like, kind of midmarket sports tend to evoke very diehard fans. so it's hard for me to even say the word celtic. um. well, that's it. i thank you guys for coming out. i really appreciate it. so i'll be signing books here for a while. they want, what, like a book sign? so you.

and annie jacobsen, thank you very much for sitting down and talking about your book. it's a pleasure to meet you. i'm delighted to have this opportunity. how are you feeling? i'm delighted to be with you. so all the compliments back that you. it really is a pleasure. thank you. well, let's get right into this. this is a brilliant book. this isn't the right thing to say about a book. nuclear war. but i really enjoyed reading it. it reads like a thriller. you've taken policy and history and details and nuclear weapons effects and war games and wove them together into a page turner. i read this in about two days, just while taking extensive notes. so let's get right into one of your essential points of the book, which is the concept of nuclear. dr. strangelove tells us in the movie after him that deterrence, the art of instilling in the mind of the enemy, the fear

attack. but in your hands deterrence almost becomes character in your book. it changes, morphs, and it almost has motivation. it becomes one of the central drives of your of your storyline. so please tell us how you think about the concept of nuclear deterrence and how it works in theory and in practice. i mean, thank you for that intro. in many ways, the concept of deterrence is very kubrickian or orwellian really, and that is a central theme. but i also want to say thank you so much for letting me know that the book fast because that is the intent and we're going to obviously get into the policy and the foundation of it. but i believe as an investigative journalist job is to inform the people and the best to do that is to get their attention. we're all fighting for people's attention these days. what could be a more important

topic that is absolutely not discussed, although i will caveat that the present day, which neither us expected probably one or two years ago, but people really don't talk about nuclear war. they must because things must change. and so we begin with deterrence. right? so for laymen, you know, i am in in spirits even though this is my seventh book, which deals with military and intelligence issues deterrence at its heart. is this idea that if you have bunch of nuclear weapons and the other side has a bunch of nuclear weapons and you both keep them pointed at one another, the world will be safer. and that is really simple, really terrifying and also really bizarre, you know, because the next statement that comes out of anyone's mouth who really believes in deterrence and have to believe in it or otherwise. the alternative of is collapse

or in the world of an in the words of a deputy stratcom commander the unraveling. yes, right. so but that's what deterrence it's like. okay. we're just going to have more nuclear weapons or rather differently. i would say deterrence. like the more weapons you have, the safer you are right. so you talk about it in the book as the first rule number one of nuclear war, although later on you have a little plot twist. there are no rules in nuclear war. you also talk out as a concept it you talk about it as a concept that is to americans to make nuclear weapons their savior, not their, you know, the threat. and in the book, you the plot is about what happens when deterrence fails. and i think this is how i about deterrence it's a great idea until it doesn't work and when it doesn't work it fails

catastrophically. absolutely. and that idea came me from having before nuclear war a scenario i previously six books on these the pentagon cia, darpa and you know 100 plus sources and each book almost all them at some point during a lengthy interview saying i dedicated my life to preventing nuclear world war three. and most people said that to me with the kind of, you know, swelling and legitimately so and so during the previous administration and when president trump was talking about fire and fury all that nuclear war rhetoric, i got to thinking about what all those sources had told. and i thought, what happens if deterrence fails? prevention fails? what would that be like? and what i learned didn't just

shock me. it shocked me again and again and again and again. and that's what i put in book. i put what i learned from top tier, upper echelon national security people who opened door into this world so that i could really see what and as you know from reading book it happens in seconds and not days and weeks. right. i think. it's 78 minutes your nuclear war takes right around there. yes. yeah. three x 24 minutes. 800. that's not my nuclear war, by the way. that's based on a quote from former stratcom general keeler when and i were discussing know nuclear war between russia and america and he said the world could end in the next couple of hours. yes right an hour and a half something like that when you just start doing the calculations as you do. how long does it take to a weapon?

what happens when the side sees the weapon? what do they do? their decision process. that's why this a thriller. i mean it's history, it's policy. but really acting out how. does this play out? what would you decide to do in moscow in washington or in pyongyang because this starts with north korean. and let me let me get us to that because you start your book with a bang. i mean literally, literally, you blow up the pentagon with a one megaton thermonuclear explosion, but then, like all good movies with a drama sequence in the beginning, you then back up, you then say, well, how did we get here? so did you choose that approach? tell us a little about what you what you learned and what you write about, about the beginning, the nuclear age? because in some ways you're picking up where oppenheimer ends, right? what happens after the movie, after we decide to build a hydrogen bomb?

