YT YouTube2Text

YouTube2Text → Transcripts → Nuclear Risks: Doomsday (Still) Hiding in Plain Sight | Daniel Ellsberg, Author of Doomsday Machine

Nuclear Risks: Doomsday (Still) Hiding in Plain Sight | Daniel Ellsberg, Author of Doomsday Machine — Transcript

by Foresight Institute · 24,100 words · 4,295 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

Open in transcriber Summarize with AI Download SRT/VTT

Full transcript

0:00hi everyone welcome to four sides
0:02intelligent cooperation group it's
0:04really really really nice to see so many
0:06of you
0:06here and yeah we are looking forward to
0:08quite a fantastic presentation so thank
0:10you all for joining and today
0:12we really really really appreciate it um
0:14so and we have released a new chapter
0:17for this group so if you want to take a
0:19look
0:19um then please do so it should now be on
0:22um
0:23on the google docs and um please comment
0:26if you'd like
0:27um and so basically we began the book to
0:29bring up to speed
0:30um by observing that historically
0:32violence has really been declining
0:34while we've made progress on a variety
0:35of factors that humans may value
0:38and we saw how cryptocommerce can help
0:40humans cooperate better in advancing
0:42progress
0:43and so far so good but now we look at
0:46the dark side
0:47um because technology is really raising
0:49the stakes of our civilizational game
0:51and in fact it could threaten its very
0:53existence and so
0:54in the chapter we outlined two traps
0:57that we need to steer away from
0:58one is has sometimes been termed the
1:00small kills all trap
1:02which is basically um by a technological
1:04proliferation
1:05the ability of a fewer people um having
1:08that and more and more reach
1:09in their technologies and so causing uh
1:12perhaps all the way down to
1:13global destruction and the second trap
1:16is power suicide
1:17and so that's kind of the other side of
1:19the coin now where um
1:21existing and powerful large-scale actors
1:24um you know may increase their power and
1:26via technologies and for building
1:28something like a world uh world
1:29government
1:30and that is insta in charge of world
1:32destroying technologies
1:33so both of those i think are traps um
1:35that and we'd like to avoid with this
1:37book
1:37and so what we're proposing is a path to
1:40navigate the traps
1:41in terms of multi-polar active shield
1:44and
1:44and so this would basically be a
1:46decentralized encrypted protective layer
1:48acro
1:48around the world um and we closed the
1:51chapter with
1:52a few ideas on how to employ it and the
1:54risk that we face
1:55in doing so um such as first strikes and
1:58so forth
1:59um and some of the solutions that we
2:00propose in the chapter are really
2:02almost dystopias in themselves and but
2:06the future
2:06really will grow out of today's
2:08decisions and so
2:10the better the structures that we can
2:12put in place now the less of utopia
2:14it will be and today we walk into this
2:17chapter
2:18with danny elsberg the author of
2:20doomsday machine and
2:22that is only really one of the hats he
2:24is wearing he is also the releaser of
2:26the pentagon papers
2:28and with that one of the most impactful
2:30whistleblowers in human history
2:32who really stood up against violence and
2:35for truth
2:36um at really high cost for himself
2:39and daniel woods really can't describe
2:41how um
2:42yeah what an honor it is to have you
2:43here thank you very much for joining
2:45this group
2:46i would like to start with a quote from
2:48you
2:49you said no transition period occurred
2:52during which i asked myself if i was
2:54willing to go to prison to help
2:55end the war that didn't come up as a
2:58question it would have answered itself
3:00i knew myself from vietnam i had risked
3:02my life overs my body my legs a thousand
3:05times
3:05driving the roads there or walking in
3:07combat
3:08if i could do that when i believed in
3:10the war and even after i didn't
3:12it followed self-evidently that i was
3:15capable of going to prison to help
3:16end it so this is a quote from you
3:20and you know really so you you did and
3:23congratulations really on 50 years since
3:26you released the penta and papers
3:28um i would like to maybe as a first
3:30question could you perhaps
3:32pick us up on the thought process that
3:35i brought you to take the actions that
3:37you did
3:38maybe in particular what was going
3:39through your mind as you were
3:40photocopying
3:42the 7000 page mac and ameristar
3:45study because that's really quite a long
3:47time to be standing at a photocopying
3:49machine
3:50so i wonder if you had any qualms um if
3:52you could have
3:53you know imagined uh having taken a
3:55different path and that
3:56and that um in that position and whether
3:59the
4:00uh if you had known that a potential of
4:01115 years in prison
4:03um would would be awaiting you and
4:07then would you have would you have made
4:09any other decisions in that regard
4:12well as i've often recounted um i had
4:15learned from mort halpern who was an
4:18aide to
4:19henry kissinger the special the
4:22assistant for national
4:23security nixon's secret plan
4:27was as he said to end the war with honor
4:30but what that meant to him was that he
4:32was trying to win it within a year and
4:34when that failed
4:35within a number of years with the uh
4:39prospect as i saw it from the history of
4:41the war
4:42that uh his threats would fail including
4:46his threats of using nuclear weapons
4:47which he was making already
4:49in 1969 and that therefore he and then
4:53then that he would carry out the threats
4:55which was not obvious i concluded that
4:58they were not bluffs or i bet that they
5:00were not bluffs
5:02and as he did he did continue the war uh
5:05through his first term on the ground he
5:08removed the troops
5:10american troops early in his second term
5:13which was his deadline for doing that
5:15but he fully intended to continue the
5:17air war
5:18uh indefinitely and in support of the
5:22vietnamese troops that we were paying
5:25and equipping
5:26and training and supporting with air
5:29and by that to keep his client
