Pulling Out of the INF

Jeffrey Lewis 0:02

Killing the treaties to shock the normies. 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 Rafi Kariri Center for the Middle East. Hey! Hey! It's a live pod. Yeah. We're recording from our undisclosed location in Washington, D.C. because you're here. Yeah, the undisclosed location in my boss's office. That's right. He has a much nicer view than I do. I stare at that new, I don't even know what you call it, but that new sort of steel and glass cube across the street from 15th and K where the Washington Post used to be.

Now I stare at the new Washington Post building.

Jeffrey 0:57

Yeah, well, so it's nice to actually be here. And we'll see how that goes. Normally I have a headset on. I thought we would talk about the INF Treaty because that's pretty much all anybody is talking about.

Aaron 1:10

Yeah, I think, has it happened yet? Has he formally withdrawn or is he just indicated that he will withdraw and Bolton is now in Moscow and will do so at the end of his trip?

Jeffrey 1:19

Hmm. He promised to undertake what I call the Stormy Daniels pullout at a campaign rally. So it wasn't, it's not a formal notification. I presume there was no principals meeting. I don't think anything's in writing. I just, you know, he was just up there on the dais screaming.

Aaron 1:41

After a night of animal planet, something along those lines, right?

Jeffrey 1:43

Yeah, that's right. And Bolton has been in Moscow for meetings. And so I suspect that the U.S. will leave the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. But that's not a thing that is – it's not set in stone. So we can pretend this catastrophe isn't happening for at least a little bit longer.

Aaron 2:08

Yeah. I mean, so I would say that the reactions thus far to the INF pullout have been twofold. One is good. The Russians have been cheating, so teach them a lesson. And the other one is the Russians have been cheating. We should pull out or at least put more pressure on them. To come back into compliance so we can be smarter about this.

Jeffrey 2:32

Would you say that's right? I know you're over there at the Atlantic Council. There are also people who care about the Pacific. That's right. Some people think it's good because China has a whole bunch of these missiles and that we can respond. That is right. We think this is terrible and thought it might make sense to talk through some of the reasons.

Aaron 2:50

Yeah. You know, I did see the Asia debate, and I think we should start with a refresher on what the INF actually is, because it's a basic mode treaty. It's not really a range treaty, wouldn't you say?

Jeffrey 3:04

Yeah, I think... I mean, one thing is, which I was writing a column, and I just gave up on this part. You know, the range is... As described in the INF Treaty, bear little to no resemblance to the terms that we use in the U.S. for the ranges of missiles. So, you know, you've got, we have, you know, close range, which is like under 300 kilometers, short range, which is under 1,000, you know, medium, which is what, 1,000 to 3,000, intermediate 3,000 to 5,500, and then ICBM above that.

And the INF Treaty has these two terms, intermediate and shorter range. And so shorter is not short, it's actually a reference to intermediate. And so intermediate is defined, well, Yeah, I'd have to double check. I think intermediate starts at 1,000 kilometers and goes up to 5,500, but then there's also the 500 to 1,000 kilometer range, which is the shorter.

So, you know, it actually covers a whole swath of missiles that we would have defined as short range, medium range, and intermediate range. Right.

Aaron 4:16

Yeah, and, you know, that's sort of been lost. Oh, yeah, and then as you point out, Only if they are ground-based. Only if they are ground-based because so much of that Asia debate, which is maybe where we should start because we'll finish about something else, sort of leaves that out conveniently about where do you put ground-based missiles in the Pacific.

Jeffrey 4:35

Yeah. I understand. There's sort of a – there's a bad argument, I suppose, and a good argument. I mean – The bad argument is, well, the argument, right? And if you stop it early, it's bad. And then I think it gets more persuasive. China has a large number of short, medium, well, they have a large number of short range missiles, particularly things between 500 and 1,000 kilometers.

And they have a small number of medium and intermediate range missiles. And some of those are nuclear. And we should say even though it's the intermediate range nuclear forces treaty, it actually doesn't prohibit just nuclear armed missiles. It's entire class. Any land-based missile of that range, right? So the Chinese are not a party to the agreement. They have a large number of missiles, although they're mostly in the 500 to 1,000 kilometer range.

