Transcript
Transcribed automatically: it certainly contains errors. It’s pretty good, just not perfect. We provide it here because, for accessibility, it’s better than nothing.
Jeffrey Lewis
0:02
In for a ton, in for a megaton. You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog, and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.
Aaron Stein
0:24
And I'm Aaron Stein, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Rafiq Khoury Center for the Middle East. How you doing, Aaron? I'm doing well. Lovely, lovely weather out here on the East Coast. It's perfect white wine weather.
Jeffrey
0:37
Ah, it's sunny here too. You know, I have been experimenting with a new cocktail.
Aaron
0:43
Really? You gotta tell us. The Corpse Reviver No. 2. The Corpse Reviver No. 2. How do you make that?
Jeffrey
0:50
So it is Corpse Reviver here makes it a hangover remedy. Okay. It is gin. Okay. Lemon, although I like to use Meyer lemons off friends' fruit trees. Okay. A little bit of Lillet.
Jeffrey
1:09
A little bit of Cointreau. And a dash of absinthe.
Aaron
1:16
Ooh, is this the local absinthe they make now in California, or do you get the imported stuff?
Jeffrey
1:20
I just have a bottle of the imported stuff, although I should look at the local stuff. I have to say, though, I actually bought some Lillet Rouge instead of the Blanc, and it gives the aftertaste just this slight hint of sangria. It's very lovely.
Aaron
1:36
When are you going to have me over? We can record out in California rather than you coming out to Drury, Washington.
Jeffrey
1:43
Oh, that would be fantastic. The joke, by the way, in the Savoy recipe book, the Savoy Hotel, I guess, had a very famous cocktail book, which is why this one is preserved, was four taken in quick succession will unrevive the corpse.
Jeffrey
2:00
Yeah, it turns out I discovered two is actually sufficient to reinduce the hangover the next day.
Aaron
2:06
I think with all the drinking we've been doing over the DPRK, you may be having a lot of hard mornings. Well, it's EMP, right? It's drink. But we're not talking about North Korea today.
Jeffrey
2:21
No, we're actually going to go all the way on the other end of the yield spectrum.
Jeffrey
2:27
Way down from the megaton you'd need for a still slightly laughable EMP scenario. Way down past the few hundred kilotons of the North Korean nuclear explosion down to mini nukes. Mini nukes. Less than five. Less than five kilotons. Bryan Bender has a story in the Politico which asserts that the Trump administration, in the course of their nuclear posture review, is considering low-yield nuclear weapons.
Aaron
3:06
Can we say deja vu all over again? Right, although for the wrong reasons. That's right. But let's talk about his frame up top.
Jeffrey
3:15
So the frame of the piece is that low-yield nuclear weapons would give military commanders more options, but could also make the use of atomic arms more likely. But we don't believe that.
Aaron
3:27
No, and this is like the reaffirming debate, because this came up, I think, in 2003, and money was actually allocated in 2004 for... The robust nuclear earth penetrator. And back at that time, you know, there was all these same debates about whether this makes nuclear weapons more usable because the yield is smaller and therefore you could not trigger massive retaliation.
Jeffrey
3:48
Right. And so this ends up being, I think, a conversation that we have to have about how partisanship basically creates debates about nuclear weapons that, as best I can tell, aren't actually connected to any kind of reality.
Aaron
4:01
This happens all the time in Washington, is that we create ring fences for debates that are built around issues that don't really exist, if that makes sense.
Jeffrey
4:09
And so what people are really arguing about right now is whether they love nuclear weapons or not. And I don't actually think that that helps us determine either one, what it is the Trump administration is considering, which, you know, spoiler alert, I think is exactly the same thing the Obama administration was considering. But then I think it engages this very interesting question, both about how our own partisan politics make it hard for us to see the real issues at hand.
Yeah. But also how important foreign perceptions are, because even though we're going to say, or at least I'm going to argue that this debate is bunk, people abroad are going to take it absolutely deadly seriously.
Aaron
4:49
Yeah, and I think its most fundamental core is people are asking, are nuclear weapons usable? If yes, I mean, sorry, and if no, what are they really good for?
Jeffrey
5:02
Yeah, you know, it reminds me of my favorite title ever of a book that Roger Molander wrote. It's called Nuclear War, What's In It For You?
