Reagan's Failed Attempt to Put Lasers in Space
Angry Planet
Matthew Gault
4.3 • 882 Ratings
🗓️ 5 April 2023
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 1983, President Ronald Reagan stood before the American public and promised to put lasers in space. The Strategic Defense Initiative was meant to be the ultimate bulwark against communist intercontinental ballistic missile. It didn’t work.
Deriseively called Star Wars, the system never worked. To this day, methods for shooting an ICBM out of the sky are shoddy at best and fantasy at worst.
Joining us today is Joe Cirincione. In his own words on his substack at joecirincione.substack.com. He is a national security expert and author with 40 years of experience on these issues in Washington, D.C. and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has held a number of prestigious roles in the nation’s capitol.
To see the clip of science fiction authors Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven talking about meeting with Reagan and “winnninng the Cold War with Star Wars” go here:
https://youtu.be/i-lSr2ud8Nc
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Love this podcast support this show through the a cast supporter feature |
| 0:05.1 | It's up to you how much you give and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. People live in a world with their own making. |
| 0:25.0 | Frankly, that seems to be the problem. |
| 0:31.0 | Welcome to Angry Planet. |
| 0:34.0 | Hello. |
| 0:36.0 | Hello and |
| 0:37.0 | and Hello and welcome'm Matthew Galt. |
| 0:45.0 | Bill Murray said it best nearly 50 years ago when he he's saying the words, |
| 0:53.1 | Star Wars, those near and far wars, and so on. |
| 0:58.1 | Are you not gonna do it in tune? |
| 0:59.3 | You're not gonna do the voice? |
| 1:00.5 | I don't think you actually want to hear that. I don't know if anybody wants to hear that. I don't think you actually want to hear that. I don't think anybody wants to hear that. I don't I just kind of want to war wars. |
| 1:07.0 | Those here and far wars. Yeah, there we go. Okay, thank you. All right. Perfect. |
| 1:12.0 | So, but we're here today to talk about a different Star Wars, one that got more than its nickname though from the movies. In 1983, Ronald Reagan stood up to propose a space-based, |
| 1:27.3 | maybe laserish anti-ballistic missile system. Well, it's been 40 years so where are those laser satellites? |
| 1:35.6 | Jo Cerncioni he has his own laser satellite no, probably not. In his own words on his substack, the substack by the way is |
| 1:47.8 | Joe Serincione at sub-stack, or sorry, dot substack.com and we will have a link to that in the show |
| 1:53.1 | notes. He is a national security expert and author with 40 years of experience on |
| 2:00.0 | these issues in Washington DC. He's a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and |
| 2:05.3 | is held a number of prestigious roles in the nation's capital. So thank you so much for |
| 2:10.6 | joining us. My pleasure, Jason. |
| 2:12.6 | Thanks for having me on. |
... |
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