And so we could have dealt with this. But I think it's... It's not a great argument to sort of stop there and say like, well, we need our own. I think there is because we could have our own, because as you point out you know, like, first of all, there's nothing stopping the Japanese from deploying such systems and the South Koreans are.

And so if there were like, I think if the actual thing that was required to respond to those Chinese capabilities was matching capabilities, which like in real life, it almost never is. You could do them with either sea-based systems or air-based systems for the U.S. And for the Japanese, they could do sea, air, and they could actually even do their own land-based systems.

Now, I will pause here and I will say I think the more sophisticated argument, which actually I still don't buy, but I think gets a little better, is I think you can complain about how capital-intensive it is to pursue sea-basing. You know, that there is an added cost to putting things on ships, provided that you don't gold plate your trucks.

Aaron 6:39

Right. You know, which, you know, with U.S. defense procurement, you never really know.

Jeffrey 6:42

Right. And in fact, you know, one of the things for the Glicom, the... The intermediate range cruise missile that was deployed in Europe and eliminated under the treaty, you know, one of the big sources of cost growth was the vehicle. Was it really? I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a substantial driver of cost growth and they had to switch the, you know, sometimes if you look, you'll see that there are two different vehicle types listed as the prime mover for the thing.

And that's because they had some cost growth problems and they wanted to explore different options to save money. So, you know, I think it's true that ships are more expensive, but don't forget you do still have to buy the trucks. And then you kind of get to these strategic questions, like is it enough money to make a difference?

Because there are real downsides to land-based missiles in a region that's basically an ocean. I mean, one, they don't float. But if you put them on land, a lot of people say, well, put them in Guam. But Guam is very small. And so if your goal is to- Disperse. Yeah, disperse and hide these things or make them difficult to find, Guam's not the world's greatest location for that.

Aaron 7:56

Yeah. I am less concerned about the Asia side of this more than I am about the Atlantic side of this. That's not just because I work at the Atlantic Council, because that is sort of like where I think the heart of strategic stability issues come from these class of missiles. I think we talked about two podcasts ago about the scare of 1983, or at least we wrote about it, and then how these were viewed as decapitation, particularly on the Russian side, and how...

It's not clear to me how this, you know, the Trump pullout. The stormy? The stormy. Was coordinated with allies and whether or not there's even a pathway for the reintroduction of American countervailing systems back into Europe of this class that was eliminated under the INF.

Jeffrey 8:51

Yeah, you know, when I... Look at this. I think it might be a mistake to assume that there is a strategic rationale.

Aaron 9:02

I think that's right.

Jeffrey 9:04

Well, it's actually a column that I have to finish up for foreign policy that I'm working on where I make the point that I think we – We've misconstrued the purpose of this act and other acts, you know, that we've sort of imagined that like, there must be a reason. And I think that, you know, because we're experts, like we like to come along and we like to give a reason.

But, like, that's a thing we do after. Like, the reasons we will invent, either because, you know, you're like some people and you want a job, or you're like other people and you're just trying to make the best of a terrible situation. Like, well, it could be okay if. Those reasons, like, they will come as a shock to the man who made the decision.

Yeah. He's not aware of them. Right, right, right. So, you know, I want to be careful with doing that. Like, I... Yes, I think there are strategic stability concerns. I don't think Donald Trump has thought about them at all.

Aaron 10:06

No, I don't think so either. But I think that that's my point is, you know, I think it's always important to start this conversation. I am not one that believes that the U.S. made up the idea that the Russians blatantly violated the INF with a cruise missile launch. It was in 2014, right? Yeah. Oh, you're giving me a pop quiz?

Jeffrey 10:31

I'm just trying to remember offhand, because I can't Google. Well, I'll tell you, you know what it was after? It was after 2011 when John Bolton wrote an op-ed calling to leave the INF because of Iran's missiles, and he complained how much it constrained the Russians. Did he really?

Aaron 10:45

Yeah, apparently didn't constrain the Russians as much as he thought. You know, we disagree, I mean, with sort of the Obama administration's tactics as they move forward to this. They maybe sort of sounded the alarm a little earlier. But then we get sort of into this idea where I think we're – where the rationale for holding the Russians' feet to the fire is fine, you know, no matter who's in power.

But when you don't think it through – And sort of you convince somebody who's not paying that close attention to this that you give them an out for something that they've already done. So this is like punishing my son when he's already peed his pants because I missed the warning signs.

