The New York Times' W.J. Hennigan on the Risk of Nuclear War

“Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longa be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. " - John F. Kennedy, 1961

For over half a century, from the end of the Second World War to the turn of the millennium, avoiding nuclear war has been a key pillar of American foreign policy – guided by arms agreements, communication and common sense.

But today, many of those controls have faded away or ceased to exist – and the Bullet of Atomic Scientists – has warned we’re closer to the nuclear precipice than we have ever been before. 90 seconds to midnight, to use their terminology.

In fact in one of the most recent near misses, in the steppes of Eastern Europe, U.S. intelligence officials estimated that in the fall of 2022 it came down to the flip of a coin as to whether or not Russia would use a tactical nuclear weapon to stave off a Ukrainian offensive.

So how did we get here? Why has the fear of nuclear catastrophe faded from the public imagination even as the threat has increased? And what the hell happened in Ukraine that brought us so close to the edge? Today I am joined by The New York Times' W.J. Hennigan to discuss.


Bill, as he goes by, is serving as the lead writer for an ambitious, NYT series on nuclear threats and the challenges our world faces in combating proliferation. Bill has deep expertise covering the U.S. military and national security issues. He has reported from more than two dozen countries across five continents, covering war, the arms trade and the lives of American service members.

Bill come to the Times from Time magazine, where he was most recently a senior correspondent. In 2021, he received the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Distinguished Reporting on National Defense for his series on the role of the U.S. military throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. Last year he was part of a reporting team that received the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award for Washington Correspondence on the Jan. 6 attack and its aftermath. Before joining Time in 2017, Bill worked for more than eight years at The Los Angeles Times, where he covered the Pentagon and the defense industry. He has earned several awards and citations, including the Associated Press Media Editors Award for international perspective and the National Press Club’s Michael A. Dornheim Award, and he was part of a team of journalists who won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting.

Twitter: @wjhenn

At The Brink Link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/07/opinion/nuclear-weapons-nytimes.html

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Transcript

NYT's W.J. Hennigan on Nuclear Apocalypse

[00:00:00] 

Kevin: One of the things that has driven me really, really Crazy about the Ukraine war. My biggest concerns about the conflict itself is this, the real threat of nuclear escalation and how that threat is basically. Absent from the mainstream discussion just to kind of paint the picture. So we're in a situation where the U S has become increasingly involved in the conflict.

Kevin: We're sending huge weapons, weapons, shipments, and they're increasingly sophisticated weapons systems. We're giving the Ukrainians direction on where to point the weapons and how to target the Russians. And there may even be us personnel on their ground, helping them out there. If that the German leak is to be believed and it's clear that there are some red lines for the Russians like Crimea, which I want to get into, but it just, it really boggles my mind that.

Kevin: It seems like something that could go disastrously wrong, and this has been since 1945 or since 1949 that a [00:01:00] focal point of U. S. policy had been for decades to avoid getting into conflict with Russia because of the huge stakes of a nuclear conflict, and we had anti nuclear movements in the 50s and the 80s, and now it's just kind of gone, or at least very downplayed, and you had this great line in the piece, Nuclear war is often described as unimaginable.

Kevin: In fact, it's not imagined enough, which I think does a really good job of, of summing up the problem here. So to start off at a really high level before we dive in deeper in, can you just talk about for the audience what this whole series is and why the New York Times is writing 

Bill: Right. Well, thank you for your comments. I appreciate that. And you know what you mentioned about this time that we're living through currently of this new nuclear age is, is, you know, kind of the foundation that the, the, the New York times built a bond to, to launch this series at the brink. [00:02:00] What we want to do is make people aware of the, you know, existential threat that nuclear weapons pose and remind people about the peril of, of, of these weapons. Because, you know, for an entire generation, we have not had to worry about nuclear weapons in any meaningful way. I mean, yes, North Korea's launches and their nuclear

Bill: tests and in their rapid expansion of their missile program has, has gotten headlines, but for the most part, you know, it's been terrorism.

Bill: That's been the primary concern when it comes to national security. But, but, you know, previous to that what loomed over us all was this, was this concern about weapons. And there was a very mobilized citizenry around nuclear weapons. And [00:03:00] if, and I think, you know, And the existential part of it, if you walked outside your, your apartment today, and you talk to somebody on the street, you know, about climate change they would be able to give you the broad contours of what climate change is. If you did the same thing about nuclear weapons, you know, you probably wouldn't get as, as, as, as in a defined of an answer. And that's because it's no longer in the zeitgeist. We don't we don't talk about it, but all in the background of all this, the geopolitics has shifted.

Bill: the landscape has shifted in a way that it's something that, we need to be concerned about again, because.

Bill: The United States is embarked on this 2 trillion dollar modernization effort over the next 2 decades and other nations are also plowing billions of dollars into modernizing and expanding their [00:04:00] missile and nuclear programs. And all of this is occurring at the time at a time where the arms agreements the guardrails that, that, you know, kind of kept us from, from falling over the brink have have fallen by the wayside. And so, so what we're trying to do is, is explore the, the, this landscape that I just described and, and provide people with context as to why it's meaningful for their lives today.

Kevin: And so getting into the conflict in Ukraine for so this started what February 2022 is when the Russians invaded Ukraine it felt like for much of the conflict or the entirety of the conflict, if the prospect of. Russia using a nuclear weapon, even a tactical nuclear weapon, which I think is downplayed.

