Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy | Lex Fridman Podcast #420

1. 0:00 – 2:13

   Introduction

   1. AJAnnie Jacobsen0:00

      The United States has 1,770 nuclear weapons deployed. Meaning, those weapons could launch in as little as 60 seconds, and up to a couple minutes. Some of them on the bombers might take an hour or so. Russia has 1,674 deployed nuclear weapons. Same scenario, their weapon systems are on-par with ours. That's not to mention the 12,500 nuclear weapons amongst the nine nuclear-armed nations. The sucking up into the nuclear stem, 300 mile an hour winds. You're talking about people miles out getting sucked up into that stem. When you see the mushroom cloud, Lex, that would be people, 30, 40 mile wide mushroom cloud, blocking out the sun. And that speaks nothing of the radiation poisoning that follows. In addition to the launch on warning concept, there's this other insane concept called sole presidential authority. And you might think, in a democracy that's impossible, right? You can't just start a war. Well, you can just start a nuclear war if you are the commander-in-chief, the president of the United States. In fact, you're the only one who can do that. We are one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear Armageddon. No matter how nuclear war starts, it ends with everyone dead.

   2. LFLex Fridman1:36

      The following is a conversation with Annie Jacobsen, an investigative journalist, Pulitzer Prize finalist, and author of several amazing books on war, weapons, government secrecy, and national security, including the books titled Area 51, Operation Paperclip, The Pentagon's Brain, Phenomena, Surprise, Kill, Vanish, and her new book, Nuclear War. This is a Lex Fridman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Annie Jacobsen.

2. 2:13 – 6:57

   Nuclear war

   1. LFLex Fridman2:13

      Let's start with, uh, an immensely dark topic, nuclear war. How many people would a nuclear war between the United States and Russia kill?

   2. AJAnnie Jacobsen2:24

      So, I'm coming back at you with a very dark answer, and a very big number, and that number is five billion people.

   3. LFLex Fridman2:37

      You go second-by-second, minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour what would happen if the nuclear war started. So, uh, there's a lot of angles from which I would love to talk to you about this. At... First, how would the deaths happen-

   4. AJAnnie Jacobsen2:55

      Mm-hmm.

   5. LFLex Fridman2:55

      ... in the short-term, in the long-term?

   6. AJAnnie Jacobsen2:59

      So, to start off, the reason I wrote the book is so that readers like you could see in appalling detail just how horrific nuclear war would be, and as you said, second-by-second, minute-by-wi- minute. The book covers nuclear launch to nuclear winter. I purposely don't get into the politics that lead up to that or the national security maneuvers or the posturing or any of that. I just want people to know nuclear war is insane. And every source I interviewed for this book, from Secretary of Defense, you know, all retired, nuclear sub force commander, STRATCOM commander, FEMA director, et ceter- on and on and on, nuclear weapons engineers, they all shared with me the common denominator that nuclear war is insane. You know, first millions then tens of millions then hundreds of millions of people will die in the first 72 minutes of a nuclear war. And then comes nuclear win- winter where the billions happen from starvation. And so the shock power of all of this is meant for each and every one of us to say, "Wait, what?" This actually exists behind the veil of national security. And I don't know if... You know, most people do not think about nuclear war on a daily basis, and yet hundreds of thousands of people in the nuclear command and control are at the ready in the event it happens.

   7. LFLex Fridman4:43

      But it doesn't take too many people to start one.

   8. AJAnnie Jacobsen4:47

      In the words of Richard Garwin, who was the nuclear weapons engineer who drew the plans for the Ivy Mike thermonuclear bomb, the first thermonuclear bomb ever exploded in 1952. Garwin shared with me his opinion that all it takes is one nihilistic madman with a nuclear arsenal to start a nuclear war. And that's how I begin the scenario.

   9. LFLex Fridman5:17

      What are the different ways it could start? Like, literally who presses a button, and what does it take to press a button?

   10. AJAnnie Jacobsen5:24

       So, the way it starts is in space, meaning the US Defense Department has a early warning system, and the system in space is called SBIRS. It's a constellation of satellites that is keeping an eye on all of America's enemies so that the moment an ICBM launches, the satellite in space, and I'm talking about one-tenth of the way to the moon, that's how powerful these satellites are in geosynch, they see the hot rocket exhaust on the ICBM......in a fraction of a second after it launches, a fraction of a second. And so there begins this horrifying policy called launch on warning, right? And that's the US counterattack, meaning the reason that the United States is so ferociously watching for a nuclear launch somewhere around the globe is so that the nuclear command and control system in the US can move into action to immediately make a counterstrike, because we have that policy, launch on warning, which is exactly like it says. It means the United States will not wait to absorb a nuclear attack. It will launch nuclear weapons in response before the bomb actually hits.

3. 6:57 – 12:36

   Launch procedure

   1. AJAnnie Jacobsen6:57

   2. LFLex Fridman6:57

      So the president, as part of the launch on warning policy, has six minutes. I guess can't launch for six minutes, but at six-minute mark from that first warning, the president can launch.

   3. AJAnnie Jacobsen7:15

      And that was one of the most remarkable details to really nail down for this book when I was reporting this book, and talking to Secretary of Defenses, for example, who are the people who advise the president on this matter, right? You say to yourself, "Wait a minute. How could that possibly be?" And so let's unpack that, right? So in addition to the launch on warning concept, there's this other insane concept called sole presidential authority. And you might think, in a democracy, that's impossible, right? You can't just start a war. Well, you can just start a nuclear war if you are the commander-in-chief, the president of the United States. In fact, you're the only one who can do that. And we can get into later why that exists. I was able to get the origin story of that concept from Los Alamos. They declassified it for the book. Um, but the idea behind that is that nuclear war will in- unfold so fast, only one person can be in charge, the president. He asks permission of no one, not the secretary of defense, not the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, not the US Congress. So built into that is this extraordinary speed you talk about, the six-minute window. And some people say, "Oh, that's ridiculous. How do we know that six-minute window?" Well, here's the best sort of n- you know, hitting the nail on the head statement I can give you, which is, in President Reagan's memoirs, he refers to this six-minute window, and he says... He, he calls it irrational, which it is. He says, "How can anyone make a decision to launch nuclear weapons based on a blip on a radar scope..." his words, "to unleash Armageddon?" And yet, that is the reality behind nuclear war.

   4. LFLex Fridman9:08

      Just imagine sitting there, one person, because the president is a human being, sitting there. (laughs) Just got the warning that Russia launched. You have six minutes. You know, I, I meditate on my mortality every day, and here you would be sitting and meditating, contemplating not just your own mortality, but the mortality of all the people you know, loved ones. Just imagining, like what... What would be going through my head is all the people I know and love, like personally, and knowing that there'll be no more most likely. And if they somehow survive, they will be suffering and will eventually die. I guess the question that kept coming up is, how do we stop this? Is it inevitable that it's going to be escalated to a full-on nuclear war that destroys everything? And it seems like it h- it will be. It's inevitable. In the position of the president, it's almost inevitable that they have to respond.

   5. AJAnnie Jacobsen10:16

      I mean, one of the things I found shocking was how little apparently most presidents know about the responsibility that literally lays at their feet, right? So you may think through the six-minute window. I may think through the six-minute window. But what I learned... Like, for example, former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was really helpful in explaining this to me, because before he was SECDEF, he served as the, um, director of the CIA. And before that, he was the White House chief of staff. And so he has seen these different roles that have been so close to the president. But he explained to me that when he was the White House chief of staff for President Clinton, he noticed how President Clinton didn't want to ever really deal with the nuclear issue, because he had so many other issues to deal with.

   6. LFLex Fridman11:13

      Hmm.

   7. AJAnnie Jacobsen11:14

      Um, and that only when Panetta became secretary of defense, he told me, did he really realize the weight of all of this, because he knew he would be the person that the president would turn to were he to be notified of a nuclear attack. And by the way, it's the launch on warning. It's the, it's the, the ballistic missile s- seen from outer space by the satellite, and then there also must be a second confirmation from a ground radar system.

   8. LFLex Fridman11:50

      Mm-hmm.

   9. AJAnnie Jacobsen11:51

      But in that process, which is just a couple minutes, everyone is getting ready to notify the president. And one of the first people that gets notified by NORAD, or by STRATCOM, or by NRO, these different parties that all see the early warning data...One of the first peoples that's notified is the Secretary of Defense, as well as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, because those two together are going to brief the President about, you know, "Sir, you have six minutes to decide." And that's where you realize the immediacy of all of this. It's so counter to imagining the scenario.

4. 12:36 – 16:09

   Deterrence

   1. AJAnnie Jacobsen12:36

      And again, all the presidents come into office, I have learned, understanding the idea that d- of deterrence, this idea that we have these massive arsenals of nuclear weapons pointed at one another, ready to launch, so that we never have nuclear war.

   2. LFLex Fridman12:52

      Mm-hmm.

   3. AJAnnie Jacobsen12:53

      But what we're talking about now is what if we did? What if we did? And what you've raised is, like, this really spooky, eerie subtext of the world right now, because many of the nuclear armed nations are in direct conflict with other nations. And for the first time in decades, nuclear threats are actually coming out of the mouths of leaders. This is shocking.

   4. LFLex Fridman13:24

      So, deterrence, the polite implied assumption is that nobody will launch, and if they did, we would launch back, and everybody would be dead. But that assumption falls apart completely. The whole philosophy of it falls apart once the first launch happens.

   5. AJAnnie Jacobsen13:45

      Absolutely.

   6. LFLex Fridman13:46

      Then you have six minutes to decide, "Wait a minute, are we going to hit back and kill everybody on Earth? Or do we turn the other cheek in the most horrific way possible?"