Aaron
5:10
That's a good one.
Jeffrey
5:11
Yeah. Okay, so we should talk about the Bender story, which details a little bit of what's going on, although actually it's pretty elusive on the key points. Yeah. You know, so it seems that there are... There's at least one Obama, I mean, oh, sorry. There's at least one Trump administration official. Right. Who's familiar with the deliberations, but not, not authorized to speak publicly about the nuclear posture review.
All right. So that kinds of kind of gives us a sense. And there's another official who actually supports the proposal. So we've got two officials.
Jeffrey
5:51
And what they're doing is they're talking about what What he quotes as low yield, although the actual yield is not given.
Aaron
6:01
Right. Although we can make an assumption about what it may be.
Jeffrey
6:04
Right. He uses the word bomb, although I think that's casual. I think it's probably more likely to be a warhead. Yes. And the scenario that's described, and here I can quote it, The Nuclear Posture Review has to credibly ask the military what they need to deter enemies, added another official who supports such a proposal, particularly to confront Russia, which has raised the prominence of tactical nuclear weapons in its battle plans in recent years, including as a first strike weapon.
Are current weapons going to be useful in all the scenarios we see? And then... we're done. It's all into framing. Right. So I think that's enough to know what's going on, though. So just roll with it. Tell us what's going on. So one thing that the article does mention, but I think doesn't really deal with, we already have low-yield nuclear weapons.
Aaron
7:08
Yeah, I mean, the scenario that's raised is about references to deterring Russia to mitigate their tactical nuclear weapons. We're already doing that, right? Yeah, we have those. We have those.
Jeffrey
7:20
And so, you know, the two that come to mind, right, are we have the B-61.
Aaron
7:27
Right, which is a gravity bomb.
Jeffrey
7:29
Yeah, which has a variable yield.
Jeffrey
7:33
And, you know, as best I understand it, the way... It's actually called, for the B61, it's called dial-a-yield, which I love. Yeah. You know, you can detonate it with either no boosting or very limited boosting so that it doesn't drive the secondary. Uh-huh. And so even though the B61 Mod 10, I think, has a yield of up to 80 kilotons... Mm-hmm.
My understanding is the lowest setting is like 300 tons. Right. So we have nuclear weapons that can be set to these very low yields. And the other one, and I think this is the more important one, is the W80 also has a variable yield. Okay. And my understanding is it's two yields. It's the primary, I'm guessing, boosted at 5 kilotons, and then the full yield at 150 kilotons.
Aaron
8:30
Right. I mean, the ranges you see for the W80 are between 5 and 150. Right.
Jeffrey
8:34
So, I mean, we have to ask, like, what the hell are they talking about? Like, we already have these capabilities, and I think I have a guess.
Aaron
8:41
Well, what's the guess?
Jeffrey
8:43
Well, so you hinted at it when you picked up on the thing that the official said, which is this is about deterring Russian tactical nuclear weapons. The other place that argument is made, right, is that was the Obama administration's justification for the new cruise missile, the LRSO, long-range standoff.
Aaron
9:06
Right, where I believe the funding for that was pushed ahead in 2014 with the proposal for the WAD as the warhead.
Jeffrey
9:15
Right, so there is this idea, which we should talk about, that the Russians have this strategy, which, by the way, I don't believe they have, but, like, whatever, everybody in Washington believes it, so it's real, that the Russians have this strategy of escalate to de-escalate, that they would have a limited use of nuclear weapons.
Aaron
9:30
On the tactical side, in the event of a land invasion. Right.
Jeffrey
9:33
Right. And we would then want this ability to do a similarly limited use of our own nuclear weapons. And I think Frank, Frank Kendall said this, right? He had this phrase, he said, beyond deterrence, we have to give flexible options to signal intent and control escalation. And like, those are all magic phrases for if they nuke us a little bit, we want to be able to nuke them just a little bit back.
Aaron
10:02
And this shows how politics play in, because when the Bush administration put out its idea for the robust nuclear earth penetrator, it was to hit deeply buried sites in Iran. Oh, I think it was North Korea. Oh, North Korea. I mean, Iran or North Korea. I mean, you have to be able to hold deeply buried WMD bunkers at risk, and conventional weapons can't do it.