Kevin: So it'd be great to get into what that looks like, but it's, I have heard. You know, very high [00:05:00] ranking D. C. people say, oh, it's just very low odds. Like, Putin would never use a nuke he knows that's, that's too far. But you had written in your piece, you said the risk of nuclear escalation in Ukraine, while now low, has been a primary concern.

Kevin: For the Biden administration throughout this conflict, and you talk a bit about in the fall of 

2022 

Kevin: when U. S. intelligence, there was an offensive that the Ukrainians they're doing quite well, and they were close to basically breaching Russia's defenses in such a way that they would be cut off from Crimea, which is a very strategic, Part very strategic area for the Russians because a naval base they have there and for a variety of reasons, you said it came down to a coin flip us intelligence estimated that if the Ukrainian fighters managed to break through Russia's defenses, it came down to a coin flip on whether or not Russia would launch a tactical nuclear weapon quoting senior administration officials.[00:06:00] 

Kevin: Can you just talk a bit about that? Because that blows my mind that it was basically 50 50. 

In the fall of 

2022.

Kevin: on whether the Russians would use a nuclear weapon. 

Track 1: Transcripts provided 

Bill: heard that it was, I had a similar, response. So, so right. I mean, the, the, the entire conflict, the Biden administration is, has kind of threaded this needle of, you know, providing weapons to Ukraine without escalating with Russia without, without crossing the red line.

Bill: And, you know, it's kind of that slow boil that they've, they've tried to, to walk. And it's also this paradoxical Part of the war, which is that when. Ukraine is being successful on the battlefield. The odds of nuclear use increase. And when Russia is, is, is gaining [00:07:00] ground, the, the risk decreases. And you know, as you say D.

Bill: C. officials and people in the Pentagon in you know, any public statements has that has maintained that the risk of nuclear uses is low. And I do feel like that's, that's been true through most of the war, but during this period in the fall of 22, that was a, it was a much different environment. And I've covered nuclear issues throughout my career.

Bill: I've covered national security for 15 years. And this is the first time that I've ever been actually heard or felt as though that people were legitimately concerned about the possible nuclear use. And, you know, a lot of the planning that went into that and, and, you know, sleepless nights at the White House and State Department rushing people into Poland to make ensure that there's equipment coming over the border. That would be able to, you know, monitor any radiation or be able to capture [00:08:00] debris. So it could be analyzed and studied from the, from the DOE You know, those fears were palpable. And you know, the, the, what, what the kind of how that was all there was a diplomatic effort, of course the push on Russia itself, you know, they were told about the, the withering economic and diplomatic and military impacts that they would have, that they would face if they did cross this line and break this 79 year taboo that we have on, on non nuclear use.

Kevin: And you said they, that the US brought in China, India and Turkey to explain to Mr. Putin the potential costs if he were to go through a nuclear attack. So. It wasn't just us calling them, it was bringing in, I mean, bringing in China seems like a really interesting facet of that.

Bill: exactly. It was, it was not just a bilateral effort. It was, it was one it was a worldwide effort that came and because all of these nations. Have a vested interest [00:09:00] in, in a nuclear weapon not being used you know China had, you know, tacitly has been supporting Russia in this, you know, they have never, they've never come out and said, you know they've never, castigated Russia for what they've done in Ukraine. And this was the first time that they actually went on the record to say, you know, this is something that we, we cannot stand by. So, so it, it took It took all of that in order for the message to, to, to really ring true. We'll never know whether or not, you know Putin was actually, whether or not it was bluster but you know, if there is, if there's any chance of nuclear use that's, that's a petrifying, you know, it's a petrifying thing.

Kevin: Yeah. And one thing, I mean, this is maybe getting into the psychology of President Biden, but one thing I've kind of wondered and curious your thoughts on, he said at one point during [00:10:00] this conflict, I can't remember when, but that the world is the closest, closest we've been to nuclear wars since the Cuban missile crisis.

Kevin: When we came pretty close and, you know, a, a point that you were kind of alluding to earlier was that you know, this has gone from people's consciousness, the threat of nuclear war, a whole generation of people were born after the cold war. Terrorism was the main thing, but Joe Biden is pretty old. Joe Biden was in his twenties during the Cuban missile crisis.

He must remember what it was like back in 1962. When the country was freaking out because they thought. There could be nuclear war. It was just a major, major thing. And the, the, probably the closest we've gotten to. Nuclear war ever. And he lived through it.

Kevin: I don't know, it just kind of blows my mind that he states that we're the closest we've been since Cuban Missile Crisis. So he recognizes the threat. 

 He knows the threat is real. [00:11:00] It was pretty fucking close in 1962, which he lived through. Six years later in 2022. He lives through another situation where his own intelligence. I told him it was 50 50. If the Russians went nuclear, if Ukrainian succeeded in their effort to sever Russia from Crimea. And then less than a year later. The U S the byte administration is pushing the Ukrainians to do another counter offensive. 

That would cut the Russians. off from Crimea.

Kevin: And, you know, I, I don't want you to get into the politics of the war. Obviously I, you know, people would say the United States is not just going to pick up and go home because Russia says they're going to use a nuke or anything like that, but I guess I'm just sort of wondering, did you have any sense of the, with the people that you're talking to, does the.