tell us. that's right. and that is so important. and you, a historian, know that as well, that where we come from, you know, shakespeare past is so how did we wind up with many nuclear weapons? and i take the reader through that i think relatively or rather in a very sort of pared down manner so that people can see where, you know, when begin this the launching scenario because the book does take the reader from nuclear launch to nuclear winter and. you know, one of the things that was really shocking to me was learning all that history in depth and figuring out how do i make this zoom, right? how do you just rip through this? i you said you read it in a night or two, right? yeah. and so the section that comes to mind to answer question is when i was looking at the buildup of weapons and i literally it's

like three or four pages in the book where i'm showing you this year, this number of weapons this year. i that was brilliant by way, because i've written about this myself and i've done these charts and. i'm talked about the nuclear mountains and but i've never broken it down that way. and it was stunning to see how quickly we went from two three nuclear weapons at the end of world war two to by the time the buildup sort of peaks when what when john f kennedy is inaugurated. we have 20,000 nuclear weapons built in just years. i mean, that alone kind of tells you everything you need know. and i feel like that such an important thrust of the narrative because the average person walking down the street if they hear launch john warning policy which will into you know we will tourists are you know so presidential authority they just their eyes glaze over and they go oh that's for the ph.d. crowd. and i think it's the opposite as

you know, there is a tiny ray of hope in this with the idea reagan reversal. we'll talk about that later. but, you know, most people simply don't want have to wrap their brain around policy issues and inevitably, the policy issues turn political. absolutely. and that is fundamentally at our own peril. when i say our it's not just you and me. it's not just every american. it's the whole world. right. right. so talk about the buildup. what what motivated the buildup? because i write in my books about how the air force, you know, around the 1940s thought, you know, we're not going to need more than 60 nuclear weapons after that said, we run out of targets. but that is not the view that prevailed? right. you talk about early on that some groups in the pentagon sketching out how many weapons they would need to completely the soviet union.

that's right. and that's where you're just of reading with your jaw dropped. and it does feel more like doctor strange than reality. and then you must remember that in the early in the fifties and parts of the sixties the idea among admirals and the generals at the pentagon was that nuclear war would be fought to win, which now the most absurd concept that you could ever not wrap up with that that we were going to fight win a nuclear war right? yes, absolutely. and interviewing many sources, as i do, former secretary of defense people that advise president who are now in their eighties and nineties they were young men when this concept, these concepts were being, you know, promoted. i mean, like former secretary of defense bill perry. yes absolutely. and and there was this idea of more, you know, the more nuclear weapons, the better. you just have more more is more. and that take away, i think is just you cannot really get

around that other than thinking this is madness you bring us into one of the early meetings i think it's 1960 where the military is decided and this is even before mcnamara becomes secretary defense, that they need to have a single operation plan psyop for nuclear war there. and you bring us into a meeting i know this. i'd never seen this. one of the participant took which which then reveal what he was thinking as this plan is laid out. can you talk about. absolutely and how you got your hands on your notes? you're about john rubel and, you know, the nuclear plans are among the most jealously guarded secrets. absolutely. in the national security apparatus. bar none, right. they just don't want to know. and then parallel to that, very sick brit idea is, the fact that

no one would break ranks. right. so you've got issues, security clearances and you've also got issues of culture. right. it would just be, you know, abominable to break ranks. well, john rubel did in a tiny memoir i mean, it's so thin and was published in 2007 or 2008. and because as america was in the middle of the war on terror, this got almost no notice. and that is what that from so those are not like some secret was like a deputy director of of pentagon planning a research and engineering research engineer, which you and i both know is like a pathway yeah, there's only a handful people in this room, a couple of dozen. and he was one of them at the highest level. yes. and so there he is in 2000, in the early 2000, a man in his eighties knowing he is going to die sooner than later and he

decides to write a memoir talking about how he felt and. that was what was key, because he speaks of the war through the long lens of history yes as a mass extinction. right. and that really kind of takes your breath away. and he compares it from right about this to another meeting. i didn't know about you. i read your book in nazi germany in 1942, when the leaders of nazi germany are sitting, discussing very calmly a plan to exterminate millions of -- systematically on an industrial scale. and he thinks of that plan when he's sitting around. that's absolutely right. the wrong side conference. and to equate to no audience in your mind as a man in your eighties who had debt you know lubell dedicated his life to this of militaristic you know

