Putin’s Nuke-a-palooza

Jeffrey Lewis 0:02

It's fun if you used to play Flying Buffalo Games' card game, Nuclear War, because this expansion pack is lit as f***. 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 0:33

And I'm Aaron Stein, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Rafiq Hariri Center for the Middle East. Oh, Aaron! It's been an exciting day here in the United States and in Russia.

Jeffrey 0:48

The nuclear posture review released by the Trump administration had a couple of proposals for new nuclear weapons systems. And yesterday, Vladimir Putin said, hold my beer.

Aaron 1:02

He said, I'll see your low yield and I'll raise you some crazy things.

Jeffrey 1:07

Oh, my God. Yes. For those of you who are wondering about the topic of today's podcast, Vladimir Putin gave his big annual, I guess it's a budget address, right?

Aaron 1:19

People on Twitter were calling it like their version of the State of the Union.

Jeffrey 1:23

Yeah. But what was really noticeable is that in the thing, which lasted like two fricking hours, it's, so it's, it's basically his annual, his annual message to the federal assembly. He unveiled a series of new or relatively recent military programs Several of which are designed to defeat U.S. missile defenses and our new nuclear weapons systems. And so there is the Sarmat, the new heavy liquid-fueled ICBM, which we knew about.

Aaron 2:00

Yeah, that's been around for a while.

Jeffrey 2:01

Yeah, there's footage followed by an animation of Russia's hypersonic reentry vehicle for its nuclear forces, which we kind of knew abstractly they were working on.

Aaron 2:11

Yeah, yeah. James Acton has a paper on it.

Jeffrey 2:13

This was much more explicit. Yep. There is the underwater nuclear propelled autonomous torpedo, which had leaked previously. And by leaked, I mean the Russians accidentally on purpose had a, had a camera focus on a slide, a briefing book. And it was included in the NPR. Right. And then, you know, for a long time there had been rumblings from certain U.S. officials that there were other, even crazier things to come down the pike.

And I was hoping for fobs. But no, the Russians, boy, they really outdid themselves. It's a nuclear-powered... Global range cruise missile. Let me say this again. Nuclear powered. Not a cruise missile with a nuclear weapon, although it is a cruise missile with a nuclear weapon. It is a cruise missile with a nuclear weapon powered by a nuclear ramjet.

Aaron 3:26

James Acton stole Twitter this morning when he quoted Hunt for Red October. Yes, I saw that. He's like, you know, that famous scene, you know, where he's looking at Red October, you know, and he goes, you know, we messed around with this and couldn't really make it work, but you're telling me they built this thing, you know, and the camera pulls in tight on Alec Baldwin she put to sea this morning.

Jeffrey 3:45

Yeah, there's also, I should note, Putin had this sort of, you know, in his charming way, he said that they haven't named... Either the underwater drone or the nuclear-powered cruise missile. And on the Defense Ministry website, they're going to solicit suggestions. And so Marty Pfeiffer is pushing pretty hard for Rockety McRocketface.

Aaron 4:11

I saw Nukety McNukeface by somebody else, which I thought would be pretty good. Yeah. Holy cow!

Jeffrey 4:20

Where to begin? Not entirely unsurprising, because we knew about the drone, and generally speaking, we knew that crazy stuff was coming. But, you know, the nuclear-powered cruise missile, I mean, that's a thing the United States looked at and decided not to go ahead with, because it's a terrible freaking idea.

Aaron 4:42

Yeah, I mean, for listeners, there was a U.S. program back in the, I believe, 1950s into the early 1960s to mess around with this. Project Pluto. Project Pluto, exactly, you know, and ultimately decided that this was not a very good idea, but, you know, bringing it back in 2018 has some sort of, like, pre-disco vintage feel Cold Warrior-ness that's kind of, I guess, fun in a way, even despite the fact that this is an awful idea.

Scott LaFoy 5:13

It's fun if you miss those glory days of the Cold War when mad science was the norm and we were figuring out what you could actually do with nuclear.

