Chatter: Nuclear Launch Authority in Myth and Reality, with Hans Kristensen
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 18 January 2024
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Lloyd Austin's hospitalization and delayed communication about it have spurred much commentary and questions about the role of the secretary of defense in the US nuclear-strike chain of command.
David Priess spoke with Hans Kristensen, Director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, about his path to expertise on nuclear issues, the chain of command for nuclear strike authorization (and recent comments from elected representatives that misunderstand it), alternatives to the current system, fictional scenarios of nuclear launches, what is known about different nuclear states' authorization processes, the "letters of last resort" for UK nuclear submarines, deterrence and human psychology, and more.
Among the works mentioned in this episode:
The TV movie The Day After
The movie WarGames
The movie The Bedford Incident
The music video for "Land of Confusion" by Genesis
The movie Dr. Strangelove
The movie Fail Safe
The movie The Man Who Saved the World
The movie A Few Good Men
"Finger on the Button," paper by Jeffrey G. Lewis and Bruno Tertais, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey
The book The Dead Hand by David Hoffman
The movie Crimson Tide
Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.
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Transcript
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| 1:04.0 | Welcome to Chatter. |
| 1:09.0 | I'm David Priest. |
| 1:11.0 | This week Hans Christensen, a nuclear launch authority in myth and reality. |
| 1:17.0 | I remember asking the Soviet commander, |
| 1:23.0 | could you have launched your nuclear weapons? |
| 1:25.0 | And he was like, oh no, I was not allowed to do that. |
| 1:28.0 | And I was like, no, no, I know that, but could you technically have done it? |
| 1:32.0 | And he said, yeah, there were no law. could you technically have done it? |
| 1:32.8 | And he said, there were no locks on the systems. |
| 1:35.9 | We could have done that. |
| 1:37.5 | The eyebrows on the American general just went off |
| 1:40.1 | because he would say, dude, if you had made one move, we would have launched. |
... |
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