Jeffrey
10:22
Right. The reason I think it's North Korea is because Linton Brooks at the time, this podcast will probably turn into a Valentine for Linton Brooks.
Aaron
10:30
The band is fantastic.
Jeffrey
10:31
I love him. He had this hilarious comment because he couldn't say the target, but he said, the B61 Model 11 is for Tundra. The Arnep is for hard rock. You can figure it out.
Aaron
10:46
You should tell listeners the B61 Model 11 is a gravity bomb with limited penetration capabilities.
Jeffrey
10:50
The B61-11 was the nuclear earth penetrator. It was, right. And then the Bush administration was proposing the robust nuclear earth penetrator. We'll come back to that. We'll come back to that. So here's the thing. The Obama administration supported the development of the LRSO, the new cruise missile. For precisely the same reason that's outlined in the Bender piece.
And the LRSO is going to be armed with the W80, which has a variable yield, and according to people like Stephen Young at the Union of Concerned Scientists, who follow these things very closely, one of the things they're considering for the W80-4 is W80 Mod 4, that's the way to say that. People are listening, not reading. One of the options for the W80 Mod 4 is to increase the number of variable yields.
It's a very similar warhead to the B61, so there's no reason you couldn't do it.
Aaron
11:50
Right. And I think what And I think what gives the capability, too, is that we all presume that the LRSO is going to look like JASM. And if it looks like JASM, then it's going to have two-way data link, and it's going to be far more accurate than what we've had before. Sort of like the B61-12.
Jeffrey
12:06
Well, now we actually know it's going to look like JASM, because didn't Lockheed get the contract? Yes. Yes, they did. Good point. And Lockheed makes JASM. And Lockheed after JASM-ER, which actually has a fairly similar range to the nuclear outcome. Similar. I said similar. They had been floating proposals for what they called the JASM-XR, And then something they called the, oh wait, was it Cruise Missile X or something?
They had some silly name for it that would be physically larger. Oh, Cruise Missile XR, that's right. So my guess is that Lockheed is just going to build on the underlying technology of the JASM, which, by the way, makes me slightly less worried that LRSO is going to be a catastrophe.
Aaron
13:14
Yeah, you'd hope is that if you use existing technologies, is that the program isn't a catastrophe, is that they're able to bring it in on budget and on time. Yeah. We hope. We hope.
Jeffrey
13:24
I mean, Chasm had a lot of problems, but now that it's done, like, it's done. It's done. So I'm like, yeah, let's not get away from that too much. Okay, so, but the reason I bring this up is... The Obama administration was planning a variable yield W80 with a low yield setting for the LRSO for precisely the same mission.
And so there's no reason to think that the Trump people aren't going to do exactly the same thing that the Obama people did.
Aaron
13:59
And we're putting a guided tail kit on the B61-12 to give it similar capabilities. And that does have a dial a yield as well.
Jeffrey
14:08
Yeah, so, you know, it's, like, the difference here isn't the underlying, I would assert, I don't believe that the Trump administration is doing, you know, like, I don't believe they're going to do anything different than the Obama administration did. I think the difference is the Obama administration sort of did it sotto voce, right? Like,
Aaron
14:29
We're going to put a W80 mod on the LRSO.
Jeffrey
14:34
And maybe we'll look at some variable yields, you know, like super quietly and kind of demurely. Right. And, you know, like Trump being the Trump administration, low yield mini nukes.
Aaron
14:48
Can we put Trump's name in gold on the side of the missile? Exactly.
Jeffrey
14:54
So, you know, like, I think. It is the same proposal. I don't think it's a good idea if Obama does it or if Trump does it. We can talk about that.
Aaron
15:06
I was about to actually stop and say, caveat, we're not actually proponents of this, even though we're sort of dismissing this as not new news.
Jeffrey
15:12
Right, but, you know, like... The difference here is that people don't trust Cheeto Jesus with sharp objects, let alone nuclear weapons.
Aaron
15:22
That is the backdrop to all of this, is that people are now paying attention to all the things a lot more because they do not trust the orange one in charge.
Jeffrey
15:30
Yeah. And to go back to Linton Brooks, I mean, Linton made this point where he got very upset about the debate about the robust nuclear earth penetrator. Because, you know, he had felt that the Clinton administration had been able to make the B61 Mod 11 without any controversy. By the way, partly that's because they classified it and didn't call it robust nuclear earth penetrator.
