Marshall here, welcome back to the realignment.

Today's episode of speaking with the author and journalist Sarah Sculls,

but her new book,

countdown the blinding future of nuclear weapons.

This conversation is really interesting

because unlike a lot of conversations around nukes,

this isn't just about relitigating the past,

though we obviously get into that.

It's about the future, what modernization looks like and how we could think about the state of the United

States's nuclear arsenal in the face of potential or future conflicts in Europe, Asia, and across the globe.

Hope you all enjoy the conversation and looking forward to having more conversations like this one,

integrating the technical questions with the deeply

important geopolitical ones. Huge thank you to the Foundation for American Innovation,

for the work in this podcast. Hope enjoy the conversation. Sarah Sculls, welcome to the realignment.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

First, an obvious question you're hearing from I'm sure everybody what's it like to write a book on the future of nuclear weapons the year of Oppenheimer

Well, fortunately for me or unfortunately I didn't know that it would be the year of Oppenheimer when I pitched the book.

But I mean, I think it's part of my goal in writing the book was just to bring nuclear issues kind of more in public because they're usually just, you know, their think tank topics or defense department topics and I wanted them to become more public topics and you know a big blockbuster movie is one way to do that also so

me and Christopher Nolan I think are on the same page.

Yeah good page to be on.

When did you pitch the book then because I think the timeline there is really interesting.

Yeah, it was back in 2020, late 2020, was when I pitched it. And yeah, I had just just I had been reporting for a while on the national

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