Jeffrey 5:21

Well, it's fun if you used to play Flying Buffalo Games' card game Nuclear War. Because this expansion pack is lit as f***.

Aaron 5:32

Yeah, it's unbelievable. The whole thing's outrageous. What I find amazing is that I see pop across my Twitter feed, you know, right after that, is U.S. officials say Russia nuke-powered cruise missile not operational yet. No s*** there, guys. Still in the R&D phase. But here's the kicker, and it's crashed recently in testing in the Arctic. So they're flying this thing around, and it crashed.

Jeffrey 5:55

Yeah, I mean, one of the things that really has my attention is the reason that the United States, I mean, there are lots of reasons the United States killed this idea, but, you know, a nuclear-powered ramjet, like, first of all, because weight is so important, it's an unshielded nuclear reactor, and it's loud. Greg Herkin who is a wonderful historian now hanging out here in Santa Cruz, I'm telling you, Left Coast, Best Coast. banana slug. Yeah, West Coast, Best Coast is what I should say. he wrote this great article for Air and Space magazine I guess back when he either was or was about to be the historian at the Smithsonian, called the Flying Crowbar. They calculated the the On-the-ground sound of this thing as it flew overhead as 150 decibels.

So basically, it would have deafened you as it flew over you. Then it would have drenched you in radioactivity because it's an unshielded nuclear reactor. I mean, I think the way Greg said it was literally roasting chickens in the barnyard.

Aaron 7:06

That's good.

Jeffrey 7:09

So, you know, like... One of the big reasons that, you know, that was undesirable from an operational standpoint, you know, you wouldn't want to fly this thing over our allies in Europe, but You couldn't test it in the United States. They had a terrible time trying to figure out, I mean, they did some on the ground tests, but what they couldn't figure out was how to do flight tests, you know, cause they were terrified that, you know, when flight tests go wrong, the thing like, right, this thing crashed apparently.

Like what, what would have happened if it would have gone like off, off the Nevada test site and into Las Vegas. But if the Russians are testing it, We should, I think, one, see spikes in radioactivity, and two, the CTBTO's infrasound network should be picking this up.

Aaron 8:03

Yeah, you mentioned that on Twitter, and that's quite creative to see, to try and narrow down using that data. When the crash happened.

Jeffrey 8:12

I think that between the radionuclide stations that the CTBTO maintains and the infrasound system, if the Russians are actually testing this thing, we ought to be able to find it.

Aaron 8:25

That sounds like a team for you, for your team, a task for your team, I should say. That seems like right up your alley.

Jeffrey 8:31

Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, on the list of eleventy bazillion things we got to do, but it might be fun. You know, we're not really very good right now at using the infrasound data. That's like a skill we got to stand up. But, you know, like, if, you know, and honestly, the video that Putin showed, it seemed to have...

What looked like data, a video of the thing flying. Mostly it was an animation, but it looked like there was a little bit of real video.

Aaron 9:04

Yeah, and I think Joseph Dempsey posted, is it a GIF or a short video from YouTube? It was a short video from YouTube. It's grainy, and you can clearly see it, and it's kind of weird looking.

Jeffrey 9:15

Yeah, well, one of the questions that I had was, Which I've never quite known what to do with, was, you know, when the Russians were dropping air-launched cruise missiles? So one of the things is the reactor is actually in an existing cruise missile body, the, what is it, like the X-101?

Aaron 9:42

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey 9:43

And so when the Russians dropped some of those air-launched cruise missiles in Syria, they wouldn't show them lighting. And I don't think that they were launching this thing, but I wonder if there was something about the modernized version of that cruise missile that might have tipped off that they had this other thing in store, which is why they wouldn't show it to us.

I don't know.

Aaron 10:06

I mean, I have no idea.

Jeffrey 10:08

But it was really weird. Tom Moore and I both noticed that they would not show the conventional cruise missile lightings.

Aaron 10:17

You're right. They only did show drop test. They only just showed it dropping from the aircraft. And then they showed it flying.