   7. AJAnnie Jacobsen13:57

      Well, when- when nuclear war starts, there's no, like, battle for New York or battle for Moscow. It's just literally it- you know, it was called in the Cold War push-button warfare, but in essence, that is wh- that is what it is. Let's get some numbers on the table, if you don't mind.

   8. LFLex Fridman14:13

      Yeah.

   9. AJAnnie Jacobsen14:13

      Right? Because th- w- when you're saying, like, "Wait a minute, w- we're just hoping that it holds," right? Let's just talk about Russia and the U.S., the arsenals that are literally pointed at one another right now, right? So, the United States has 1,770 nuclear weapons deployed, meaning those weapons could launch in as little as 60 seconds and up to a couple minutes. Some of them on the bombers might take an hour or so. Russia has 1,674 deployed nuclear weapons. Same scenario, their weapons systems are on par with ours. That's not to mention the 12,500 nuclear weapons amongst the nine nuclear armed nations. But when you think about those kind of arsenals of just between the United States and Russia, you real- and you realize everything can be launched in seconds and minutes, then you realize the madness of mad, that this idea that no one would launch because it would assure everyone's destruction, yes, but what if someone did? And in my interviews with scores of top-tier national security advisors, people who advise the President, people who are responsible for these decisions if they had to be made, every single one of them said it could happen. They didn't say, "This would never happen." And so the idea is worth thinking about, because I believe that it pulls back the veil on a fundamental security that if someone were to use a tactical nuclear weapon, oh, well, it's just an escalation. It's far more than

5. 16:09 – 25:35

   Tactical nukes

   1. AJAnnie Jacobsen16:09

      that.

   2. LFLex Fridman16:11

      So, to you, the use of a tactical nuclear weapon, maybe you can draw the line between a tactical and a strategic nuclear weapon, that could be a catalyst. Like, that's a very difficult thing to walk back from.

   3. AJAnnie Jacobsen16:23

      Oh my God, almost certainly. And again, any- every person in the national security environment tells- will- will agree with that, right? Certainly on the American side. Um, strategic weapons, those are like big weapons systems. The Am- America has a nuclear triad. We have our ICBMs, which are the silo-based missiles that have a nuclear warhead in the nose cone, and they can get from one continent to the other in roughly 30 minutes. Then we have our bombers, B-52s and B-2s, that are nuclear capable. Um, those take travel time to get to another continent. Those can also be recalled. The ICBMs cannot be recalled or redirected once launched.

   4. LFLex Fridman17:09

      That one is a particularly terrifying one. So, land-launched missiles, rockets with a warhead can't be recalled.

   5. AJAnnie Jacobsen17:19

      Cannot be recalled or redirected. And speaking of how little the presidents generally know, as we were talking a moment ago, President Reagan, in 1983, gave a press conference where he misstated that submarine-launched ballistic missiles could be recalled. They cannot be recalled. So, that gives you, here's the guy in charge of the arsenal if it has to get let loose, and he doesn't even know that they cannot be recalled? So, this is the kind of misinformation and disinformation and- and pr- you know, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently said when he was talking about the conflicts rising around the world, he said, "We are one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear Armageddon."

   6. LFLex Fridman18:11

      So just to sort of linger on the previous point of tactical nukes. So you're describing strategic nukes, land-launched, uh, bombers, submarine launched. What are tactical nukes?

   7. AJAnnie Jacobsen18:23

      So that's the triad, right?

   8. LFLex Fridman18:24

      Triad.

   9. AJAnnie Jacobsen18:25

      We have the triad and Russia has the triad. Tactical nuclear weapons are smaller warheads that were designed to be used in battle. And that is what Russia is sort of threatening to use right now. That is this idea that you would, y- you know, make a decision on the battlefield, in an operational environment, to use a tactical nuclear weapon. You're just sort of upping the ante. But the problem is that all treaties are based on this idea of no nuclear use, right? You cannot cross that line. And so the what would happen if the line is crossed is so devastating to even consider. I think that the conversation is well worth having among everyone, you know, that is in a power of position. How ... A- as, you know, the UN Secretary-General said, this is madness, right? This is madness. We must come back from the brink. We are at the brink.

   10. LFLex Fridman19:32

       Uh, can we talk about some other numbers? So you mentioned the number of, uh, warheads. So, land launched, how long does it take to travel across the ocean? From the United States to- to Russia, from Russia to the United States, from China to the United States, uh, how ... Approximately how long?

   11. AJAnnie Jacobsen19:52

       When I was writing an earlier book on DARPA, the- the Pentagon science agency, um, I went to a library down in San Diego called the Giesel Library to look at Herb York's papers. Herb York was the first chief scientist for the Pentagon, for DARPA, then called ARPA. And I had been trying to get the number from the various agencies that be ... To answer your ... Like, what is the exact number and how do we know it? And like, does it change? And, you know, as technology advances, does that number reduce? All these kinds of questions, and no one will answer that question-

   12. LFLex Fridman20:30

       Hmm.

   13. AJAnnie Jacobsen20:30

       ... on an official level. And so, much to my surprise, I found the answer in Herb York's like dusty archive of papers.

   14. LFLex Fridman20:39

       Mm-hmm.

   15. AJAnnie Jacobsen20:39

       And this is information that was jealously guarded. I mean, it didn't ... It- it was not, it's not necessarily classified, but it certainly wasn't out there. And I felt like, wow, Herb York left these behind for someone like me to find, right?

   16. LFLex Fridman20:57

       Hmm.

   17. AJAnnie Jacobsen20:57

       And what the process ... He wanted to know the answer to your question, and as the guy in charge of it all. So he hired this group of scientists who then and still are in many ways like the Pento- the supermen scientists of the Pentagon, and they're called the Jason scientists. Many conspiracies a- about them abound. I interviewed their founder and have interviewed many of them. But they whittled the number down to seconds, okay? Specifically for Herb York, and it goes like this, 'cause this is where my jaw dropped and I went, "Wow." Okay? So 26 minutes and 40 seconds from a launchpad in the Soviet Union to the East Coast.

   18. LFLex Fridman21:41

       Mm-hmm.

   19. AJAnnie Jacobsen21:42

       And it happens in three phases, very simple, and interesting to remember, 'cause it ... Then suddenly all of this makes more sense. Boost phase, mid-course phase, and then terminal phase. Okay? Boost phase, five minutes. That's when the rocket launches. So you just imagine a rocket going off the launchpad and the fire beneath it. Again, that's why the satellites can see it, okay? Now it's becoming visual. Now it makes sense to me, right? Five minutes, and that's where the rocket can be tracked. And then imagine learning, wait a minute, after five minutes, the rocket can no longer be seen from space. The satellite can only see the hot rocket exhaust. Then the missile enters its mid-course phase, 20 minutes, and that's the ballistic part of it, where it's kind of flying up at between 500 and 700 miles above the Earth-

   20. LFLex Fridman22:37

       Mm-hmm.

   21. AJAnnie Jacobsen22:38

       ... and moving very fast, and with the Earth, until it gets very close to its target, and the last 100 seconds are terminal phase. It's where the warhead reenters the atmosphere and detonates. 26 minutes and 40 seconds. Now, in my scenario, I open with North Korea launching a one megaton nuclear warhead at Washington, DC. That's the nihilistic madman maneuver. That's the bolt out of the blue attack that everyone in Washington will tell you they're afraid of.

   22. LFLex Fridman23:16

       Hmm.

   23. AJAnnie Jacobsen23:17

       And North Korea is a little ... Has a little bit different geography, and so I had MIT professor, emeritus, Ted Postol do the math.

   24. LFLex Fridman23:27

       Mm-hmm.

   25. AJAnnie Jacobsen23:28

       33 minutes from a launchpad in Pyongyang to the East Coast of the United States. You get the idea. It's about 30 minutes. But hopefully now, that allows readers to suddenly see all this as a real ... You- you almost see it as, you know, as poetry, as terrible as that may sound. You can visualize it, and suddenly it makes sense. And I think the sense-making part of it is really what I'm after in this book, because I want people to understand, on the- the one hand, it's incredibly simple. It's just the people that have made it so complicated.

   26. LFLex Fridman24:05

       But it's one of those things that can change all of world history in a matter of minutes. We just don't, as a human civilization, have experience with that. But-It doesn't mean it'll never happen. It can happen just like that.

   27. AJAnnie Jacobsen24:23

       I mean, I think what you're after, and I couldn't agree more with, is like, why is, why is this fundamentally annihilating system, a system of mass genocide, as John Rubel, uh, you know, in the book t- refers to it. Why does it still exist? You know, we've had 75 years since there have been two superpowers with a nuclear bomb. Um, so that threat has been there for 75 years, and we have managed to stay alive. One of the reasons why so many of the sources in the book agreed to talk to me, people who had not previously gone on the record about all of this, was because they are now approaching the end of their lives. They spent their lives dedicated to preventing nuclear World War III.

   28. LFLex Fridman25:20

       Mm-hmm.

   29. AJAnnie Jacobsen25:21

       And they'll be the first people to tell you, "We're closer to this as a reality than ever before." And so, on the bright, the only bright side of any of this is that, like, the answer lies most definitely in communication.

6. 25:35 – 28:35

   Nuclear submarines

   1. LFLex Fridman25:35

      So there's a million other questions here. Uh, I think the details are fascinating and important to understand. So one, you also say, uh, nuclear submarines. You mention about 30 minutes, 20- 26, 33 minutes, but with, uh, nuclear submarines, that number can be much, much lower. So how long does it take for a warhead to, a missile to reach the East Coast of the United States from a submarine?

   2. AJAnnie Jacobsen26:04

      Just when you thought it was really bad-

   3. LFLex Fridman26:06

      Yeah.