Kevin: Possibility of Russia using a nuclear weapon influence their decisions at all beyond what you reported on [00:12:00] the preparation for the aftereffect of a tactical nuclear weapon. You talked a lot about like Ukrainian hospitals getting ready to take in people with radiation exposure, but does the Biden administration, know, like to me, it seems like you talked about red lines.

Kevin: They. It seems they keep on saying, they started the war saying, we're not gonna send these kinds of weapons, we're not gonna send tanks. Right. You know, this is our red line. And then a few months later they send the weapons. They said they weren't gonna send, and it just feels like to use a cliche Russian roulette.

Kevin: So I'm wondering if, if you got any sense from people you were talking to about are, are they being cautious? Are they, are they just gambling with our lives right now?

Bill: Well, you know, to your first point about Joe Biden, Joe Biden is probably the most informed president on nuclear issues in our history. I mean, the man has he's, he's, you know, foreign relations. He was in Congress during the cold war. You know, he [00:13:00] worked on arms control issues. There is not a president that's more informed on nuclear weapons. In our, in our nation's history. So I think that the fact that he's so, this administration is so sensitive to the, to the issue of escalation and nuclear escalation in, in the Ukraine conflict is, is largely due to his leadership and knowledge of the issue, you know, to your question. Since the very beginning of this conflict, the administration has had a, had these tradeoffs.

Bill: I mean, early on it was in the first months of the, the war, the Pentagon canceled a ICBM test that we, you know, we, we, we take these missiles out of the ground. They're, you know, they're based in the, in the Great Plains states and they take the, you know, these ICBMs that Are waiting in silos, you know, on a hair trigger ready to be launched at a moment's notice.

Bill: And they, they ensure that [00:14:00] they still work. They bring them out to California and they launch them over the ocean to the quadrillion a toll and that's, that's, you know, thousands of miles away. Just to make sure that they work and they do this pretty regularly. I would say it's probably once a quarter or something like that. And in the early months of the war, they canceled that test, a routine test that is planned years in advance. Because they saw that as being escalatory.

Bill: And they didn't want to send the wrong message to Russia when they, when they did that. So You know and then, you know, the administration has been, 

Track 1: see, 

Bill: when it comes to providing arms that, that the Ukrainians say they need, you know, they Pick, pick your weapon system, but it's, you know, it takes months before they're like, okay, finally we'll, we'll, we'll, [00:15:00] you know, we'll send those. So this is, this is that, that, that kind of balancing act that they've, they've had to walk that the, the entire time. And, you know, I don't know if it will, if we had another administration, whether or not it would be as measured, as, as it was, and as I report in the, in the story, you know, four days after Putin invaded Jake Sullivan directs the NSC to convene a tiger team to, to come up with a playbook of options for the president.

Bill: Should a, a nuclear weapon be used? That, that kind of foresight shows how much that that fear of the threat figures into their calculus.

Kevin: One thing I've wondered is whether. The, the fact that Russia and the United States have developed tactical nuclear weapons 

Tactical nuclear weapons being much. Smaller nuclear weapons fund smaller nuclear bombs, smaller than the. [00:16:00] The Hiroshima bomb, for example. So the develop. I'm wondering if the development of these kinds of weapons has. 

Kevin: somehow taken the, the bite or the sting out of the fear of nuclear weapons. Because I think people used to think if the bomb drops, it's 10 times the size of Hiroshima. It's, you know, a hydrogen bomb just incinerating everything around it, that kind of thing.

Kevin: And so maybe people think that these These bombs are just kind of like conventional weapons. But you did a very really good job. And I really encourage people to read this description of what a conventional not a conventional, I'm sorry, tactical nuclear bomb would look like. This is where you talked about a nuclear warhead exposing that you said was more than half of the Hiroshima bombs, explosive power.

Kevin: And just to describe it a little bit, using your words, you talked about. A white flash envelopes the sky for miles, briefly blinding everyone who witnesses it. Temperatures inside the explosion reach [00:17:00] millions of degrees hotter than the surface of the sun. There's a firestorm that consumes so much oxygen that it can suffocate people sheltering in their cars or their homes.

Kevin: It sounds like description of the firestorms in Dresden or Tokyo. You said the wreckage of everything around it. It's sucked into the toiling stem of a mushroom cloud rising up for miles. The cloud appears like a living thing. Its colors change from white to yellow to red to black, billowing in the sky until it eclipses the sun.

Kevin: And then there's too much to read here, but it's just really good. You talk about the thousands of buried undead, the open sewage, the fetid water. being a breeding ground for disease and growth. Flies appear en masse, laying eggs and corpses in the open burn in the wounds of survivors. Radiation sickness begins with bouts of nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.

Kevin: People who survived and feel fine days or weeks later can suddenly lose chunks of hair, become anemic or weak, begin bleeding internally. Their immune systems fail. They get all sorts of diseases, cancer of all kinds. [00:18:00] appears decades later. And that's just a , tactical nuclear weapon, right?

Kevin: Can you, can you just talk about like, what, beyond what I just said, but like, what does it look like if Russia uses one of the Earth, United States uses one of these? 

