Barry’s Legacy and the Bomb

Aaron Stein 0:02

I'm trying to make jokes to cheer everybody up. You are listening to the Arms Control Walk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Aaron Stein, a contributor to the Arms Control Walk blog, and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Rafik Kariri Center for the Middle East.

Jeffrey Lewis 0:24

And I'm Jeffrey Lewis. I'm the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Aaron 0:34

Are you in your car for this episode or are you back in your office?

Jeffrey 0:37

I'm back in my office because poor Scott, brand new super producer, was getting a little bit of, oh, I'm trying not to swear. He was getting grief because the sound quality was poor.

Aaron 0:49

But it's not his fault. No, it was an emergency pod. We were speaking from an undisclosed parking lot in the undisclosed Carmel Valley.

Jeffrey 0:56

Yeah, the implication if I'm speaking from a parking lot is I'm on a cell phone.

Aaron 1:00

So don't blame Scott, people. Yeah, no, we're back in our high-tech studio now, so everything should be better.

Jeffrey 1:06

I'm my high-tech studio with my giant North Korean flag that I have to take down every time I do events with Koreans.

Aaron 1:12

I can imagine that. But you have an ocean view.

Jeffrey 1:16

I do. In fact, let me look, let me look. I think the Cal Fire people are doing backburns in Carmel Valley again to keep the fire out of the valley, and so it's a little smoky.

Aaron 1:29

But yeah, I can see the waves washing up on the shore. I'm looking at an overcast and rainy gray sky in Washington. You see it in the brick building next to me. Well, that's romantic in its own sad little way. Right, but overcast and gloomy. I mean, this is the discussion about today's podcast, Obama's nuclear blues. We're coming to the end here.

Jeffrey 1:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're getting to the end. And I think maybe he feels like he didn't do quite enough. So he's going to try to do a little more.

Aaron 2:00

Right. There's been a lot of talk in the media for the past couple of months about Obama's final big move on nuclear policy here in the United States.

Jeffrey 2:10

Yeah, I was—well, I guess I wasn't just in Japan anymore. I was in Japan at the end of August. And all anyone wanted to talk about was this Josh Rogin story that was in the Washington Post in which it asserted that Obama was considering a no-first-use pledge, which was weird because— You know, when I read that story, just knowing Josh Rogin's general political outlook and his sources, you know, I didn't think it was a friendly leak, right?

The people who were leaking that were either trying to make the president look bad because no first use is unpopular or deny him a kind of Win with his base by making whatever it is he chose to do seem sort of disappointing. But it was interesting. People in Japan really thought that that was like a straight story like, yeah, this was seriously under discussion in the United States and that they needed to decide how they felt about it.

Aaron 3:11

Right. And which leads us to sort of the next story in our story arc here for the podcast, which is the Sanger and Broad story, I believe, in the New York Times in mid-September about pushback on this.

Jeffrey 3:21

Right, which suggests that basically nobody in Obama's cabinet wanted the president to do that.

Aaron 3:27

Right. So there was a widespread leak. But, I mean, the two allies that they mentioned as being particularly uncomfortable with it are two friends of the pod, Japan and South Korea.

Jeffrey 3:35

Yeah, I have to say, you know, it – It does seem to me like they must have discussed it because lots of people mentioned it. And so what I suspect happened is that some of our friends were pushing for bigger changes. But the thing that the Sanger and Broad story says is that the arguments in front of the president himself were relatively brief because so many senior aides objected.

So I don't Really think that it was ever seriously considered. And that was certainly our, I say our, I and the other American participants who were in Hiroshima, I think all made the point that we would be shocked if the president were to make a no first use declaration. Which is really interesting because I think that came as a surprise to the Japanese.

I mean, they really seemed like they were getting ready for that eventuality for better or for worse.

Aaron 4:31

Was that out of, on the Japanese side, sort of just general ignorance about how, as you said, certain people leak things to express, to try and kill proposals or at least tarnish proposals before they even get off the ground? Or a serious concern about what a U.S. no-first policy would do for their own security?