   4. AJAnnie Jacobsen26:06

      ... and then you kind of realize about the submarines. I mean, the submarines are what are called second strike capacity, right? And, you know, it was describ- submarines were described to me this way. They are as dangerous to civilization, and, uh, let me say, a nuclear armed, nuclear powered submarine, is as dangerous to civilization as an asteroid. Okay? They are unstoppable. They are unlocatable. The former chief of the nuclear submarine forces, Admiral Michael Connor, told me, it's easier to find a grapefruit-sized object in space than a submarine under the sea. Okay? So, these things are like hell machines. And they're moving around throughout the oceans, ours, Russia's, China's, maybe North Korea's, constantly. And we now know they're sneaking up to the East and West Coast of the United States within a couple hundred miles. How do we know that? Why do we know that? Well, I found a document inside of a budget, um, that the Defense Department was going to Congress for more money recently, and showed maps of precisely where these submarines, how close they were getting to the Eastern Seaboard.

   5. LFLex Fridman27:23

      So, wait, wait, wait. So nuclear subs are getting within 200 miles?

   6. AJAnnie Jacobsen27:27

      Couple hundred miles, yes. They weren't precise on the number, but when you look at the map-

   7. LFLex Fridman27:31

      Couple hundred.

   8. AJAnnie Jacobsen27:31

      Yep. And that's when you're talking about under 10 minutes from launch to, to strike.

   9. LFLex Fridman27:37

      Undetectable.

   10. AJAnnie Jacobsen27:38

       And they're undetectable. The, the map-making is done after the fact because of a lot of underwater surveillance systems that we have. You know, but in real time, you cannot find an, a nuclear submarine. And, you know, just the way a submarine launches, goes 150 feet below the surface to launch its ballistic missile. I mean, it comes out of the missile tube, and with enough thrust that the r- the thrusters, the boo- they ignite outside the water-

   11. LFLex Fridman28:10

       Mm-hmm.

   12. AJAnnie Jacobsen28:10

       ... and then they move into boost. And so the technology involved is just stunning and shocking, and again, trillions of dollars spent so that we never have a nuclear war. But my God, what if we did?

   13. LFLex Fridman28:25

       As you write, they're called the handmaidens of the apocalypse. What a terrifying label. I mean, um,

7. 28:35 – 35:46

   Nuclear missiles

   1. LFLex Fridman28:35

      you, one, one of the things you also write about, so for the land-launched ones, they're presumably underground? So the silos. How long does it take to go from, like, pressing the button to them emerging from underground for launch? And is, is that part detectable-

   2. AJAnnie Jacobsen28:53

      Yeah.

   3. LFLex Fridman28:53

      ... or it's only the, the heat?

   4. AJAnnie Jacobsen28:55

      So what's interesting about the silos, America has 400 silos, right? We've had more. Um, but we have 400, and they're underground, and they're called Minutemen, right?

   5. LFLex Fridman29:06

      Mm-hmm.

   6. AJAnnie Jacobsen29:07

      After the Revolutionary War heroes. But the sort of joke in Washington is they're not called Minutemen for nothing, because they can launch in one minute.

   7. LFLex Fridman29:16

      Yeah.

   8. AJAnnie Jacobsen29:16

      Right? So the president orders the launch of the ICBMs. ICBM stands for intercontinental ballistic missile. He orders the launch, and they launch 60 seconds later, and then they take 30 some odd minutes to get to where they are going. The submarines take about 14 or 15 minutes from the presidential, from the launch command to actually launching. And that has to do, I surmise, with the location of the submarine, its depth. Some of these things are so highly classified, and others, other details are shockingly available if you look deep enough, or if you ask enough questions and you can go from one document to the next to the next and really find these answers.

   9. LFLex Fridman30:03

      Not to ask top secret questions, but, uh, to what degree do you think the Russians know the locations of the silos in the U.S.-

   10. AJAnnie Jacobsen30:11

       (sighs)

   11. LFLex Fridman30:11

       ... and vice versa?

   12. AJAnnie Jacobsen30:12

       Lex, you can, you and I can find the location of every silo right now.

   13. LFLex Fridman30:16

       Oh, no.

   14. AJAnnie Jacobsen30:16

       They're all there. And before they were there on, on, you know, Google, they were there in Maps, because we're a democracy, and we make these things known. Okay?

   15. LFLex Fridman30:24

       Mm-hmm.

   16. AJAnnie Jacobsen30:25

       Now, what's tricky is that Russia and North Korea rely upon what are called road mobile launchers, right? So, Russia has a lot of underground silos. You know, all of the scenario takes you through these different facilities that really do exist.

   17. LFLex Fridman30:41

       Mm-hmm.

   18. AJAnnie Jacobsen30:41

       And they're all sourced with how many weapons they have, and their launch procedures and whatnot. But in addition to having, um, underground silos, they have road mobile launchers, and that means you c- you just have one of these giant ICBMs on a 22 axle truck-

   19. LFLex Fridman30:59

       Mm-hmm.

   20. AJAnnie Jacobsen31:00

       ... that can move stealthily around the country so that it can't be targeted by the US Defense Department. We don't have those in America, because presumably, the average, you know, American isn't gonna go for like the ICBM road mobile launcher driving down the street in your town or city. Um, which is why the Defense Department will justify we need the second strike capacity capability, the, uh, submarines, right? Because, you know, the, I mean, the wonky stuff that is worth looking into as a, if you really dig the book and are like, "Wait a minute," w- it's all footnoted, where you can learn more about how these systems have changed over time, um, and why, more than anything, it's very difficult to get out of this Catch-22 conundrum that, you know, we need nuclear weapons to keep us safe. That is the real enigma, because the other guys have them, right? And the other guys have sort of more sinister ways of, of using them, or at least that's what the nomenclature out of the Pentagon will always be when anyone tries to say, "We just need to really think about full disarmament."

   21. LFLex Fridman32:16

       You've written about intelligence agencies. How good are the intelligence agencies on this? How much does the CIA know about the, the Russian, uh, the Russian launch sites and capabilities, and command and control procedures, and all this, and vice versa?

   22. AJAnnie Jacobsen32:33

       I mean, all of this, because it's decades old, is really well known. If you go to the Federation of American Scientists, they have a team led by a guy called Hans Kristensen, who runs what's called the Nuclear Notebook, and he and his team every year are keeping track of this number of warheads on these number of weapon systems. And because of the treaties, the different signatories to the treaty all report these numbers. And of course, the different intelligence community people are keeping track of what's being, you know, revealed honestly and, and reported with transparency, and what is being hidden. The real issue is the new systems that Russia is working on right now. Um, and that will lead us, you know, we are kind of moving into an era whereby the, the threat of actually having new weapon systems that are nuclear capable is very real, because of the escalating tensions around the world. And that's where the CIA, I would guess, is doing most of its work right now.

   23. LFLex Fridman33:38

       So, most of your research is kind of looking at the, the older versions of the system, and presumably, there's potentially secret development of new ones. H- hopefully not-

   24. AJAnnie Jacobsen33:50

       Which violates treaties.

   25. LFLex Fridman33:51

       Yes.

   26. AJAnnie Jacobsen33:51

       So, yes, that is where the intelligence agencies ... But you know, at a point, it's overkill, literally and figuratively, right? People are up in arms about these hypersonic weapons. Well, we have a hypersonic weapons program. You know, FALCON. Google Black Swift, right? This is Lockheed's doing. Um, you know, we're, DARPA e- exists to create the vast weapon systems of the future.

   27. LFLex Fridman34:18

       Mm-hmm.

   28. AJAnnie Jacobsen34:18

       That is its job. It has been doing that since its creation in 1957. I would never believe that we aren't ahead of everyone. Call me, you know, over-informed or naive, one or the other. Uh, that would be my position. Because DARPA works from the chicken or the egg scenario, you know? That w- like once y- once you learn about something, once you learn Russia's created this, you know, Typhoon submarine, which may or may not, you know, be viable, it's too late if you don't already have one.

   29. LFLex Fridman34:50

       We'll probably talk about DARPA a little bit. (sighs) Uh, one of the things that makes me sad about Lockheed, many things make me sad about Lockheed, um, but one of the things is because it's very top secret, you can't show off all the incredible engineering go- uh, going on there. The other thing that's more philosophical, DARPA also, is that war seems to stimulate most of our, not most, but a large percent of our exciting innovation and engineering. And so, but that's also the pragmatic fact of life on Earth, is that, uh, the risk of, uh, annihilation is a, is a great motivator (laughs) for-

   30. AJAnnie Jacobsen35:31

       Yes.
8. 35:46 – 44:53

   Nuclear football

   1. LFLex Fridman35:47

      Can you tell me about the nuclear football, as it's called?

   2. AJAnnie Jacobsen35:50

      I think Americans are familiar with the football, at least anyone who sort of, you know, follows national security concepts, because it's a satchel, it's a leather satchel that is always with a military aid. In Secret Service nomenclature, that's the milaid. And he's trailing around the president 24/7, 365 days a year, and also the vice president, by the way.... with the ability to launch nuclear war in that six-minute window all the time, okay? Um, that is also called the football.

   3. LFLex Fridman36:26

      Mm-hmm.

   4. AJAnnie Jacobsen36:27

      And it's always with the president. To report this part of the book, I interviewed a lot of people in the Secret Service that are with the president and talk about this. And the director of the Secret Service, a guy called Lou Merletti, told me a story that I just really found fascinating. Um, he was also in charge of the president's detail, President Clinton this was, um, before he was Director of the Secret Service. And he told me this story about how, he said, "The football is with the president at all times, period."

   5. LFLex Fridman36:58

      Mm-hmm.

   6. AJAnnie Jacobsen36:58

      Okay? They were traveling to Syria, and Clinton was meeting with President Assad. And they got into an elevator, uh, Clinton and his Secret Service team, and S- one of Assad's guys was like, "No." You know, like, about the male aide.