Ellen Tauscher, yeah, she used to joke that only the Bush administration would put robust in front of nuclear earth penetrator. I mean, when Trump does it right, it'll be the tremendous nuclear earth penetrator.
Aaron
16:07
The gold tremendous nuclear earth penetrator.
Jeffrey
16:09
Yeah. But, you know, I think Linton's point was what they really wanted to do was a sled test to look at putting a new casing on existing nuclear weapons, either the B61 or the B83. Right. And and I think he was right. That the Bush administration was being held to a different standard. But he was very forthright, I think, in acknowledging that really the question was, do you trust the Bush administration with sharp objects?
And after the invasion of Iraq, like, the answer was no. Right. Right. Because public rhetoric and we'll come back to this later. Public rhetoric does matter. Right. Bush had talked very openly about preemption. And so even if they're doing exactly the same thing as the Clinton people were doing or would have done. You know, like it is a different thing to do it openly, give it a terrifying name and then turn around and talk about how awesome it would be to use it.
Aaron
17:07
Right. You know, and I think we have to challenge like the underlying assumptions. I mean, we assume that these wonderful, neat war games where we have to have like a tit for tat response at the same yield level to prevent mass retaliation. Is that even, I mean, slightly strikes me as crazy. I mean, no matter what the kilotonnage is that you'll be dropping on somebody or you'll be hitting somebody with, it's still kilotonnage.
Jeffrey
17:38
Oh, yeah. In for a ton, in for a megaton. Right.
Aaron
17:40
And so, like, the debate beyond this, you know, this seems like, to put a casing around something, you know, it seems like you're putting casing around a broader argument.
Jeffrey
17:50
To put a survivable Earth-penetrating casing around this particular physics package.
Aaron
17:54
Around the physics package about what are these things actually really good for, right? Isn't that the underlying question? Like, if you can't use a 5 kiloton and you're afraid to use 150 kilotons... Then why are we talking about kilotons to begin with?
Jeffrey
18:10
Well, I think that's exactly right. I mean, I think one of the other things that Linton used to complain about, which again, I think all of this is true. I'm just like, I just think I come out looking at it slightly differently than he does. I shouldn't put words in his mouth. I haven't actually asked him. But, you know, he used to say that he didn't act...
So when they were looking at the robust nuclear earth penetrator, which, by the way, would not have been a low-yield nuclear weapon. People have this idea that there are low-yield bunker busters. Doesn't work that way, right? No. The whole point of penetrating is to couple the shock to the ground. So you want a larger nuclear weapon, right?
Now, you don't want it to be gratuitously large because you're coupling it to the ground, you're getting kind of fallout and other nasty things. And so you do want it to be You want it to be the minimum size necessary for the job, but it's going to be a big nuclear weapon. One of the things he used to point out, and I think this is true, is that reducing yields, in his mind, didn't make weapons more usable.
It made the collateral effects when you chose to use them less, and that was a good thing, but he didn't actually think it made the decision to use a nuclear weapon any easier. And I think that's true, right? It's why I kind of fundamentally reject the framing at the top of the bender piece. Which is I don't actually think that a lower-yield weapon gives military commanders, quote-unquote, more options, but I also don't think it makes the president more likely to use these weapons.
And the scenario, I think, is very helpful. We assert that we are worried about this Russian escalate-to-de-escalate strategy, which we have to talk about because I don't believe it. But that the Russians are going to, you know, in the course of a conventional conflict over the Baltics, they're going to use a nuclear weapon in Poland, and it's going to be a limited use, and we're going to be afraid to use large-yield weapons against targets in Russia.
And I think that, like, the idea... That we're going to look at an LRSO and go, well, if we've got it on 150 kilotons, that might start a nuclear war. But if we dial it down under five kilotons, you know, and that goes off in some Russian city, we're good.
Aaron
20:28
Like, that's crazy. It is crazy. I mean, the whole thing is... It's crazy.
Jeffrey
20:35
You are starting a nuclear war. There's no universe in which a nuclear weapon going off in close proximity to a Russian city, the Russians are going to be like, hmm, well, how big was it? Six kilotons? Look, if it had been five, I would have let it slide, but it's six. Like, come on.