5:33to general tew who had helped win the
5:36election
5:37for him in 1968 to keep him in power
5:41throughout nixon's second term in other
5:43words in eight years he expected to do
5:45that
5:46and he was expected to do it by
5:47continuing the air power that long
5:50would the american people have let him
5:52do that if
5:53uh in his second term or afterwards
5:57uh when no american casualties were
6:00being uh
6:01inflicted we've seen that in afghanistan
6:04that's answered itself we've been
6:06killing afghans and bombing them there
6:09for
6:09over 20 years and could easily have kept
6:12that up for another 20 years
6:14had it not been the case that watergate
6:17revelations
6:18removed or forced him to resign from
6:20office and
6:22the war became endable actually
6:26many of the charges he faced were based
6:28on crimes against me
6:30while i was on trial for releasing the
6:32pentagon papers
6:33because he wanted to shut me up
6:38from releasing possible documents that i
6:40had
6:41on his threats the pentagon papers ended
6:43in 1968
6:44before he came to office so he was
6:47mostly afraid
6:48of what i would else i would reveal and
6:50he knew i had some documents on him
6:53and he very reasonably feared but
6:56mistakenly
6:57turned out that i had documents that
6:59would demonstrate
7:00his nuclear threats in his plan to keep
7:03you in power
7:04at least eight years and i didn't have
7:06those because people
7:08who did have them in his office
7:11did not choose to make them public or
7:13give them to me
7:14even when they resigned over the
7:16cambodian invasion
7:19coming back to the immediate that was
7:20then in my mind to try
7:22not to simply tell the truth or tell
7:25history
7:26my interest was in trying to help end
7:29a war that i knew was going to go on for
7:32a long period
7:33and was going to get larger in the air
7:35as it did he returned to bombing
7:36that had been stopped in 1968 and i
7:39didn't succeed in that
7:41actually the pentagon papers did not
7:43stop the war
7:44that came out in 71 72 with an
7:48ill-conceived offensive by the north uh
7:51leading to another 50 000 casualties on
7:53the north side like the ted offensive
7:55four years earlier nevertheless many
7:58many vietnamese died
8:00the bombing was enormous in the
8:02christmas bombing of 72
8:04a year and a half after the pentagon
8:06papers
8:07was the heaviest bombing in human
8:09history for a couple of weeks
8:11so and then as i say the war was faded
8:14to go on
8:15except for watergate uh
8:18and after all that background that was
8:20what was in my head
8:21but the what led to the copying was
8:24that i witnessed young americans whom i
8:27just gotten to know
8:28and to admire actually were on their way
8:31to prison
8:32i learned to my shock
8:35they were expecting trial and
8:37imprisonment for refusal to cooperate
8:39with the draft
8:41and they were not doing that on the bay
8:44of course they hadn't seen the pentagon
8:46papers
8:47as i had at that point but they weren't
8:50doing it because
8:52of what most people think was the great
8:54great uh
8:55lesson of the pentagon papers they think
8:57that wrongly
8:59in the last month i've seen innumerable
9:00times when the
9:02message of the pentagon papers was
9:04claimed to be
9:05that officials had known the war was not
9:08winnable
9:09and yet they pursued it that's 180
9:12degrees wrong
9:14the pentagon papers show that the joint
9:16chiefs
9:17always thought the war was winnable from
9:19the beginning to the end
9:20if only the president would do what they
9:23proposed
9:24uh invade laos in cambodia invade north
9:27vietnam
9:28really as the french had done of course
9:31and uh
9:31risk war with china and the president
9:34wasn't willing to do that so their
9:35method of winning the war
9:37was never tested i believe that's very
9:40fortunate
9:40i believed at the time and ever since
9:43that the joint chiefs were
9:44totally wrong in believing simply as
9:47americans
9:48let us do all the violence we're capable
9:51of and we'll deliver a victory
9:53they were wrong uh in simple terms they
9:56had their head up their ass
9:58they knew they had no idea what they
9:59were talking about
10:01and uh it's uh and johnson was quite
10:03right and kennedy
10:05uh in refusing to go that far
10:08he did know and uh the joint chiefs told
10:12him
10:12that what he was doing which was very
10:15murderous it resulted
10:16in the end in well under his watch about
10:1930 000 lives
10:20and he he bequeathed awarded nixon who
10:22added another
10:2320 000 a total actually 58 000 lives
10:28and several million vietnamese the
10:31number there varies between two million
10:33and four million
10:34uh mostly around three million as it
10:36happens uh
10:38but uh three million lives then
10:41as a result of these american decisions
10:43and it's true
10:45nobody really believed that what we were
10:47doing would end the war or win the war
10:50but that's not why these people went to
10:52prison and that's not the example they
10:53set me
10:55we all knew the war was not winnable by
10:56that time the american people at least
10:58in what we were doing
11:00the american people had concluded that
11:03by 69
11:04if if not earlier after the tet
11:06offensive in 68.
11:09the people who went to prison and set me
11:11the example
11:12of asking myself okay what can i do now
11:16that i follow their example
11:18if i'm willing to go to prison if i'm
11:20willing to give up their career
11:21as they were the harrison what could i
11:25do beyond what i'd been doing for a
11:27couple of years earlier
11:28internally advising people on the inside
11:32uh up to the level of the secretary of
11:33defense to extricate ourselves from that
11:36war but that had had
11:37no effect even though they took me
11:39seriously but
11:40that's not the momentum of the war
11:43uh i did think then of other things i
11:45could do including the pentagon papers
11:48which was the most dangerous uh legally
11:52but uh the others seemed more promising
11:54actually that
11:56none of it none of it worked including
11:58the pentagon papers
11:59in at that time up through 73.