   7. LFLex Fridman37:16

      (laughs)

   8. AJAnnie Jacobsen37:16

      And Lou said it was like a standoff, because there was no way they were not going to have the president with his football in an elevator. And it kind of sums up, for me, anyways, you- you realize what goes into every single one of these decisions. You realize the massive system of systems behind every item you might just see in- in passing and glancing on the news, as you see the male aide carrying that satchel. Well, what's in that satchel? I really dug into that to report this book.

   9. LFLex Fridman37:55

      What is in that satchel?

   10. AJAnnie Jacobsen37:56

       Okay.

   11. LFLex Fridman37:57

       (laughs)

   12. AJAnnie Jacobsen37:57

       So, well, okay, first of all, that is, you know, people are always say, "It's incredibly classified." I mean, people talk about UFOs. It's incredibly cl- I mean, come on, guys. That is nothing burger, right? You wanna know what's really classified? What's in that football, right? What's in that satchel? But the PEAD, Presidential Emergency Action Directives, right? Those have never been leaked. No one knows what they are. What we do know from one of the male aides who spoke on the record, a guy called Buzz Patterson, he describes the president's orders, right? So if a nuclear war has begun, if the president has been told there are nuclear missiles, one or more, coming at the United States, you have to launch in a counterattack, right? The red clock is ticking. You have to get the blue in- impact clock ticking. Um, he needs to look at this list to decide what targets to strike and what weapons systems to use. And that is what is on, according to Buzz Patterson, a piece of like sort of laminated plastic. He described it like a Denny's menu.

   13. LFLex Fridman39:04

       Mm-hmm.

   14. AJAnnie Jacobsen39:05

       And from that menu, the president chooses targets and chooses weapons systems.

   15. LFLex Fridman39:14

       And it's probably super old school, like all, uh, top secret systems are, because they have to be tested over and over and over and over and over, probably-

   16. AJAnnie Jacobsen39:23

       Yes, and it's non-digital.

   17. LFLex Fridman39:24

       Non-digital. It might literally be a Denny's menu from hell.

   18. AJAnnie Jacobsen39:29

       Right? And there's a... Meanwhile, I learned this only in reporting the book. Um, there is a identical black book inside the STRATCOM bunker in Nebraska, okay? So let me... Three command bunkers are involved when- when nuclear war begins, right? There's the bunker beneath the Pentagon, which is called the National Military Command Center, okay?

   19. LFLex Fridman39:53

       Mm-hmm.

   20. AJAnnie Jacobsen39:54

       Then there is the bunker beneath Cheyenne Mountain, which everyone has, you know, or many people have heard of because it's been made famous in movies, right? That is a very real bunker. And then there is a third bunker which people are not so familiar with, which is the bunker beneath Strategic Command in Nebraska. And so it's described to me this way. The Pentagon bunker is the beating heart. The Cheyenne Mountain bunker is the brains. And the STRATCOM bunker is the muscle.

   21. LFLex Fridman40:28

       Mm-hmm.

   22. AJAnnie Jacobsen40:28

       The STRATCOM commander will receive word from the president, launch orders, and then directs the 150,000 people beneath him what to do, okay? From the bunker in STRAT- beneath STRATCOM. That's before he run, uh, you know, he- he gets the orders. Then he has to run out of the building and jump onto a, what's called the doomsday plane. We'll get into that in a minute. Let me just finish the... I mean, but again-

   23. LFLex Fridman40:56

       No, this is g- uh, right- right.

   24. AJAnnie Jacobsen40:57

       ... th- these are the details. This is like, these are the systematic, sequential details that happen in seconds and minutes. And reporting them, I never cease to be amazed by what a system it is, you know? A ha- A follows B, you know, just, it's just numerical, right?

   25. LFLex Fridman41:19

       Yeah, but, uh, as we discussed, this procedure, each individual person that follows that procedure might lose the big picture of the whole thing. (sighs)

   26. AJAnnie Jacobsen41:29

       Right. And-

   27. LFLex Fridman41:29

       I mean, especially when you realize what- what is happening-

   28. AJAnnie Jacobsen41:34

       Yeah.

   29. LFLex Fridman41:35

       ... that almost out of fear, you just follow the steps.

   30. AJAnnie Jacobsen41:38

       Yeah. Or, okay, so imagine this. Imagine being the president. You got that six-minute window. You have to, you're looking at your list of strike options.
9. 44:53 – 49:10

   Missile interceptor system

   1. LFLex Fridman44:53

      What is the interceptor capabilities of the United States? How many nuclear missiles can be stopped?

   2. AJAnnie Jacobsen45:02

      I was at a dinner party with a very informed person, right? Like, somebody who really, you know, should have known this. And I, this is when I was considering writing and reporting this book. And he said to me, "Oh, Annie, that would never happen, because of our powerful interceptor system."

   3. LFLex Fridman45:23

      Mm-hmm.

   4. AJAnnie Jacobsen45:24

      Okay? Well, he's wrong. Let me tell you about our powerful interceptor system. First of all, we have 44 interceptor missiles total, period, full stop. Let me repeat, 44, okay? Earlier, we were talking about Russia's 1,670 deployed nuclear weapons. How are they, how are those 44 interceptor missiles gonna work, right? Um, and they also have a success rate of around 50%, so they work 50% of the time. There are 40 of them in Alaska, and there are four of them at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara. Okay? And they are responsible at about nine minutes into the scenario, right, after the ICBM has finished that five-minute boost phase we talked about. Now, it's in mid-course phase, and the ground radar systems have identified, yes, this is an incoming ICBM.

   5. LFLex Fridman46:28

      Mm-hmm.

   6. AJAnnie Jacobsen46:28

      And now, the interceptor missiles have to launch, right? It's essentially shooting a missile with a missile. Inside the interceptor, which is just a big giant rocket, in its nose cone, it has what's called a, the aptly named exoatmospheric kill vehicle. Okay?

   7. LFLex Fridman46:47

      Mm-hmm.

   8. AJAnnie Jacobsen46:48

      There's no explosives in that thing. It's literally just going to take out the warhead, ideally with force. So one of them is going, like, you know, mach 20. And the, I mean, the, the speeds at which these two moving objects hurtling through space are going is astonishing. And the fact that, that interception is even possible is really remarkable. But it's only possible 50% of the time.

   9. LFLex Fridman47:16

      Is it possible that we only know about 44, but there could be a lot more?

   10. AJAnnie Jacobsen47:20

       No, impossible. That I would be willing to bet.

   11. LFLex Fridman47:24

       And how well-tested are these interceptors?

   12. AJAnnie Jacobsen47:26

       Well, that, that's where we get the success rate that's around 50%, because of the tests, right? And actually, the interceptor program is, are you ready for this? It's on strategic pause, right, right now, meaning the interceptor missiles are there, but developing them and making them more effective is on strategic pause, because they can't be made more effective, right? People have these fantasies that, uh, we have a system like the Iron Dome, and they see this, in current events, and they're like, "Oh, our interceptors would do that." It's just simply not true.

   13. LFLex Fridman47:58

       Why, why can't an Iron Dome-like system be constructed for nuclear warheads?

   14. AJAnnie Jacobsen48:03

       We have systems I write about called the THAAD system, which is ground-based, and then the Aegis system, which is on, you know, vessels. And these are great at shooting down some-... in c- you know, some rockets, but they, they, they can only shoot them sort of one at a time. You cannot shoot the mother lode as it's coming in. Those are the smaller systems, right? The tactical nuclear weapons. And by the way, our THAAD systems are all deployed overseas, and our Aegis systems are all out at sea. And again, reporting that I was like, "Wait, what?" You know, you have to really hunker down. Are we sure about this? People really don't want to believe this is an actual fact. After 9/11, Congress considered putting in, you know, Aegis missiles and maybe even THAAD systems along the West Coast of the United States to specifically deal with the threats against nuclear armed North Korea, but it hasn't done so yet. And again, you have to ask yourself, "Wait a minute, this is insanity." You know? One nuclear weapon gets by any of these systems and it's full out nuclear warfare. So, w- that's not the solution. More nuclear weapons is not the solution.

10. 49:10 – 55:46

    North Korea

    1. AJAnnie Jacobsen49:10

    2. LFLex Fridman49:10

       I'm looking for a hopeful thing here about North Korea (laughs) . Uh, how many deployed nuclear warheads does North Korea have? So, does the current system with, as we described it, uh, the interceptors and so on, have a hope against the North Korean attack? The one that you-

    3. AJAnnie Jacobsen49:28

       Yeah.

    4. LFLex Fridman49:28

       ... mentioned people are worried about?

    5. AJAnnie Jacobsen49:31

       So, they... North Korea has 50, let's say 50 nuclear weapons right now. Some NGOs put it at more than 100. It's, it's impossible to know because North Korea's nuclear weapons program has no transparency. They're the only nuclear armed nation that doesn't announce when they do a ballistic missile test. Everyone else does. No one wants to start a nuclear war by accident, right? So if Russia's going to launch an ICBM, they tell us. If we're gonna launch one, and I'm, I'm talking test runs here, you know, with a dummy warhead, we, we tell them. Not North Korea. That's a fact, okay? So, we're constantly up against the fear of North Korea. In this scenario, I have the incoming North Korean, one megaton, you know, weapon coming in, and the interceptor system tries to shoot it down. So, there, there's not enough ti- And this, by the way, I ran through by all, you know, generals from the Pentagon who run these scenarios for NORAD, right? And confirmed all of this as fact. This is not... This is, this is, this is the situation, right? So, in this scenario, I have the nuclear ICBM coming in. The interceptor missiles try to shoot down the warhead. The capability is, is not like what's called shoot l- you know, and look. It, it, they can't... There's not enough time to go like, "And we're gonna try to get it. We missed it. Okay, let's go for another one." So, you have to go (imitates missiles launching) right?

    6. LFLex Fridman51:03

       Mm-hmm.