Aaron
20:55
Right. You know, especially at the speed of combat, you know, you get reports in the Kremlin of kilotons going off down the street and you're like, oh, wait, the Americans just hit us with something. We're just going to sit back or we're going to wait for yield readouts.
Jeffrey
21:10
Yeah, Dave Abshire used to tell a funny joke about this. I'm just, I'm just loving on older Republicans. They used to be so, so much, so much smarter. normal, normal, normal. Oh, that's smart. I love Linton. I'd let, I'd let Linton run NSA any day. even if I didn't always agree with him.. Dave Abshire, when he was ambassador to NATO, there was this, you know, nuclear shot across the bow idea that you would, you know, fire a nuclear weapon to like, you know, demonstrate your seriousness, which by the way is escalate to deescalate.
It's just, I think we're, you know, imposing our fears on the Russians. He was always like, so what do you do when they shoot back? Like, okay, I got it. Like, like it's not really signaling, you know? So I, I just, this idea, I mean, I think the way I look at it is, and this has been a recurring problem.
Do you know the old Roger Molander book? Nuclear war, what's in it for you? I know the title.
Aaron
22:15
I know it very well.
Jeffrey
22:16
It makes people laugh, right? It makes you laugh because there's nothing in it for us. It's never going to be in our interest to start a nuclear war. And so we have this fundamental political problem. Which is you can't actually use these weapons, right? We didn't use them against Saddam. And I got to tell you, if North Korea uses nuclear weapons, there's exactly zero chance that we are going to incinerate the people in Pyongyang that we are pretending to free.
You know, you can't, like, nuke people to liberate them any more than you can burn a village to save it.
Aaron
22:49
Yeah, no, a lot of the assumptions that go into this are, like, even how we think about conventional war. You know, is that you can bomb the bad guys and therefore empower the good guys. And it's like, no, no, you bomb everybody. Yeah. Because they're not that discriminatory. And then you come out the other end and you try and salvage what's left.
Jeffrey
23:06
Right. So I think we have this fundamental political problem, which people are accurately assessing, like, oh, my God, if the Russians use one nuclear weapon, we still wouldn't want to have a nuclear war. It's like, yeah, actually, if they use 10 nuclear weapons, we still wouldn't want to have a nuclear war.
Aaron
23:19
If they used 100 nuclear weapons, we still wouldn't want to have a nuclear war. I challenge the premise, too, of Russian de-escalate to escalate. I mean, if the scenario is Poland, they're in Poland.
Jeffrey
23:30
Right. So, you know, the problem is we have these political problems with using the weapons, and we're looking for a technical solution.
Aaron
23:37
Yeah, and the Baltics are particularly sort of hung out to dry out there because of geography and the ability for us to project power quickly.
Jeffrey
23:44
Yeah, I'm actually going to write a column for foreign policy about this, and I can't decide, like, is the right metaphor here Goldilocks?
Aaron
23:50
You know, you're looking for the nuclear weapon that's just big enough that it'll really scare the Russians, but not so big that we're going to have a nuclear war.
Jeffrey
24:01
Like, okay. Or is it Erica Jong's zipless f***? I could tell by your laughter which of the two I should pick.
Aaron
24:12
Pick the second one. But I don't know if foreign policy lets you get away with that.
Jeffrey
24:15
I don't know either. You know, where, you know, she has this idea of, you know, she sort of talks about, like, how much you would want an unencumbered sexual encounter. And then she sort of admits that that's like a unicorn. Like, it's not a real thing. Right. And, you know, it's like... It's kind of like nuclear warfare.
Like, yeah, it would be great if we could have a zipless nuclear war, you know, but it doesn't work that way. And, and, and, you know, you're, you, there is no dial a yield that says just right. Like it doesn't, it just doesn't work that way.
Aaron
24:56
It's just the primary. It's fine. But if you get both stages, then it's a problem.
Jeffrey
25:00
Yeah. Yeah. All the obscene places, right? Like, if it's just the primary, that's only second base?
Aaron
25:09
This is a kid's show. We don't have an adult warning on our podcast. We might after this.