12:02as i say later crimes that nixon took
12:06provoked by my actions and his fear
12:11reasonable fear that i would do more
12:13than i had done
12:15uh that in fact did bring him down and
12:17make the war endable
12:18but that was i think foreseeable by no
12:20one
12:21so it was this example of these young
12:23men and as i say
12:25none of the 5 000 americans
12:29who went to prison instead of being ceo
12:32or going to vietnam
12:33conscientious objectors or going to
12:35sweden or going to canada or having
12:38reporting bone spurs like donald trump
12:40or joining the reserve like george w
12:43bush they went to prison to make the
12:46strongest statement they could
12:47not that the war was not winnable
12:52but that it was wrong they should not
12:55participate in it nor should anyone else
12:57as they saw it
12:58and i saw it the same way they did so
13:01the question was then
13:02how to tell our fellow citizens this war
13:05is wrong
13:06and it should be ended we don't have any
13:07right to kill any more vietnamese
13:10we don't have any right or need to send
13:12any more americans there to die
13:14or kill and we never did
13:18that was the message to me of the
13:19pentagon papers it's been very dismaying
13:21this last month to realize
13:2350 years later that message really never
13:26did get across
13:28there was a lesson that had been learned
13:30by innumerable
13:33wise people uh for millennia
13:36actually and it took the form in 1944
13:41when i was a
13:42sophomore in high school i
13:45should say in the ninth grade in high
13:48school
13:49in a sociology class i had whether a
13:51teacher introduces to the notre dame of
13:53cultural lag uh then by a
13:57guy named i think osborne was putting it
13:59in that form it keeps getting rent
14:00invented
14:01reinvented rediscovered i notice every
14:03few years
14:04and for good reason the idea was
14:08that our technology had shown steady
14:12progress and even exponential progress
14:14in recent years
14:15but steady progress from for thousands
14:18of years literally
14:19go back to the neolithic or the uh
14:21certainly the rise of
14:23civilization technical civilization
14:26but the ability of humans to collaborate
14:29and control that technology
14:31had not progressed in the same way
14:34had not caught up with this ability to
14:37harm to destroy
14:39with our technology uh to an extent
14:42that we could reliably control it or
14:45direct it or avoid suicide he didn't
14:48actually
14:49make that point but the teacher
14:52bradley patterson introduced us to
14:54something he'd read about
14:55in just the pre-war years and then there
14:58had grown a silence about it
15:00he said there can be and probably will
15:04be
15:05a bomb created that is a thousand times
15:08more powerful
15:10than the current blockbusters uh
15:13a u-235 bomb he said now this is the
15:16subject of great self-censorship
15:18and the manhattan project during that
15:20which was going on
15:21was highly secret and never did leak to
15:23the germans as a matter of fact
15:25we had some russian spies but uh
15:28amazingly enough
15:29something involving thousands and
15:31thousands of people all together
15:34were uh kept from the german adversaries
15:38but he said we didn't so we didn't know
15:40that that was happening but he said
15:41there will be a bomb
15:42u-235 bomb whereas
15:46a current blockbuster so-called because
15:48it destroyed
15:49a city block of buildings one bomb
15:53was 10 to 15 to 20 the largest were 20
15:57ton bombs those could only be carried by
16:00the british lancaster it was the only
16:02heavy bomber that could carry those we
16:03couldn't we couldn't carry them
16:05but they dropped a lot of 20-ton bombs
16:08he said now imagine then that there's a
16:10bomb a thousand times more powerful or
16:13as we would
16:14now say 20 kilotons that was by the way
16:18the bomb that destroyed nagasaki about
16:20nine months later
16:22hiroshima about 15 13 to 15 kilotons
16:26kilotons instead of tons so i said
16:29will this be a good development for
16:31humanity
16:33or not on balance gave us a week to
16:36write a paper about that
16:38well now you'll recognize that the same
16:40issues are raised
16:41today still about nuclear weapons
16:45but uh we've had 70 years with that and
16:48we haven't had another
16:49nuclear war that's the the good news
16:52but you face it of course with genetic
16:55engineering
16:56with uh possible um uh
17:00climate engineering you know release of
17:04or particles in the sky that will
17:06deflect the sunlight
17:07somehow save us a little from global
17:09warming and of course
17:11with a.i and if i can uh mention one
17:14credential on that
17:15uh when i was in society fellows at
17:17harvard i was a very close friend of
17:19marvin minsky a lot of people have heard
17:21that name
17:22so that was back in 1950 uh
17:26since 1957 actually
17:32it was fairly early in the game his
17:33friend were kind of in on the ground
17:35floor on the thought about that but i i
17:37didn't pursue it
17:40so i did get my thesis was on
17:44decision theory though decision making
17:46under uncertainty
17:47obviously related to issues of uh
17:51epistemology and issues of ai
17:56as a result of
17:58[Music]
17:59that uh interest actually in decision
18:03theory i was hired at the rand
18:04corporation
18:06where my goal of nuclear weapons
18:10i went to a task force in the pacific
18:13under commander in chief pacific admiral
18:16phelp
18:18whose order would get out reliably to
18:21the
18:21troops that control the the um
18:24carriers airfields that control nuclear
18:27weapons
18:28against china almost entirely because
18:30that's all that was in range
18:32of the pacific command they had a few
18:34targets in
18:35uh vladivostok area and siberia but
18:38nearly all the targets of the pacific
18:40command
18:40were in china not coincidentally
18:46uh zinhower's plans at that time for war
18:50with the soviet union
18:52however it arose over berlin iran
18:55yugoslavia or west germany anywhere
19:00was to hit every city in russia and
19:03china
19:05china sign of soviet bloc had
19:08he weren't going to just destroy russia
19:10and be destroyed by them perhaps and let
19:12china
19:13pick up all the marbles vote as they
19:15would say china be the successor state
19:17no china had to go if you were
19:21destroying
19:21russia and our plans called for no
19:24limited war with russia
19:26under eisenhower on his belief very
19:29pretty realistic that war with russia
19:32could not be contained it would be to
19:35the death
19:36there would be all-out nuclear war we
19:38should get the first drop
19:41so any conflict with uh russian soldiers
19:45uh above the levels that save a platoon
19:47or a company that might be
19:49probing or on reconnaissance or
19:50something but a brigade a regiment
19:54every city in russia and china any
19:56thought of leaving china on was
19:58anathema to the pacific command because
20:01it would mean that the big game was
20:02going on
20:04against russia by the air force and they
20:05would be sitting there on their carriers
20:07with no one to hit after they'd hit
20:09flativos done so it was essential that