Jeffrey 10:22

Yeah. So I wonder if it had some like technical feature on it that somebody would have said, Oh, you know, that really, that really looks like, but you know, who knows? I mean, this is just, this is just, I mean, it's terrible, but it's wonderful.

Aaron 10:39

Well, the hot takes and sort of the Twitter chatter is linking this to the NPR and sort of the Russian reaction to the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review. And we don't share that. Hot take, even though the timing is coincidental, and obviously I think that there is some political timing to the NPR, is that you don't just drop a nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed cruise missile with a test on somebody's head from a document that's only a couple weeks old.

Jeffrey 11:12

Yeah, that's right. I mean, we know... I mean, first of all... Many of these systems, and I should note there are other systems unveiled too. So there's like a 2,000 kilometer range hypersonic missile. And then there's like a crazy laser system. So there's even more stuff to talk about. Yeah, we may have to break this up into multiple pods as more information comes in.

Good God, yes. But, you know, like we knew about the Sarmat. Son of Satan. And the Russians had previously said it was so big that it could come up over the South Pole, thus evading US radars and missile defenses. And we knew that the Russians were working on hypersonics, and we knew about the underwater drone, and all of those programs date at least back into the Obama administration.

And, you know, I don't think that the cruise missile is new. I mean, like I say, I think if you look back Senior U.S. officials said a lot of things where they couldn't say nuclear-powered cruise missile, but I definitely was under the impression that there would be more stuff coming. So all of this stuff has been in train for a long while.

I think what it dates back to is what Putin said in his remarks is he said that when the U.S. withdrew from the ABM Treaty, the Russians decided to start looking at Countermeasures and you know it took them a long time i think for a while they maybe wasted some time on diplomacy trying to get the u.s to talk and then then i think they were talking and developing and you know these systems are pretty science fictiony and so i think they took a while but they're here now well i mean i think we should start about i mean you mentioned up top

Aaron 13:01

But for listeners, what the advantages is of some of these systems to defeat U.S. missile defenses. So, I mean, you mentioned the fact that they fly over the South Pole rather than the North Pole. I think it's important to flesh that out a little bit just as we start with the Sarmouts and its capabilities.

Jeffrey 13:16

So, I mean, if you imagine that the U.S. has a, I mean, let's say you're a paranoid Russian. You've got the GMD system sitting in Alaska, which can intercept ICBMs in midcourse, and then, you know, what, like four more interceptors down at Vandenberg. I should say, is designed to intercept ICBMs in mid-course. Whether that system would work or not, I think, is a very open question, particularly given that you'd expect to see Russian countermeasures.

But even if you assume then that also some of the European deployments have some capability against Russian missiles, which we say they don't, and I actually don't think that they do, but, you know, again, let's assume you're a Russian planner... In addition to the very large Russian nuclear force that is plenty big enough to overwhelm those systems, they're also giving themselves the option of sending ICBMs over the South Pole so that we won't see them with our radars.

You know, we'll probably see them with the space-based systems, but we don't have any missile defense assets in the South. Although I'm sure Ted Cruz is going to be demanding one now. You have hypersonic reentry vehicles that they showed maneuvering around missile defenses, so in case they were dealing with very capable theater missile defenses or reentry, which I can't imagine you'd really need against an ICBM, but again, you know, you're dealing with the Russians here.

You've got a global range cruise missile and you know, we don't have any decent cruise missile defense. Poor J lens was the best we could do. At least seeing these things come in and it went rogue and had to be shotgun by a sheriff in Pennsylvania.

Aaron 15:01

It went rogue. It went down.

Jeffrey 15:03

Yeah. And, and, and then there's the underwater torpedo and you know, I didn't see any missile defenses on the bottom of the ocean.

Aaron 15:09

Right. You know, and so, I mean, I think the point of this is we're getting this back to the U.S. withdrawal with the ABM Treaty and them saying they're going to look at ways to ensure that no matter what you build, we will basically have countermeasures to... To evade those defenses.