Jeffrey 11:27

Right. Well, the example I was thinking of is like – If someone commits a murder, right, they're violating the law, but the rest of us don't withdraw from the law to make legal murder. Right. Right.

Aaron 11:40

That would be vigilantism. I think it's the word that would be.

Jeffrey 11:42

Yeah. Except for, you know, we're not actually going to engage in any vigilantism because we're not going to like go get their missiles. We're going to get some of our own. And my guess is we won't get as many as the Russians get. I think we should, you know, say, I mean, we were talking about this, that, you know, we've done so many podcasts on this topic.

But listeners may be racking their brains to remember what the two problems were. And so there were actually two missiles. There's a violation which Actually think is probably the less problematic of the two systems but it's the clearest legal violation and so it's the one that the state department has emphasized and so it's a cruise missile which the russians call the 9m729 which the us calls the ssc8 screwdriver it's a it's a cruise missile for a system like the iskander although it may have a different launcher And it's probably a land-based variant of the Kalibr family.

And so, you know, you're looking at like a 1500 kilometer range cruise missile, clearly a violation. But there is a second missile called the RS-26, which exploits a loophole in the treaty. And this will, I swear to you, Aaron, there will be a point to this. The Russians exploited a loophole that we knew was in the INF Treaty, and it was supposed to be dealt with in the START context, which is we always knew Russia could take an ICBM, remove its upper stage, so take a three-stage ICBM and cut it down to two, pack it full of warheads, and it would be an intermediate-range nuclear force.

This was a well-known problem in 1987 because that's actually what the SS-20, which was the big Soviet missile that caused all the problem, was. It was a Soviet ICBM where they popped off the top stage and packed it full of warheads. Well, like three if you go over to the Smithsonian. Yeah. So Russia did that again. And so what they did was they took, I think it was a Yars, took off the third stage, put one warhead on it and tested it once and just barely got it to ICBM range, 5,500 kilometers.

Then they packed that sucker full of warheads and they started testing it as an IRBM. And the reason I say this is because whenever I would point out to people like, OK, this is not a violation of the agreement. It's a circumvention, but it is a serious one. People would say, yeah, but what do you care? Because there's a punishment for the Russians, which is in order to make it not an INF force, the Russians had to declare it under new start.

And so they lose. They have to give up one of their new start ICBMs. Well, not anymore, they don't. Not anymore. Nope. Right? They can build as many of these suckers as they want. They can admit that they're intermediate range nuclear forces.

Aaron 14:31

That's right. And so they can build more missiles.

Jeffrey 14:33

And so then they get all those new start slots back for however long new start exists, which may not be that long.

Aaron 14:38

Right. So this is, I think, what I was trying to drive at inelegantly, which is when you don't have a strategic rationale for pulling out and you don't think through it all, Is you wind up in a worse place even when your starting position is both a circumvention and an outright violation.

Jeffrey 14:56

That's right. If we're negotiating and you're cheating and my punishment to you is to make legal your violations and dramatically increase the number of slots you have in new start for your nuclear weapons, I think you walk away from that. I mean, you still complain and grumble because, you know, you see what more you can get. But like secretly, you're just laughing your way to the bank.

Aaron 15:22

You know, in a field of political science where everybody tries to challenge the rational choice theory, this is one of the clearest choices where you can just literally do a pro and con table and you can just count. And one side is greater than the other, so the least bad option is one of the easiest things to discern on the face of the planet, even if the Russians are the original ***.

Jeffrey 15:44

Yeah.

Aaron 15:45

I don't understand.

Jeffrey 15:47

There's a Beavis and Butthead sketch where there's a meathead athletic coach who keeps imploring Butthead to kick him in the jimmy to show how tough he is.

Aaron 15:58

He's like, I'll show you how tough I am. Kick me in the jimmy. And so Butthead just keeps kicking him in the nuts. What happened? It's okay.

Jeffrey 16:06

So now this goes back to the Bolton op-ed because maybe there's some... Oh, I don't think this is any... None of the things we have discussed matter one bit to John Bolton. No. He has a fundamentally different calculation. Right. Which is to say it's not a calculation at all.

Aaron 16:19

No, it's... Is this ideology? I mean, is this sort of fierce partisanship? What is the word I'm looking for here? It's just militant ideology. No. No? I think it's subculture.