    7. AJAnnie Jacobsen51:04

       So, in my scenario we fire off four, which is about what I was told would... One to four because you're worried about the next one that's gonna come in.

    8. LFLex Fridman51:10

       Mm-hmm.

    9. AJAnnie Jacobsen51:11

       You're gonna use up 10% of your missile force, of your interceptor force, on one, and all four miss. And that's totally plausible.

    10. LFLex Fridman51:19

        Right. Uh, how likely are mistakes, accidents, false alarms, taken as real, all this kind of stuff, in this picture? So, like you've... We've kind of assumed the detection works correctly. How likely is it possible, like anywhere...

    11. AJAnnie Jacobsen51:37

        Yeah.

    12. LFLex Fridman51:37

        You, you've described this long chain of events that can happen. Ho- how possible is it just to make a mistake, a stupid human mistake along the way?

    13. AJAnnie Jacobsen51:45

        There have been at least six known, like absolute, like, like, "Oh my God" close calls. How, how thank God this happened type scenarios. One was described to me with an actual personal participant. Secretary, former Secretary of Defense, Bill Perry, right? And he described what happened to him in 1979. He was not yet Secretary of Defense. He was th- the Deputy Director of Research and Engineering, which is like a big job at the Pentagon. And it was... The, the n- the night watch fell on him essentially, right? And he gets this call in the middle of the night. He's told that Russia has launched not just ICBMs, but submarine launched ballistic missiles are coming at the United States. And he is about to notify the President that the six-minute window has to begin when he learns it was a mistake. The mistake was that there was a training tape with a nuclear war scenario, right? We haven't even begun to talk about the nuclear war scenarios that the Pentagon runs. An actual VHS training tape-

    14. LFLex Fridman52:54

        (laughs) .

    15. AJAnnie Jacobsen52:54

        ... had been incorrectly inserted into a system at the Pentagon. And so this nuclear launch showed up at that bunker beneath the Pentagon and at the bunker beneath STRATCOM, because they're connected, as being real. And then it was like, "Oh, whoops, it's actually a simulation test tape." And Perry described to me what that was like. The pause in his spirit and his mind and his heart when he realized, "I'm about to have to tell the President that he needs to launch nuclear weapons." And he learned just in the nick of time that it was a, it was an error. And that's one of five examples.

    16. LFLex Fridman53:36

        Can you speak to maybe, um, is there any more color to the feelings he was feeling? Like, what's your sense... And given all the experts you've talked to, what, what can be said about the seconds that one feels, uh, once finding out that a launch has happened?

    17. AJAnnie Jacobsen53:56

        Yeah.

    18. LFLex Fridman53:56

        Even if that information is a- is false information?

    19. AJAnnie Jacobsen54:00

        For me personally, that's the only firsthand story that I ever heard because it's so rare and it's so unique. And most people in the national security system, at least in the past, have been loath to talk about any of this, right? It's like the sacred oath. It's taboo. It's taboo to go against, um, the system of systems that is, you know, making sure nuclear war never happens. Bill Perry was one of the first people-

    20. LFLex Fridman54:29

        Mm-hmm.

    21. AJAnnie Jacobsen54:29

        ... who did this. And a lot of it, I believe, at least in my lengthy conversations with him over... We had a lot of Zoom calls over COVID when I began reporting this. And he had a lot to do with me...... feeling like I could write this book from a human point of view, and not just from the mechanized systems. Because, and I only lightly touch upon this, because it's such a vast sweeping scenario, but Perry, for example, spent his whole life dedicated to building weapons of war. Only later in life to realize, this is madness. And he shared with me that it was that idea about one's grandchildren inheriting these nuclear arsenals and the lack of, you know, wisdom that comes with their origin stories, right? When you're involved in it in the ground up, apparently, it has... Perhaps you're a different kind of steward of these systems than if you just inherit them, and they are, you know, pages in a manual.

    22. LFLex Fridman55:44

        Mm-hmm. People forget.

11. 55:46 – 1:04:38

    Nuclear war scenarios

    1. LFLex Fridman55:46

       You mentioned the kind of nuclear war scenarios that the Pentagon runs. I'd love to... What- what do you know about those?

    2. AJAnnie Jacobsen55:53

       I mean, again, they are very classified, right? I mean, it was interesting coming across informa- levels of classification I didn't even know existed, like ECI, for example, is Exceptionally Controlled Information, right?

    3. LFLex Fridman56:07

       Mm-hmm.

    4. AJAnnie Jacobsen56:08

       Um, but the Pentagon war- nuclear war gaming scenarios, they're almost all still classified. One of them was declassified recently, if you can call it that. I show an image of it in the book, and it's just basically, like, almost all- almost entirely redacted, and then, like, there'll be a date, you know? Or it'll say, like, "Phase one."

    5. LFLex Fridman56:30

       Mm-hmm.

    6. AJAnnie Jacobsen56:31

       Um, and that one was called Proud Prophet. But what was incredible about the declassification process of that is it loud- allowed a couple of people who were there to talk about it, okay?

    7. LFLex Fridman56:41

       Hmm.

    8. AJAnnie Jacobsen56:41

       And that's why we have that information. And I write about Proud Prophet in the book because it was super significant in many ways. One, it was happening right... In 1983, there was an- it was an insane moment in nuclear arsenals. There were 60,000 nuclear weapons. Right now, there's 12,500. So we've come a long way, baby, right, in terms of disarmament. But there were 60,000. And by the way, that was not the ultimate high. The ultimate high was 70,000, okay? This is insane. And Ronald Reagan was president, and he orders this war game called Proud Prophet, and, um, you know, this- everyone- everyone that mattered was involved, they were running the war game scenarios, and what we learned from this declassification is that no matter how nuclear war starts, there was a bunch of different scenarios with, you know, NATO involved, without NATO, with- all different scenarios. No matter how nuclear war starts, it ends in Armageddon. It ends with everyone dead. I mean, this is shocking when you think about that coupled with the idea that all that has been done in the 40 some odd years since is, "Okay, this- let's just really lean in even harder to this theoretical phenomena of deterrence," 'cause that's all it is. It's just a statement, Lex.

    9. LFLex Fridman58:09

       Mm-hmm.

    10. AJAnnie Jacobsen58:09

        Like, "Deterrence will hold."

    11. LFLex Fridman58:12

        Mm-hmm.

    12. AJAnnie Jacobsen58:13

        Okay. Well, what if it doesn't? Well, we know from Proud Prophet what happens if it doesn't.

    13. LFLex Fridman58:20

        So almost always, so there's no mechanisms in the human mind, in the human soul, that stops it, in the- in the governments that have created... They just keep- the- the procedure escalates always.

    14. AJAnnie Jacobsen58:31

        I mean, here's a crazy nomenclature jargon thing for you. Ready? Escalate to deescalate. That's what comes out of it. Think about what th- what I just said. Escalate to deescalate. Okay, so someone strikes an- you with a nuclear weapon. You're gonna escalate it, right? General Hyten recently said, he was STRATCOM commander, you know, if- he- he was sort of saber-rattling with North Korea during COVID, and he said, "They need to know if- if they launch one nuclear weapon, we launch one. If they launch two, we launch two." But it's actually more than that. They launch one, we launch 80.

    15. LFLex Fridman59:05

        Yeah.

    16. AJAnnie Jacobsen59:05

        Okay? That's called escalate to deescalate. Like, pound the you-know-what out of them to get them to stop.

    17. LFLex Fridman59:14

        But th- (sighs) I mean, there is... To make a case for that, there is a reason to the madness, because you want to threaten this gigantic response. But when it comes to it, the seconds before, there is still a probability that you'll pull back.

    18. AJAnnie Jacobsen59:36

        Which brings us to the most terrifying facts that I learned in all of that, and that- that has to do with errors, right? Not just- not errors of, like we spoke about a minute ago with the, you know, a simulation test tape. I'm talking about if one nu- one madman, one nihilistic madman were to launch a nuclear weapon, as I- as I write in the scenario, um, and we needed to escalate to deescalate, we needed to send nuclear weapons at, let's say, North Korea, as I do in my scenario, well, what is completely unknown to 98% of the planet is that not only do the Russians have a very flawed satellite system so that they cannot interpret what is happening properly, but there is a absolutely existential flaw in the system, which Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta confirmed with me, which is that our ICBMs do not have enough range. If they're- if we launch a counterattack against, say, North Korea, our ICBMs must fly over Russia.They must fly over Russia. So imagine saying, "Oh, no, no. These 82, you know, warheads that are gonna actually hit the, strike the northern Korean peninsula are not coming for you, Russia, our adversary right now that we're sort of saber-rattling with. Just trust us." And that is where nuclear war unfolds into Armageddon. And that hole in national security is shocking. And as Panetta's told me, no one wants to discuss it.

    19. LFLex Fridman1:01:22

        And if one nuclear weapon, uh, does reach its target, I presume communication breaks down completely, or, like, there's a high risk of a breakdown of communication.

    20. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:01:36

        Uh, well, let's back up. We are both presumptuous to assume that communication could even happen prior to. And let me give you a very specific example. During the Ukraine war, okay? If perhaps you remember, I think it was in November of 2022, news reports erroneously stated that a Russian rocket, a Russian missile had hit Poland, a NATO country, right? It turned out to be a mistake, but for several hours, this was actually the information that was all over the news, breaking news, okay? 36 hours later, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, gave a press conference and talked about this, and admitted that he could not reach his Russian counterpart during those 36 hours. He could not reach him. How are you going to not have an absolute Armageddon-like furor with nuclear weapons in the air if people can't get on the phone during a ground war?

    21. LFLex Fridman1:02:48

        I, I'd like to believe that there's people in major nations that don't give a damn about the bullshit of politics and can always just pick up the phone. Sort of very close to the top, but not at the very top, and just cut through the bullshit of it, in situations like this.