Jeffrey 15:27

Yeah, Alan Thompson, who I just adore, sent me a note pointing out that there's this lovely declassified 1983 assessment on how the Soviets might respond to SDI. And it's got all these responses. And there are like the near-term responses, which is like Soviet tech in the 80s, the mid-term responses, and then the long-term responses, which are all like crazy sci-fi ideas.

Well, we are like, it's all the list of crazy sci-fi ideas that the CIA identified in 1983, you know, nuclear powered cruise missiles and hypersonic vehicles and all the rest. So, you know, like this is all stuff that the Russians said that they might do 35 years ago. It's just that it took us withdrawing from the ABM treaty in 2001 to And it took the development of technology to make it possible.

And I think the last and most important ingredient was it took the collapse of democratic institutions in Russia to unleash the defense industry to go totally nutty.

Aaron 16:37

Yeah, yeah. And I think one of the other things maybe we should flesh out a little bit is the shorter range hypersonic, because that touches on some of the conversations we've had on this pod about the INF. And we've been focusing on the other cruise missile and the RS-26, but they seem to have other things in mind as well.

Jeffrey 16:56

Yeah, I mean, this thing is compliant because it's only shown being launched from an airplane, and I think there's a hint that you could launch it from a ship.

Aaron 17:07

Right. Which is totally legal.

Jeffrey 17:10

It is. And you know, this is this is what's good for the goose is good for the gander. So I'm not you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I, I feel like the, the cruise missile and the RS 26 are not nice things. The Russians did. This is more like, yeah, that was a predictable development. But yeah, if they were to put that thing on the ground Boy, that'd be something.

Although I don't know why you necessarily would, right?

Aaron 17:42

I don't think you have to, but what I think it shows is, again, just building on this thesis that's really about missile defenses is that they're worried about, or at least they're planning to strike U.S. missile defense sites in Europe. And so this isn't just a threat against the continental United States, but this also includes U.S. allies in Europe as well.

Jeffrey 18:00

Yeah, you know, I really want to talk about the collapse of democratic institutions in Russia because, you know, I think it is necessary but not sufficient to identify the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty and our serious investment in a lot of missile defenses and our general refusal to do anything more than transparency measures. Because, you know, whenever U.S. officials blew off Russian concerns about missile defenses, we'd basically always say, like, well, you could just build more missiles.

Like, you already have a bunch of missiles. Like, we're never going to build enough missile defenses to defend against you. And if we ever did, you would just build more. It takes a special kind of person to say, actually, I don't think I'm just going to build more missiles and overwhelm you. I think I'm going to make an underwater torpedo, and I think I'm going to make a nuclear-powered cruise missile.

Like, you know... Yes, this is a response to our ABM deployments, but they also had to go a little bit funny in the head.

Aaron 19:00

Oh, no, absolutely. Just to reiterate. The underwater drone is entirely nutty in terms of what it's designed to do. I mean, it's essentially designed to shower our ports in radiation, whereas the cruise missile could shower any number of people in radiation sitting in the flight path, assuming it gets here. These are nutty systems that are... Overkill seems like too little of a word.

Jeffrey 19:30

Yeah. You know what? One of my favorite things about Project Pluto is one of the big things that held back that reactor was materials science. Because, you know, like the 50s, you know, metallurgy wasn't where it is today. Right. And so they had to use Coors porcelain. Right. And yes, it is exactly that Coors. It's the company that made the porcelain that lined the vats for the breweries.

Right. Rocky Mountain Brewed. Yeah, yeah. Well, Adolph Coors, I think, first made the... Ceramic-lined vats and then realized that there was more money in the beer sitting in the vats.

Aaron 20:27

Yeah.

Jeffrey 20:29

So, but I, you know, I just, yeah. I presume that material science, you know, 70 years later is so much better that, you know, some of the problems that the U.S. faced are not there. But I would still think that this thing would be spewing radiation and I would think it would be loud. So I don't, I, yeah, I mean, it's a really terrible thing to do.