Track 1: Transcripts 

Bill: important part for me was getting this right because everything I was hearing from, from the administration and, and outside government officials and other countries was the fear of, of not a a hydrogen bomb, not an H bomb, but which are, you know, city destroying weapons, but you know, smaller in my, I'm using air quotes here device. And, and it's important to understand that a So the largest conventional bomb in our arsenal is the GBU 43, called the mother of all bombs. And it was used several years ago in Afghanistan on a tunnel complex of, for ISIS tunnel complex. And that is 11 [00:19:00] tons of TNT. the biggest one that we have. And if you think about a, a nuclear weapon, they're in, in kilotons, thousands of, of, so, so let's say a bomb that has half a kiloton is still 50 times larger than the smallest it was 50 times larger than this, the largest conventional bomb that we have in our arsenal. So these are immense. The explosion is, is, is unfathomable and also I wanted to make, I followed the reporting, of course, you know, and then I wanted to describe the tactical weapon because that's what the reporting is, but I also feel as though that people can see, and one of the criticisms that I've had is, well, Bill, why didn't you, why didn't you use H bombs?

wm-hennigan_1_03-08-2024_141202: And it's 

Bill: like people cannot, it becomes an abstract thing, you know, when, when you have these humongous the idea that a city would be eviscerated is, is, [00:20:00] is almost, you know, that's, that's, it's a hard thing to, to come to grips, but you can see one of these, you know, smaller weapons being used and and understand the effects.

Bill: So the first thing that I did after I got hired was I went to Hiroshima Nagasaki and spoke to survivors about what they experienced when they, when, when they lived through the bomb and, and to follow on and almost, you know, a lot of what I wrote in the, in the. And that scenario was taken directly from their mouths and put into the, and put into the article to, to describe it to people. I also was able to, to draw on years of data and white papers and, and scientific studies that talked about all the follow on effects of, of, of nuclear weapons. And so everything that I put in there is, is based on. You know, I can tie anything that I, I wrote in that, in that scenario [00:21:00] to either something that was told to me or something that, that came from expert study on it. And it was important for me to get all of that, get that right. I did not want to be sensational. I did not, you know, the biggest thing for me was to come off over alarmist or sensationalize this threat in a way that would be off putting. I wanted people to understand that this was, you know, this is real life and I think, you know, If, if we engage in this and begin to understand, like, you know, this problem did not go away, it's, it, you know, even though we thought we solved the, the issue of, of the arms race, it's, it's coming back again.

Bill: And we need to confront that in a meaningful way. We need to demand that our politicians talk about this. You know, we're, we're out, we're on the. cusp of another presidential election. And, and very rarely have I ever seen presidential candidates talk about nuclear weapons. I think we should [00:22:00] demand that, that, that, that be discussed this year,

Kevin: Yeah, I kind of wonder, you know, I was just reading up on the history of anti nuclear movements and it sounded like in the in the early 1980s, there was like a made for TV movie. You're probably familiar with this. I think it was called the day after tomorrow or something like that,

Bill: it's just the day

Kevin: the day after, and that helped galvanize because it, it illustrated to a lot of people, what, you know, people who had been born well after the, you know, the fifties arms race and the sixties arms race, a new generation of people, what that might look like, obviously it was helped by high tensions in the cold war.

Kevin: And you know, I think Reagan was. A couple of years later, maybe around that time, put Pershing missiles in Germany and things like that. But I, I had wondered if there was a parallel with Oppenheimer. And I mean, obviously Oppenheimer isn't about it's, it's, it's a real life movie. It's not whatever that [00:23:00] made for TV movie was about what would happen.

Kevin: But it does either way. It doesn't seem like Oppenheimer made anyone didn't galvanize anyone to be against nuclear weapons or fear nuclear war. I know that wasn't the point of the movie, but

Bill: Yeah, well, I think that, I think that the, the, day after is a, you know, seminal film, you're exactly right. I mean, you have to understand it in the, in the, in the context of the time. It was very, you know, you're, you're talking about the arms race and you know, Reagan making these very hawkish comments against the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union doing likewise.

Bill: There was a palpable fear in the citizenry. About about the fear of, of a full out thermonuclear exchange between, I mean, you know, there were film, there was films, there were other films that came out around that time. War games comes to mind immediately that, that, you know, and there were songs [00:24:00] about you know,

Bill: 99 red 

Kevin: Luftballoons or 

Bill: Yeah, exactly. And so you know, that was just part, part of the that was just part of the culture at the time. And, and the day after really was even, it holds up today. I mean, I don't know if you've, if you've

Bill: watched the film, but it's, it's, it's very, it's very moving because the, you know, a lot of these movies, a lot of nuclear movies deal with decision makers and, and, and you know, or military officers or, but this is done from the ground level.

Bill: It's done from, you know, people who will be the targets of of a nuclear strike, you know, average people in Kansas. And so, yeah, it was, it, it was a, a a movie that really motivated people to become more active and I think just a year earlier I believe the day after came out in 1983 and 1982 was the largest. [00:25:00] In American history at the time, over a million people came to New York City in Central Park to demand that the United States and the Soviet Union freeze their arsenal, stop building new bombs because they were so petrified of, of, of what And they knew the stakes, you know, you, you know, the thing is that with nuclear weapons is like two leaders can have a problem.

Bill: We saw we brushed up against this not too long ago with with President Trump and Kim Jong Un. North Korean leader, you know, these two men have an issue with one another and then all of us are, are in the middle of, of, of that, you know, kind of personal thing because, you know, indeed the nuclear weapons are the president's weapons.

