely targets in the US? Is it take us through triage the the targets? And this you're talking about for an enemy to attack us. Well, by all means the Pentagon is the first and primary target. And almost everyone who I interviewed for the book said to me that it's the bolt out of the blue attack against Washington DC, that Washington DC fears most. That has to do with the fact that it's not just that it would decapitate leadership and kill, let's say, two million people if you had a one megaton thermonuclear bomb as I do in my scenario. But then you're setting off a catastrophe of problems having to do with what's called continuity of government.

29:32This idea that the United States government must continue functioning no matter what. Imagine DC being decapitated. And so there's this incredible scramble that I write about in the scenario of who's in charge and getting the Commander -in -Chief out of Washington, DC. The targets are everyone. It was set to me this way by Professor Brian Tune, who's one of the original five authors of the nuclear winter theory. He said, if you live in a major city or a minor city, if you live near an airport, if there's an industrial base in your city, just about any city in America up to, let's say, the top 800 of them, you have a nuclear weapon pointed at you.

30:28And that's enough to keep you up at night. And again, the same goes for anyone in an enemy or an adversary of the United States that is also nuclear armed. They too have a nuclear weapon. Tune said, pointed at them, but of course, what really man is targetable to them because the nuclear weapons are actually left targeted out at sea in case there was a road launch, which I found like one of the only comforting details in all of this. And when those keys get that's when the codes, the actual coordinates are put into play. What is the protocol that the president is chilling in the White House answering emails on the phone, Mr.

31:21President, this missile is coming toward us. Have you got any idea what the process from there is? Well, I do because I interviewed many people around the president that would be confronted with trying to make decisions about what happens next. So surely you would have his military advisors at U .S. Strategic Command and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff trying to get a launch order in response from him, the counter -attack order. And that is something called jamming the president. And that is well known and that is confirmed by almost all military sources that they are are very aware of the launch on warning protocols, the policy, and that's what they need from the president because the launch order can come from him and only from him.

32:14But the most interesting sort of counter argument to that, that would be the primary event happening, came to me from the Secret Service, from the, the president has a paramilitary team that is with him all the time. This is not very well known. It's called the Counter Assault Team. And they shadow him everywhere and they are responsible certainly in event like this for making sure that he's whisked out of Washington, D .C. to safety. That would be on the command of the of the person in charge of the president's detail. The special agent in charge also known as the SAC. And I interviewed Lume Merledi, who is the head of the Secret Service, the director of the Secret Service, and before that he had been the SAC for President Clinton.

33:04And he explained to me that most certainly, the Secret Service would be completely at odds with stratcom in that moment because they would want to move the President to Raven Rock, which is, again, that sometimes mythical command bunker outside watching to DC that is very real and is actually called officially the alternate national military command center because it is where anyone left living who should have been at the Pentagon would now go in the event of nuclear war. It's about 70 miles outside of DC and it's a quick helicopter ride if you can get there before the EMP pulse takes the helicopter out.