Jeffrey 4:54

Well, I think, look, people leak stuff in Japan. So I think politicians and experts are used to that particular gambit. But I think with distance and not knowing the participants, it's a little harder to spot what the motive of a particular leak is. One thing I would say is that, and this was a disarmament roundtable, and so you would think that people would be a little bit more inclined to accept these kinds of proposals.

But even the more conservative Japanese and South Korean former officials were sort of thinking through how they could live with such a pledge. I actually think, even though it was designed to hurt the president, I came away thinking that the anxiety in Japan and South Korea is not really about the pledge, but more what the pledge might represent.

And so if I was going to fault the administration for one thing, it's not keeping allies alive. Appropriately appraised of what's going on, right? So that they believe everything they read in the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Aaron 6:15

Right. But then we've had a, you know, subsequent to both those stories, we had the third story in our own story arc, which was Julian Borger in The Guardian.

Jeffrey 6:24

Right, which seems to suggest that much more modest things are now under consideration. probably small cuts to either the deployed force, the total stockpile, or maybe just the amount of plutonium we have sitting around. But the big one, right, would be canceling or delaying the replacement for the air-launched cruise missile. The LRSO, Long Range Standoff. Hey, that was another funny thing about Japan, is our acronyms are baffling to foreigners.

Aaron 7:02

Explain this, because I actually have nothing to say. I'm actually curious in the story myself.

Jeffrey 7:08

Well, just the name, right? The new bomber, which is now the B-21 Raider. I like it. Yeah. I don't know. I just imagine, you know, Al Davis saying, Newcomb, baby! I don't know why the Raider fight. It's apparently a... Yeah, it's a reference to the Doolittle Raid.

Aaron 7:33

Yeah.

Jeffrey 7:33

You know, which is... Yeah, it was the first one.

Aaron 7:36

It was the one-way raid where some of our guys, I believe, landed in China.

Jeffrey 7:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? It was a one-way trip. Right. It couldn't refuel.

Aaron 7:43

For how much this bomb was going to cost, we'd hope they could come back. But we're off topic here.

Jeffrey 7:47

We're way off topic. Sorry about that. The B-21 Raider, it used to be the LRSB.

Aaron 7:56

Right.

Jeffrey 7:57

Right? The Long Range Strike... And then it's like, dash, bomber. Right. Which I think is just like a mini B-2. Like it's, I don't know, I'm not convinced that this plane is actually something really new. And then the cruise missile that will be carried on that bomber, as well as legacy aircraft, is the LRSO, long-range standoff weapon.

So that was just endlessly confusing for Japanese participants. Right. So we had to say, new bomber, new cruise missile.

Aaron 8:34

Right, and I think that this one's been picked out as at least what's had the most chatter, because there's a lot of pushback against the LRSO. What mission does it serve? Is it actually new? And then lots of calls to either completely cancel the thing altogether or something even more broad, which we'll get to in a second.

Jeffrey 8:53

Yeah. Andy Weber was one of the American participants at this conference. And while we don't talk about deliberations, right, he has very publicly in the press argued that the president should cancel the LRSO and do so as part of a campaign to seek a treaty banning nuclear-armed cruise missiles.

Aaron 9:13

For the listeners, what are his arguments?

Jeffrey 9:16

Well, I hate making other people's arguments for them because I've never quite To it totally fairly. I think Andy definitely thinks the LRSO is a capability that is unnecessary. And we can talk about whether it is necessary or unnecessary. Some of the things that are written about LRSO that are negative, I don't actually agree with. But he thinks it's unnecessary.

And as we'll talk, I think it might be a waste of money. But then he has this broader notion, which I sort of agree with generally, but I have more questions about the mechanics of it, that we should ban nuclear-armed cruise missiles. And I would love to ban nuclear-armed cruise missiles. Don't get me wrong. That would be a great thing.

Nuclear-armed cruise missiles are deeply destabilizing. But do we think that that's something the Russians are going to get on board with? I don't know.

