This is John Bachelor, conversation with Peter Husey of the National Deterrence Center. I'm This is John Bachelor, conversation with Peter Hughesy of the National Institute for Deterrence Studies about the capability

of the People's Republic of China's nuclear arsenal building up all the time.

The distinction is a counter counter-force or a counter-value strategy.

Counter-Force means it attacks our weapons.

Counter-value means it attacks our cities.

Peter's answer is complicated, but then again, straightforward and the People's

Republic of China's ambitions are uncontained in any fashion and not rational in any fashion.

Here's Peter's explanation for the choices between counter force, missiles against weaponry,

and counter value missiles against cities.

John is a very good question.

They are going after our weapons.

Our missiles, our submarines, our bomber bases, and our cities.

They occasionally will say to the United States,

don't mess with us because our submarines can target.

And then we miss San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles

to intimidate us.

But on the hand, they have enough weapons now. They have more land-based

ICBM's launchers than we do, remarkably. And that was as of a year ago. So they now have a full

counter force capability. And in my view that's why they're

building what they're building but much more importantly the silo-based

systems are designed to go first.

Talking about San Francisco that's counter value.

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