Scott 20:57

One thing to note on the material science, and besides, like, you know, we have 50, oh my god, 70 more years of material science on an intercontinental cruise missile, one big difference between this and Project Pluto appears to be that, as far as I can tell from the limited imagery we have, assuming this imagery is correct, this appears to be not only a lot smaller than Project Pluto, but doesn't seem to be advertised as sort of the MIRV bomber that Pluto was.

So it may be like an order of magnitude smaller, which may reduce some of the complexities they had with building that just enormous honker of a cruise missile back then.

Jeffrey 21:36

Yes. Although, I mean, I think that the, if I remember correctly, the first engine was very large and, And they were planning a smaller engine. So I am not sure how... I don't know how much reducing size solved those problems. I mean, clearly the bigger version was worse. Good God. But, you know, I mean, this is still like I think that CIA document from 1983 had it being a larger reactor that the Soviets would put in.

And again, Putin said this fits inside an X-101. So, yeah, it definitely is probably smaller. But I still think we should be able to hear it and sniff it. I mean, this gets to like, well, why are the Russians doing this? Right. Yeah. And like I say, it's not merely enough to point to the ABM Treaty and say the U.S. withdrew and the Russians needed to take countermeasures, because they might have just done what a normal political system would have done, which is make some nice pen-aids and maybe build a few more missiles.

Right. But they kind of went whole hog. And I think the reason they're going whole hog has less to do with the ABM Treaty and more to do with the collapse of democratic institutions in Russia. And we've seen this kind of resurgence of Soviet patterns of thought and behavior. And I think like this is just one of them, you know, that you have a system that is functioning, again, a lot like the Soviet Union did.

And that means a powerful defense industry that gets a lot of money to do whatever the hell it wants. And the things that it wants to do are pretty crazy. And, you know, you don't have the kinds of things that you have in a democratic society that might restrain it. Like, wait, sorry, you're going to spew radioactivity over 2000 kilometers in the Arctic like right that without without democratic institutions in Russia you don't really have the opportunity for people to meaningfully participate in the process and you know complain about that kind of thing exactly which I think is important because you know That subtle rumble you hear is almost certainly thousands of tiny little b**** popping in the Pentagon with guys thinking that they themselves should get with themselves one of those nuclear cruise missiles.

But I don't actually think an arms race is the way to deal with this problem. Because I think the Soviet military-industrial complex is racing with itself. And this is like wrestling with a pig. You get dirty, and the pig likes it.

Aaron 24:22

Do we have any real sense that they're actually going to deploy this thing? I mean, I don't think this will ever work. Or if it does, it's undeployable, if that makes sense. I mean, I just can't imagine they're that... They can't really want to deploy a nuclear-powered cruise missile. I mean, come on.

Jeffrey 24:44

I'm sorry. Well, I don't—I mean, I don't know how to answer that. I mean, you know, why wouldn't they? I mean, when I say why wouldn't they, I mean, like, you kind of have to have a model in your head of the people who are making this proposal. And, like, those people existed in the United States. Right?

Like, they wanted to build this. They were really excited about building this. No, what we've seen is they have built it.

Aaron 25:11

I mean, assuming that imagery is correct, is that they've built it, and then if you cross-coordinate that with the US Intel leak, I think it was to Fox News, is that they've even tested it, but it crashed. And I think you're exactly right, is that it comes off the rails, that it even got to the point where they tested it and crashed, assuming that it spews radiation.

I wouldn't want to be near that crash site. I think that's exactly right.

Jeffrey 25:32

So then the question is like, well, who's going to complain? And when you have a... Democratic system like we do in the U.S., then suddenly there are constraints, right? It's not that we're better people than they are. We're just as bad. But we have better institutions. And so there's a requirement like, well, what is your plan if this thing gets out of control?

How do you know it's not going to hit Las Vegas? And we don't always make the right decision, but we have an open political process where we can at least argue. You don't have any of that in Russia. And so it's not clear to me where the points of objection will be unless it is just sheer cost or technical infeasibility.