Aaron 10:19

Right. So, I mean, there's a lot to unpack there. I mean, first of all, you hinted to your own skepticism about this. I mean, for me, you know, it just seems like, well, A, is this a capability we really need, right? And so is it worth it? Expending the money to develop this system when there may be things in the arsenal that can already take its place?

It may be already under development. Is there some sort of budgetary shenanigans going on here that are taking place secondary to the broader debates about no first use, whether or not we should cancel the LRSO, and what Obama's big announcement will be towards the end of his term in office?

Jeffrey 11:02

Well, that's a hell of an agenda for the podcast you just laid out there.

Aaron 11:06

It's the truth.

Jeffrey 11:09

Okay. Well, where do you want to start? Like, do you want to go through that? Do you want to... I mean, there is this weird way in which... You know, the itch that no first use would scratch is not the same itch that banning LRSO or canceling LRSO and then seeking a treaty to prohibit nuclear-armed cruise missiles would scratch.

And so I find them kind of... I find them an interesting pair. And I guess I would say, you know, I wrote this column in which I wondered if maybe going to Hiroshima would have a bigger effect on the president than he expected, that he would get there and feel like he didn't do enough. Yeah. And so I wonder if that partly accounts for the legacy thing.

Aaron 11:59

Although, do you know how long he was in Hiroshima? No, no idea. Less than an hour. Really?

Jeffrey 12:04

Really? Uh-huh. He flew down, landed, motorcaded in, did the ceremony, and motorcaded out.

Aaron 12:13

So he wasn't there very long. I mean, you did write that column. I think it was after your last trip. Not this last one in August, but the one before. It's about how it impacts you just to see it and how it makes you conceptualize nuclear weapons in a very different way.

Jeffrey 12:29

Yeah, I mean, it does for me. I don't... I don't know that it universally has that impact. I mean, I know one of the members of the governor's roundtable that I'm on is Gareth Evans, the former foreign minister of Australia. And we like to tease Gareth because every time he does a public event, he speaks very movingly about the time he visited Hiroshima as a student.

And it is a very moving story, and I don't in any way mean to demean it. But he always brings it up, right? And so it's super clear that it had this enormous impact on him and his entire life and career. And so I don't want to make fun of it, but it's just he always brings it up.

And I think for a lot of people, that's how they react.

Aaron 13:18

I don't know if you can do that in an hour.

Jeffrey 13:21

No, that's true. Well, I don't know. For me... I think what I wrote in the column is there are these specific moments where you look around, right, and you see people going about their daily life, right, pushing a stroller, trying to catch the bus to work or something, and you realize that, like, these are the people who get bombed, right, that they're, like, Going to school, and then the bomb goes off.

So there are those moments where that sense of place really comes through, and you do think about it. But what I think happens is that you get this sort of abstract sense that you need to do something. And so even though LRSO and No First Use aren't in any way... You know, you don't trade one for the other.

I think they both maybe reflect the sense that that we should do more. And then there's just a question of what more is.

Aaron 14:28

Yeah. I mean, I think it's two inches to scratch. I mean, I think we'll unpack them each just one by one is, you know. I mean, just the thoughts, I mean, the pushback we got from even just mentioning probably in the late to taint the even very discussion of it on no first use, you know, and what that was supposed to, you know, move forward in part of the Obama administration's agenda on the nuclear issue.

Jeffrey 14:55

Yeah. You know, I, I find no first use to be such a funny issue because it, It is such a settled debate. Like, everybody has mentors who have the same argument that we're having now. And so the arguments that we have now are really just, like, expressions of loyalty to the dead people who taught us. And it's always struck me that there's not an enormous amount of...

Actual debate going on. You know, it's more like, you know, just mentor worship. And I guess I'm as guilty of that as anyone. I think one of the few people who really tried to think seriously about, like, why you would pledge no first use, and although he rejected no first use as a doctrine, I think tried to think seriously about that set of issues was Michael Quinlan.