    22. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:03:10

        I hope that's true. I doubt it is, and let me tell you why. Most... And you, neither you nor I are political, from what I gather, right? So I just write about POTUS, President of the United States. I don't... You have no idea what my politics are, because they shouldn't matter. No one should be for nuclear war, or no one should be for nuclear, you know, uh, national insecurity. Yes, you wanna have a strong nation. But once you get into politics, then you're talking about sycophants. And the more a political leader becomes divisive, becomes polemic, it, the more his platform is predicated on hating the other side, either of, uh, within his own country or, uh, with enemy, uh, alleged enemy nations. The more you surround yourself, as we see in the current day, with sycophants, with people who will tell you not only what they think you wanna hear, but what will help them to hold onto power. So you don't have wise decision-makers. Long gone are the days where we had presidents who had advisors on both sides of the aisle. That's really important, because you wanna, you wanna have differing opinions. But as things become more viperous, both here in the United States and in nuclear-armed nations, all bets are off at whether your advisors are gonna give you good advice.

12. 1:04:38 – 1:09:06

    Warmongers

    1. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:04:38

    2. LFLex Fridman1:04:38

       Who are the people around the President of the United States that give advice in this six-minute window? How many of them... Just to, maybe you could speak to the detail of that, but also to the spirit of the way they see the world. How many of them are warmongers? How many of them are kind of big picture, peace, humanity type of thinkers?

    3. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:04:59

       Well, again, we're talking about that six-minute window. So it's not exactly like you can, "Let me put a po- pot of coffee on and really tell me what you think, and we can strategize here," right? You have your SecDef and your Chairman, maybe the Vice-Chairman. And, okay, we haven't even begun to talk about the fact that at the same time, these advisors also have an incr- a parallel concern, and that's called continuity of government.

    4. LFLex Fridman1:05:22

       Mm-hmm.

    5. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:05:22

       Okay? So while they're trying to advise on the nuclear counter-strike in response to the incoming nuclear missile, they have to be thinking, "How are we gonna keep the government functioning when the missiles start hitting, when the bombs start going off?" And that is about getting yourself out of the Pentagon, let's say, getting yourself to one of these nuclear bunkers that I write about at length in the book. So, how much can you ask of a human, right? 'Cause it comes down to a human. The Secretary of Defense is a human. Um, and, and imagine that job while trying to advise the president. And then there's also a really interesting term which I learned about called, "jamming the president," which is often understood in Washington that the military advisors would... We don't know if this is legit, we've never seen it put to the test. But jamming the president means the military advisors are gonna push for a really aggressive counterattack immediately.

    6. LFLex Fridman1:06:24

       Mm-hmm.

    7. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:06:26

       And again, you're the president who's not really been paying attention to this, because he has many other things to deal with. Speed is not conducive to wisdom.

    8. LFLex Fridman1:06:36

       Can you speak to the jamming the president? So your sense is the advisors would, by default, be pushing for aggressive counterattack?

    9. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:06:46

       That is a term in sort of the national security nuclear command and control historical documentation that many of the people that you might call the more dovish-type people are, you know, worried about. That the more hawkish people are going to-... the military advisors-

    10. LFLex Fridman1:07:07

        Yeah.

    11. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:07:07

        ... right, are gonna, are gonna be jamming the president to make these decisions about tar- which targets. Not if-

    12. LFLex Fridman1:07:14

        Right, which targets.

    13. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:07:15

        ... but what. Yeah.

    14. LFLex Fridman1:07:15

        The argument will be about which targets-

    15. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:07:17

        Yes.

    16. LFLex Fridman1:07:17

        ... not about if.

    17. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:07:18

        Yes.

    18. LFLex Fridman1:07:19

        I, I hope that even the warmongers would, uh, at this moment... Because what underlies the idea of you wanting to go to war? It's, it's power. It's, like, wanting to destroy the enemy and be the, the big kid on the block. But with nuclear war, it just feels like that falls apart. Do, do you think warmongers actually believe they can win a nuclear war?

    19. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:07:44

        Well, you've raised a really important question that we look to th- the historical record for that-

    20. LFLex Fridman1:07:49

        Right.

    21. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:07:50

        ... answer, right? Because y- astonishingly, all of this began, like, when, when Russia first got the bomb in 1949, the powers that be, and I write about them in the book as, in a setup to the first n- you know, for the f- for the moment of launch, right? Like, it's called How We Got Here, right? And you see, and I cite, you know, declassified documents from some of these early, um, meetings where nuclear war plans were being laid out. And absolutely, back in the 1950s, the, the generals and the admirals that were running the nuclear command and control system believed that we could fight and win a nuclear war, despite hundreds of millions of people dying. This was the prevailing thought. And only over time did, did the, did the kind of concept come into play that, no, we can, we can never have a nuclear war. It's the famous Gorbachev and Reagan joint statement. "A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought." But before that, many people bel- believed that it could be won, and they were preparing

13. 1:09:06 – 1:15:19

    President's cognitive ability

    1. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:09:06

       for that.

    2. LFLex Fridman1:09:07

       Not to be political, and not to be ageist, but do, uh, cognitive abilities and all that kind of stuff come into play here? So, if so much is riding on the president, is there tests that are conducted as a regular training procedures on the president that you're aware of? Do you know?

    3. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:09:30

       I don't think that has anything to do with ageism. I think it has to do with, uh, I think it's an earnest question, a really powerful one. And if people were to ask that question of themselves or their sort of, you know, dinner party guests or their family around the dinner table guests, you might come to a real good conclusion about how bad our political system is and how bad our presidential candidates are. Because why on earth there would be two candidates, one of whom has cognitive problems and the other of whom has judgment problems? Um, these are the two biggest issues with a nuclear launch, judgment and cognition. And so, where's the, you know, young-ish, um, thoughtful, forward-looking, wise, dedicated civil servant running for president? I know that sounds, you know, fantastical, but I wish it weren't.

    4. LFLex Fridman1:10:32

       So, that's one of the things you should really think about when voting for president, is, uh, this scenario that we've been describing, these six minutes. Imagine a man or woman sitting there f- six minutes waiting for their pot of coffee.

    5. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:10:47

       But I think about that issue with, with any, with any war, right? I mean, prior to writing Nuclear War: A Scenario, I previously wrote six books on military and intelligence programs designed to prevent nuclear war. And I believe the president as commander-in-chief should be of the highest character possible, because the, the programs, the wars that s- that we have fought since World War II have all been... You know, how many octogenarian sources have I interviewed? I'm talking about Nobel laureates and weapons designer and spy pilots and engineers in general. They've all said to me with great pride, you know, "We prevented World War III, nuclear World War III," right? And that, but that idea that the commander-in-chief and everyone in the, in, within the national security apparatus should be making really good decisions about, about war. It's the oldest cliché in the world that, you know, the, the wars are fought by the young kids. And that is... It's not a cliché. It's true. And so, the character part about the president should be in play whether we're thinking about nuclear war or any war, in my opinion.

    6. LFLex Fridman1:12:11

       Well, uh, I agree with you, first of all. But it feels like with nuclear war, one person becomes, like, exponentially more important. With a regular war, the decision to go to war or not, uh, advisors start mattering more. There's judgment issues. You could start to make arguments for, um, sort of more leeway in terms of what kind of people we elect. It seems like with nuclear war, there's no leeway. It's like one-

    7. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:12:42

       Mm-hmm.

    8. LFLex Fridman1:12:42

       ... person can, uh, resist this, uh, uh, the jamming the president force, the, the warmongers, the use... The, the, like, uh, all the calculation involved in considering what are the errors, the mistakes, the missiles flying over Russia, the full dynamics of the geopolitics going on in the world, consider all of humanity, the history of humanity, the future of humanity.... or the, your loved, all, all of it just loaded in to make a decision. Then it becomes much more important that your cognitive abilities are strong and your judgment abilities against, against powerful, wise people, just as a human being, are strong. So, I think that's something to really, really consider when you vote for president. But to which degree is it really on the president versus to the people advising?

    9. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:13:37

       Oh, no. It's on the president. The president has to make the call, and that six-minute window happens so fast. I mean, the president is gonna be, being moved for part of that time. The Secret Service is gonna be, you know, up against, up against STRATCOM, STRATCOM saying, "We need launch," you know, "we need the launch orders," and the Secret Service is gonna be saying, "We need to move the president." So it's not as much that he's delegating the issues, it's more like the issue is being postponed, because there is only one issue. For the president to say, "These targets..." You know, he, for him to choose from the Denny's-like menu, "Okay, this is what we're gonna go with." And then this astonishing thing happens. The president pulls, you know, takes out his wallet. He has a card in it that's colloquially called the biscuit, and that card with the codes matches up an item in the, the briefcase, in the, in the football, that then is received by an officer underneath the bunk, underneath the Pentagon in that bunker. It's a call and response, Lex. It's like, you know, Alpha Zeta, r- right? That's it. And th- then back, so that the individual in the bunker realizes they are getting the command from the president, and then that order is passed to STRATCOM, and STRATCOM, the commander of STRATCOM, and I interviewed a former str- commander of STRATCOM. Commander of STRATCOM then follows orders, which is he delivers the launch orders to the nuclear triad, and what's done is done.

14. 1:15:19 – 1:23:17

    Refusing orders

    1. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:15:19

    2. LFLex Fridman1:15:19

       What would you do if you were the commander of STRATCOM in that situation? What would you do? 'Cause I, I, like, my gut reaction right now, if you just throw me in there, I would refuse orders.

