Transcription
Noah, welcome to the program.
Thank you so much for having me.
You bet. I have to tell you, your your uh movie frustrating because it ends and I'm like, wait, there should be five more episodes. This is should should not just be a 90-minute movie. There's so much more. Uh really compelling the way you told the story. So, congratulations on that. First question, are there going to be sequels?
Well, first of all, thank you very much. which I I really appreciate. It means a lot coming from you. Um there is no plan for a sequel. Um you know we we wanted the movie to be a provocation in the best sense of the word. Uh you know a provocation to a larger conversation about this nuclear issue which I'm so glad to be having with you right now.
Yeah. Um was your primary source the Annie Jacobson book or was that just one of many? I mean, did you go to government sources? Where how did you get all this information?
We spoke to a wide variety of people who had worked in places like the White House, the CIA, Strategic Command. We, you know, I had worked as a journalist previously and so knew folks um who had held these kinds of jobs. Katherine Bigow, who's the director of the movie, had made Hurt Locker: Zero Dark 30. Um, so she has extraordinary relationships in the national security world and obviously there's an incredible body of work that has been done over the past several decades by you know think tank folks, authors, journalists, etc. Um, and you know it's it's surprising how much a lot of this information is in the public domain in terms of what procedures the government would follow in in case of a of an attack like this. And then a lot of it, you know, you can build by talking to sources. Uh, you know, much like you would do if you were trying to report out a story or get to the bottom of something.
You know, it's it's amazing to me that most presidents don't ever ask for training on this. They don't they don't they don't do dry runs. This is you're the one person that could change the whole world uh in 15 minutes and you're coming into it. Most of them are just coming into it absolutely dead cold if something would happen. They don't they don't know how the work and this is not some I don't know how you would make the decision in that amount of time. Yeah. It's I mean two of the most terrifying things that we that we zeroed in on early was this question of sole authority and decision time. Right. So the idea that in the United States we live in a nuclear monarchy. The president of the United States has the sole authority to determine whether these weapons are used. It's not like he has to build any kind of consensus with the joint chiefs of staff or take a vote of the cabinet. He has to decide uh and he has to decide under extraordinary time pressure. So, you know, if a missile is launched from the Pacific theater, that part of the world, it's, you know, under 30 minutes to impact on the continental United States. If a missile is launched off our coast by a Russian sub, for instance, it would take 10 to 12 minutes. So, you do have a scenario in which one person has arguably the fate of all mankind in in their hands and they've got a clock ticking and you know depending on where they are and what the target is, they're probably running for their life or being evacuated worrying about their own family. Um, and it's all put to them. What do you want to do? Um, and if you that's not scary enough. The cherry on top is we spoke to people who had worked directly with presidents, directly with secretaries of defense and we said how often uh is the president rehearsing this, practicing for it, preparing and they said never. Basically never.
Never.
They get one briefing when they take office where they're introduced to the military aid who we're all familiar with, the guy who follows them around with the the suitcase, the nuclear football if you will. they're the process is explained how that would work. Um and then after that uh they never think about it again. And you know Ronald Reagan we were told was the last president who participated in any kind of live nuclear decision-making exercise. Uh and it's and and so the f the guy who has the most responsibility, all the authority is also arguably the least practiced and prepared of anyone in this whole
it's really it's it's terrifying. You know, I've I've talked to President Trump about nuclear capability and I will tell you, you say whatever you want about Donald Trump, but the one thing I know he's afraid of is nuclear war. He that has kept him awake night after night. He he knows like Reagan did and Gorbachoff did. You start that you push that button it's over. It's all over.
There's I mean you you hinted at it you know when you know you were like I got you know
if we fly these missiles over this country what are they going to are they going to perceive this as a threat? you know, missiles, you know, with Russia. I think in in the movie, you've got Russia saying, "How do we know you're not going to bomb it? We should just trust you." I mean, it's it's over.
Yeah. And and all of which begs the question, I think, um, for President Trump and for all of our leaders, what do we do about it? You know, how do we solve this problem? We we've lived with this threat in the background of all our lives since the dawn of the nuclear age. I I am, despite my last name, not related to Oppenheimer. Um but you know we've lived with this
only got half
we've we've lived with this uh dynamite in the walls uh for so many decades now and really since the end of the cold war we haven't really talked or thought about it very much. It is obviously on President Trump's mind. He does talk about it. He's talked about trying to build the Golden Dome and a a better missile defense system. And I think that you know this this question of how do we make the world safer? And it may be part of that is building a better missile defense system. It it it may be that part of it is re-engaging with an arms control and arms reduction process. Right? I mean, New Start, our last remaining treaty with the Russians that that governs the the development and, you know, proliferation of these weapons is set to expire at the end of the year. Um maybe we should engage in a process with Russia, with China to try to dramatically reduce the nuclear stockpile. Um there are a lot of levers that the president and can pull to try to make us all safer.
So, you know, part of the controversy with your um your movie which is uh House of Dynamite and it's on Netflix. Um, part of the controversy, I guess, with the with the Pentagon is that, um, the groundbased missile uh, or interceptors and the interceptors, you say it's 60% success. I think I think uh, Annie Jacobson says it's like close to zero and um, the Pentagon says it's 100% every time.
What do you think it really is? Is it 60?