You know, where he was willing to say he could never conceive of how it would be in our interest to use nuclear weapons first, but wasn't willing to make that pledge. I've had two sort of mutant variants, which I think people could live with. One is to never talk about when you would use nuclear weapons, but to talk about why you possess them.

So I think you could make a no first use pledge in the context of saying we don't possess them for the purpose of using them first. It's this funny idea like. We spend all this time talking about when we might use nuclear weapons, but those are hypothetical decisions that are going to be made in the future, right?

But we make all kinds of real decisions every day about how many nuclear weapons to have, what kind of nuclear weapons to have, what sort of infrastructure we want. And I often think that it would make sense to be able to say, without making some abstract promise on behalf of a future president that probably doesn't have much credibility, that I can tell you that the reason we have this number is not for a first use.

It's for retaliatory capability or the reason that we have this alert rate or the reason that we have this particular type of weapon. You know, so I feel like you could say, I feel like you could do a lot of the reassuring function of no first use by focusing on the decisions you do make. And that would be less controversial.

And then the other thing – sorry, Aaron. I'm hijacking this. But Scott Sagan and I wrote this article the other day. I'm working on it for a year. But we had an op-ed in the Post and we have a longer version coming out in Daedalus in which we wonder why a president couldn't say we would never use a nuclear weapon when a conventional one would do.

Aaron 17:59

Right. I mean that's a good argument. I always find the no first use – Argument's interesting because it ultimately rests on the potential adversary during a time of crisis believing the adversary's own doctrine. And so when it comes time to a crisis, does no first use actually matter as things approach the threshold where leaders are even thinking about using nuclear weapons?

So if you're sitting in Moscow in the bunker, you're saying, well, I'm not going to push the button because the Americans said that they won't use it first or vice versa.

Jeffrey 18:36

Yeah, I've always – I don't have a problem with the pledge, but I have always wondered if people have unrealistic expectations for what would happen from a pledge like that. You know, I study the Chinese pledge, and I actually think that it's real. I mean, I think that the guidance given to the military... Is consistent with the public statements.

And I think that to the extent that people in what used to be the Second Artillery is now the Rocket Force, to the extent that they don't like that guidance, I think they have tried to nibble around the edges and focus on how that guidance is implemented so that it's implemented in a way that is perhaps more ambiguous.

But Even though I think it would be a terrible idea to use nuclear weapons first. And I'm glad that the Chinese pledge it. Like we are a perfect example. Like nobody in the United States believes them. And, and so I do think that having conversations about doctrine and finding ways to be reassuring are useful. But it seems to me that no first use or some equivalent phrasing is less about the kind of magical incantation of saying it and more about the conversations that it might enable.

Right. Like the conversation we have to have with the Chinese is is not really about no first use. It's about. Whether their nuclear weapons and our nuclear weapons are intended to strengthen and reinforce the status quo, because we don't want to have a war, or whether we have revisionist ideas that our nuclear weapons are going to enable, right?

And if it's the latter, then that's unstable. And I suspect, actually, it's the former. And it's really issues of misperception that I worry about the most in that relationship. And so I would like to find a way to talk to them. And they've kind of set up no first use as their requirement. So I'm eager to find something that's sufficient to start that conversation, but maybe not something that's quite as tired and something that carries all of the baggage, I guess, of no first use.

Aaron 20:59

What about pairing a new cruise missile with the Raider? You know, in a way that that could be potentially destabilizing. You know, and I bring this up for a reason. I'm not just joking. You know, it's... Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's... There is the idea that maybe you could add new capabilities to the delivery vehicle. And in this case, the delivery vehicle will be both an aircraft, two actually, well...

One now, the Raider and perhaps the F-35, that are stealthy and that are by design meant to at least contribute to the penetration of perhaps a nuclear armed adversary's air defense systems. So how can you be reassured in that type of environment? You know what I'm saying?