20:11uh the china stay in
20:13and it did in san jose in all these
20:16plans
20:17okay i thought that i think that's quite
20:19relevant to you on your work
20:21i got very interested in the question of
20:24might
20:25these planes be launched without the
20:28president
20:28having ordered it the public was led to
20:31believe then
20:32to this day that only in the president's
20:35football the briefcase that's always
20:37carried with him
20:38are codes that will suffice to launch
20:41our nuclear weapons
20:42if he were separated from that if he
20:45were if there was a bomb that destroyed
20:46him
20:48why no one could give that order that's
20:50what the public
20:51is led to believe it's always been false
20:55obviously are you really going to how
20:57can you imagine to have a deterrence
20:59if the russians with one high explosive
21:02bomb or one bullet perhaps
21:04could take out the president or take out
21:06all of washington and the joint chiefs
21:08and the others no no from the beginning
21:10there had to be
21:12arrangements for
21:16other people at least field commanders
21:19and they delegated it to others for the
21:21same reason should be able to launch
21:23those weapons if they had reason to
21:24believe
21:25that the war was on and communications
21:28was lost with washington
21:31now in 1957 58 59 60
21:35when i was looking at this in 58 59 and
21:3816
21:38and 61 communications were out
21:42between the u.s and admiral felt
21:46in oahu every day on the average
21:50many times for six or seven hours but at
21:53least some period of every day
21:56and communications between felt the
21:58paccom
21:59headquarters and the seventh fleet in
22:01what they called westpac
22:02the western pacific was also out
22:06part of every day both of these links
22:08were out
22:09that's less true now of course with
22:11satellites and
22:13more cables and whatnot but still not
22:15unknown
22:16as a matter of fact as far as i know so
22:20here these people were in fact on their
22:22own
22:23part of every day and if they had reason
22:25to believe they were being attacked
22:27uh and we could go into all that but i i
22:30could think of lots of reasons when they
22:31might believe
22:32i i discovered lots of reasons
22:35uh where they might think they were
22:37under attack as has happened at the
22:38national level
22:40many many times without there being
22:43actual attack
22:44being a false alarm and since our entire
22:47plans have then till now been based on
22:50the delusional
22:52fraudulent notion that the us
22:56will be better off striking first than
22:59second
23:01uh they're all set to go it's a hair
23:03trigger primed
23:05missile's ready to go and 10 minutes
23:06notice or it or less
23:08to this day especially and they are very
23:10vulnerable to attack by enemy
23:13icbms or even slvm sublaunch missiles
23:16and therefore if there are indications
23:18on the radar electronics
23:20that an attack is underway they
23:23are poised to go first to get first
23:26you might say how are they going to
23:28limit damage
23:30if the other missiles are on their way
23:31already by
23:33hitting silos good question
23:36uh there's really no answer to that the
23:38only real warning that makes any use of
23:40those icbms
23:41is quote strategic warning such as
23:46uh being at war or at armed conflict
23:51somewhere ukraine
23:54syria somewhere else i don't think it's
23:56too likely to escalate from syria
23:58i think it is likely to escalate from
23:59ukraine uh
24:02escalate meaning what meaning pretty
24:05soon we'll be considering
24:06using first one or the other is going to
24:08be wanting to use nuclear weapons
24:11let it be us first that's been the
24:15doctrine
24:16for 70 years and still is so we're
24:18poised on this hair trigger
24:21as i discovered uh i don't know how many
24:23of you probably a lot of you have seen
24:25dr strangelove and the movie and be
24:28worth seeing it again
24:30i've often been quoted as saying that
24:31when i saw that in 64
24:33i felt i'd seen a documentary but that
24:36wasn't just an idol
24:39in terms of tone i meant in details
24:42in a certain number of things let me
24:44give you just just one
24:47that almost nobody is aware of it was a
24:49very esoteric matter within the
24:51pentagon in the movie
24:55uh the planes are set off by a somewhat
24:58deranged general
25:00i say somewhat because he was very
25:02concerned about the pollution of his
25:04bodily fluids
25:05by the russians i think he was talking
25:07about fluoride
25:08if anything was a big craze on that
25:11somewhat deranged like
25:12like somebody who believes for instance
25:14that hydroxychloroquine can solve uh
25:17kovic and uh the russian that we have
25:20the only supply of it
25:21or as uh a smart fool named
25:26friedman tom friedman on the new york
25:27times caught my attention a month ago
25:29when he said
25:30we must be prepared for conflict war
25:33with china
25:35because this was really the only reason
25:37he gave
25:38because of their highly advanced chip
25:41industry
25:42semiconductors in taiwan
25:45we can't let the chinese have control of
25:48that
25:49and uh we want control of it basically
25:52so we should be prepared to go to war
25:54over that
25:55no mention of possible alternatives like
25:58moving the entire industry uh somewhere
26:01else
26:01if uh if if they wanted to go it didn't
26:04want to be run by china
26:06uh but what they're just talking about
26:08what what
26:09what friedman was talking about was a
26:11war almost sure to escalate
26:14to large conventional war and since
26:18current war grains apparently say that
26:20with a 20-year buildup
26:21the chinese now can usually beat us in a
26:24war game in taiwan
26:26their cruise missiles can hit our
26:28carriers we can't just sail at the
26:30taiwan straits the way we did
26:31as recently as 1996 under clinton
26:35to warn them off you can't do that now
26:38they're totally subject
26:40to uh to attack and so when they're
26:43talking now about
26:44uh war with china you're talking about
26:46something that will escalate to nuclear
26:48war
26:49probably not certainly let me just back
26:52off from that
26:53and say the question will be raised and
26:56discussed
26:57on whether to use nuclear weapons in
26:58advance as our old
27:00plans in 58 depended on
27:03they were entirely dependent on nuclear
27:05weapons that's no longer true
27:07on either side but the nuclear weapons
27:10are still there in the area
27:12and we still have a president who unlike
27:15china
27:16refuses to say that he will not under
27:19any circumstances
27:20initiate nuclear war he's rejected a no
27:24first use condition
27:25just as obama did trump did and every
27:28president in the nuclear era has
27:31actually
27:32planned under some contingencies uh for
27:35initiating nuclear war and has never
27:37rejected it so it will get raised
27:40absolutely in fact it was in the trump
27:42administration
27:43now here's a little detail that i'll
27:45tell you for your technical interest
27:49they had these elaborate uh conditions
27:53for supposedly authenticating
27:57since this is such a technical audience