Jeffrey
25:16
So, you know, yeah, I just think that, I mean, it's absolutely the case that the Obama administration was going to do, I think, the same thing that the Trump administration was going to do. But the difference is the Trump people... Like to highlight it. which by the way, the Bush people did too. You know, when their Nuclear Posture Review from 2002 leaked, it was like all about low yield, right? Well, I shouldn't say it was all about, but it had many references to lower yield weapons. And so there's a sort of different way of talking about nuclear weapons, and there is a different public perception of them. you know, some of which is like well deserved. I mean, I, you know, like, like.
People think Trump's a crazy lunatic for a reason. But I don't think it should blind us to the... Underlying problem, which is that there is a pretty healthy bipartisan commitment to this kind of thinking that there is a technical solution to our political problem, and I think that thinking is wrong. And it's wrong if Barack Obama thinks it.
They get so pissed when I call him St. Barry of Prague. It's wrong when St. Barry of Prague thinks it, and it's wrong when Cheeto Jesus thinks it.
Aaron
26:35
Right, right. Right. And so, yeah, and so it goes back to the original premise of this podcast, which is how politics frame our debates about nuclear weapons and trying to fit technical solutions into, like, politically driven scenarios rather than challenging the fundamental assumptions underpinning those scenarios.
Jeffrey
26:51
Yeah, and I think it is almost all about domestic signaling. You know, people who vote for Trump have kind of views about American power and America's place in the world and nuclear weapons that look a particular way. And I think Trump and the people around Trump want to play to those views. I mean, they want to highlight those things, whereas Democrats have different views.
And to the extent that Democrats or progressives would be skeptical of the kinds of arguments that the Obama Defense Department was making, then I think we tend to play things down. You know, the famous example of this is when Obama said, you know, oh, I'm not going to build any new nuclear weapons.
Aaron
27:37
Yeah, without defining what new nuclear weapon means.
Jeffrey
27:40
You build a bunch of new nuclear weapons, you know? Like the B61 Mod 12 is a new nuclear weapon.
Aaron
27:49
They gave it the same number, right?
Jeffrey
27:51
But it consolidates five different mods of the B61. It is... They could easily have given it a new number. Right. You know, they could have given it a cool name. You know, it could have been the Berry Bomb. But it wasn't, right? Because they wanted to downplay the extent of the changes they were making. In fact, the reason it was so damn expensive, right, is because early on they were looking at these Cadillac options that really were very extensive changes to the weapon.
So, you know, it's nice that he says no nuclear weapons, but It doesn't have any technical meaning. The life extension programs introduce all kinds of newness and new capabilities into the arsenal. And, you know, like, that's... You know, I don't know what to say. Like, it just does. It's not necessarily malicious. You know, if I go put a new radar, I mean, I don't want to get into the crazy radar fuse debate because, again, that's a classic example where, like, people were fine with the new radar for the W76 and then people decided to not be fine with it.
Aaron
29:08
But, like, what the hell did you want them to do?
Jeffrey
29:09
Like, remanufacture a 1970s state-of-the-art radar fuse? Come on.
Aaron
29:16
Right. No, exactly. And so, I mean, there's no definition for a new nuclear weapon. I mean, there just isn't. I mean, they give new capabilities to existing pits or even slightly, I mean, modified pits in the case of the B61-12, but they don't change the number. Because if you're boring about it, I mean, this is what we're really talking about.
Like, if you're boring about it and you call it the B61-12, The mass amount of people don't pay attention to this. But if you go back and like what the Bush administration did and you call it robust in front of it, you all of a sudden people start paying attention. You say, holy fecal material. These guys want to be able to use mini nukes.
Right.
Jeffrey
29:56
Which I think does get to the place where this conversation becomes real. Because even if you and I read the Bryan Bender story and say...
Aaron
30:03
I shrug my shoulders.
Jeffrey
30:04
Oh, yeah, it's a variable yield W80 for the LRSO. I thought it was a bad idea when Obama was doing it. I still think it's a bad idea. I also don't think it's the end of the world.
Aaron
30:13
Actually, when I saw the Twitter thing, I actually thought they were going to call it a robust nuclear earth penetrator.
Jeffrey
30:22
No, it would be the tremendous nuclear earth penetrator. Tremendous. But, you know, like, I think the interesting question here relates to foreign perceptions. Because even if you and I know that probably it doesn't relate to anything new technically... Mm-hmm. And certainly doesn't relate to anything useful, right? Because, you know, like, go ahead, make a low-yield bunker buster.