Jeffrey 21:45

Yeah, it's a really interesting dilemma. I mean, on the one hand, I think... The U.S. side looks at a nuclear-armed cruise missile that's stealthier than the Alcom and can be married to this relatively stealthy platform and sees a way to ensure a non-submarine-launched ballistic missile capability, right? An alternative to that that can get through an air defense and strike a target.

And I think that the U.S. reaction is, well, that is good for deterrence. But by exactly the same token, the fact that you have this capability and it's embodied in the system that's relatively accurate, I think raises real questions about whether the Russian command and control system would survive an attack using bombers. And, you know, people like to talk about using bombers for signaling.

But if you miss the takeoff of the bombers and they are stealthy and the cruise missile is stealthy, then the first time you might learn of the attack is when there are, you know, a couple hundred kilotons going off in Moscow. And that's probably not a great situation. So I understand people who are freaked out about the proliferation of cruise missiles, because I am one of the people who is freaked out about the proliferation of cruise missiles.

And I would like to find a way to eliminate nuclear ones. But I'm not quite sure how we're going to get there.

Aaron 23:26

No, I completely agree. And Listeners of the podcast will know that we talked about the proliferation of cruise missiles a lot but primarily in their conventional role so I have another question which I think is also interesting it's just it's my pet project which I can never find funding for which is the overlap more and more of conventional delivery systems with that of nuclear delivery systems and that how do you signal to an adversary that That this one coming in isn't nuclear, but hey, this one is, when they look the same.

Jeffrey 24:05

Yeah. Well, and not even an issue of once they've been launched, but how do you know that a particular unit, whether it's an aircraft that's being scrambled or a ground-launched cruise missile unit that's being put into the field... How do you know that that's going up with conventional weapons as opposed to nuclear weapons? In a crisis, might you misinterpret what the other side is doing because you can't tell the difference?

I say this to my Chinese colleagues all the time, and I think that this is something that Andy thinks is a really important reason to try to ban nuclear-armed cruise missiles. The Chinese have some units that are capable of carrying both nuclear and... Conventional warheads. They're ballistic missiles, but they think we can tell the difference, and I'm pretty sure we can't.

And the idea that they might deploy nuclear warheads with their conventionally armed cruise missiles, you know, that worries me.

Aaron 25:17

Same with the Russians.

Jeffrey 25:19

Yeah, I mean, they're clearly using their nuclear-capable cruise missiles for all kinds of conventional strikes all over Syria. And while we know what they're doing, that's because it seems unlikely that they're going to nuke Syria. I don't know what happens if we're fighting over someplace. Where NATO is involved.

Aaron 25:40

Yeah, that's where I was going, so you beat me to it. But it brings up the bigger question, is we have systems like this already, you know, in the L... But, you know, there is a nuclear-capable outcome, you know, and there is already sort of a cruise missile that we're talking about in addition to the LRSO proposal.

Jeffrey 26:03

Yeah, so I'm always a big fan of hedging. Like, I... If I have an option on the table that looks like it's a cheap and inexpensive way of doing the same thing and then I don't have to commit, I like that.

Aaron 26:21

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey 26:22

So, for example, you know, there is this cruise missile called the JASM-ER. Mm-hmm. And it's a conventionally armed cruise missile and it's stealthy. And I literally do not understand why the JASM-ER can't do exactly the same thing as LRSO, right? And, you know, the argument that I always hear Is that JASM-ER has a shorter range than the nuclear-armed Tomahawk, or the, well, I guess it's Tomahawk, but I should say the Alchem.

But this is so weird to me because, you know, the nuclear-armed Alchem has, like, a 2,400-kilometer range, right?

Aaron 27:22

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey 27:24

But the conventional outcome has like a thousand kilometer range. And the reason it's so much shorter is because you replace a warhead that weighs like 200 kilograms, a nuclear warhead that weighs 200 kilograms, with like a, you know, one ton or one and a half ton. You know, it's like 2,000 or 3,000 pounds. I don't want to convert to metric.

But a much larger... Conventional payload because you need more conventional explosives, right?

