If You See, Kay

Jeffrey Lewis 0:02

What? Why are you worried about that? 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 0:25

I'm Aaron Stein, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Rafiq Hariri Center for the Middle East. Calling in today from a parking lot in New Jersey. So that sound you hear in the background is not the ocean. I'm not at a poolside resort. That is the 95 freeway. We're doing an emergency podcast. It's guerrilla style, man, so there may be a little human noise behind me, some cars moving back and forth, but I'm at a coffee shop and we have to talk about this.

I mean, it's New Jersey, so I bet some of those sounds might be really interesting.

Jeffrey 0:57

You know, I was complaining that we didn't have enough things to talk about on the podcast that weren't North Korea. I didn't need the US ambassador to NATO to try to start a nuclear war with Russia just for content.

Aaron 1:11

Whoa, boy. Could have done without it.

Jeffrey 1:14

Could have done without it. That's all I'm saying.

Aaron 1:17

Yeah, some behind-the-scenes for the listeners. We had a heart-to-heart about whether our topics were stagnating last week because of all the DPRK news. And, yeah, don't think so anymore.

Jeffrey 1:30

All right. So, as listeners probably can tell, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, the U.S. ambassador to NATO... Went ahead and in a meeting with reporters repeatedly implied that the United States was going to launch a preemptive nuclear strike on the Russians to prevent them from deploying nuclear capable cruise missiles.

Aaron 1:54

It's not what she meant, but it's what she said. I mean, is it worth, like, laying out what she said for people who haven't, like, by now seen the clips of her statements pulled out and put in Reuters or the Associated Press to talk about how mangled this was?

Jeffrey 2:15

Yeah. You know, so she gets asked a question that is actually about Germany. And it involves the INF Treaty. And she implies that the U.S. is not going to withdraw from the treaty or doesn't want to withdraw from the treaty. But if Russia keeps going, then we're going to have to do stuff. And then a reporter asks her sort of like, well, like...

What do you mean do stuff? The actual phrases is, you know, what are the countermeasures that you're considering? And she talks about how the countermeasures are to take out the Russian missiles. And. What I think she means is countervailing capabilities, you know, the ability to respond in kind or the ability to do counterforce missions or, you know, whatever.

But, like, she gets asked, it comes off to everybody as they're, because she kind of ties it to the deployment of the missiles, it comes across as, To all the reporters, and I've actually spoken with at least one reporter in the room who didn't write the story. It just, I think it comes off as we're going to attack Russia.

And then Lauren Cook from AP, like, follows up and says, you know, did you really mean that? And she doesn't understand what he's getting at. And she says, yeah, yeah, I meant that. But she didn't mean that.

Aaron 3:43

Yeah, and the way she framed it was she put a timeline on it. So in addition to threatening sort of preemptive American counterforce or measures against Russian INF deployments, she put a timeline on it that they wouldn't allow these missiles to be able to threaten the U.S., she says, Alaska or our European allies.

Jeffrey 4:10

Right. I mean, and, you know, it's worth I think it's worth reading the statement because I think it it touches on some of the threads here, which are that one, she struggles with technical language. I mean, she is a former politician. Her entire career really has been being a politician. And so these are these words are pretty.

She just, she struggles with them, right? So she says, getting them to withdraw would be our choice, of course. And she doesn't mean withdraw from the treaty. She means them not deploying missiles, but she calls it withdraw, which is just confusing. But I think the question was, what would you do if this continues to a point where we know that they are capable of delivering?

And again, what I think here she means is they're deploying the systems. Like, that's not what she's saying, right? She doesn't know how to use any of these words correctly, but it's kind of what she's getting at. And she says, and at that point, we would then be looking at a capability to take out a missile that could hit any of our countries in Europe and hit America in Alaska.

So... Right? I mean, she, sorry, it's so mangled.

Aaron 5:19

I mean, she had a point. She was trying to do something here and she screwed it up, but it's so mangled.