    3. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:15:28

       Okay, so good question. I asked that exact question to one of my very helpful sources on the book, Dr. Glenn McDuff, who is at Los Alamos and who, for a while, was the classified m- they have a, a museum that's classified within the lab, and he was the historian in charge of it, right? So he's a nuclear weapons engineer. He worked on Star Wars during the Reagan era, and, and he does a lot having to do with the history of Los Alamos. And the, by the way, the Oppenheimer movie really... 'Cause I've reported on nuclear weapons for, you know, 12 years now, and Oppenheimer movie had a very, to me, positive impact on Los Alamos' transparency with people like me. They had a real willingness to share information. I think before, perhaps they were on their heels, feeling they needed to be on the defensive. But now, they're much more forthcoming. They were super helpful. I can tell you the origin story of the football, which would, they declassified for the book.

    4. LFLex Fridman1:16:34

       (laughs)

    5. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:16:34

       But, uh, I asked this question to Dr. Glenn McDuff, right? Like, in a different manner, I said, "Is there a chance that the STRATCOM commander would defy orders?" And he said, "Annie, you have a better chance winning Powerball."

    6. LFLex Fridman1:16:54

       Why, do you think? What's his intuition behind that?

    7. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:16:58

       You don't wind up as STRATCOM commander unless you are someone who follows orders. You follow orders.

    8. LFLex Fridman1:17:08

       You don't think there's a deep humanity there? That, because his c- his intuition is about everything we know so far, but this situation has never happened in the history of Earth.

    9. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:17:18

       Well, this is tr- I mean, all right, so you're raising a really tricky, interesting conundrum here, because during COVID, when President Trump and the leader of North Korea were kind of locked in various relationships with one another, good, bad, threatening, non-threatening, friendly, just bananas, you might say. Like, not presidential behavior. If you were someone watching C-SPAN, like I do, nerding out on what STRATCOM was actually saying about all this, you noticed that STRATCOM commanders were speaking out publicly to Congress more so than ever, I had ever seen before. And this issue came up, would you defy presidential orders? So the caveat I would say to McDuff's answer of easier to win, win the Powerball, right? Um, is that if the commander of STRATCOM interpreted the president's behavior to be unreliable, to be non-presidential, then dot, dot, dot. But now you're into some really radical territory.

    10. LFLex Fridman1:18:40

        Well, I mean, fundamentally, it feels like, just looking at all the presidents of the United States in my lifetime, it feels like none of them are qualified for this six minutes. So, like, I could see, uh, you know, I- I could, I could see us being, the commander of STRATCOM and being like, "This guy?" Like, basically respecting no president. I- I know you're supposed to be the commander-in-chief, but in this situation-... thing. Like, I mean, everybody, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden. If I was a commander of STRATCOM, I'd be like, "D- this, what does this guy know about any of this?" Um, it, I would defy orders. I mean, in this situation when the, the, the, the future of human (laughs) civilization hangs in the balance, I mean, it... To be the person that says, "Yes, launch," it's... No matter what, I just can't see a human being on Earth being able to do that in the United States of America. That's a hell of a decision. Like, this is it. That's it.

    11. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:19:49

        This is it. Well, but now you've raised a great important, you know, presentation essentially, because what you're saying is people be aware, right? Be aware of, like, why you're voting or why certain individuals are being escalated to even being able to run for president. What does that mean? Why are people in America not more involved as citizens? Do we have a responsibility for that? Because you've opened up the door for people to understand, okay, the ultimate thing is the, is the nuclear launch decision. So if a person can't be trusted with that, you know, everything spiral, everything unravels from there.

    12. LFLex Fridman1:20:26

        Also, I wanna look up who's the commander of STRATCOM now. (laughs) Um, speaking of which, you've interviewed a lot of experts for this book. Is there, uh, some commonalities about the way... You've talked about this a little bit, but in, in the way they see this whole situation, what, what, like, scares them the most about, uh, this whole system and, uh, the whole possibility of nuclear war?

    13. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:20:54

        I first learned about nuclear weapons from a guy called Al O'Donnell, who appears in my earlier books, because I interviewed him for, over a period of four and a half years because he was an engineer who actually wired nuclear bombs in the 1950s. He was a member of the Manhattan Project in 1946, worked on Operation Crossroads, the first explosions of nuclear bombs after the war ended, after World War II ended, and went on to arm, wire, and fire 186 out of the 200 some odd atmospheric nuclear tests that the United States did before this was banned. And so I learned from him the power of these weapons, right? And I learned from him this very almost nationalistic idea about how important it was to have nuclear weapons. And while I learned a lot about his human side, I also saw- saw the side of him that was very Cold War warrior, right? And then, so he was kind of the first, and then, I don't know, there's been 100 people that have been directly involved in nuclear weapons along the way. Billy Waugh, who was my subject of my main, my main sort of central figure in a book I wrote about the CIA's paramilitary called Surprise, Kill, Vanish. And Waugh halo jumped, um, a tactical nuclear weapon into the Nevada test site with a small team, almost unknown to anyone, right? Only recently declassified. And so his position was like, tactical nuclear weapons may end up being used. So I'm trying to speak here to the scope of different people I have interviewed over, over the years, right? And what has happened is as, as we're, as I've gotten closer to the present day, you know, in arrears, there seems to be a growing movement from some of these Cold Warriors off the position of, "Nuclear weapons make us great and strong," toward, "Something must be done to reduce this threat."

15. 1:23:17 – 1:28:23

    Russia and Putin

    1. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:23:17

    2. LFLex Fridman1:23:17

       How much do you know, uh, in the same way that you know about the United States, how much do you know about the Russian side?

    3. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:23:26

       (laughs)

    4. LFLex Fridman1:23:26

       Maybe the Chinese side, uh, India and Pakistan, that, all, all, all of this. Like, what, how their thinking differs perhaps.

    5. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:23:35

       Yes. Well, for that, you, you wanna go to the experts, right? So in, for Russia, for example, um, there's a guy called Pavel Podvig who is probably the West's top expert on Russian nuclear forces. He works in parallel with the UN. He also studied in Moscow, and he interviewed... So my information comes from him, right? Like, you do all the footwork to know what questions to ask, and then you take the very specific questions to him. And I learned from him about how the Russian command and control goes down. And it's very similar to ours, because America and Russia have been at sort of nuclear dueling with one another-

    6. LFLex Fridman1:24:22

       Hmm.

    7. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:24:23

       ... um, for 75 years now. And so everything we have, they have, right? With the exception of we have a great satellite system, and they have a super flawed one. Theirs is called Tundra. And even, um, Pavel Podvig admitted that there are serious flaws in Tundra. Uh, the Russian satellite system, for example, can mistake sunlight for flames, can mistake clouds for a nuclear launch. This is a fact, okay? (laughs) And, um, you know, what was interesting in interviewing him was also this recent very, very dangerous shift in nuclear, Russian nuclear policy, which is this. Many Russian experts will tell you that Russia has always maintained that it never had a launch on warning policy. Now, I don't know if I believe that's true, but I'm just telling you what they say. And this is coming from the generals, the Cold War generals in Soviet Russia saying, "Oh, no, no, no. We would wait." Th- they were kind of playing the noble warrior. "We would wait to absorb a nuclear attack."... Until we launched, okay? So many Americans, you know, experts will tell you that that's just posturing and propaganda. Mm-hmm. But that was their official position, and that changed just two years ago when Putin gave a speech, and he said that their position had changed, that they will no longer wait to absorb an attack, that they... Once they learn of, how did he phrase it? He called it, like, the, the p- the trajectory of the missiles, right, which is a way of s- of s- talking about parody, the same way we see the missile coming over in mid-course, right? Putin made that same statement and said, "We would launch."

    8. LFLex Fridman1:26:04

       What do you know of the way Putin thinks about nuclear weapons and nuclear war? Is it just something to allude to in a speech or do you think he contemplates the possibilities of nuclear war?

    9. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:26:18

       I don't know. But if I had to guess, it would go like this. I would look at his background, and he comes from the intelligence world, right? So my experience in interviewing old-timers who've spent decades working for the CIA or even NRO or NSA, I know the way they think from having spent hundreds of hours interviewing them, right? And then I know the way that, you know, military men think, and it's very different, right? So Putin's not a military person per se. He's an intelligence officer. So what con- would concern me there, if I had to guess about his mindset, has to do with paranoia, right? Most intelligence officers must have a degree of healthy paranoia or they're gonna wind up dead, right? And so that's not a great quality to have.

    10. LFLex Fridman1:27:11

        You would be more trigger-happy perhaps. Uh, so you're more... You would be more prone to respond to erroneous signals and...

    11. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:27:19

        And you'd be suspicious, and you can see that now. There's a, such a, you know, incredible distrust and, and, and sort of real conflict between Russia, between its leader and NATO, between its leader and all of the West, and then that is fueled by his closest advisors, um, kind of, you know, seem, they seem to be f- th- from the statements they have made that I've read in translation, they seem to be fostering that same idea that, you know, NATO really has it in for Russia. The America really has it in. And that is so dangerous and disheartening.

    12. LFLex Fridman1:28:09

        And perhaps makes it less likely that the President will pick up the phone and talk to the other president.

    13. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:28:15

        And or that the close advisors near the President would make that happen.

    14. LFLex Fridman1:28:21

        You were talking about the procedure with

16. 1:28:23 – 1:29:45

    Cyberattack

    1. LFLex Fridman1:28:23

       the football. Is there any concern for cyberattacks, for sort of security concerns of, uh... And at, at every level here, false signals, errors, uh, shutting down the, the channels of communication through cyberattacks, all that kind of stuff.

    2. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:28:41

       Mm-hmm. So to answer those questions, I interviewed a number of people, but most specifically General Touhill, who was Obama's Cyber Chief, and he was actually America's first Cyber Chief. And the nuclear command and control system, and really the triad, functions on a l- on analog systems. They've, it functions on old-school systems. If there's not digital interface, you can't hack into it, right? So most of the issues that I raise in the book have to do with what happens to cyber after a nuclear atta- attack, right? What happens to cyber in the minutes after, um, a bomb, a nuclear weapon strikes America, and how that impacts the ability for people to communicate with one another, and that's when chaos takes control.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:29:43

       Well, let- let's talk about it.