effective and to have turning point your own mind i think is really remarkable. well you know you know i've worked in the house armed services and i'm working nuclear issues i've written about them i've been a think tanks in 1991 when i was still on staff and top secret code word clearance, i went to the strategic air command. it was still called sac to get a briefing on the psyop generally. butler was, the commander at the time, as you know, he later and becomes an advocate for nuclear abolition. but at the time he gave us sort of a sanitized view. and in this picture he's talking about the target list. and in this unclassified version of it, we drop 60 nuclear bombs on the city odessa, which was then in ukraine which was then still part of the soviet union. soviet had collapsed yet and i'm looking at and i when i read your book i'm thinking that's what i thought. what what eight ruble ruble

verbal ruble is thinking. i'm thinking this is. 60 nuclear weapons on one city and that's just one of the targ of the plan. and i know the military would vigorously disagree this. but this is what you're pointing out in your book is this is the natural consequence of deterrence, for deterrence to you have to have a machine ready to execute and what it means. and that's what happens in your book is, okay, what happens when deterrence fails for whatever reason and we start to execute this. absolutely. and then you realize there is no turning back. it's a system. you know, the decision trees are in place. no one no one changes their mind. there's no to change the mind. the mind is set from the minute that the united states detects launch and that really frightening. and also compelling at the same time. again looping back to, i think

you and i are both in agreement about that nuclear this book this is not meant to scare people and sort of you know, make them even militaristic. it's simply to make them educated and willing to realize, wait a minute, the world that we live in today is very different than it was in the 1950s in from technology to nuclear armed nations. so shouldn't we all be having the conversation rather leaving it to a small group of people who are like the version today of the john rebels of the 1950s who might later an epiphany or maybe none of us will be here to have that epiphany, because this is a situation where we are all walking on the razor's edge. there are no villains in your book with the possible exception of kim jong un, whose reasons for launching the attack are not known. right. which they in real life.

that's true. we wouldn't know why someone has done this. you would just see the missile launching. but there are villainous concepts and you get into these and they become sort of character in the book and they date back to the and sixties. so let's talk about this and what you think about launch on morning seoul authority first use of nuclear weapons launch on morning tell us about that launch warning again. you asked the average person on the street. they have no idea what that is, including before i really drill down on this launch on warning is exactly like it sounds like we launch on warnings. okay so. what does that mean then you have to pull back for a second to the most basic concern of strategic missiles, which, again, most people don't realize. it's like you can learn it in one page in my book, an icbm is a ballistic missile that travels from one continent to another in approximately minutes.

it's 33 minutes from pyongyang. it's 26 minutes and 40 seconds from moscow. okay. so are down to the seconds and minutes. so when you consider that amount of time, then an analogy would be this, is not 911 happening? this is not the pentagon suddenly realizing planes have hit the towers. this is a system, systems nuclear command and that americans have spent trillions of dollars setting up with most us not having any idea since the 1950s sixties. so now we have there is a satellite system in space. you, of course, know this bringing the reader or the listeners up to speed, the satellite system in space is so technologically advanced it sees ballistic missile launch, it sees the the exhaust coming. the bottom of the rocket right from in under second. yes. it's actually remarkable technology achievement. i mean, it really is. and when you know that these are

our early warning satellites. and once you learn think once you learn that as a reader, you go now i get it right. launch on warning. so we see we have a warning our satellites early warning satellites that a missile has launched. then what happens? and then everything begins because. and by the way, we have satellites parked, all the nuclear armed nations. so we are watching for the launch right. and then geosynchronous orbit. absolutely and then this the situation begins. and so as i show in the book, because i take readers in seconds, you know and then we speed up 2 minutes but a immediately that data gets sent down to these nuclear command and control. there's one called the aerospace data facility in colorado. and begin to interpret the information. now it's all about the missiles trajectory, right? again, super fast. i mean, who knew that after 150, 180 seconds, the defense department knows the space, the

the analysts, the machine learning the defense department whether or not that missile heading toward honolulu or the east coast. and so then you begin to realize driving in intensity is only building as all of these different individuals eyes are getting ready to brief the president. yes, right. and they have minutes to do so. and the president has, depending on the scenario, somewhere between six and maybe 10 minutes to go through the whole thing from the time he's sipping his coffee at the white house dining room to the time that he's in the situation room and getting the briefing or in the secure bunker, as you point out, no doubt not about nuclear war and worrying about a bunch of others. so why what what? what why the rush to launch nuclear weapons? well, that gets into policy. and i do think that's where a lot of people get really lost in the weeds, because now you're talking about second strike. and first, you know, all different capabilities.