Bill: No other person can choose to use them. And any, in any case just to, to, to bring it home is, is you're exactly right. I mean, that, that, that cultural moment was [00:26:00] important and did. Did motivate people to come out. I think Oppenheimer is providing people is alerting people to, to this danger but not in, not in a way that the day after did that, that was a real shift.

Bill: And, and because of that the movie and how, how. visceral the the, the scenes are and everything. The Reagan administration demanded to have some television time afterward to speak directly to the American people about the threat and,

Kevin: Was it Reagan directly that 

Bill: No, it was it was, it was state secretary, George Schultz. He came out on an ABC and, and discussed, you know, what the administration was doing. Yeah. And, you know, again, here again, you know, we're, we're plowing all this money into the modernization. And how many times have you seen anybody really talk about you know, any, any prominent politician really have a meaningful [00:27:00] discussion? In a public space about about these issues.

Kevin: Well, actually to that question , Reagan what everyone thinks of him and the genuineness of his statements, I believe he was a nuclear abolitionist. And you had these other nuclear abolitionists, I think George Shultz later became one too, Henry Kissinger. And then as recently as Obama again, they profess to be, but you know, who knows what they're actually doing.

Kevin: And The United States is treaty obligated under the NPT right to pursue good faith obligations to get rid of nuclear weapons, but we had as recently as Obama president pledging giving lip service at the very least to getting rid of nuclear weapons. Not immediately, but you know, he just said that would be a great thing to eventually do.

Kevin: Do you imagine we'll ever have something like that again? I know I wouldn't expect Biden in the middle of this Ukrainian conflict to say [00:28:00] something like that. Or actually, you know, I think it would be a good time to say that I reversed what I just said. But do you I mean, Obama being the last president, I believe to say anything like that.

Bill: Well, well, so, right, we have this, this high, you know, the tensions were at its highest arguably with, with in the Pershing missile and the, the You know, the INF the inter intermediate nuclear forces agreement in the 80s. So, so they call it the Euro missiles. So, so what happened was, yeah, there was this, this real high intentions were at its highest.

Bill: And then there was a, you know, Reagan part in part because of, of the day after. He was really motivated to, to begin doing something about nuclear weapons. He came into office, you know, very hawkish and by the end of his administration, you know, they were, they really set, you know, set up the, the infrastructure for arms control, you know, for the next, [00:29:00] you know, up until what we have today everything. Kind of came out of spun out of what the Reagan administration was able to accomplish and begin pathways into, into these various agreements. And yeah, I mean, you know, the fall of the Soviet union meant that that threat was kind of certainly deescalated and. and. we had a big period there where we stopped making nuclear weapons, you know, in, in the, in 1991 and we stopped testing, you know, the same year, you know, the year that the Soviet Union dissolved and and those, the date that those years. In the, in the 20 years afterward, you know, nuclear weapons were put on the back burner, the United States did not invest in new nuclear weapons. You know, I mean, not only we're not, we were not building the warheads, which we haven't done since 91, but we're starting again, we did not, we did not field new nuclear delivery systems.

Bill: We're still [00:30:00] operating with the minute men three that was first that were first installed in during the Nixon administration.

Kevin: we reducing our stockpiles at the end in the early 90s to comply with treaty obligations from the 80s and 70s?

Bill: correct. So we yeah, we we would we were living in a world of continual reductions because of because of the the pathway that the Reagan administration put us on, you know, between Russia and the United States. We, Russia, United States has 90 percent roughly 90 percent of all nuclear weapons in the world.

Bill: And so these 2 nations being, you know, having mutually, you know, identifying weapons that were, you know, mutually menacing and then eliminating them and we lived through that period. There was a, you know, there was a real hope that we could rid ourselves of this, of this peril that we, we, you know, that loomed over us. And then, you know, it. [00:31:00] It's all now we're at a moment of open of open competition. We're we're less than 2 years removed from the last major strategic agreement. New start from sun setting. And that will, you know, in February of 2026.

Kevin: That's an arms control treaty between the U. S. and Russia.

Bill: what that's the last one that keeps a cap on the number of of strategic warheads that we can have deployed, which is 1550 on each side, and there's no hope for for another follow on agreement as of right now. Right now. And, and, you know, that's, that's kind of the, you know, you asked, is there going to be another period? I don't think that anybody anticipated that there would be another period of open competition after what we lived through, you know during the cold war, there was. A number of incidents that, you know, really came down to a lot of times to a low level [00:32:00] military officer making the right decision. There's, you know a number of close calls and S and so, you know, now we're entering this new era of, of this competitive near peer era and, you know, throw in China as well, because in 2030, the U. S. intelligence estimates that they'll have up to 1, 000 nuclear warheads, which puts them on par with the United States and Russia, considering that, you know, we, we only we only, we deploy 15 you know, 1, 500 of them currently. So it's, it's, it's a real. It's, it's kind of mind blowing to see how we're at this place after, you know, seemingly the, the, you know, the, the genie was put back in the bottle so to speak,

Kevin: Yeah, and I want to circle back on close calls in a moment and kind of, and where we are now. But I just wanted to go back to Ukraine for a minute because of, you know, the, the Kursan offensive that we [00:33:00] talked about in the fall of 2022 did not breach the Russian defenses and cut them off from Crimea, but there was a leaked discussion recently of German military officials.