27:58i i think i will
28:00tell you uh the following which i
28:03wouldn't i wouldn't go into with an
28:05ordinary audience
28:08to author if they got an order to attack
28:11to execute how would they know that it's
28:13a uh
28:14an order from the president well as i've
28:16just said by the way
28:18it might not have been from the
28:19president uh that order could definitely
28:22be sent
28:22by field commanders because of the
28:25possibility of decapitation
28:27just as in um doctor strangelove
28:31i think they call it then plan r well
28:33the plan r
28:34in case uh the war was on and the
28:37president was no longer alive
28:38has always existed so that was not an
28:41invention
28:42next uh though in the movie the planes
28:45go off
28:47and they do um the one
28:50they're back
28:53just they're on the way and then it
28:55would take hours we weren't dealing with
28:57missiles
28:58at that point fortunately so uh this is
29:001964 when we came out
29:02so the president muffley uh muffley
29:05merkin if you know what american is
29:07uh played by uh same guy who plays
29:10doctor strangelove
29:12peter settlers says uh
29:15call them back and the chief of uh joint
29:18of the joint she says
29:20we can't call them back there's no stop
29:23order
29:23there's no order that we can
29:25authenticate i
29:26i didn't tell you the authentic okay i
29:28will from it here was the authenticated
29:30mission
29:31in the uh in the pacific there was they
29:34had a sealed
29:34envelope inside of which was another
29:38inflow
29:40and inside of that was a card okay
29:43this is before a lot of digital
29:44technology obviously
29:46so if you get a certain code um
29:50you open the envelope it's more or less
29:52in the film you see this
29:54and uh you see on the outside of the
29:57next envelope
29:58um as i i think it was like three digits
30:02or four
30:02three or four alphanumeric some letters
30:05some
30:06some numbers if the they've sent a code
30:10my best memory is it was a six a six
30:12character code
30:14so if the first three characters are
30:17like
30:18on the outside of the envelope you open
30:20the envelope
30:22and if the next three characters
30:23correspond to the card inside the
30:25envelope
30:26um go that's a go order okay
30:30obviously we have better ways of doing
30:32it now digitally
30:36not subject to error of course so
30:39uh in those days i would ask people out
30:41there
30:42well supposing somebody uh
30:46in the plane is out of radio
30:47communication which happened very
30:48quickly once they were away from the
30:50base
30:51um couldn't they uh
30:55send that what if they sent the whole uh
30:57go code out to other people
30:58thinking like the guy in the movie this
31:01is the time to go
31:02and here's the answer i got over they
31:05can't do that
31:07what do you mean you can't do that
31:10they'd have to open the envelope
31:12say hmm you know that didn't seem an
31:16insuperable
31:17obstacle somehow for somebody who wanted
31:19to start world war three
31:21and i'm telling you you may think that's
31:23a caricature here
31:24we actually went through that dialogue
31:26many times they had to open the envelope
31:29okay but if they open the envelope and
31:31sent the code they could take a squadron
31:33with them
31:34and then you would hear as in the movie
31:37the chief of staff say the
31:38chief chairman of the chief saying look
31:41if they're on the way
31:42we're at war but this is a good time to
31:46join them
31:46because nobody's expecting it there
31:48hasn't been any crisis there hasn't been
31:50anything
31:51this is what um uh buck turgenson i
31:55think his name is the chairman of the
31:56nation's staff
31:57says let's go that's exactly what they
32:00would have said
32:00almost surely and the guy who sends them
32:02off counts on that
32:04he says look i've sent this squadron you
32:06better send the rest
32:07because they're on the way okay then the
32:10president says wants to say
32:11okay they're on the way tell them to
32:14stop
32:15now we get to the next point he's told
32:18there is no stop order authentication
32:22he says muffly says how could that be
32:25what do you mean no stop order
32:27he said well you yourself made the
32:29decision some time ago
32:31that if we had a stop code
32:34the russians might get it and they would
32:38abort our entire attack right
32:41now what to do now that was exactly the
32:45situation in the strategic air command
32:47and i don't at that time and i don't
32:49know when if
32:50ever it changed for the same reason
32:54given in the movie
32:55what if the russians got the stop code
32:58and stopped it
32:59i am saying here now that you'll
33:00recognize you know type 1 error type 2
33:02here
33:03all the emphasis was on getting the
33:05planes over there
33:07very little on avoiding a false signal
33:11avoiding them going and no effort on
33:14getting them back
33:15and what was that about as other
33:16colonels told me
33:18look the real worry here is that having
33:21given an execute order on this
33:23pre-planned thing which was
33:24of extreme complexity like world war one
33:27mobilization plans
33:29everything going with its target all
33:31timed and everything
33:33the president may get lily get cold feet
33:37in the course of the four six eight
33:38hours that those planes are on the way
33:40and try to stop them he may believe uh
33:45uh khrushchev on the other side saying
33:47we surrender
33:48it's over we're the president oh whoa
33:51stop this
33:54oh no no we do not want the president to
33:58screw up the plan so once the order has
34:00gone out
34:01from anybody not just the president
34:04now or then we don't want to bring back
34:07has that changed for pl
34:08can't change for missiles of course you
34:10can't bring them back reagan seemed to
34:12be unaware of that by the way at one
34:14point he talked about
34:15being able to bring back missiles he had
34:17to explain to him uh
34:19no actually not and um
34:22but the planes couldn't be brought back
34:25either
34:26they were like missiles okay well you
34:28see how
34:29how i got into this problem as a matter
34:32of fact
34:33a friend of mine at rand and then others
34:37uh came up with what amounted to a
34:39technical solution to that
34:42a lock they came to call it a permissive
34:45action link
34:46of various kinds at first just the
34:47combination lock to start with
34:49but that would uh the the go code
34:53would be the the combination to unlock
34:57a lock and make the weapon usable you
34:59know various
35:00forms of that many many different forms
35:02of it
35:03called permissive action it took a
35:05decade
35:06to get that it took several decades to
35:08get that on missiles and submarines the
35:10navy just couldn't
35:11stand that idea they're possibly being
35:14paralyzed by a lack of communication
35:16and it took a long time decades to get
35:19it on to any strategic air command
35:22bombs and they did put it on minuteman
35:25missiles against the
35:27objections of the air force a code that
35:30was necessary for the launch officers
35:32to punch in uh when they got the order
35:35or you couldn't use the missile