Aaron 27:54

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey 27:55

So that cuts down the range. So if you took the normal JASM ER payload, right, which is I think 1,000 pounds, right, so, you know, whatever, and you cut that— Oh, gosh, I should do 1,000 pounds in kilograms. What is that? It's like, yeah, 500 kilograms. If you cut that in half or, you know, more, that, like, 1,000-kilometer range JASM-ER, that range is going to jump up.

Aaron 28:32

And tell the listeners why you say that because you have an idea of which warhead they would use, right? Yeah.

Jeffrey 28:37

Yeah, well, they would use that. You would just reuse the W80, or, or, or a, you know, W80 follow-on, or something that, you know, just didn't weigh that much. So, I don't really, I mean, I, I don't know. I guess, you know, maybe you want a couple hundred extra kilometers that LRSO is going to give you, but that feels like we're spending a lot of money and initiating a whole new development program.

When we have this sort of capability already that's kind of inherently in the conventional force, and it would probably be a much cheaper thing to give ourselves a nuclear option to execute down the line if we decided we really needed it. So I don't know. I don't get it.

Aaron 29:18

I'm not an expert on stealth, but surely the Raider is supposed to get within 1,000 kilometers of its intended target without being detected, or at least if not detected, no capable air defense system could plot a firing solution for it.

Jeffrey 29:34

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, they're so... What's the right word? They're really not eager to reveal details of this aircraft. And I can't decide if that's because it has some, like, super-duper amazing capability, or if it's actually because it would be really disappointing. You know, when you look at the aircraft, it really just... Looks like a kind of off-brand B-2.

And I'm just worried that the Air Force and their enthusiasm for a large number of new bombers has just settled for that, right? Because that would be the cheapest thing or the cheapest way to get a whole bunch of new bombers. And if that's true, that's, like, really disappointing.

Aaron 30:24

Right. And, you know... Well, you know, we'll have to see as it comes out because, I mean, I think we've just seen artist renderings of it and we got the name actually today, the day that we're recording the podcast, which is September 19th. But it brings up this sort of, you mentioned it earlier, you framed it up nicely.

So let's say the LRSO is canceled or at least delayed significantly. Does this create space for what some people are calling for, which is a broader limit on Christmas? Yeah. Nuclear-capable cruise missiles, to be specific. And are the conditions right with the potential other side – forget our side, but our side plus the Russians and the Chinese on limits to this, to these potential things?

Jeffrey 31:14

I don't know what you think, but right – no. I mean it's so frustrating because I would – Really like to do that. I would really like to ban nuclear-armed cruise missiles. I think they're destabilizing, and the world is a better place without them. But I feel like we're showing up to this conversation after the Russians have invested an enormous amount of money in nuclear-armed cruise missiles, and we're going like, oh, yeah, we don't really like that.

Maybe you could get rid of all of those? I don't I think they're going to be like, oh, yeah, sorry, okay, right?

Aaron 31:51

I don't think it's feasible from our side. I mean, we are the cruise missile kings.

Jeffrey 31:56

Well, that's – yeah, that's why the whole start series of treaties don't include cruise missiles, right? They count bombers as one. So there's a premium on air-launched cruise missiles because you can pack as many as you want on an airframe and it only counts as one nuclear weapon. And they don't count sea-launched cruise missiles at all.

Aaron 32:22

Right. And that's because of us, isn't it?

Jeffrey 32:24

Yes. Yes, because we wanted to have conventionally armed cruise missiles, which are awesome. I understand why we did. Right. But, you know, like Lewis's dictum, you will live to regret the concessions you win in direct proportion to how hard you fought to win them. Like, we did that because that made a lot of sense for our technological advantage in the early 90s.

And now the Russians have been like, you're right, that's a really good idea. We should get a whole bunch of sea-launched cruise missiles.

Aaron 33:00

Yeah, no, absolutely right. And now, you know, there's a lot of pictures of Russian cruise missiles, you know, doing similar things.