Jeffrey 5:26

Yeah. Well, you know, like, I mean, this gets to a broader question of whether washed up politicians should be considered for sensitive ambassadorships. I mean, I understand we want to reward these people and they're far more powerful than I'll ever be. And so, you know, friends do favors for friends. But like, Like this is not good, you know?

And, and, and, you know, I hope it's not, you know, I mean, she's also older. And so, you know, older people have good days and bad days. And maybe she just was, maybe she was jet lagged or, you know, I don't know, maybe she was sick, but she really, she follows it up pretty badly. And so I think what she's trying to say is if, If this gets to the point where the Russians are deploying these forces in large numbers, then obviously the United States is going to have to respond.

And one of the options available to the United States are what you would call countervailing measures, which is our own intermediate range nuclear forces. And that is not in and of itself a particularly controversial thing to say. It's what the Obama administration said. Brian McKeon, albeit in much more professional and careful and sensible terms, said the same thing in his testimony.

But she fouls it up.

Aaron 6:35

Yeah. And we've been on this path for a while. So again, like she does foul it up, but this is why she mangles it so badly. And I don't have as much sympathy, I guess. I hold these people to a high standard. Is that this was language that we've talked about in previous podcasts about within the National Defense Authorization Act about how the U.S. should respond to Russian INF violations.

Jeffrey 6:59

Right. Because what the reason I think people see this as a gaffe, like, oh, you threaten to start a nuclear war. Like, yes, that's a gaffe. But it's actually worse than that. You think? Yeah. Yeah, I do. Like, it turns out it like because if it were a threat to the Russians in no context whatsoever, it would just be weird.

Right. I mean, it would be like, well, she's deranged or she just misspoke.

Aaron 7:26

But the problem is... She watched Fox and Friends in the morning. I mean... Yeah, that's right.

Jeffrey 7:30

She got her daily dose of white supremacy and, you know, came out. I mean, it is... I mean, I do think like the take them out thing, like because she is a politician, she's used to like riling up voters. And, you know, I mean, like this, like all she needed were the finger guns. You know, I mean, she was really like, she's hamming it up.

... But if that's all she were doing, then I wouldn't be super worried about it. Because, you know, whatever. The carnival of bellicosity that comes out of the United States Congress is just immense. And those people get ambassadorships and then they proceed to say stupid inflammatory things because they've been rewarded all their life for saying stupid inflammatory things.

But the problem is... That she's reinforced a specific Russian fear that is a source of incredible instability. Because what she has done is she has implied that the United States could rapidly deploy some kind of INF force that would put the United States in a position to eliminate the Russian missiles as they are being deployed. Right. Which is not true.

Like, we can't do that. There is no plan to do that. That's totally paranoid. But I think the Russians believe that the United States plans to do that. And she just said we plan to do that.

Aaron 9:06

And I think it's worth sort of fleshing this out because this policy of countervailing systems and having more flexible targeting options and more precise ability to decapitate the Russian leadership is not new. This is a return to a status quo that the INF was meant to eliminate. And I think that's something else that needs to be talked about as well within the context of this specific Russian paranoia.

It's not new, this paranoia. It's not Putin's paranoia.

Jeffrey 9:34

That's right. You know, and what's charming is that during the Obama administration, this term got revived, countervailing, which has a very specific meaning. And I think it was meant to scare the crap out of the Russians, which is the idea that If the Russians are going to have the capacity to use intermediate range nuclear forces in the Cold War meant from the territory of the Soviet Union against targets throughout Western Europe, then the United States was going to have the same flexibility to strike targets in the Soviet homeland also from Western Europe.

And countervailing, you know, it's not counterforce because it included the ability to decapitate the Soviet leadership. And that scared the crap out of them, which is why they agreed to the INF in the first place. And admittedly, they have forgotten that. And so I don't have a ton of sympathy for them. But on the other hand, we are locked in this relationship with them.

And so their paranoia has come surging back. And the Russians are 100 percent convinced that the U.S. is putting missile defense installations in Poland and Romania, not because they are missile defenses, but because they are intended to serve as silos for the covert deployment of INF forces as part of a countervailing strategy. So like that's been a Soviet paranoia for like a decade now.