Like, that is the most useless weapon on Earth. It is. Yeah, like, fine. Like, go ahead. You can have all of those you want. Like, you can use them as, you know, paperweights. New coffee table. I need one. But no matter how dumb the idea would be and how useless the idea would be... There is this interesting question about how it shapes foreign perceptions, whether for good or for ill. And I know that, you know, last nice thing about Linton, he was really interested in this question because he observed, I think quite rightly, that people assume that foreigners agree with us.
Mm-hmm. Like, if I'm a Democrat, I think our allies will be alarmed and our enemies will be alarmed in ways that will make them do bad things. And if I'm a Republican, I think our allies will be reassured and our enemies will be deterred. But these are almost certainly, like, fact-free beliefs based, you know, at most on very selective reading of the, like, rando foreigners who actually talk to.
Aaron
31:47
Yeah, I worry about... Russian perceptions of a JASM-like LRSO with a quote-unquote more usable warhead.
Jeffrey
32:01
Well, I certainly worry about things. You know, there was a study that I think NNSA, maybe starting under Linton, but maybe it was under Tom D'Agostino. I think they funded it with SAIC. I think Lou Dunn did it. Okay. To look at foreign perceptions of nuclear weapons.
Aaron
32:21
Oh, I'm actually not familiar with this.
Jeffrey
32:23
Yeah, I think it's called Foreign Perspectives... On U S nuclear policy and posture. Yeah. It was SAIC, Greg Giles, Jeff Larson, and Thomas Skypeck. I know, I know, I know Greg Giles. I love, Oh, and, and Lou Dunn. Yeah. You know, and that's to me a really interesting effort. Like I don't, by no means do I think the SAIC report is the last word on the subject.
But I do think that it was a serious effort to try to like actually go ask people. You know, like, well, how does this make you feel? I think it's just interesting that, you know, again, going back to this question about like, do the Russians have an escalate to deescalate strategy? Will allies be reassured? Will our enemies be deterred?
I feel like almost always these debates are really about Washington and very few people actually try to like bother with, you know, real opinions of foreigners.
Aaron
33:23
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to give you a practical example, Olga Olikar.
Jeffrey
33:28
Olga Olikar, who I think does some of the best work on Russian nuclear doctrine, thinks the escalate to de-escalate stuff is DCE nonsense. She says like, that's not how the Russians talk about their nuclear weapons. It's not how they think about their nuclear weapons. And for the most part, it's not how they talk about them.
Aaron
33:44
Well, that's been my impression, you know, is just reading as much as I can about Russian doctrine is that they don't have escalate to deescalate in the way that we ascribe to them. They do something different or think about them differently.
Jeffrey
33:55
And I think the reason we ascribe it to them is because either we don't know what to do about it. Like it's a hard problem. We worry they might have it. But also because it then fits the solution that we want. Like... Oh, they're developing low-yield nuclear weapons. We want to get some of those too, right? But if you actually read the stuff the Russians wrote about low-yield nuclear weapons, it's the Americans are developing those.
We want to get some of those too. You know, there's this interactive piece, but you're really looking for, like, the evidence that will support your view. So it's like, oh, well, this is the Russian strategy that would then justify all this. Oh, gosh, we didn't talk about SPRAT first. I'm so bummed. Oh, yeah. I don't think it neatly fits in.
It has to go in at the end as a kind of addendum. Yeah, we can do that. Because, you know, like, the other thing is, like, low-yield nuclear weapons, like, we have them, and in a weird way, they're not a thing. Because all the primaries for modern thermonuclear weapons are low-yield.
Aaron
34:56
Exactly. I mean, that's what I was saying. It's like, you know, if you just detonate the primary or... Does it really matter? I mean, is it really new? And the Russians sitting there counting yield.
Jeffrey
35:07
Well, and this was ultimately the reason that Linton Brooks wanted to get rid of Spratt first, right? Because any new primary you were going to develop would have a low yield possibility to it, right? So, I mean, the way he said it was, we were in a situation where to think about anything, you sort of had to have two physicists, an engineer, and a lawyer, right?
Aaron
35:29
Explain to the listeners what Sprat First is.