Kevin: But who were having a national security level conversation on Webex, where one guy apparently called in from his cell phone from a hotel room in Singapore. That just sort of gives me pause as to what the fuck was going on there. But setting that aside they, so it was intercepted by the Russians.

Kevin: The Russians leaked it. A couple of things we learned from that conversation. One was that the Germans were talking about sending tourist missiles to the Ukrainians so that they could blow up this bridge that connects Crimea to Russia. And again, you know, whatever one thinks of the politics or the policy, the Ukraine war, it's always seemed clear to me that Crimea is a huge red line for the Russians.

Kevin: They've had it since 1783. I mean, they, it got shifted to the [00:34:00] Ukrainian control in the fifties, but Russia. Even when Ukraine became independent in the early 90s, maintained control of that, the military base in Sevastopol, it's, I think their only warm water port, like, they are not going, it's, I think it's like 75 percent Russian people, when the Russians went in, in 2014, it was like the Ansheles, like, no one was Fighting them.

Kevin: It's not to say it's okay to invade another country, but it's just the reality of the ground on the ground. I don't, I feel like the Russians are just not whatever else in this war. They would not let go of Crimea. And here are the Germans talking about sending tourist missiles to blow up this bridge.

And it feels like to me, whatever else happens in this war, the Russians are not going to let go of Crimea. That is their big red line. That was why us intelligence estimated that it would be 50 50 that Russia was going to use a nuke [00:35:00] in 2022, because they were going to be cut off from Crimea. And now we have this conversation, but Germans talking amongst themselves about sending missiles to Ukraine. So that they can blow up the one bridge, linking Russia to Crimea. And it's clear that the. Russians. 

When they got that conversation, they leaked it and made it public for a reason.

Kevin: And I believe that was when Putin started talking about potential nuclear threats as well, and sort of almost like tacitly threatening the Germans.

Kevin: So. Can you talk a bit about that? I know this was not your reporting and I I believe the Germans confirmed the authenticity of the conversation, but just this idea that the threat is not over in this conflict of Russia potentially using a tactical nuke.

Bill: right? We, I mean, I cannot comment on, on [00:36:00] the, on the reporting. I haven't done any of my own independent verification on that, but what, yeah, but what I can say is, is, absolutely. I mean, this is the, the fact that there are nuclear weapons in the world means that there's a chance that they're going to be used.

Bill: And, and, you know, when you have a hot war in, in Europe, as we do, you know, that's always going to be a concern. And so I think, you know, you've seen Ukraine, Germany, Launched drone strikes and these long range strike campaign that they have on going in Crimea, but that's a, that's a, I think it's a much different thing than, you know, being able to cut off the supply and and, you know, Basically be able to, you know, have

Bill: to shape the battlefield in a way where, you know, you could have a, a full out offensive.

Bill: And I think that, you know, that red line is probably is, is, is almost definitely [00:37:00] still in effect. There's a, there's always a chance that, that the, you know, that, that, you know, the threat meter could, could jump again. We're not at that place though, because, you know, Ukraine is on its back foot. And you know, they're, they're losing ground, not gaining ground.

Bill: And, and you know, Russia's defenses of Crimea are substantial. And in the early days of the war, you know, Crimea or the Ukrainians were on the march.

Bill: And, you know, they were, they were, they were taking back territory at a rapid clip. And I think that there was, you know, the goal of the counter offensive this past year was to cut that land bridge again, you know.

Bill: But they didn't have, they didn't realize the the objectives that they, that they set out for themselves in order to, to make that happen. So you're, you're absolutely correct that the, that, that this, this [00:38:00] threat could, could you know, rise again. But I feel like at this place we're, we're, we're far away from, from, from that moment.

Kevin: Yeah, one of the things the Germans said in that discussion was it wouldn't matter anyway, if we sent the missiles and they took down that bridge because they don't have the manpower to kind of move in and solidify their gains.

Bill: Right. So that, I mean, that's kind of what you're seeing now is the spectacular. Long range strike campaign to, you know, be disruptive, but I mean, it's not, they're not, it's not a strategic campaign to retake territory. It's, it's more to, to to disrupt things than anything there, you know, the small tactical efforts, not, not a part of a larger strategic effort.

Kevin: And so backing away and just kind of thinking about the current global risk we talked about close calls. I think you, you got close to mentioning one of them, which is one of the most chilling for [00:39:00] me in the early eighties a Soviet early warning system reported that there were five ICBMs coming toward the Soviet Union which should have triggered an immediate Russian response because I, I don't know how long it takes ICBMs to get to Russia from the United States in the early 30 minutes.

Kevin: So yeah, so they should have in theory. Just responded, but it was one man, Stanislav Petrov, who just kind of had a gut instinct. I think he said like, well, there was only five. And I think if they were going to attack, it'd be more than five. And so just on that instinct decided it was probably a glitch. It wound up being a solar flare or something like that.

Kevin: But Jesus Christ, we came pretty close to, to a nuclear exchange between the Soviets and the Russians, and there were a few, I mean, many other close incidents, bombs falling out of planes in the United States, flocks of geese going over radars and freaking people out. And you talked about the, the [00:40:00] treaties that we had, especially the kind of second half of the Cold War.

Kevin: The START treaties, the SALT treaties. I know that, I think Obama had done START too, is that right?

Bill: New

Kevin: New start. And there are other treaties like the anti ballistic missile treaty that, you know, just about arms controls, even if not always nuclear arms controls between the United States and the U.