It I think has driven both their enthusiasm for new INF forces, but also all kinds of other destabilizing behaviors. And we are not either willing or able to address it. It's complicated. And then she just went ahead and implied we were going to do that, which, which means it will now be impossible to ever convince the Russians that we aren't going to do this because she said it.

Aaron 11:32

I mean, They haven't exactly kept this a secret. They haven't kept their paranoia a secret. Vladimir Putin is on the record multiple times. Warning specifically about this idea that you could convert either missile defense interceptors into offensive ballistic missiles or use the same launch system, you know, because they're based on the Navy system, the common launch system, to replace the SM-3 with a Tomahawk.

And therefore you could clandestinely put in offensive missiles into Eastern Europe that would give them no warning time. And so they're ultimately concerned about this. And it's in the language in the NDAA. Is to look at converting the SM-3 and the SM-6 or reintroducing Tomahawk into these places. And so when she says that, it looks like there's some sort of coherent policy rather than a politician turned ambassador gaffe.

Yeah.

Jeffrey 12:29

So I put these examples up on Twitter, but, you know, the clearest, the first clear indication we had of this paranoia, which, by the way, I've always believed was a paranoia. And the reason is because John Steinbrenner was my mentor and John used to write about this all the time. And, you know, at first when he said it, I thought it was slightly crazy that the Russians would be terrified that their command and control system wouldn't be able to survive a decapitation attack.

And then, like, once he explained that and then, like, A lot of things the Russians do that are crazy made sense. I mean, like, they made sense because they were based on this particular fear. But the first modern instance we have of this is Bob Gates, the Secretary of Defense, came out and said that the Russians told him that they were worried that ground-based interceptors in Poland could be fitted with nuclear weapons and become an offensive weapon like a Pershing.

And we know that in the New START treaty, the Russians insisted on that ban that you couldn't put offensive missile systems in missile defense silos and vice versa.

Aaron 13:26

For me, that's the kicker.

Jeffrey 13:27

Yeah, it totally caught the U.S. by surprise, which is a good sign that we weren't prepared because you can actually, through WikiLeaks, now read the cables. And the U.S. side is just like, what? Why are you worried about that? You know, and it's like, oh, man, you literally, you don't. C, their fundamental concern. Putin charmingly told Oliver Stone, he gave an interview where he said the launching pads of these anti-ballistic missiles can be transformed within a few hours into offensive missile launching pads.

And he told a meeting of defense officials, right, that, again, that the launchers to be deployed at stations in Romania and Poland can easily be used for the deployment of intermediate and short-range missiles. And then to make it worse, he said that that conversion could actually happen in a short time, and we will not even know what is happening there.

So, like, he has said it over and over and over and over again, and it is paranoid because we have no such plan except, as you point out, The Senate Armed Services Committee, in its report, along with the NDAA, did actually call for evaluating existing U.S. missile systems for modification to INF roles, including the SM-3.

Aaron 14:38

And she references that in this sort of back and forth. Yes.

Jeffrey 14:42

I mean, not on purpose, but she does.

Aaron 14:45

Yes, she does. Again, because she's not briefed or she mangles words. It's so unfortunate. Congress has spoken. Congress has spoken. American law is supreme and therefore... We have to start looking at these things. And then she points out that that's not in violation of the treaty because it's just research, it's not deployment. But nevertheless, it suggests that there's actually an American plan to do this.

And maybe there is.

Jeffrey 15:11

Which again, there is no plan, but we talk about it enough that if you are a, you know, you have to sort of, you have to imagine like the world of the defense intellectual. Like the U.S. has now done more than enough to, That if the shoe were on the other foot and there were the Russians making these statements, that we would be subjected to endless tedious talks at deterrence conferences by people saying, yes, the Russians have a secret plan.

And then they would point to, you know, the statement of a senior Russian official and a Russian defense document, right? You can point to a congressional defense document and the statement of a U.S. official. And there you go.