Jeffrey
35:32
Oh, so Sprat First was the amendment to, I think, the 1994 Defense Authorization Act. The simple thing to say is it prohibited the development of low-yield nuclear weapons. But in fact, precisely because of this problem, it prohibited research and development of That could lead to the deployment of low-yield nuclear weapons that were not already in the stockpile as of 1993, which was an incredibly convoluted statement that actually still had no clear legal meaning.
And it, you know, the funny thing is, like, I understand why they did it, and actually I was annoyed when it got eliminated, but Ellen Tauscher, and actually even John Spratt, Admitted it was not the most perfect restriction because of the, you know, simple reality of things. And they had talked about different things that could be replaced with, but in the end, it was just repealed and was not replaced.
So I think we're probably a little worse off. But, like... You know, foreigners take this stuff seriously. There were a couple of Australians who, you know, kind of looked at this debate and were like, oh, we should ban low-yield weapons. You know, like, the countries of the world should get together and ban low-yield weapons. I'm like, how are you going to verify that?
Aaron
36:53
Yeah, countries are going to be lining up to be giving you a look at their primaries.
Jeffrey
36:57
Yeah, you think NNSA is going to let you, like, confirm that the W80 Mod 4 doesn't have a variable yield setting on it? I don't know. You can ask Rick Perry.
Aaron
37:07
He has smart glasses.
Jeffrey
37:09
Maybe they're x-ray glasses that allow you to see through and you can... You know, like... Again, foreigners take this stuff seriously. They do. It really does lead to this interesting question where even if it has no technical meaning, I do think my bias, my tendentious reading of my foreign friends is if we spend a lot of time talking about how awesome low-yield nuclear weapons are, We will reinforce the perspective that nuclear weapons are useful.
We'll reinforce the perspective that they're for warfighting. It will be interpreted that we intend to use them first. It will be interpreted that, you know, we do not have a defensive but rather an offensive capability. And I think it will be used to justify all kinds of programs in foreign countries. All the while, I think, not really solving our ally problem because, you know, the ally problem is a weird mixture of fear that we won't come to their aid and fear that we will come to their aid and get everyone killed.
Aaron
38:12
Right. So maybe the analogy you need to use is the Goldilocks one.
Jeffrey
38:17
Yeah, that's right. What we need is a dial-a-yield weapon that has a setting that says just right.
Aaron
38:21
That's right. That's right.
Jeffrey
38:23
It's like the amp in a spinal tap that goes to 11.
Aaron
38:29
That's right. That's right. Yeah. I don't know what else to add to that. That's just too perfect. Well, if Scott were here, we'd ask him how the Slack channel's going. The Slack channel's robust, man. The conversations that are going on in there are, at some levels, and I'm going to be completely honest, are above my head. They are above some of my own personal technical capabilities, but I always learn a lot.
And a lot of fun. Yeah, people are throwing down. They are throwing down in there. I mean, it's like a one-upsmanship. And we had, for subscribers, we had an Arms Control happy hour last week. Oh, how'd it go? It was fun, you know. And I don't think I am stepping outside and insulting anybody when I say it's a self-selecting group of people who, A, listen to our show, and then, B, get together for happy hour to talk more nukes because they're still interested.
Jeffrey
39:19
Yeah, I mean, I kind of love that aspect about it. You know, we were all laughing. I, you know, living in California, I've been able to meet George Herbert. And yeah, who, since I live in California, right, and he's up in the Bay Area, I actually get to see him from time to time, but he posted a picture of himself online.
Oh, really? Yeah. And Marty Pfeiffer and a whole bunch of other people were like, you look exactly like you are supposed to. Like, in person, you are the person you are supposed to be, which is totally true. Like, George is awesome. And he is, you know, like, some people don't really look like the person they sound like or seem like.
And George is like, George is a 100% authentic human being. He's great. So it's always nice to meet people in meet space if they live up to what you're hoping.
Aaron
40:11
Right. And so all of this is a plug for the Slack channel. Listeners can join for the very, very low price of $5 a month. If you are a student, I think that drops down to $3 a month. And Scott will be able to hook you up with all the details.
Jeffrey
40:25
Oh, Aaron, thank you for joining me.
Aaron
40:27
Oh, thank you for having me. And thanks, everybody, for listening.