Jeffrey 33:09

Yeah. Well, and I'm really frustrated because one of the things that I asked the Obama administration after they negotiated a new START treaty was, like, did you try to preserve... START did not include a limit on sea-launched cruise missiles. They are treated as non-strategic weapons. But there was a side agreement in which both sides agreed to limit the number to less than 880, which is such a huge number that it's no limit at all, but also to declare how many nuclear-armed cruise missiles they were deploying.

And so my question is, Or was, did you make any effort to preserve that side agreement? Because obviously you and I are very worried about the Russians patrolling nuclear-armed cruise missiles up and down the coast. We see this massive investment by the Russians in sea-launched cruise missiles of both types. I suspect that it probably won't be long before the Chinese at least consider migrating a DH-10 to sea.

You know, like, there are a lot of things that could happen. So it's like, so you guys, did you do that? You know, did you at least try? And I have not gotten a straight answer. I don't think they did. So, you know, like, on the one hand, I totally want to ban sea launch cruise missiles. On the other hand, like, eight years ago...

We didn't even, I guess it's only like six years, six and a half years ago, didn't even make the effort to preserve the declarations. Haven't been able to persuade this administration to revive the effort to do the declarations. And not finding much interest on the Russian side. And so if we can't even like just say like how many nuclear-armed cruise missiles do you have, I don't really know how we're going to get to a ban.

And I feel terrible saying that because I think Andy and Bill Perry are totally right. This is a really destabilizing capability, and we should be banning it. I'm just like, with every Arms Control 1 podcast, doomed to end on a pessimistic note. Like, I don't know how we do it.

Aaron 35:23

I have a good story that I can tell about JLens, though, how I explain it to my wife. Okay. We were at the Philadelphia Zoo, and they have, like, this balloon that's tethered to the ground and that you can go up. It's like a hot air balloon. You can, like, overlook Philadelphia. Like, look right down the Schuylkill River there.

You know, it's a nice thing. And she said, do you want to do it? And I said, no, because even Jalen, sometimes the cable breaks and it goes rogue. And, like, I don't want an F-16 to shoot us down, like, over Pennsylvania.

Jeffrey 35:53

You know, you don't want a face full of buckshot from some sheriff in Pennsylvania.

Aaron 35:58

So I said, no. He can't get me to go on this thing.

Jeffrey 36:01

I bring this up because we both – You say, no, no, baby, you go up and tell me if you see any cruise missiles streaking toward the capital.

Aaron 36:07

But leave the 13-month Oliver with me. He's not allowed up there because even the best go rogue. And so I bring this up because we both think that Jay Lenz was probably put up there largely to test it maybe for some bureaucratic inertia but because of concerns that Russian subs were patrolling. We see launch cruise missiles. So is this just the reality we live in now?

Jeffrey 36:30

I guess, but it's like a sucky reality. I mean, so we did this timeline, right? Like there's an interactive timeline that showed how little time a president would have to make a decision under the most kind of demanding scenario.

Aaron 36:50

Right. It's, it's, yeah. How much time the president would have really when under nuclear attack to To make a decision to fire back.

Jeffrey 37:01

You know, and so it's all timed around. We detect the launch of Russian ICBMs coming at our ICBMs, and we have to launch ours before theirs get there, right? And so that creates all these really rigid timelines, and there's, you know, this really small window between when the confirmation of an attack comes in and when the order has to go out, and that gets chewed up by...

You know, getting a White House, a getting a White House aide to like focus and decide this is real and then like finding the president and sitting him or her down and explaining what's happening. And then there's only like, you know, maybe two minutes for what you might call real decision making where the president says, OK, shut up, let me think about whether I want to end the world or not.

And when we were putting this together, One of my colleagues kept saying, like, well, I notice you're not talking about, you know, submarine-launched ballistic missiles or cruise missiles. Like, why aren't they in the timeline? I'm like, oh, because if they do that, none of this works. Like, everybody's just dead, right?

Aaron 38:03

Key for seven has to take over?