So, you know, I think the Russians could go quite far to developing this system before they hit any kind of barrier that would, like, force them to give it up.

Aaron 26:28

Well, that's my question. I mean, is that barrier cost? I mean, because Scott and I were talking off-pod before you jumped on about rail mobile ICBMs. That being the constraint ultimately coming on is that they make an announcement, they put on a showy announcement, it's, you know, partly linked to missile defense being, you know, rail mobile ICBMs, but then ultimately they make a quiet announcement that they're just not going to go forward with it.

Jeffrey 26:51

Right, but, you know, like... Again, all of this assumes that at some level there is a kind of reckoning. But maybe there's enough money. You know, I don't know. There are these two wonderful quotes from people who worked on the U.S. program for the nuclear-powered cruise missile. One guy said, it was the best six years of my life.

And the other person said, I was young. We had lots of money. It was very exciting. You know, like the defense industry, Is loving this. And the NPR, which we can talk about, maybe helps excuse this. The ABM withdrawal and U.S. missile defenses provide a ready justification. But I think deep down... It has more to do with, you know, the Russian equivalent of these two guys saying this is the best six years of my life.

I am young. I have lots of money. I am very excited, you know. And well, and and, you know, like we we imagine that like, oh, well, it's a waste of money. That money could be used, you know, for some other purpose. But like Russia is a petro state. You know, like, that money isn't... Like, it's not like that money is necessarily being sunk back into, you know, wages for working people.

You know, like, how many billion dollars, you know, like, drift off to oligarch accounts? So, you know, I think there's a very good chance that this stuff could soldier on for a while, which then, you know, brings up the question of what to do about it, right? Because it's not... It's not clear to me that this is a strictly strategic calculation.

And so getting the Russians to stop isn't Like, like, building more defenses isn't going to get the Russians to stop it. It's just going to like encourage them to like invest in other new horrible things. you know, I'm fine with building some defenses, but like, that's not our strategy, right? Or it can't be our strategy because it doesn't offer a serious prospect of of getting out of this craziness. I mean, my instinct is to let them have at this crazy project. I mean, is that crazy?

Aaron 29:17

I mean, not like we have any sway over them, but the way we think about it is sometimes the best response is to do nothing.

Jeffrey 29:24

Well, so I would say we certainly don't need to do stupid things. We don't need to build our own. Building our own isn't going to convince them not to do this. And I actually don't even think defenses are going to convince them not to do this. I think the dynamic works the other way, which is they want to ensure that we're vulnerable to them.

And that's like the lesson of the nuclear age is that you're vulnerable. And we've never really liked that in the United States. And so when we saw the prospect of missile defenses rendering nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete, as Ronald Reagan said, we were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's do that. Then we won't be vulnerable anymore. It'll be like when we had those big oceans to protect us.

And, you know, the Russians not having those oceans were like, no, no, no, no. We're like, we're going to build our way out of that. So I don't think you can arms race your way out. I would say this. We do a lousy job of raising the cost on the Russians for this kind of stuff. And this gets back to like my constant harping on why we should have participated in the humanitarian consequences debate and why we should have played a different role when it came to the negotiations to ban nuclear weapons.

Because what we chose to do Was to make common cause with the Russians against people who wanted to ban nuclear weapons. And so in doing that, I think we created a kind of lazy moral equivalence between ourselves and them, even though what they're doing is like off in La La Land. We made it super easy for all kinds of people, especially in Europe, to look at all the crazy stuff the Russians are doing, but then to look at the crazy things we're saying, and then, you know, some of the much smaller universe of crazy things we're doing, And just say like, oh, well, you know, you're both nuts.

You're both addicted to nuclear weapons. You're each feeding off one another. A pox on both your houses. You know, I can just opt out. Which I detected a lot of that at Munich. You know, in Munich, I got a real sense that the cost of the nuclear posture review was that it made it really easy for people who didn't want to deal with what the Russians are up to To just throw their hands up and say, well, it's both of you.