Kevin: S. S. R. slash Russia, but you, you said where the, the last one is kind of expiring and we'll basically have, or maybe not basically, we're just going to have no arms control agreements between the United States and Russia for the first time since, the cheese.

Bill: Yeah. The, the I mean, the, you know, the threat is not only alive in Ukraine, but also, you know, future wars that, that, you know, people are anticipating, like, in, in Taiwan, there's, you know, China has tactical [00:41:00] weapons and, you know, in Korea, of course, as well with, with North Korea's substantial nuclear arsenal which, you know, is, is said to also include tactical weapons at this point. So, you know, and then when you, when you talk about the arms control piece of that all of those agreements have either phased out, you know, they've sunsetted or they've been ripped apart, you know, by, by the Russians or the United States, you know, the W. Bush administration walked away from the anti ballistic missile treaty And you know, the, the INF, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Agreement the, the Trump administration walked away from that even though Russia was abrogating that, that agreement. There is little prospect for any follow on agreement. I mean, you know, Jake Sullivan, the NSC by President Biden's NSC advisor. He, you know, he, he had a speech [00:42:00] last year in which he, you know at the arms control association and he, he compelled, you know, he said, you know, we're open for business basically to both Russia and China to, to, to either hammer something out bilaterally or multilaterally. And you know, that, that hasn't, you know, he, what he was saying was like, we want to compartmentalize, you know, we can, we can do this, we can compartmentalize our, our arms control discussions away from our disagreements over Ukraine or Taiwan or whatever, you know, we need to just, this is good for everybody, but that was met with crickets, you know, I, I understand that they've had some, some sort of very early discussions with China about this.

Bill: Yeah. But for the most part, it's nothing meaningful has come out of that. And Russia has straight up, you know, said that they're not interested on any strategic stability talks,

Bill: which are part of the, the new star treaty that we were, that we're currently in. And I should also mention the fact that, you know, [00:43:00] President Putin, 

Track 1: that.

Bill: the, the new star treaty. And you know, there's, that's essentially abrogating the agreement. I mean, there's no, there's no suspension clause in, in, in the document. And so, you know, right now. That they say that they're staying to the 1550 weapon in terms of the weapons that they're deployed, but you know, there's no verification there's no way to to ensure that's the truth being Part of the agreement was that you're able to go in and visit one another's installations and, and do inspections and all that's gone, you know, there's also, you know, I end this story on, on the nuclear reduction center at the state department, you know, there used to be messages passed back and forth among the two countries about, you know, the maintenance work that they would do, or, you know, we're going to test here. And, you know, now all of that's gone, and that might sound trivial, that sort of, that, [00:44:00] that, that messaging back and forth, but, you know, when you, when you, when you're telling another nation, you're building trust, first of all, and second of all, you're, you're ensuring that the raw, you know, the, the observable intelligence that you're gathering you know, you're able to verify that right in the absence of that information, you could be seeing movement on the ground and totally misinterpret what's, what's happening. So yes, I mean, after, you know, basically our whole lives, we've had these agreements in place that were established out of fear. Out of fear between these two countries. You know, they recognize that this was untenable. The arms race was untenable. We need to put some guardrails. So they established these guardrails.

Bill: And now, you know, we're here, we are a one generation removed from that. And it's like, all that was, you know, why were we even doing arms control? You know, there's there's a lot of hawks in Congress that have been talking about how nothing arms control does [00:45:00] nothing but hampers American it's it's very surprising to me about how we've come to this spot, you know, I've read a lot about these, the history of this over the years and, and to think that we're now in this place kind of, it's hard to really kind of get a firm grasp around it.

Kevin: And we talked about Biden mentioning that it's, in his opinion, we're the closest nuclear conflict since the Cuban missile crisis, the, the doomsday clock run by the bulletin of atomic scientists has this at 90 seconds to midnight, midnight being we're fucked and I think they've been running that since, what, 1947,

Bill: Yeah. Yeah. It was started by Albert Einstein. You know right after the, after the, the bomb

Kevin: Yeah.

Kevin: And they, 90 seconds, midnight is the closest we've ever been. Which is very scary. So. Just, you know, going back to big picture, what is your assessment of the, the current risk, the threat that we face from nuclear conflict?

Bill: [00:46:00] I believe that the threat of nuclear conflict remains to be low, but I think that the, the threat is rising in a way that was, is almost unthinkable. To even 10 years ago the idea that we're not actively engaging with other nuclear powers about, you know, the, the future of, of arms limits, you know, there will be calls in Congress soon about the fact that we need to have, you More nuclear weapons.

Bill: Russia and China have, you know China is expanding its, its, its arsenal. So we need to have as many nuclear weapons as both China and Russia. You know, you, you can disagree with whether or not we, we, we need something like that. But, you know, there, you can understand that that argument, you know, will be made and the fact that we're revitalizing our, our, our nuclear weapons complexes is staggering considering that, you know [00:47:00] we're still cleaning up a lot of the environmental mess that was made and during the first arms race it's, it's again, I, I, I, I, yeah. Can't say this enough. It's just it's unanticipated that we we've kind of arrived at this spot. I don't I do think that that the every war, you know, these wars that I, the future wars that we're concerned about will have a nuclear component with them and I do think that the threats that have been thrown around recently by both. By, you know, President Trump of, you know, fire and fury and Putin's, you know, implicit and explicit threats about nuclear use and Kim Jong un's often, you know, threatening, you know, to, to, to annihilate South Korea and the U. S. and the region and all of this is, is, you know, degrading the taboo. It's, it's, it's, it's kind of just making it, you know, by making, Comments like this, it's, [00:48:00] it's normalizing the threat of nuclear use. And, and that's, that's a very scary place to be. Because eventually, you know, they, they very well might use one.

