Who Profits from Nuclear Weapons?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 12 February 2018
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
US President Donald Trump has pledged a major upgrade to the country's nuclear deterrent, but are a handful of private defence contractors driving the multi-billion dollar modernisation programme?
Jonathan King, a veteran campaigner against nuclear proliferation and professor at MIT, argues guaranteed profit margins and secrecy make the industry very attractive to such companies.
But Hawk Carlisle, chief executive of the US National Defense Industrial Association, tells Ed Butler the private sector is the only area capable of building such weapons and that there is adequate competition and government scrutiny.
Plus, how complicated is it to make a bomb these days? Robert Kelley, a former weapons inspector in Iraq, says technology is advancing so fast that it's getting easier and easier.
Producer: Laurence Knight
(Picture: Ballistic missiles being launched in North Korea. Credit: AFP photo/KCNA via KNS, Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:08.7 | President Donald Trump has pledged a major upgrade to his country's nuclear deterrence. |
| 0:13.8 | He's offered tough words, but perhaps this is also a big cash windfall for a few private |
| 0:19.1 | defence contractors. |
| 0:20.3 | No matter how inefficient corporations are in the manufacturing process or how much they go over |
| 0:26.0 | to the original estimate, they're guaranteed a hefty profit margin. |
| 0:30.2 | Yes, the money trail for big U.S. defense contracts is our theme today. |
| 0:34.7 | Also, we ask just how easy is it for anyone to make a nuclear bomb? But now you see |
| 0:40.0 | someone like North Korea shaking the earth very hard. So it's getting easier and easier from a |
| 0:46.3 | computational and engineering point of view. The information is clearly out there. All of that in |
| 0:51.2 | Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 1:01.3 | President Trump has made it clear in his recent state of the union address. |
| 1:08.8 | The United States will be dramatically upgrading and diversifying Washington's strategic nuclear deterrence. |
| 1:15.9 | As part of our defense, we must modernize and rebuild our nuclear deterrence. As part of our defense, we must modernize and rebuild our nuclear arsenal, |
| 1:22.6 | hopefully never having to use it, but making it so strong and so powerful, |
| 1:29.9 | that it will deter any acts of aggression by any other nation or anyone else. |
| 1:33.1 | Yes, according to the Congressional Budget Office, |
| 1:37.9 | the upgrade could cost more than a trillion dollars over the next 30 years. |
| 1:41.2 | A new submarine-based launching system, |
| 1:44.3 | a whole new range of battlefield weapons on the shopping list. |
| 1:49.5 | With the military standoff with North Korea, an ongoing talking point, many see Mr. Trump's get-tuff approach as a sign that the world is becoming riskier in this regard. |
| 1:54.9 | We'll have more on that in a moment. But first, is there also a financial agenda at play here |
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