Aaron 31:49

Yeah, so, you know, being able to draw a false equivalency where one country is firing a f***ing nuclear reactor over the Arctic and the other one put together a policy document.

Jeffrey 32:00

Right. And, you know, like, in a way, we kind of deserve it. You know, I mean, and this is not even about the Trump people. I mean, I think the tone of their nuclear posture view certainly made this worse. But if you look at how the Obama administration approached this question of disarmament, right, the entire view was that the humanitarian consequences initiative is illegitimate and that disarmament is something that happens between the U S and Russia, or maybe the P five.

Right. And you know, we're the big boys with the big bombs and we're going to work it out ourselves and we'll let you know. But the problem with that is like, you know, the Obama administration suggested to the Russians that we do another round of reductions and the Russians are like not having it, especially since we're not willing to talk about missile defense.

And so instead of getting reductions, right, our reductions process, I think, has stalled. We're looking now at a period of buildup again. We're looking at a period of no arms control and we're looking at a period of crazy science fiction stuff. And for whatever reason, I mean, I know what reason. I just think it's a dumb reason.

We decided to implicate ourselves in that process by making common cause with the Russians. And, and I think in doing so really left ourselves isolated in Europe. Right. So, you know, it's that classic problem where you know, like even as the Russians get scary, there are a lot of European countries who think that we're prepared to like, you know, defend NATO to the last German.

Aaron 33:36

Right. Which is not good. Yeah. Yeah. No Yeah, and so, you know, because this is coming up on the heels, and this may be the time to wrap up, of the Missile Defense Review, you know, here in the U.S., and you can see that that will probably become more politically...

Jeffrey 33:54

I just see people, like, suddenly, like, hitting select all and then hitting delete. Right, exactly.

Aaron 34:00

But, you know, you can see how they'll be linked together politically. And... Yes. And maybe that's not the best, because maybe that's what my instinct is, is that's not the best thing to do is to draw linkage, is to try and separate. And to point out how wacky these things are, an underwater autonomous drone meant to shower ports and radiation by stealth is ridiculous.

Jeffrey 34:24

Well, I mean, it is the natural. I mean, obviously, as I say, I think, you know, you don't get it unless you also get the collapse of democratic institutions in Russia. But if you do, and we did, then it's suddenly a very understandable response. You know, it's what Brezhnev's Soviet Union would have done if Brezhnev had lived to see SDI.

It's totally what they would have done. And it's the reason that a bunch of us said, I wasn't around back then, but my mentors all said, hey, this is crazy. This arms race that you're proposing, there's no escape from it. Because you're going to build these systems, and then they're going to build these other crazy systems, and then you're going to build some crazy systems to deal with those crazy systems, and then they're going to come up with a whole new set of crazy systems.

And the only people who are going to make out like bandits are the guys at Flying Buffalo who are going to keep making expansion packs for their nuclear war card game.

Aaron 35:18

I guess the card game would be online now.

Jeffrey 35:22

No, we actually play it. We play it here. Our GRAs bought copies because it's still in print. And we went down to the beer garden one day and I got the crap nuked out of me by my graduate students.

Aaron 35:37

So somebody got the best of the great Jeffrey Lewis?

Jeffrey 35:39

Yeah, yeah. I did get to ask if anybody had change for 20 million people. Hey, before we wrap up, there was something else I wanted to complain about, and I don't know if Scott's going to have to put it in, but something else that pisses me off about the Nuclear Posture Review in this context.

Scott 35:56

What?

Jeffrey 35:57

All that fucking time that they spent talking about how the Russians are developing these little low-yield nuclear weapons that they're planning to use, and we're going to have our own little low-yield nuclear weapons, we're going to have little low-yield nuclear weapons, like nuclear war at the Baltics. At the Munich Security Conference, Kislyak was really aggravated about this and kept saying, you know, if there's a nuclear war, it's going to be a big nuclear war, and we're really only going to use nuclear weapons in these extreme circumstances, and it's not going to be limited.