but ultimately, it's that, well, the greatest saying is use them or lose them start. i mean i say great in jest but that a common phrase that the idea is if the weapons are coming at us in that approximately 30 minute time period the defense department must be to launch our nuclear weapons particularly our 400 icbms in silos across the country. otherwise will more than likely be targeted by the enemy. yes. and so you know what? i was i was fascinated to learn about these three different command bunkers. right. because it makes it very simple. there's the cheyenne these are the nuclear these are the powers that be in these three different bunkers are suddenly all taking this information and getting to communicate with the president. and it's cheyenne mountain, colorado, which is like maybe by people because of movies right. it plays a role in a couple i've been there right you press events it looks yes. on tv. yes it really is big giant steel door. and it is deeply and is designed

to withstand an from a very large nuclear weapon. that's interesting that you've been there. yeah, there's the there's that. and then there's bunker beneath the pentagon. yes. and then there is bunker beneath stratcom, which again it's one of the most significant military organizations that almost no one's heard of. yes, right. strategic command, you've been to the former and that is in nebraska and a bunker beneath there the way it was described me, cheyenne mountain, the brainstem, the pentagon is, the beating heart of nuclear war stratcom is the muscle. and that pretty much gives you a great sort of poetic sense of those parts are now going to work with the president to get the counterattack going. so launch on is one of the wilderness concepts. again, there's no villains here. there is a debate at some point in your book between one. well, the secretary defense who

is in favor of waiting and the head of the strategic who's in favor of going. but neither one is evil, right? there's no jack weapon jones out general jack ripper here who's mad these are people logically following system and the policies we set out and that's what's so chilling about your book is that there's no crazy person here with the possible exception of kim un. it's just this is the way is the process we set up and we then get to next concept that you discuss in detail is sole authority and there's sides to that. why don't you tell us what seoul authority sole authority again, just like it sounds that the president of the united states has sole authority when it comes to launching nuclear weapons. he does ask anyone, not the secretary of defense, not the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and not the congress. interestingly lee if you google like could the president launch

a nuclear war you will see that more people believe that is fallacy than no it's actually a fact yeah that is stunning to me during the again the fire and fury rhetoric rhetoric with president trump there was so much attention to issue which had been sort of long buried. right. that congress released a congressional report stating that sole authority was, in fact, actual and that it is an inherent to the commander in chief. and they really laid out that he doesn't need to ask. right. so the safety half of that is that a lower ranking officer, even a colonel, a general, can't order, the release of nuclear weapons, only the president can do that. and harry truman started that john f kennedy institutionalized. but the other part is it is that once the president wants to launch a nuclear weapon for whatever reason, no one can overrule him. that's and that's another

paradox that is very i would say that's sinister paradox right because it's it puts this authority in one person literally can bring upon the end civilization and then you have to say to yourself, how how is that just acceptable? and again, that kind of loops back to my idea that i think most people are busy with other things rather than thinking about. yes, yeah. and it's that we do because the world is is is a different animal and some of these could be really from being discussed more transparently all kinds of people. right. the launch of all our weapons all the way up requires two people to agree, even in the minuteman silo. yes. two keys have to be turned to guard against an unstable individual, except for the most

important maker, the president and that's him and only him. yeah, absolutely. interesting. so did you decide to do this book as a scenario? why did you decide to play it out? this rather than talking about the history, the concept? yeah, the way i do in my books. again that has to do with wanting the most people passive to have an opinion or a discussion about this issue. yeah. and i know from, you know, experience that people very interested in things that they can digest reasonably and quickly and that makes perfect sense you know that, doesn't mean that there aren't market arts and, you know, libraries for really intense books, many of which i source in the back of my book and bibliography. excellent sources say there

we're all on the same team. they're all part of the same cons of, you know, making aware of their america. and i think that once i realize as i began reporting this, that the scenario format was the only way to go because i could find nothing more dramatic and nothing more important and nothing more dangerous than the speech with which all of this gets set in motion. yes. once launch on warning happens. yeah. and also discuss another aspect of of deterrence. you know any in the history of the nuclear age there's been a longstanding between whether we needed to get rid of these weapons or whether needed to build more of these weapons. and the people who want to build more of always argued sort of against on arms control, on