Jeffrey 16:34

Right-wing subculture? Well, so I – when Bolton wrote that op-ed in 2000 – Maybe describe it. In 2000, John Bolton and Paula de Sutter wrote an op-ed saying – or 2011, that the – in 2011, John Bolton and Paula de Sutter wrote an op-ed saying that the United States should withdraw from the INF Treaty. And in the body, they actually cite several different countries, but the headline or the header is because it doesn't deal with the Iranian threat.

Because the Iranians also were developing INF range missiles. And at the time, it really struck me that Bolton's rationale was, Kept changing, but the conclusion always remained the same. And the question was, how to interpret that op-ed? And I wrote a little blog post, which I've now revisited, because it's even more true when you go from an op-ed to a campaign speech.

I just read that blog post. I reread it, I should say. But yeah, I remember. So it's, I mean... I think your toilet makes an appearance into it. My toilet, yes, in my apartment in Washington, D.C., that I no longer have. Above my toilet, there was a picture of Jean Genet, the famous French writer. And Jean Genet was quite transgressive.

You know, he was a petty criminal. And in addition to that, he was a homosexual at the time. That was illegal in a lot of places. And so much of his work was about transgression. Shocking, polite society with the realities of his life. And he has a story, which I didn't find. A sociologist named Dick Hebdige found it.

Drew his attention to make an elegant point, which I will steal with attribution. But, you know, Jean Genet gets arrested by the French police. He gets arrested by the Spanish police in Franco-era Spain, which, you know, is not a nice experience. So I'm shaking my head no, sorry. Feel free to jump in here anytime, Aaron.

Aaron 18:55

It's a live podcast. There's a lot of nonverbal cues. Yeah, I know, which, you know, they're very exciting for listeners. Frank goes, Frank goes. You're right.

Jeffrey 19:02

And the police officers find this tube of Vaseline in his things, which is an unmistakable sign that he is gay. Yeah. And they begin to torment him. And he sort of recounts that at first he is uncomfortable about this, but then he sort of begins to appreciate the power that this object has because it makes these cops so angry.

Green. Okay, I can see where you're going with this. You know, it just fills them with rage. And so, Hebdige, who's a sociologist, uses this to explain the styles of subcultures like punks and skinheads and mods and teddy boys. You know, which is like, what is the purpose of their style? Like, and, and, the example I like is, why does a punk put a safety pin through his nose? That's right. You know, and, and.

You and I aren't supposed to like it. In fact, if we like it, that's a problem. Because the point of the object, and I think it's true of the op-ed, and it's true of the speech, the point of the object is to manifest the tensions between the dominant culture and the subculture. Like, the point of that safety pin in that punk's nose is to make clear that you and he are different, and that his...

Style is an act of refusal. It's a fuck you. Yeah. Okay.

Aaron 20:30

Yeah.

Jeffrey 20:30

It's go fuck yourself. That's right. And I think that's, you know, the point I made about the op-ed, and I think it's true of Trump's speech, is we are mistaken if we try to understand these acts as exercises in persuasions. Or exercises in persuasion. Just as you would never imagine that a safety pin in a person's nose is an argument about strategic stability.

That's right. It's just not. And it's funny because I made this point to a younger colleague who was a little skeptical. And so I had to send him... A thing which I thought was recently published, but it was actually published in 2000. It's 18 years old. There's an essay by John Bolton before he went into the Bush administration decrying the rise of global governance.

And it's a very clear statement that, you know, his whole worldview is not about... Like, his worldview is not about... The conversations that we have about stability. His worldview is about opposing the constraints that our worldview imposes upon the United States.

Aaron 21:47

Yeah. So it's a rebellion against sort of our idea of supranational institutions and governance from everything from the Treaty of Amity with Iran. I think there was something with the Postal Service. And then for listeners of this podcast. Building out to the INF. And so he's not making, he's not doing, well, so this is going back to my analogy about the most basic rational choice theory.

This is an argument against sort of the pros and cons and the role of ideology in individual decision-making, especially when that decision maker is pushing on an open door.

Jeffrey 22:27

Indeed. So let me read you the abstract of his paper, Should We Take Global Governance Seriously? Please. Well, because it sounds like I'm pretending that he's some kind of lunatic. So I'll just give you the words. My thesis as a convinced Americanist is that these happy days are over. Like it or not, the globalists have seized more readily the opportunities provided by the end of the Cold War to advance their agenda, building on an iceberg-like mass produced by years of writing, conference-going, resolution-passing, and networking.