35:37but as bruce blair found out as a launch
35:39control officer
35:41and told mcnamara later senator
35:43secretary mcmurran
35:45by order of the air force all the codes
35:48were set at
35:49it was an eight digit number zero zero
35:52zero zero
35:53zero zero zero zero by
35:56order they should not move to anything
35:58else or you know
35:59you might not get things off in time
36:01mcnamara was
36:02quite angry but he was out of office
36:04when he finally learned
36:05that they had done that so you can put
36:08all these
36:09safety devices on and they can't help we
36:12we got them fairly early on the european
36:14weapons
36:15that are over there at the lowest level
36:18but at what level are the codes actually
36:20held
36:21not in washington and i think you can be
36:24sure
36:24not in brussels or paris or any of the
36:27headquarters
36:29uh the codes have to be at a lower level
36:31to survive
36:32uh a first attack which is quite
36:35possible over there
36:36so as far as i know they're still not
36:38zero zero zero zero
36:40at the at the uh launch at the actual
36:43sergeants and captains and majors that
36:45are launching these weapons
36:47but probably not far above them which
36:49means there are a lot of fingers on a
36:51lot of buttons
36:53actually well maybe let me stop there to
36:56set the
36:57tone it will explain i think why
37:00actually my major
37:01undertaking in my mind in 1969
37:06was to copy all the top secret notes i'd
37:09taken on these problems
37:10in my top secret safe at rand and copy
37:13them along with the pentagon papers
37:15and i had the full intention of putting
37:18them out as soon as the
37:19pentagon papers had had their run in
37:22effect had done what they could
37:23to help shorten the war and these seemed
37:26much more important to me the
37:28nuclear issues uh including his first
37:30strike issue
37:31in china russia all that preemption
37:34uh but i thought vietnam is where the
37:37bombs are falling now
37:39and i i want to stop those or do what i
37:42can to stop those
37:43then we'll get to the nuclear and just
37:45to make it very short
37:46i stored them with my brother in new
37:48york the nuclear documents
37:50they got lost where he had stored them
37:52in a uh he stored them in a trash dump
37:55and a hurricane or a tropical storm
37:57doria
37:58scattered that trash dump to such a
38:00point that he could never find it
38:02though he looked for another year so i
38:04haven't been able to put out much of
38:05that
38:06although some did survive uh a
38:09top-secret study of the taiwan straits
38:11crisis
38:12of 1958 which happened to be my main
38:15friend
38:16mort halpern but it could have been
38:17anybody i did have and apparently i had
38:20a copy of that out
38:22i don't know how um
38:25i have to think about that why did that
38:27survive the others it must have been
38:29stored a little differently
38:30somehow from the others i haven't
38:32thought through but anyway i have it i
38:33had a few other things
38:35i put that out last month top secret
38:39two-thirds of it maybe three-fourths of
38:41it had been declassified
38:43in 2006. about a fourth
38:47was still top secret as far as anybody
38:50knew
38:51and i put that out last month because i
38:53see us moving
38:54toward armed conflict
38:57with the chinese in the taiwan over
39:00taiwan
39:01which could easily lead by past example
39:04of 1958
39:06escalate to a war that no one wanted
39:09but a war that one side was thought
39:12was better than waiting to be struck
39:15wrongly because with nuclear winter
39:19everybody will starve with nearly
39:22everybody
39:22not everybody let's be precise here
39:25maybe 90
39:27or 99 but one percent
39:30will survive the global the clouds
39:34of toxic smoke the toxic isn't so so
39:37important
39:38but smoke that will reflect sunlight
39:41smoke and soot around the globe to a
39:44point that all
39:45harvests are killed for much of a decade
39:49and uh within a year or so nearly
39:51everyone starves
39:53except for uh maybe let's say one
39:55percent
39:5670 million people almost 80 million
39:58people quite a lot of people down
40:01in new zealand on the coast i'm told on
40:04the coast of australia eating fish
40:06and mollusks so peter thiel isn't so
40:09dumb in
40:10uh stocking up silos in new zealand as i
40:13understand
40:14he's doing uh if he gets here in time
40:17in a timely way hoping that there's not
40:19a false alarm before him that
40:21catches him unawares at ground zero
40:25so um i thought this is a good time
40:28for people to know this even though
40:31insanely
40:33that amount is still kept classified
40:36and that's the last point um
40:39classification itself is no indication
40:43of relation to national security now
40:47this stuff is 50 years old still
40:50classified
40:51why is it still classified well there's
40:53two reasons in this particular case
40:55the national security archive which goes
40:58freedom of information act requests
40:59and gets a lot of stuff classified
41:01declassified
41:03after about 30 years usually did try to
41:05get this 50 year old stuff declassified
41:08in 2006 m8 or later
41:11and the pentagon keeps saying we can't
41:13find the classified version
41:16well fortunately i had it so i've i've
41:18now leaked it into the pentagon
41:20and they can decide to classify it or
41:22not but if they do
41:24if they do prosecute me for this i think
41:26it will illustrate
41:27the absurdity and abusiveness of our
41:30present classification system
41:32and maybe get this issue worked up to
41:34the supreme court
41:36for the first time which has never
41:38addressed the constitutionality
41:40of using the espionage act against
41:42people like
41:43julian assange tom drake
41:46chelsea manning
41:50what should we have done instead of mad
41:53we were in the situation where both
41:56sides had nuclear weapons
41:58both sides were belligerent and had very
42:01aggressive militaries
42:03brilliant people at rand thomas shelling
42:06mutually assured destruction mad was the
42:09best they were able to come up with at
42:11the time
42:12in retrospect what should they have come
42:15up with what should we have done instead
42:19it is very regrettable
42:23that some ver some wise relatively and
42:26really
42:26wise physicists such as um
42:32i was going to say frank
42:36frank report james frank report nobel
42:38prize winner
42:39who uh as soon as
42:42germany had surrendered on may 8th i
42:46believe it was 1945
42:48very shortly after that got a group
42:50together
42:51especially with leo zillard who had
42:54first
42:56copyright giving the copyright to
42:59the admiralty the idea of a chain
43:01reaction and then
43:03had been critical in getting a chain
43:05reaction started
43:06um along with fermi in chicago
43:10and you've been working on this in other
43:11words from the beginning in fact he had
43:13he had drafted the letter for einstein
43:16to send to roosevelt
43:18uh with edward tiller as the chauffeur
43:20out to uh
43:22einstein's estate uh urging something
43:24like a manhattan project
43:26which didn't actually begin for another
43:27couple of years after that
43:30um so lard and the others