So there's a there's a few factors involved here. Um the record of uh the testing record for this system which is the groundbased midcourse interceptors uh is is is public and it is 61%. They have done a series of tests over the last 25 years and if you add up uh the you know the number of successes uh over the number of failures it comes to 61%. The the Pentagon in their memo is trying to say that the last several tests have been successful. The previous ones were not. So they say if you only count the most recent ones, it's 100%. Which is of course impossible. That's like saying I made my last I I made my last two free throws and so I'm 100% free throw shooter even though I missed the previous Exactly. Right.
four. Yeah. So now that being said, they're not wrong in that the system is getting better. the software is getting better. All of it is improving, but it is nowhere close to being able to say it's 100% effective. And part of that also comes down to the conditions under which these tests are undertaken. Right? If I tell you, you know, Glenn, I'm going to throw a baseball at your head, it's a lot easier for you to brace yourself and be ready and catch that baseball, it's, you know, if an attack were to happen in the real world, it's far less likely, uh, you know, it's far more complicated to defend against. So, you know, this though is not a debate between, you know, us as filmmakers and the Pentagon. It's really a debate between the Pentagon and a much wider community of experts um about the efficacy of this system. And, you know, like I said, it, you know, it's it's a good conversation to have. Do we want to improve the system? Do we want to try to pour more money into building something like Golden Do?
Yes. Yes. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. Um the um uh the one thing that you didn't uh hit on that was in Annie's book that I thought was fascinating was that the president when the president has to finally make the decision, he still doesn't know if it's nuclear tipped. There could be a conventional weapon on a ballistic missile that is being sent by North Korea, let's say. I mean, it would be an incredible waste. But, you know, if we launch before the missile hits, we don't even know if that's nuclear and we would have then started a nuclear war because we're launching nuclear weapons and they didn't. I think that one of the things that we're trying to capture in the story that we tell, which is of course a fictional story, um is the difficulty of making decisions in the fog of war. And that particularly when you have such a tight decision window when that clock is winding down so rapidly, it's it you're going to find yourself being forced to make calls with imperfect and incomplete information. And the other thing that is scary is is that the system that we built to that governs the use of nuclear weapons was designed during the Cold War for a specific purpose. It was to make sure that the Soviets believed they could never get away with a first strike. That if they launched missiles at us, the president would be able to fire back so quickly that our decision-making, our command and control apparatus would be able to retaliate. And so maintaining that deterrent threat, we needed to make sure that the president could respond and retaliate as quickly and as easily as possible. So that's the world we still live in now. And so, you know, again, if one domino falls, there aren't breaks, a lot of breaks built into this. The idea is to make it easy for the president to fire back. Um, and so yeah, I mean, you're right. I mean, mistakes can be made. It's I I think it's miraculous, frankly, that, you know, we're all still here.
mistake, hasn't it?
It is.
It really is. Uh Noah Noah Oppenheim, we're talking about the um the show on Netflix called House of Dynamite. If you haven't seen it yet, it's a mustwatch. It is an absolute thrilling 90 minutes. That'll scare the living daylights out of you cuz you'll be like, "That can't be true, right? That's not the way this works." Nope. That's exactly the way it works. Uh and we're talking about nuclear war. We'll come back for a little bit more here. I And I want to know, Noah, because I made a decision what I would do, but I think that is what would make me a really bad president. Maybe um I would love to hear if you guys had a debate internally and decided what you would do if you were the president in that exact situation. There's one part of this I don't understand and maybe this is what would make me a bad president because I would say I am not striking until that thing hits and we know that it's hit and it's blown up one of our cities
and then I'm going to wait and I'm going to say immediately to the world everyone in the world you isolate and and take action against this guy or I will have no other response. I have no choice than to hit him back. Um, but I would take the one hit in order to try to save the whole world. Why can't the president wait? Why Why is it this constant you've got to launch before it hits? Why?
I don't think that would make you a bad president at all. I think that's a perfectly reasonable response um to the situation. I think that the counter point would be the the argument made by um one of our characters, one of the generals in Stratcom who says if you don't now that the genie is out of the bottle, right? Now that somebody has kind of broken this nuclear stalemate that's existed for the last, you know, 70 years that if we don't, it is now increasingly d it is more increasingly more likely that more me more weapons will be launched our way. We've now kind of entered into what they call a spiral of alerts where because that missile the one missile is coming towards us. We then raise our level of military readiness, start mobilizing forces. As soon as we start mobilizing our various forces around the world, everyone else does too. Now the nuclear genie is in potentially out of the bottle. And do we want to wait and see if more missiles are sent our way or do we want to try to make sure that it stops with this one and take out the other uh our enemy's arsenals and command and control systems before they can potentially launch more? I agree with you. It's perfectly reasonable to say I'll take that chance that there are more coming. Um but I want to see what happens with this one first. Somebody else might say don't take that chance. What are the odds it's only one? Let's hit everyone else's missiles while they're still in their silos and their bombers while they're still on the ground and make sure that we limit our losses to just this one city. Um I think you once you do that it's over anyway.
Yeahce that's the kind of
Yes. I mean that's the that's arguably the insanity of of the nuclear deterrent which is just that once you do you know it's it's it's we destroy the entire world as a means of defending ourselves.
Noah great job. I hope there's a sequel cuz I would love to see what the president uh would choose. Uh Noah Noah Oppenheim. The the show is House of Dynamite. Don't miss it. Movie on Netflix. House of Dynamite.