reduction and or trying to eliminate the weapons. and instead, we have to rely on our military might and in some ways recognizing flaws in deterrence that if it fails, it fails catastrophic. lee they've come up with the idea of missile that if the worst should happen, if somebody should launch a missile or missiles at us, we can devise ways shooting them down the way we have weapons to shoot down bombers. you talk about missile defense in this book as a myth and you go through how this would actually work based on what we now have and what we could foreseeably have for for the next. ten, 20 years or so. tell me about you came to those views about missile defense and how you see this operating. there's so much misinformation in when it comes to missile, right? so i was at a dinner party when. i was in the early stages of working on the book and i mentioned this, the person sitting to my right, at which

point they said something to the effect of, oh, annie, oh, if we have a missile defense system, we have interceptor that would shoot all this down. and they likened the situation. to the iron dome. yes i didn't want to correct because missile defense is missile defense. yes. right. and didn't want to correct them. i figured i'm going to send them a copy of my book when it publishes. but and i went to the experts. i went to everyone who knows and, you know, this, but most people don't that we have a grand total. of 44 interceptor missiles. those missiles have a success rate of between 40 and 55%. and those are the time after time under ideal conditions. yes. or you could call they're called cure tests. right. so like charlie we're going to be sending a missile your way. how's that? you know? i mean, this is what they did. so how easy. it's it's not sort of a madness and mayhem unfolding caught off guard. 44 half approximately half of

them are going to be successful. now consider this number, russia has. 1670 nuclear weapons ready for launch. you and i both know numbers change a little every year, but most people don't know that number. never mind the thousands on reserve, right? america because it's all about parity. has. 1770 nuclear weapons with several thousand on reserve. okay, so are 44 missiles going to defend more than a thousand? but even if they worked perfectly, even if they worked all the time and so then you nuke the war is the premise of it is to send the motherlode and so that is a fantasy. you know, i had a lieutenant general who is not a source for me, but i wanted to keep some people who were not sources in the book. so they had no horse in the race, but rather they would read

for me at the very stages of the drafts, you know, for fact checking for accuracy, for you might want to look deeper at this or that. and i was almost out hoping that someone said me, you know, annie, you shouldn't report because we do secretly have an iron. write something that tipped hat to that. maybe i was wrong, right? so you know what? people think that there's some secret weapon, right? they really do. and then people, some you know, they say, oh, lasers know and you and i both know. and this we're we're not going to get into the policy of it and do technical. but again, more fantasy the bottom line is you cannot defend against a nuclear war it which is why it only ends one way it ends in total we would all like to have effective missile defense system not against it sort of in theory. it's just that it doesn't. and we've been trying since we just passed the of the 41st anniversary of ronald reagan's

strategic defense initiative speech in march of 1983. and we've spent about hundred and $50 billion with america's best scientists and, contractors working on this. and we not have an effective missile defense. we can shoot down short range rockets like the israelis do with iron dome. that's a major technological. we can shoot down scuds that, travel about 300 miles, but an icy beam deploying decoys and has you do chaff right. or radar jammers? yeah, it's impossible. we just can't it. so there is no safety there is no shield. there is no safety net. here's a little anecdote i'm going to share. sometimes it's easiest to wrap the head around these very highfalutin concepts with just an image, right? the ballistic missiles, when they're in mid-course phase, when they're essentially trying to be shot down by the intercept outside, the atmosphere in space. so they're 500 miles up right there, 500 miles up.

and the way the works, you've got the ballistic missile going and the interceptor hours are in santa barbara. we have four in santa barbara and 40 in alaska. yeah. and the interceptor missile is to try and meet the incoming warhead 500 miles above. the ground traveling one is traveling 20,000 miles an hour. the other is traveling 14,000 miles an hour. even a spokesman at the missile defense agency said it was akin to shooting a bullet with a bullet. right. good luck, right. and under ideal, remarkably, sometimes can actually do that. but need a cooperative target. we need to target that's not trying to evade us or spoof us or jam us or attacking the radars, etc. guy this is great okay. so you one of the things i like about the way you do this is that you interrupt your you're story with little historical