Aaron 15:48

It's almost like we did that with escalate to deescalate.

Jeffrey 15:51

It's almost like we did that. Did I tell you about my paper that made people so angry?

Aaron 15:55

No, maybe you did. Tell me.

Jeffrey 15:57

I wrote a paper on conspiracy theories and their effect on strategic stability. And the two conspiracy theories are this conspiracy, that the Russians believe that we're going to secretly put nuclear weapons on our missile defense interceptors and use them to decapitate them, and escalate to deescalate.

Aaron 16:16

You've not told me about that, and I actually want to read that. So send that over when this podcast is done. Yeah. Oh, was that a vehicle driving by?

Jeffrey 16:23

Yeah.

Aaron 16:24

It was a semi-truck.

Jeffrey 16:25

It was a semi-truck. I like to think it's a hard mobile launcher.

Aaron 16:30

I was about to say, it's a mobile launcher. We can find it and target it. But anyways, go ahead.

Jeffrey 16:36

Anyway, the point of this is to say the Russians have this particular paranoia, which you and I know is unfounded because we have a kind of subtle awareness that Because a congressional committee carelessly suggested we consider something, and because a NATO ambassador had a bad day, we know that doesn't mean anything. But they don't know that.

Aaron 17:03

It would be imprudent for their defense officials not to take her seriously. How do you not take somebody seriously when you worst-case scenario plan?

Jeffrey 17:10

Well, and in particular, when you believe, as Putin does, that the conversion can happen in a very short time, and you will not even know it is happening.

Aaron 17:20

And for those of people who are maybe listening along now and saying like, oh, they'll get over it. This didn't end well when we first had the deployment of the now banned INF systems into Europe in the 1980s. This wasn't exactly a stabilizing factor in bilateral relations.

Jeffrey 17:44

Yeah, the Russians really freaked out when the U.S. deployed INF systems, right? That deployment happens in the autumn of 1983, which coincides perfectly with the war scare.

Aaron 17:58

Right. And, you know, the whole idea of countervailing targeting comes out in a nuclear planners group. I don't find it sort of... I don't find it to be a coincidence that they chose to roll out, even mangled, these talking points the day before NATO's nuclear planning group meets to discuss the alliance's overall nuclear deterrent. I do think that they're trying to make a point.

I do think that the entirety of this thing is actually quite logical and quite rational from an American perspective, which is, if you deploy these things, we will seek out To raise the cost on you so that you don't get the jump on us. And so this is ultimately to reinforce deterrence not to fight a war. But that's why messaging matters so much when you're dealing with this thing and why it infuriates me when people don't stick to their brief and go off the reservation when they're, you know, talking about things like nuclear war and, you know,

Jeffrey 19:02

Countervailing you know and you know the potential for decapitation strikes. I just, that's just what it makes me angry. Yes, because what I think is likely to happen is the Russians aren't going to read these remarks and see the intended meaning. They're not going to say, oh, by Pursuing this system and I would actually say pair of systems because I am more bothered about the ballistic missile Which is not technically a violation but but which is a serious challenge to that that treaty, but whatever I have my hobby horse but they're not going to read this and say oh These two systems that we have developed are They are putting us at risk of a return to this period that we did not like.

Perhaps we should do something different. They are going to see these remarks and they are going to say, aha. We knew it was the American plan all along that while we agreed to the INF treaty, they were secretly putting in place all of the pieces that would allow them this breakout capability. And now she has admitted it.

Now she has admitted that if we attempt to deploy our systems, they will consider this covert conversion and they will quickly put themselves in a position to do this.

Aaron 20:24

And of course they will not decide not to do it.

Jeffrey 20:29

We're going to have the opposite problem, which is when this system goes into proper deployment. There have been some rumors that some systems are deployed, but I don't get the sense that it's a large-scale deployment yet. But when the Russian general staff is in that phase, they are going to be so alert for signs of coming attack.