In substantive field after field, human rights, labor, health, the environment, political, military affairs, and international organization, the globalists... Have been advancing while the Americanists have slept. Recent clashes in and around the United States Senate indicate that the Americanist party has awakened and that the harm and cost to the United States of belittling our popular sovereignty and constitutionalism and restricting both our domestic and our international policy flexibility and power are finally receiving attention.

Nonetheless, Americanists find themselves surrounded by small armies of globalists, each tightly clutching a favorite new treaty or multilateralist proposal. The man hates treaties. That's right. Where is that written? 2000. It's a law review article.

Aaron 23:47

It's in the Chicago Journal of International Law. I've never read that. That's actually really, really instructive and insightful.

Jeffrey 23:51

Yeah, because the whole thing is about his general opposition to international agreements because they represent a... Well, how does he say it? It's perfect. It's a belittling of our popular sovereignty and constitutionalism. It's a tube of Vaseline. It's a f***ing tube of Vaseline, man. You know, he is killing the treaties to shock the normies.

Aaron 24:17

And so even the way that they announce and these sort of wanton big rallies... Makes it better. Makes it better.

Jeffrey 24:23

And I mean, at some level, it's... Like, we're all used to triggering the libs, right, as a reason for things. But I think one of the things I find really notable is that we often treat Trump like he is this individual phenomenon. But, you know, John Bolton was writing this stuff 18 years ago and calling himself an Americanist and criticizing the globalists.

I mean, like, I could see Steve Bannon reading this and, you know, like rubbing one out on the printed out paper. That's right. I was about to say.

Aaron 24:54

Right. And so when he gets his avenue to return to power, well, he does what he says he's going to do.

Jeffrey 25:03

Right. He is. Yes. He is attempting to whittle away at that iceberg-like mass produced by years of writing, conference-going, resolution-passing, and networking. What about podcasting, John?

Aaron 25:15

Podcasting. This is pre-podcasting. I don't know. I'm just being... Yeah. Well, so... This is actually even pre-blog era. I don't start the blog for another four years. What's funny is I think the Russians would look at that in certain ways and sort of shake their heads along and say yes, albeit replacing Americanists with Russia-firsters. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Because they have made the same argument about the INF. I think it was the first time was in 2007. It was after the ABM Treaty or somewhere around that line. When we record in real time, I can't look up my Google Things check dates. What is notional about restraint and about how they feel unduly restrained by... Many of the same things in this treaty that the INF, that John Bolton is harping on, and how we're giving them an out, if that makes sense.

Jeffrey 26:09

Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think he fundamentally, you know, he is so focused on that broader point, and it really comes through in the op-ed, actually, that he wrote in 2011, you know, where he's sort of concerned that it's also constraining on the Russians, right? You know, it's really, it's a, it's a, it's a, you can tell from him it's a worldview issue.

And he's sort of like, well, you can't, I mean, he sort of blames the Russians for, you know, being the Russians. But he's also a little bit like, you know, like, come on, guys, can't you see this is bad for you too?

Aaron 26:42

Well, why don't we just summarize the 2011 op-ed? Because I think that's important just to drive the point home. And then let's pivot to the sort of the big picture takeaways as we look forward to a future world without... Without arms control.

Jeffrey 26:58

A theme of the podcast. Well, you know, I don't know that there's much to say about the 2011 op-ed. I mean, in and of itself, it's just, you know, as I say, I don't think we should treat it as an exercise in persuasion. It mentions Iran and it mentions China. But, you know, like Iran doesn't get mentioned this go-round.

It wouldn't surprise me if at some point they mention other countries that have these capabilities. It's just not an exercise in persuasion. But what really struck me about it was not its content, but its timing. I mean, it really, like I say, there's this international law review in 2000 and this op-ed in 2011. And so this stuff is all, like you can see very clearly in...

In Bolton's work, the very clear precedence of the Trump era.

Aaron 27:53

So let's pivot out and let's do the finalist. What does this mean? And I'll go first. I mean, so like the way that like I talked to some military people about this and they see like an actual need for longer range conventional systems in Europe or I and I can make that case too. And in fact, I find that argument slightly persuasive on the US side about some need for longer range conventional systems.