43:34were reasonably obsessed
43:37with the idea that the germans would get
43:39this first and that it would be a weapon
43:41with which
43:41then they would protect themselves
43:43against invasion that's for sure
43:46from the sea and to a certain extent
43:50from the ground with with russia and
43:52they'd be able
43:53in effect to rule the world and with
43:55this extremely
43:56uh expansionist and aggressive and
43:59uh ruthless um opponent
44:03he didn't want them to get it first and
44:05as you know as you all know probably
44:08uh that it had been germans in the first
44:10instance who had
44:11first uh split the atom and then
44:14realized that they had done it elisa
44:16might never found well that's what
44:18they've done is split the atom in their
44:20experiment
44:20and went from it so they had a head
44:22start on the on the physics
44:24of this there was every reason to think
44:25they would pursue it
44:27hitler didn't for reasons
44:30i just i won't go into now i talked
44:32about them in my book the doomsday
44:34machine
44:35kind of interesting but largely because
44:37he was expecting and counting on a short
44:39war
44:40and would not have the weapon in time to
44:42affect it so he chose to concentrate on
44:44other things
44:45uh our manhattan project
44:50uh the front report concluded in the
44:53spring
44:53of 19 late spring of 1945
44:57that because of the long-run prospects
45:00of the nuclear era
45:02we should not uh use the bomb
45:05unilaterally uh it uh it
45:09might be a demo a different form of the
45:11report said
45:12a demonstration but somewhere it should
45:15not be used
45:16on people should not be used without the
45:17full knowledge of the soviet union
45:20because otherwise
45:21there would be a deadly arms race
45:24between the two
45:25which might happen anyway but uh could
45:28not be stopped if we use the bomb
45:29without having
45:31made them part of the project at all
45:33totally prepared to threaten them with
45:35it
45:35as hiroshima and nugaseki were in
45:38significant part
45:39intended to do so arms race
45:43and arms race is these people knew was
45:48that i've already told you the story
45:51about bradley patterson
45:53and the thousand times more than a
45:55blockbuster
45:57they knew that the atom bomb would be
45:59the detonator
46:00to trigger the percussion cap for obama
46:04a thousand times more powerful
46:06than that the first atom bomb droppable
46:09atom bomb that was tested in 1954
46:12the one that put fallout unexpectedly on
46:15uh the lucky dragon which took uh
46:18radioactive
46:19tuna back into japan and they had to
46:22they had to uh take back the entire tuna
46:27problem more or less created the the
46:29modern uh since then
46:31anti-nuclear movement in japan and
46:34somewhere else
46:35okay that first bomb was 1 000
46:38times hiroshima hiroshima was about 13
46:42to 15 kilotons
46:44they hadn't expected to go into
46:48uh fermi had been worried from start to
46:51finish
46:52on the atom bomb project the best
46:54experimental physicist
46:56probably in the world feared that there
46:59would be leaving something out
47:01in the effectiveness and he he worked on
47:03this calculation
47:04until virtually days before the trinity
47:07test
47:08that there might be something they
47:09hadn't calculated on that would lead to
47:12uh burning the atmosphere
47:17and the height of the nitrogen and the
47:19hydrogen
47:20in the water and everything would go in
47:22a flash inside of a second
47:24everything gone totally lifeless planet
47:28he none of his calculations pointed to
47:30that
47:32uh happening but as a possibility
47:37uh and the other thing was that as he
47:40said
47:41this this possibility of a kind of
47:43calculation they just hadn't made
47:45at all so he said on the way to trinity
47:48to a fellow scientist this won't blow up
47:51everything
47:52except by a miracle i think the chance
47:55of a miracle
47:56is about 10 fermi went to this
48:00believing that there was a 10 chance
48:04that the first explosion would
48:07make the earth a lifeless rock no
48:10microscopes
48:11no my microbes no nothing unlike
48:14nuclear winter which leaves most of the
48:17micro
48:18micro forms actually get more than half
48:20of my the biomass of the planet
48:22remains not with this uh atmospheric
48:26ignition
48:27and i took a 10 chance of that
48:30i'm not aware that anyone told many
48:33people knew that possibility
48:34at los alamos he actually made bets on
48:37it
48:37the night before trinity i doubt if the
48:40president
48:41truman had ever heard of this
48:44possibility
48:45and when did that possibility take place
48:47in
48:48august partly of 1945
48:52when everyone knew that no invasion
48:55was likely to be necessary would be
48:58necessary on japan
49:00one exception an important exception
49:02marshall wasn't as sure of that
49:04everyone else felt sure of it uh be no
49:06invasion
49:07you didn't need the atom bomb to win you
49:10didn't need it to shorten the war
49:14if they were taking the risk you know
49:16that's true trinity had not blown the
49:18world up
49:18but remember with a very small risk like
49:20this
49:21one test is not the answer they did not
49:25know that it was effectively impossible
49:27to do this because of
49:28the loss of heat in the course of the
49:31reaction
49:32wouldn't go far enough they didn't know
49:34that until after many tests
49:36after the war after bikini it was really
49:40established
49:41no that wasn't possible any of those
49:44tests could have done it
49:45actually but they were taking a chance
49:47that it wouldn't
49:48well i go into this if you you'll
49:50understand because i'm talking to people
49:52who i know many of you face this with uh
49:55who said the the head i don't know the
49:58physics of this
49:58at all so the the hadron
50:07uh daniel your audio cut out
50:14then you your audio cut out and do you i
50:17didn't i missed the question was so
50:18important
50:20to an answer direct question from your
50:23audience
50:25can you hear me no your audio we can
50:27hear you now your audio had cut out
50:29could you repeat the last 30 seconds or
50:31so
50:32okay um i'm just saying
50:35yes coming back to your question sorry
50:38with all this background
50:40given that the front committee including
50:41zillard and eugene rabinowicz uh james
50:44frank a number of others about nine
50:46people
50:47said do not they question testing
50:50without the soviets here the trinity
50:52test which was yet to take place
50:55and they said if it did take place do
50:57not
50:58this is a slight paraphrase do not use
51:01it against japan
51:03um for fear of the you know the arms
51:06race that will set off
51:07which they knew and said industries is
51:10going to thermal nuclear weapons
51:11it's going to be much bigger uh than we
51:14have now and we should avoid that
51:16and here's the key part they said on a
51:18petition
51:19that they a lot of them signed
51:22even if this would save american lives
51:26in other words their attitude was that
51:29the
51:29you should consider they couldn't make
51:31that choice but in terms of the future
51:33that lies ahead of us here