vignettes, a little reminded me of john passos and how he does us a which he tells the story, but he interrupts it with what he called newsreels at the time. so you do that here just to give us a another perspective, the one you do is on deterrence and you say it's the number one rule of nuclear war is deterrence. but then you later go on to say the number one rule of nuclear is that there are no rules. so tell us a little bit about what you about that well you know you have all these very specific fixed protocols these systems forms of systems it's a sequence of events that are all mapped out. everyone is rehearsing. but then you parallel lines of intention right and i'll give you an example and i'm talking about with, you know, in the event an incoming nuclear missile is coming at the united states, it's detected. so we've spoken about the

defense department. stratcom command and control, what's happening over in this one lane. but then other lane of what's happening with the president. it was uniquely interesting to me, having written about the secret service in a previous book, specifically the secret service paramilitary team, which protects the president, the counter assault team, cat team. i got thinking and knowing what how they're job is to protect the life of the president no matter what and they will go to any. then i was thinking well what would they because of course if an incoming missile is coming into washington, d.c., the president's in washington, d.c., the secret service is going to get him out, is going to be their focus. and they are very determined. and they also have a lot more weapons than anyone else around. okay. and so in interviews with the former director of the secret service, cat team members, i about this other unique element called, a unique part of the captain called the element and

that's would come into play in the white house to move the president. and that was interesting. new on it had not been on the record before very valuable for people to know because i didn't know anything about again you're talking about these you know there are no rules like so the cat team is going to get him out. the stratcom commander is going to say we need to launch order first. in the scenario i describe the cat team wins and they take the president out. but there is a problem some without giving too much away. another thing i was shocked to learn of all about mp that's a whole, you know, electromagnetic pulse could very seriously threaten marine one and cause it to crash. yeah so the secret service director would order the team in the element to make sure they had parachute because they would need to jump the president out of marine one in the event that the helicopter crashing there not parachutes for everyone. i mean, you get these details where you realize this is where things start to unravel.

you know you you you take an approach similar to eric schlosser in his book command control very detailed like when eric describes a missile silo almost know the colors of the wires that are holding up the light bulb in the hallway outside. so why that approach why why go so deep? yeah i think people relate to and again, i'm talking about layman like just regular people. i mean with all of my books, i'm often told i'm read yes. by the generals in the admirals, the pentagon. but i'm also read by the little old ladies in south dakota. right. and that warms heart, because i am trying to take very calm blacks seemingly calm blacks issues and make them accessible to all us. and i think helps same with poetic help or anecdotes when you really hear a detail that,

you know, describes the color of paint on the wall or that there's not enough parachutes and the guys running back and forth between the white house office to try to find another you start to be able to use your own imagination to use your own thought process, and you become involved. yes, yes, yes. well, you do. you paint a new world. i mean, you really draw it in i am i am in the situation room. i am in the command bunker. i'm in marine. when you just you just didn't tell me what color the the headphones were but you just about it's just an excellent and on that i'm going to -- in for a second because one of my favorite parts about being in a journalist is asking questions you know, i'm usually in your seat and that the joy and i you know i'm always working with people with top secret clearances. q clearances like tell me this, you know, it's like, well, and it's interesting because they can't tell you the classified details, but they can tell you the color of the headphones and that becomes really interesting.

yeah. yeah. you i don't think a book like this out, you know, i've written a few myself and it's really about history and policy descriptions or you know nuclear being counting who's got what where but this the only the closest parallel i can think to this is a movie the day after that came out in the 1980s when the world was afraid that leonid brezhnev and ronald reagan were going to blow the world. and when was the last time were in an actual nuclear buildup an actual arms race like we are once again? did you think about the day after when you decided when you were conceiving this this approach? most certainly when saw the day after when i was a high school student and i remember being terrified by it, you know, and i've since a couple interesting things which are actually quite

hopeful, right. so of them is that abc was initially told, you know, that they or if there was a real discussion that they shouldn't it was too terrifying. right. and so yet they went ahead, aired it. a hundred million americans watched it, including me, including a very important american president, ronald reagan. yes. right. and that his response to that miniseries becomes, famously what is known as the reagan reversal or with the inside baseball crowd in washington, d.c., the reagan reversal, because he wrote reagan wrote in his presidential diary that he felt greatly depressed after watching it. those are his words. and as you know before, that with the sdi and reagan's position was american supremacy he no matter what he was very pro nuclear he was pro build up. he was for more power, more

nuclear power. and he changed his position seeing that he reached out gorbachev and because that the two leaders communicated and if there's a takeaway on the book, it's about communication, right? can learn to communicate learn to communicate. that's the best. don't learn to fight learn to communicate. reagan gorbachev communicated. and as a result, the markovic summit the world went from its high point in sanity. yes, 70,000 nuclear weapons in the world to the almost equally divided between the us and the soviets need 70,000. that is just astonishing. yes. and now 12,500 approximate today. yes right. many people would say that's or some people say that's 12,500 too many. but my god that is a big shift and that's where we need to go now. yeah one of the benefits of your book is talk about what happens.