But I'm not sure the Russians want longer range conventional systems, but they want more nuclear systems. So there's an asymmetry there. And two, within NATO, I would call the leaders of our major allies part of the globalist cuts, even if they have sort of right wing constituencies that are making life difficult for them. Why would they accept American INF forces back into their countries?

Especially at a time when you look at any type of Pew polling on Donald Trump around the world. I think in left-wing Spain, I think he's in single digits, if that makes sense. And so going back to that rationality thing, again, What does it look like with an unrestrained Russia and a NATO that's perhaps divided east and west?

The eastern side happy for a more American thing, but the western side in the larger country is not so happy. And just real no prospect for a return to that dual-track 1980s type situation.

Jeffrey 29:27

You know, the thing about... Europe. And I mean, this is actually true about Japan. And I think this is kind of such a weird aspect of this is on the one hand where we say that we're bothered by Russian behavior, which we are. But the implication is that these capabilities are going to be the response. But there was nothing stopping Japan from buying sea-launched Tomahawks, which wouldn't violate the treaty.

And there's nothing stopping Japan from developing ground-launch missiles that would be prohibited by the treaty, but they're not a party to it. South Korea has those capabilities. There's nothing stopping the Poles From buying these capabilities. And my understanding is maybe the Poles have sniffed around some European systems that might be in this range. And so there's a kind of revealed preference thing.

Yes, the treaty imposes some constraints, but it does not comprehensively constrain these capabilities. And yet, we have this huge Russian problem we say that demands that we withdraw from the treaty, but we're not actually even exploiting the things we can do right now. Right. And I think that like on the one hand, that's like a good governance.

Like, no, no, you you you actually like take the steps you can now and leave this really costly step to later. But I think what it goes to show you is that they're not actually that worried about that problem. No. Right? It's not worth the defense dollars to them. No. Right? Spend their money elsewhere. If they'd had to pay to withdraw from the INF Treaty, then I think, you know, they would have suddenly been like, oh, this is very expensive.

We hate this treaty, but, right? Right. So it's the fact that it's a cost-free signaling thing is what makes it so appealing to them. And I strongly suspect that it will not be followed by new capabilities, at least not a significant number. On the U.S. side.

Aaron 31:31

Yeah, or among our allies.

Jeffrey 31:33

Yeah, I agree. If you look at the ABM system that we built in Alaska, it's not really that much more than what an ABM compliant system would have looked like. You know, it is more. It's a slight improvement over what they plan to build. But it's not like the U.S. withdrew from the ABM Treaty in 2001 and now 17 years later we have, you know, thousands of interceptors providing a thick defense over the country, right?

We have a thin, fragile defense based on a system that doesn't work that's located at a single site. And, you know, a lot of the assets are constrained in the way that the ABM Treaty would have required. And so, like... I think we're kind of headed for the same thing where we like pull out of the treaty and we build a small number of systems that would have been prohibited.

So you can't say that we didn't do anything, but when you really look at it, just like we look at that ABM system, like we pulled out of the ABM treaty, did we end up building an ABM system that would actually defend the country? No. The Russians end up developing a whole bunch of systems to defeat it.

Yes. I think that's where we're going to go with INF.

Aaron 32:41

Yeah. I think so too. And It's just, I mean, again, it's a subculture. I think that's the point of this podcast is that we're dealing with the anti-globalist subculture. Sure, you can make some arguments for conventional systems, maybe in the seed role or for longer range, not necessarily nuclear. So getting to your point where we have some response, but perhaps not on the levels that the Russians will do.

So perhaps we'll be left at a disadvantage. I think with that, I have a meeting to go to, so we're going to have to wrap up the in-person podcast. This was really fun. I'm glad we got to do this. I know. It's always nice to do it in person. It's a different dynamic, and it's fun. Yeah, you can watch me check my phone.

You can watch me check the phone. You can watch me nod along rather than say, yeah, uh-huh, uh-huh. So with that... Oh, okay, let me do the readout. And so with that, thank you for joining. And if you like the Arms Control Wong podcast, hop on over to patreon.com slash acwpodcast. And for as little as $3 a month if you're a student or $5 a month if you're not a student, you can get access to our Slack channel where we talk a lot about these cool things.

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