17. 1:29:45 – 1:34:24

    Ground zero of nuclear war

    1. LFLex Fridman1:29:45

       Uh, so God forbid, if a nuclear weapon reaches its target, what happens? What... Uh, perhaps you could say what you think would be the first target hit. Would it be the Pentagon?

    2. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:30:04

       I was told by many people I interviewed that the biggest fear in Washington, DC is what's called a bolt out of the blue attack. That's an unwarned nuclear attack against Washington, DC. The target would be the Pentagon, and that's what I begin the scenario with, you know? And I reported in graphic, horrifying detail what happens because-

    3. LFLex Fridman1:30:27

       Yes, you did.

    4. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:30:27

       ... I don't know what's worse, me writing that all out or the fact that it's all documented by the Defense Department. I mean, they have been documenting the effect of nuclear weapons on people and animals and things since the earliest days of the Cold War, and all of the details I pull are from these documents, like the effects of nuclear weapons. Um, and again, this document was... The original information, the original data in this document come from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, right? It was all classified, and then it was built upon by those 200 some odd atmospheric nuclear weapons tests we did. Um, and you know, we're talking about like millimeters and inches. We're talking about the Defense Department knowing that, oh, seven and a half miles out, the upholstery on cars will spontaneously combust. The pine needles will catch on fire. They will start more fires, you know? You have...... all kinds of mayhem and cha- chaos happening, um, based on reported facts from observations. And this is really shocking and grotesque at the same time.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:31:48

       So, one warhead reaches the Pentagon, everybody in the Pentagon perishes?

    6. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:31:57

       180 million degrees. The fireball on a one megaton nuclear weapon is 19 football fields of fire. Think about that. Nothing remains. Nothing remains.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:32:13

       And there's then a radius where people die immediately, and then there's people that are dead when found, and then there's, uh, people that will die slowly.

    8. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:32:28

       Yes.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:32:29

       The centric rings.

    10. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:32:31

        And again, rings defined by defense scientists. But before that, you know, the bomb goes off, then there's this blast wave that's like several hundred miles an hour, pushing out like a bulldozer, knocking everything down. Bridges, buildings. I mean, you can read FEMA, uh, manuals about what the rubble will be like. You're talking about 30 feet deep rubble as the buildings go over six, seven, eight, 10 miles out. That speaks nothing of the mega-fires that will then ensue. So o- once all these people die, and third-degree radiation borns- burns. Did you even know there was such a thing as fourth-degree radiation burns? Right? We're talking about the wind ripping the skin off people's faces many miles out. Um, and then you have a meg- a sucking action, right? Everyone is, or many people are familiar with what the nuclear mushroom cloud looks like. And its stem is actually creates... And again, this is from, you know, physicists who advise the Defense Department on this. The sucking up into the nuclear stem, 300 mile an hour winds. You're talking about people miles out getting sucked up into that stem. When you see the mushroom cloud, Lex, that is... In a nuclear war, that would be people. Those are like the remnants of people and of things in the cloud, 30, 40-mile-wide mushroom cloud, blocking out the sun. And that speaks nothing of the radiation poisoning that follows.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:34:14

        And then the power grid goes out. Basically everything we rely on in terms of, uh, systems and our way of life goes out.

18. 1:34:24 – 1:38:42

    Surviving nuclear war

    1. LFLex Fridman1:34:24

       You write, quote, "Those who somehow manage to escape death by the initial blast, shockwave, and firestorm suddenly realize an insidious truth about nuclear war, that they're entirely on their own." Here begins a, quote, "fight for food and water." I mean, that is, um, a wake-up call on top of a wake-up call, that we go back to a kind of primitive fight for survival, each on their own.

    2. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:34:58

       And by the way, those details were given to me by Obama's FEMA director, Craig Fugate, who was in charge of, um... So FEMA is the agency in America that plans for nuclear war, okay? And what Fuga- Fugate said to me was, "You know, Annie, we plan for asteroid strikes." These are called low probability but high consequence events. And FEMA is the organization that, you know, when there's a hurricane or an earthquake or a flood, FEMA steps in and they do what's called population protection planning, right? They take care of people. And what Fugate told me is, after a n- nuclear strike, after a bolt out of the blue attack, he used those terms, there is no population protection. Everyone's dead, right? And he means that metaphorically, but also kind of more literally, because he just said, "At that point, you just hope that you stocked Pedialyte."

    3. LFLex Fridman1:35:57

       What do you think happens to humans? Like how does, uh, human nature manifest itself in such conditions? Do you think like brutality will come out? Like people will, just for survival, will steal, will murder, will...

    4. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:36:15

       I can't imagine that not happening. I think that's why people love post-apocalyptic television shows and films, because they see that. And then of course there's always one great charismatic person who's trying to restore morality, and these are great narratives that people like to tell themselves in the world of science fiction. But what we're dealing with is science fact in this scenario, and it is meant to terrify people into realizing, wait a minute, this is a conversation that absolutely should be have had while it c- can still be had. Because the realities, when you have the director of FEMA telling you this, it's a real wake-up call. And by the way, Craig Fugate was so transparently human with me, and I quote him directly in the book, but he spoke about... You asked me earlier about like what would g- be going through the President's mind, and we don't know, I don't know. But Craig Fugate told me what would be going through his mind, and he said, along the lines, I'm paraphrasing, like, "It's almost something you couldn't even comprehend. You would ju- it would just..."...like, ruin you. You know, his words are really powerful. And of course, the FEMA director in this scenario is notified in that first window while the launch, you know, while the ballistic missile is on its way, and no one in America yet knows. And I have the FEMA director pull over to the side of the road and jump in a helicopter that's sent for him, to take him to the bunker that FEMA goes to, which is called Mount Weather. And so, he's aware that ... Fugate was aware that as FEMA director, you would likely be taken to a safe place, however many hours you're gonna be safe, um, or days, or maybe weeks, or maybe months. But as I also learned from the cyber people I interviewed, that, you know, there's a f- complete fallacy that these military bases can continue functioning. They run on diesel fuel. And when the fuel stops pumping, there's no more generators.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:38:20

       Electricity's gone. Uh, communication lines are all gone. The food supply, all of it, all the supply chains is gone. Um, it's terrifying. And that's just in the first few days, first few hours.

19. 1:38:42 – 1:49:05

    Nuclear winter

    1. LFLex Fridman1:38:43

       Uh, in part five, you described the 24 months and beyond after this first hour we've been talking about. So, what happens to Earth?

    2. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:38:54

       Mm-hmm.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:38:54

       What happens to humans-

    4. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:38:56

       Mm-hmm.

    5. LFLex Fridman1:38:57

       ... if a full-on nuclear war happens?

    6. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:38:59

       Mm-hmm. So for that, I was super privileged to talk to Professor Brian Toon, who is one of the original five authors of the nuclear winter theory.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:39:12

       Mm-hmm.

    8. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:39:12

       And the n- that theory was developed in, was published in 19, in the early 1980s. One of Professor Toon's professors was Carl Sagan, who is sort of the most famous auth- author of the nuclear winter theory. And, you know, there were all kinds of controversies about it when it came out, including the Defense Department saying it was Soviet propaganda, which it wasn't. And what the nuclear winter author, authors conceded back in the '80s was that their modeling was just the best it could be based on what they had at the time. And so, now, flash forward to where we are in 2024, and talking to Professor Toon, who's been working on this issue for all these decades since, he shared with me how the climate models today, with the systems we have, the computer systems, reveal that actually nuclear winter is worse, right? So, to answer your questions, the bombs stop falling, in my scenario, 72 minutes after they first launch. The bombs stop falling. And then the mega-fires begin. Each nuclear weapon will have, according to the Defense Department, a mega-fire that will burn between 100 and 300 square miles. So, 1,000 weapons, 1,500 weapons, think about those mega-fires. Everything is burning. Forests, cities. Pyr- think about the pyro toxins in all the cities, you know, high-rises burning. And all of this soot gets lo- lofted into the air. According to Toon, some 300 billion pounds of soot. And what happens? It blocks out the sun. And without sun, we have nuclear winter. We have a situation whereby ice sheets form. You're talking about bodies of water in places like Iowa being frozen for 10 years.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:41:19

       The temperature drops.

    10. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:41:20

        Temperature plummets, right? And there are all kinds of papers that have been written about this using modern calcula- you know, systems. And the numbers vary, but the bottom line is agriculture fails.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:41:37

        Mm-hmm. Foods obviously, uh, dies, uh ... So, the agriculture system completely shuts down, so the food sources shut down. So, there's no food. There's no sun. Temperature drops completely. No electricity.

    12. AJAnnie Jacobsen1:41:52

        And we haven't even spoken of radiation poisoning, because, you know, the radiation poisoning kills many people in the aftermath of the nuclear, the nuclear exchange. But after the nuclear freeze ends, after nuclear winter, you know, af- after the sun starts to come back, let's say, eight, nine, 10 years, um, now you have no ozone layer, or you have a severely depleted ozone layer. And so the sun's rays are now poisonous. So, if you have people living underground, and you have this great thawing, and with that great thawing comes pathogens and plague. And you have this, you know, system where the small-bodied animals, the insects and whatnot, begin reproducing really fast, and the larger bodied animals, like you and me, begin to go extinct. Professor Toon said it to me this way, you know, he said, "66 million years ago, an asteroid hit Earth, killed all the dinosaurs and wiped out 70% of the species. And nuclear war would likely do the same." And so here we are talking about this because there is a difference. There's nothing you can do about an asteroid, but there is something you can do about a nuclear war.

Episode duration: 3:07:26