you use those 12,000 weapons, what happens to the planet to human. and so you you really realize that even that number is enough destroy in 78 minutes, everything that humankind has created over millennia right. so you can do that. and you think back to 70,000 you want what we. well it's very interesting that you give me that anecdote. reagan's response to the day after, because i think the day after was in 84, 83, 83, and then in 85, gorbachev is elected. we get new leadership. we have an opening. reagan sees it and you seizes it and you get that statement from the both of them. a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought. a phrase we still cite today. last year, the nuclear five nuclear powers in this un council. we issued that statement,

agreeing that i mean, that's like an that's like a statement that should be carved in stone coming from those two individuals. and yet our nuclear force posture. tell me what you think about this. although the we claim it's for deterrence it's configured for war fighting. right. i mean, that is there's another paradox or could say a conundrum, right. because you can't undo that. the legacy goes back to that these systems the nuclear triad, the icbm arms, the submarines, the bombers, they were created and to fight and win nuclear fight and win a nuclear right and still are. so that hasn't changed it's just that the policy in air quotes has shifted. but they're the fundamental sort of paradox of deterrence is that we will never use these weapons. we have to. yeah. and so then if you're the

defense department, you're going to say, unless we have to, you're going to plan for what happens if, you have to. and you argue that being ready to go to nuclear war at a in a few minutes notice is essential to the deterrence mission. right. i mean that's how it's set up. that is how it's been set up. and how do you unravel that? and i don't have the answer. many wise people have been dedicated looking at these issues. well, could ask you for a couple answers in a second, in part because the new york times and glowing review of your book does take issue with this and say once you present the problem vividly as you do, you have an obligation to say, well, what's the alternative? what should we do? but we'll get to that in. just a second. i wanted just go back to the concept of writing book and the day after, because when i read this, i felt like this reads

like a movie. did you write it that way? are you thinking about this? do you think? this book could be adapted for a film presentation. i think cinematically. i that is the way i think when i was a young student in college, i wrote about about a book by nabokov that became a book by stanley kubrick. so i think movie by saying i sorry, a movie, a book. nabokov. lolita. yeah. and so i think and i also wrote about clockwork orange, right? so i think about different mediums of expression like a storyteller. that's how i came out of the shoot. i'm really interested in how the human mind processes information and what it does with it right. and to me, storytelling is the quintessential central, you know, winner of, all things. that's what interests me most.

and so i think the two things intertwine my own thinking and therefore it comes out in my writing. i take that as a compliment. oh, it is a compliment oh, absolutely. you know, i many years working in washington and then i went to work work for jessica matthews at the carnegie endowment. and i thought it was a gifted writer until i met her. and her full name is tuchman matthews. her mother is, barbara tuchman, pulitzer prize winner. and she says her mother used to keep her saying her typewriter. will the reader turn? page wow. will the reader turn the page? yes. and you've written a book where i kept turning the page. i needed to know what was going to happen next. so you've given us a gifted you've given us a way to understand the almost 80 years of the nuclear age now, now and,

the dynamics that are present in the way we've we've set up, oh well, before i get to my last question, i want to you said something about talking people about this. and one of the responses you got was, oh, annie, how often? oh, she's going to say which one because that's a that is a common oh, annie, you don't understand. yes. i mean, that's bent listen, that sometimes, you know, you can use friction your advantage and and i certainly do. i'm an old hockey player. and so you know just think about your skate on the ice it's all about friction and pushing off pushing again. yeah. and so when someone says to oh annie, which is an often phrase, yeah, as if i don't know, i just take that as a challenge and as i said because i love storytelling much, i love being a reporter, love the people that i to interview, you know, and

that's tricky situation because journalists are supposed to be so objective with their. and of course, i start out that way but many of the people that i work over years and sometimes more than a decade they end up the becomes a friend after they're no longer in the book. yeah because you i love interviewing people it warms my heart to be to be curious and be willing to hear new things right. well you know you don't use this phrase in book, but here in washington often talk about the nuclear priesthood and they jealously guard their white to be the ones. setting the rules for this setting the budgets for this. and it is a priesthood it's almost all white men there are some it's changing but not not very much. when you come down to the authority, did you run up against the priesthood? i, i just sort of, you know, the hockey player in me just around