Jeffrey 38:07

I think they make that decision out of Omaha, right? Like, maybe the basement in the Pentagon survives. I don't know. But... The president is the only one authorized to order a use of nuclear weapons. But he's not the only one who has that capability. And he or she is not the only one with that capability. And so, you know, are these two nuclear forces really stable since it All depends on the non-existence of very extant nuclear-armed cruise missiles.

Aaron 38:52

You see, Jeffrey, this is not good. Because now I don't even have a pivot to try and get us to a positive moment to end the podcast. Like, usually I can try and pivot us out here so the listeners in their car don't want to shoot themselves or anything like that. But I don't got anything.

Jeffrey 39:09

Well, you know what? Maybe we should say this. We have JASM-ER. So we have the capability to do this if we want. I don't know how quickly we could do it. I mean, I think the answer is we can't do anything quickly because we're so bureaucratic. But, you know, maybe in a real crisis we would, like, figure out how to do it.

So we probably don't have to act super rashly. So maybe it's worth taking a couple of years and really trying to see if we can persuade the Russians... To at least do something where, you know, we imagine a verification regime where you tag the cruise missiles and then there is some kind of inspection regime like the Black Sea experiment, right, where you can see if they're nuclear or conventionally armed.

I mean, it seems awfully unlikely given the current president of Russia. But maybe, yeah, maybe if we do the technical piece and we get it all lined up, you know, he gets hit by a truck or a cruise missile.

Aaron 40:19

That would be a positive note. It's probably just one reelection vote, by the way. I was on the edge of my seat watching the returns come in on my Twitter feed. I was really concerned that he was in serious jeopardy of losing power in Russia.

Jeffrey 40:32

Did you see the video of the women stuffing the ballot boxes?

Aaron 40:36

I did. But he has 82 percent approval rating. Do you know that?

Jeffrey 40:39

I'm sure he does.

Aaron 40:43

Very, very popular over there. I wouldn't say anything different in their shoes.

Jeffrey 40:50

I want to know who the 18% are. We're like, I don't care. You'll probably shoot me, but I really hate that guy. Right.

Aaron 40:58

The woman stuffing the ballot, that was just the national will. She got overexcited in her glee at the democratic process and work.

Jeffrey 41:08

She liked voting so much she wanted to do it over and over again.

Aaron 41:11

You can't fault her. It's fun. What do we think the Obama administration will do? That's the positive note. I think they're going to do something. What's it going to be?

Jeffrey 41:24

I think they might Delay LRSO, because it would save money and, you know, everybody wants to save money. But I suspect we'll get a modest cut in the stockpile. Maybe they'll take some plutonium and say, well, we're going to go down to 3,500 warheads. They probably won't announce the number. And so, you know, we only need this many Or rather this much in reserve.

So some modest cut to the stockpile, which I guess that's good.

Aaron 42:06

Yeah, that's a positive note.

Jeffrey 42:07

Probably shouldn't have unnecessary nuclear weapons laying around.

Aaron 42:10

No, they might end up on a transcontinental flight accidentally.

Jeffrey 42:16

Yeah. What is it with you and steering us back to the unhappy note, Aaron?

Aaron 42:20

I'm trying to make jokes to cheer everybody up. But no, I think that's right.

Jeffrey 42:26

That time we accidentally misplaced six nuclear-armed cruise missiles.

Aaron 42:30

It happens. My son hid my credit card the other day. It took me an hour to find it. It happens.

Jeffrey 42:36

One of my children likes to hide my keys. That's always fun when I'm trying to get out the door in the morning.

Aaron 42:43

Right. So I think that's the positive note is that life moves on regardless of these discussions about these stabilizing cruise missiles. So thank you for the podcast. Thank you to the listeners for listening.

Jeffrey 42:54

Thank you for listening.

Aaron 42:57

Check out – we are in the process of putting together a new Patreon page and hope to keep the band back together after our hiatus.

Jeffrey 43:06

I'm really excited about this new era in our life, Aaron. Yeah, that's right. The podcast is back.