Aaron 20:53

It's just pointlessly dangerous. You mean the 9M729, just to be clear.

Jeffrey 20:59

Oh, sorry. When the cruise missile goes out into deployment, that's right. The general staff is going to look at her remarks and they're going to conclude that they need to be extra wary in the event that there is an attack, which is enormously destabilizing and precisely what happened. Well, I shouldn't say it's precisely, but it is kind of a mirror image to what happens in 1983, right?

Where the General Staff becomes focused not on their deployment, but on an American deployment, seeing it as a crucial moment when they need to be ready. And so, you know, like hopefully nobody like accidentally shoots down a Russian airplane or nobody tweets anything stupid. And then, you know, we all learn that, you know, the, the war scare of 2019 passed with, with you know, no day with no, no loss of life.

Right. But like, like it's better to avoid the war scares in the first place rather than to try to stumble through them.

Aaron 22:05

You know, I, I agree with all of that, and that's not just because I'm reading my 12th book on 1983 at the moment called Brink. Mark Ambinder, I'm very excited for it. It's sitting on my shelf. I'm on page 101, so I only started it two days ago. But I see also a second issue with it is that there's a credibility problem there.

One of the things in the 1980s with the U.S. ground-launched cruise missile deployment was – What else took the Russians off guard was the ability to win alliance consensus on this. I'm not sure you could win alliance consensus at the moment for an American deployment, again, Of a similar system or one that has similar capabilities to match the Russian INF violation.

And that's where I link it back again to Kay Bailey Hutchinson. And again, the importance of diplomacy and getting your messaging right. The number one thing you don't want to do is to get out over your ski tips. So some of the more wary European allies are afraid of tangling with the Russians because you're afraid that the Americans are going to get you nuked for something to appease American policymakers back home.

Jeffrey 23:24

Yeah, I... You know, I am someone who thinks that the advantage of the INF deployments that the US undertook in the early 1980s wasn't so much the threat that the missiles posed to the Russians, although, you know, it scared the pants off them, but it was the... The discrediting of the Soviet military leadership, which basically had told Gorbachev that they could go ahead with this.

I mean, they told, you know, Andropov and they told Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernyanko. There were a lot of them, all really fast right there for a period. But they had basically... Promise that the West wouldn't be able to respond, that it was too divided. And, you know, and indeed there were significant protests. And I'm someone who thinks that it was actually the ability of Western governments to do something hard, right, to hang together and to stand up to the Russian deployment and to win the domestic political debates that Both shook Gorbachev a little, but then also gave him a cudgel.

Because he could then turn around to the people who had pushed this, and he could be like, you told me that they weren't going to be able to respond, and oh, by the way, they did. And so your judgment is suspect. And so, you know, like, I do think it would be good if the NATO allies could do something hard together.

I have actually preferred the idea of sanctions on the Russian companies, which the Obama administration thought was too hard. But, like, we should do something together, right, to show Putin that, like, we can respond. But that actually requires a certain adroitness. It requires the ability to brief these countries, build this consensus, articulate a path forward, and then take it together.

And we don't seem to actually be able to do that. Not only do her, not only do Kay Bailey Hutchinson's comments reinforce this paranoid Russian fear, but I actually think they make it harder for do the kinds of things that we need to do to convince the Russians that they can't just deploy anything they want because it's divisive and upsetting and it makes us seem as crazy as the Russians when we need to be sending exactly the opposite message.

Aaron 25:46

I'm going to be slightly more pessimistic, too, because, like, one of the things that I'm seeing, you know, both about the RS-26, which is the circumvention, which is a ballistic missile that, you know, is a clone of the SS-20, and then what K. Bentley Hutchins is talking about, which is the cruise missile, the 9M729, is, you know, the fallback position to do something without being overly provocative is more missile defense.

But that feeds Russian paranoia. So, like, Within that context, is there a way politically to make missile defense more palatable to the Russians? And my answer to that is probably not. Or we have to start getting more creative in how we think about that. I don't know what you think about my thought process on this. So even a collective response could heighten the specific paranoia that you are talking about because of the specific concern about the common law system and the conversion of either the SM-3 or the introduction of a Tomahawk.