And, like, now you see this set of systems on display, and, like, I know what was going through his head, right?

Aaron 36:38

Oh, yeah, we're having a total debate amongst ourselves to justify the building of systems to match our own scenario planning, where the Russians are simply not playing in this game and doing something entirely different. The only country that has a policy of escalate to de-escalate is us, not them. Yeah.

Jeffrey 36:54

Which, by the way, Frank Miller has now admitted in his little War on the Rocks piece. He said, you know, oh, well, if they use, you know, a nuclear weapon on the battlefield, we're going to have a low yield option to escalate to like the Russian homeland, right?

Aaron 37:04

Right. Against leadership targets. He says high value. He skirts around it, but he's talking about leadership targets.

Jeffrey 37:12

I mean, it must have been so strange for Kislyak to have been sitting there listening to Sullivan spin this story about Russia's nuclear posture. And he's just sitting there thinking like, Dude, you have no idea. Like, I'm planning on flying a nuclear-powered cruise missile at you. Like, low yield? Like, what are you talking about? Like, I am going to nuke the f***ing Jesus out of you.

Aaron 37:41

Right. Have you seen the Sarmat? We put it out there, and now we just showed you in another damn video that we can fly it anywhere we want. Like, I just can't believe that we have these discussions that literally don't exist.

Jeffrey 37:52

Yeah, it's like there's this... And, you know, we saw this a little bit on Twitter where a lot of us would point out to certain U.S. officials that we didn't really think this was an accurate depiction of Russian strategy, the whole low-yield thing. You know, they were like, whoa, why don't you criticize the Russians? You know, and it's like, but we do criticize the Russians all the time.

It's just we criticize them for the nuclear weapons they're actually building that you don't have a plan to deal with. Like, the Russians are deploying... Multiple high-yield nuclear systems to defeat missile defenses, and you are off playing war games with low-yield nuclear exchanges in the Baltics like you're in some grad school seminar. I mean, it's the most absurd...

Dereliction of responsibility in service of parochial interests I have ever seen. They should fire everybody who was involved with that process. Like you have a real threat in a Russia that is determined to overwhelm your missile defense systems and in doing so is building all of these systems and like the nuclear posture view doesn't deal with any of that because it doesn't correspond to a procurement program that's somebody's little pet rock.

I mean it's It's very irresponsible.

Aaron 39:15

Is that a happy note? I mean, I feel like the rant is a happy note because I love ranting.

Jeffrey 39:23

I mean, maybe that, maybe that just gets cut out and put up as a, as a, as a, as a special one for subscribers. I don't, I don't know, but I just, it's crazy to me.

Aaron 39:33

Anyway, it is crazy. The whole thing is crazy because the only country with escalate to deescalate is us. It's our damn war game. They don't have it. They just are there.

Jeffrey 39:44

Meanwhile, the Russians are building missile defense defeating systems in deadly earnest.

Scott 39:49

Scott, how are things going over on the Slack channel? Things on the Slack channel are good, as always. And it looks like this week's conversation is slowly starting to gear towards this, as of this morning at least. So if you would like to join an excellent group of people who do cool things and support the pod for $5 a month, Or $3 a month if you are a student, you can support us and get access to our Slack channel.

You can support us over at patreon.com slash acwpodcast. Again, that's patreon.com slash acwpodcast.

Jeffrey 40:27

Well, as disappointing as it is that we are in the midst of a vigorous arms race... I think we're going to have a lot to talk about over the coming years. So that's good news, right?

Aaron 40:39

It's always good news to have more fodder for the podcast.

Jeffrey 40:44

So it's a reason for us to all get together in chat, right?

Aaron 40:46

That's right. And for the listeners to tune in.

Jeffrey 40:49

Well, Aaron, Scott, thank you for joining me.

Aaron 40:52

Always a pleasure.

Jeffrey 40:53

And thank you for listening.