Kevin: And it's not just Trump, right? In terms of American presidents, I think previous presidents use more careful language. But I, you know, when talking about what we might do with Iran. Obama and his predecessors would say all options are on the table, which feels pretty clearly coded. And I think the U. S.

Kevin: is, correct me if I'm wrong, the only country that has a first strike policy.

Bill: The yeah, I mean, you know, these, these these are all very, you know, these sorts of terms are, are, are very eye of the beholder type of thing. I mean, you know,

Kevin: Well, they're understood by diplomat. Like when Russia, when Iran hears all options are on the table. I think the Iranians are like, okay, well, that, that means they might use nukes.

Bill: sure. I, I, you

Bill: [00:49:00] know, but as a, as a. As a former pentagon correspondent, you know, all options on the table is something that I regularly heard. I do think that what you're saying is true that, that, you know, any nuclear nation that, that says all options are the table has to include, you know, the, the, the nuclear option. But yes, you know China has, has recently said you know, that, that it wants a nuclear option. The United States and Russia to say that they're not going to to use a nuke first. You know

Kevin: And Russia does have, Russia doesn't have a first strike policy, right? I think they said, They would only use nuclear weapons if someone else introduced them into a conflict.

Bill: well, I mean, you know, other president. U. S. Presidents have said similar things in the past as well. But, you know, the. The U. S. policy, the U. S. policy is, is not that's not been ensconced in, in, in American policy and no first use. And I've, you know, I say, I wrote an article that came out yesterday [00:50:00] that discussed the, the, the president's unilateral power in using nuclear weapons.

Bill: And there's nothing, you know, stopping a U. S. president there's no legal. Device by which the president has to, you know, get consent to use those weapons with any other person. And I think it makes good sense that that that. You know, the, the Congress needs to pass something to make that a law that, you know, no, no president can ever use a weapon without consulting, you know, either Congress or the courts or, or advisors.

Bill: Somebody needs to be in that chain of command.

Kevin: So you mentioned that second article that came out yesterday. Which I also highly recommend. It's really good and it's crazy to think that it, it is in just one person's purview to do this in the little time that they might have to make that decision. What else is next in this series? I mean, it sounds like it's a whole on the brink or I don't know what it's formally called, but it sounds like it's going to be a several [00:51:00] essay series.

Kevin: Are they all coming from you? Are there other writers? And what, what's the, the, it seems like it's all going to be nuclear focused, but what, what can we expect coming down the pike?

Bill: Correct? Yeah. We, we will be publishing articles throughout the year. It will include essays that I write as well as essays that outside Experts and politicians are, are, are going to write on a range of

Kevin: Politicians?

Bill: Yeah.

Kevin: great.

Bill: Yes. You know, this is, this is something as I said at the top, this is, this is a sort of effort that we want to educate the American public on.

Bill: We want to have a robust debate about, about this, these issues and more than any, we just want people to think about it, you know It's a funny thing to me that millions of people recognize that nuclear weapons pose this existential threat in our in our lives. And yet we don't talk about it very much at all. [00:52:00] We don't have a we don't have a debate about this. We don't we don't, you know, I was talking about climate change. You can go on any university Campus and find a, you know, activist group with, you know, climate change. You, you will never, you will not find this a, a, a nuclear activist group on, on a, on a university these days.

Bill: And, and anyway, I, I'm just saying this to say, you know, we need to be talking about this more if we otherwise we're just gonna keep handing the problem to our children and their children. You know, we're, we're now almost a hundred years into the. The atomic age. And a lot of the thinking And, um, tools of, of, of the nuclear, of nuclear war fighting, it's still, it's still with us.

Bill: And it hasn't been, it hasn't been discussed or thought about in new novel ways. So let's start that discussion again.

Kevin: I couldn't [00:53:00] agree more, which I, is why I just felt the, the pieces that you wrote were such. value of such value and importance and to really appreciate the work that you're doing, the work that your team is doing at the times and just think it's I'm, I'm trying to preach as much as I can. So appreciate you coming on the show to have that discussion.

Kevin: I guess one final question, are we going to get a daily episode on this for people who are not so much readers and more listeners?

Bill: Well, I can say that I have two podcasts that are coming out. Um, about about this. One of them is actually dealing with the films that we discussed. Strangely enough, and and there'll be another one that comes out later. But I haven't sat down with the daily quite yet.

Kevin: How can we find the podcasts when they come out? 

Bill: There'll be. Yeah, they're on the N. Y. T. Audio

Kevin: Other New York times podcasts.

Bill: Yes.

Kevin: You know, when they're coming out,

Bill: [00:54:00] The movie one should be coming out right after the Oscars.

Kevin: Awesome.

Kevin: I'll look out for that. Well, bill, thank you so much. This has been an awesome discussion. So thank you for coming on and big thanks for all the work that you guys are doing.

Bill: Thank you.