Jeffrey 26:45

Well, look, I mean, I think they have to move together. I mean, it's all well and good to organize something tough, like I said. And I don't object to looking at options for ground-based intermediate-range nuclear forces, although, you know, we have sea-based intermediate-range nuclear forces. Like, we're fine. But, like, I get it. You want to do something tough, but you also have to be willing to make the deal.

And I think the problem that we ran into, and I actually was thinking about this in the context of all those Clinton Yeltsin transcripts that came out.

Aaron 27:25

Yeah, those are good stuff.

Jeffrey 27:26

They got along great. But Clinton wasn't willing to ever make any deal with Yeltsin. They just kind of had this attitude like, well, they're friends. So their friendship will allow them to just paper over these differences. They don't actually have to fix them or solve them. And it's like, no, you don't understand. This is our last window to fix and solve these problems.

And if you don't, then you go into this next iteration, which is Bush and Putin. And they're friendly. They do get on well. But like over time, you can't paper over these things. And then, you know, Putin and Obama hate each other. And, you know, so like... If you aren't willing to make a deal on missile defense, if you aren't willing to... You know, I think you probably at this point have to go beyond transparency and confidence building.

I mean, I think you probably have to take the systems out of Poland and Romania. But if you aren't willing to strike a deal on defenses, I don't think you're going to be able to sustain a process of arms control on offenses. And, you know, off we go to the races. So, like... I worry that, you know, my advice that we should do something hard and we should be willing to consider these tougher measures, like that you cannot separate that advice from you also have to be willing to take yes for an answer.

And I think the answer is we're not willing to take yes for an answer. And so we're just going to rerun the arms race again for no apparent reason. Other than it sounds awesome when she's like, we're going to take them out. Yee-haw!

Aaron 29:04

That's right. I'm with you on that. It's become my ultimate thing when I think about these problems is what are we willing to concede rather than what do we want the Russians to give us, if that makes sense. So flipping, turning the mirror around and looking at ourselves and say, are we willing to give up missile defenses or are we willing to put a hard cap on missile defenses in Europe?

I'm not sure that we are. And that ultimately is where I think the INF question and the new start question, which this podcast bumped the podcast that was supposed to come out today but will come out next week, intersect and make me very pessimistic about the future of arms control.

Jeffrey 29:51

Yeah, I mean, I think the casual takeaway from this podcast and the one we have in the can that's going to get bumped is... We're watching a resurgence of the arms race, and it is precisely like the first resurgence of the arms race, which is it is very hard to get people to take arms control seriously as a solution to this problem.

And it's like we are insisting on relearning all of those lessons and re-experiencing the period of intense terror before we decide that all the hyper-masculine bulls**t Is just crazy. And that actually, even though we might loathe Vladimir Putin, and trust me, I loathe Vladimir Putin. That, like, we still have a shared interest in not having a nuclear war.

And that requires reaching agreements, however distasteful. It just sucks that we have to relearn all this again when we just went through it. Like we went through it in my lifetime. I was a child living in Illinois, remembering being terrified, picking up on the anxiety of the war scare of 1983, which even if it wasn't, you know, known to policymakers, it was certainly manifest in the nuclear freeze movement and the anxiety that adults felt.

So why the are we going to do this again? Because we can take them out, man. I guess because everything comes back into fashion. We're going to have the skinny ties. You remember the skinny knit ties?

Aaron 31:34

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I have a few in my closet at the moment.

Jeffrey 31:38

You can get a skinny knit tie. We'll reboot some classic Cyndi Lauper and, you know, then have a nice helping of Nuclear Holocaust. It'll be great.

Aaron 31:51

Go read or watch American Psycho depending on your medium of choice.

Jeffrey 31:57

I mean, we already have the absurd, you know, yuppie greed thing happening again.