all the time. i mean, because you you're always going to find interesting. interested that's my theory. you know, a lot of people say to me they look at my sources and they say, my god, how did you get secretary of defense met on how did you get all these people to talk to you? well, if they had any idea all the people i reach out to, they would realize it's, you know, eventually someone dies. i just at it, keep trying. and now what has happened because of course, this is my seventh book often i'll reach reach someone on the phone and oh thank you so much for a great i'll try to you know explain these are i've your books and so that becomes where you feel like oh i've been at this a while excellent yeah it's wonderful how you bring them in to your your scenario okay you've written a book that talks about war talks about weapons talks about unintended consequences. here in washington, we talk about policy. so if you had the opportunity to

walk ten blocks down to the white house and go get a few minutes with president biden, what kind of policy advice would you give him? and don't tell me you don't do policy this is your shot, okay? you get talk to biden. you've less 7 minutes to see him. what would you want him to do this year? what would you want him to do if he got a second term? well, i'd certainly ask him to read nuclear war because then we would agree that we knew what we were talking about. the same issues, because i was shocked to learn from secretaries of defense and others that the president in any president, most presidents remain terrifically ignorant about the issues that they are instilled with having to take control of. should nuclear war happen. and so that is really surprising. so it's like a quick up on this

situation that we're talking about here. and then i would the current president, any president to receive value aid from a democratic pov the idea small d small democrat a president. the democracy is not of yes i never make it about politics. right, right right. however so thank you for that correction. very important that the launch on warning policy entwined with sole authority are both inherently dangerous perilously dangerous and must be reexamined. and there are a number of ways to do that. as you know, executive orders having, you know, the congress. take a look things but they need to be unpacked and unwound. but first they have to be discussed because. if no one knows about these policies, the president is never going to think they're important enough to address. and then they would be, my opinion, sidelined into

politics. the reason i avoid policy is because i just write about policy. for example, president the united states. yes, i have always written about the produce, but i don't write about politics and a result. i have just as many on each side of the aisle. and to me that's the ultimate compliment, because no should be for nuclear war and everyone should be for a strong democracy. little know. and so too, to my eyes as a journalist, it's just leave the politics the politicians. so you would have the same to a president trump as you were to a president? i would i absolutely would to any president. because it's a presidential. it should be an issue. it was it's a situation created by the president. so therefore, it should be yeah, it should be addressed by any and every president, you know, in ways president biden is

uniquely qualified to change rules of the game on this because he's because of his chairmanship of the senate relations committee and how long he's been around. i mean, yes, you know with accumulated experience comes wisdom. absolutely and he is probably more conscious of nuclear war and arms control efforts. any president we've had the possible exception, george h.w. bush. and he said that when we were afraid that putin going to use a nuclear weapon in ukraine, we came we sent reports, we came closer to that than we had thought at the time, he says. i know of any scenario where you can use a tactical nuclear and have it not end in armageddon. that's right? and you talk about this in your thomas schelling, that all the war games we've played, every single war game that we've played and this is i agree with you, you say in the book, i think this is true escalates because once get into it the logic of the game right that

only ends in one way in nuclear armageddon and i agree with you that a president has been around for a while and who has worn different hats is going to have a greater scope of understanding and ultimately is going to have i more wisdom and make better choices when presented with this is the issue we need you to deal with and. so to that end, i think that in general, nuclear war and nuclear war scenario should be top on the president's list of briefings because we know he gets an early briefing and then it kind of at least i learned from secretary of defense vance, former panetta, you know, that kind of goes the president becomes concerned with other things and is no longer concerned nuclear issues. so make that a regular issue be dealt with and then also have people really care about it. i once said, why doesn't congress do more about when i

was interviewing some of my sources and a number of them said to me, and a congress only pays to what the people are paying, know, and well, you have given us a book that should get people's attention and is a tremendous contribution, in my view, to informing the public about the stakes, about the options and about the history of how we got here and points in the direction of how we can out. so annie jacobsen thank you much for your book. thank for joining us and having a what i think was informative and. i can i say this a highly discussion about nuclear war. it was a great discussion. thank you so much. thank you.

so tim alberta is the author is an author staff writer, the atlantic.