Aaron 32:03

Yeah, although the Gilded Age is a throwback to the 1920s, not really the 1980s. But why not, you know?

Jeffrey 32:11

Yeah, you know. Everything old is new again.

Aaron 32:15

So before we wrap up here, do you think... Is that our f***ing happy note? No, no. I have a prediction. Do you think they'll issue a clarifying statement to try and clean it up? I mean, just so you know, this is Tuesday, 2.46 p.m. on the East Coast, 11.46 p.m. on the West Coast. It's been about five hours since this dropped, since my Twitter exploded.

Jeffrey 32:34

My understanding is the press people ran for the bunkers. And hunkered down. They put out the transcript really fast. They did.

Aaron 32:42

I requested it on Twitter, although I don't think I was responsible for that.

Jeffrey 32:46

Well, I mean, my sense is that all the reporters heard her say that. Lauren Cook followed up with her. She said it again. And I think they were all like... She said it. No one believed she meant it. But she... Said it, and I think it was a real dilemma for them. Like, do you report it? Like, like, no one wants to be irresponsible, right? Because you know, you're thinking like, I don't think she meant it, but like, also, she is a grown-up and she made some news. And you know, I think Reuters, Reuters, went with the kind of more inflammatory version. AP went with the kind of like fuller block quote.

And then we'll see what others do. I am expecting consensus to emerge. What I think is happening is I think they are not issuing public statements, but I think my guess is that they will, off the record... You know, and it'll be like, you know, sources close to Ambassador Hutchison, sources familiar with Ambassador Hutchison's thinking are going to like start walking this back.

Aaron 33:58

Yeah.

Jeffrey 33:59

And, you know, I don't know what kind of person she is. Weirdly, I don't know anybody who worked for her on the Hill, even though she was in Congress for and in the Senate forever. Yeah. So, like, she might be... I don't know what kind of boss she is. Like, she might be a screamy blame-your-staff boss, in which case, you know, that rollout's going to be different than if she's a, you know, well-adjusted individual.

I get... I get a bad vibe from her, but my bad vibes have been wrong before.

Aaron 34:30

I have no read on her whatsoever. But I do hope that the source is close. Start to use precise language again, because precise language matters.

Jeffrey 34:44

When you're talking about nuclear weapons, you really... Here's a hypothesis for you, Aaron. U.S. public communication about nuclear weapons would improve if the only people authorized to talk about nuclear weapons were performance artists trained in interpretive dance.

Aaron 35:11

That's not where I expected you to take that, but okay. I can see why. I think we'd still be better off.

Jeffrey 35:17

Yeah, yeah. Yeah?

Aaron 35:21

Yeah, yeah. I have nothing to add to that, so I think that's a signal for me to wrap up. I think listeners may be tired of the freeway noise in the background.

Jeffrey 35:32

All right, well, enjoy New Jersey. Don't get fitted for a pair of cement shoes.

Aaron 35:38

You know... My scenery, I have a little grass. You know, there are some cars, but then I have some nice green. It's about 75 degrees. So it's almost if I squint, it looks like Los Angeles.

Jeffrey 35:59

If I only stay on the highway stuck in traffic, and I repeatedly hit myself in the face with a hammer, I can convince myself it's Los Angeles.

Aaron 36:10

That's right. Especially with today's weather. You're getting phone calls. That means journalists are calling you and we're off the rails.

Jeffrey 36:18

All right. I'm going to take it.

Aaron 36:20

All right. Jeffrey? Jeffrey? Thank you for joining. And everybody, thank you for listening and putting up with the sound quality on this one. If you like what you're hearing, we have a new feature at the Arms Control Long podcast called Brilliant Pebbles. It's a podcast for our subscribers. And if you would like to be our subscriber, you can head on over to patreon.com.

Slash ACW podcast. And for five bucks a month, you can get access to our Slack channel and the exclusive subscriber pod, Brilliant Pebbles, and access to our Slack channel. And with that, thank you everybody for listening. And thanks everybody for putting up with the bad noise. Have a good one, Jeffrey.