51:35on this one even american lives
51:39should not be saved by starting this
51:42arms race
51:43and that would have been the right
51:44advice if only they had started that in
51:46the fall at the time that
51:48bradley patterson's class was looking at
51:50it instead of six months later
51:53uh they might have had some influence it
51:55might have gotten to truman
51:56it did not get to truman their report
51:59was held up
52:00by groves and simpson and it's not clear
52:02that it ever got to truman
52:04uh or the petitions so that was the
52:06first thing you should have
52:07started off with that and started had it
52:10been a nazi weapon
52:11that was used first which turned out not
52:13to be possible
52:14uh it would have been the uh most
52:17obvious nazi
52:18crime it would have been the major thing
52:19for which they were hanged and
52:21every scientist involved would have been
52:24hanged
52:25on that one of the nazi and it would
52:27have come into the world
52:28as what it is a weapon of terror a
52:31weapon of mass murder
52:32a nazi type weapon not for us
52:35well came of course exactly opposite
52:38under a set which i've only hinted at
52:40here
52:41but a set of lies which especially in
52:441946
52:45starting in 45 especially that had been
52:48essential it was necessary
52:49if it was an evil it was a necessary
52:51evil it had won the war
52:53it was endorsed by the sainted franklin
52:56roosevelt
52:57and by truman it was our weapon etc etc
53:00uh and nothing else would have ended the
53:01war so quickly it saved a lot of lives i
53:03mean
53:04all untrue except that it had been
53:07endorsed
53:08by the presidents and uh who
53:11who knew by that time that it was almost
53:14surely
53:14not necessary and uh
53:18had it failed in some way they would
53:19have gone ahead with other things
53:22by the way one little point we know from
53:24the
53:25japanese reserves had we
53:28not indicated that we would allow the
53:30emperor to escape war crimes trial
53:33and to remain as emperor the army
53:37would have insisted on continuing the
53:39war even
53:40after two three four and probably the 10
53:44atom bombs that were planned by the end
53:46of the year
53:47the enemy were neither necessary nor
53:50sufficient
53:50you had to make that offer to the
53:52emperor and it had been discussed being
53:55made months
53:56earlier before okinawa even
53:59so uh what that showed was
54:03not that the americans had no reason
54:06for starting this race but that the
54:09reasons were
54:11remarkably shallow i would say if not
54:14shallow
54:15actually confronting the russians in
54:16europe that's not a shallow problem
54:19it had no effect on that but they hoped
54:23it would uh
54:24that was important but was that
54:26possibility enough
54:28not just to kill 300 000 people
54:32in a matter of time with those two
54:34weapons
54:35we had killed 900 000 america
54:38japanese civilians without the atom
54:40bombs before that
54:41so that wasn't a moral issue what was
54:44new
54:44for them what was new was the future
54:48the next hundred years and for that they
54:51made a deadly decision
54:53having done that i would say there was
54:55no escaping that the russians would
54:57acquire
54:57some bombs as they did on a crash basis
55:00and they achieved it by 1949.
55:04you could still have at that point said
55:07okay this is for no other reason
55:10than the deterrence of nuclear attack
55:14and for that we only need a handful of
55:16bombs
55:18depending on vulnerability here or the
55:20enemy's offensive capability
55:22but let's move forward to the present um
55:26herb york once raised the question how
55:29many bombs does it take
55:30to deter from nuclear attack an opponent
55:34who is rational enough
55:36to be deterred at all now ask yourself
55:40and his answer was one
55:44but one maybe you'd destroy you know
55:48not function five ten
55:51he said uh maybe ten going at it from
55:54the other direction
55:55curb asked who was the head of the
55:58livermore laboratory
55:59established to concentrate on the
56:01thermonuclear weapon
56:03under tiller but he was the first
56:05director of it uh
56:06herbivore he said how much destructive
56:10power do we want
56:12one person to be able to launch he said
56:16well
56:16let's take just off the wall here world
56:19war ii
56:21uh enough for him to be able to kill 60
56:24million people
56:26and you know or less of course but not
56:28more than that
56:29in a short period of time he said well
56:32that gets you up to a hundred bombs
56:35from thermonuclear bombs now 100 kiloton
56:38not enormous
56:39by other standards he said maybe at the
56:42very most 200 but
56:44really 100 will do it on cities he was
56:47not calculating nuclear winter which was
56:49discovered
56:51within a year of his saying this so that
56:53one or 200 bombs
56:55doesn't kill 100 million say 200
56:59on cities it kills nearly everybody
57:03there's nothing much in between if you
57:05uh if you want to kill 100 million
57:07people
57:08it's hard to do that except by hitting
57:10their cities and creating enough smoke
57:12to kill five or six billion so
57:16uh that's where we've been all this time
57:19we've gone up to 37 000
57:22nuclear weapons mostly thermal nuclear
57:26and we're way down now to 1500 alert
57:30on each side uh russian uh and the us
57:33and another couple thousand in reserve
57:36about three thousand
57:38each thousand compared to one hundred
57:42so what york said was for deterrence you
57:45need something between
57:46one or ten and a hundred
57:49and closer to one than a hundred
57:52that's 49. uh that's about where
57:56uh north korea is now the other nations
57:59all have more than that
58:01and uh so finally the answer to your
58:03question is
58:04yes we should have cut off
58:07early in the issue we should have had a
58:08test span uh
58:11if the testing of weapons was regarded
58:13as not
58:14uh reliable enough stop
58:17well atmospheric testing was could be
58:19stopped
58:21stop testing missiles intercontinental
58:23missiles
58:24easy to verify all over the place
58:27and the the missile the the h-bomb made
58:30the icbm
58:32feasible because it gave it a big enough
58:35bang to compensate
58:36for its at at first great inaccuracy
58:40if it landed five miles away with the
58:42thermonuclear warhead
58:43it could still destroy a city couldn't
58:45destroy asylum
58:47that could destroy a city so uh
58:50the ice the h-bomb gave us icbms on both
58:53sides
58:53we're essentially vulnerable only to
58:56icbms
58:58it would have been the highest priority
59:00for a sensible
59:01imperialist cold warrior to keep icbms
59:05from existing
59:06and for that you just had to have a
59:09mutual ban
59:10on icms was that possible with the
59:12russians
59:14probably so they kept proposing things
59:16like that
59:17and we kept pushing them aside uh could
59:20we
59:20relied on them no not more than in us or
59:23anybody else
59:24no doubt would have been better than
59:26what we did do which was create
59:27two doomsday machines yes which is what
59:30we have
59:31so the answer is and finally is there an
59:34example of somebody who's done it
59:35smarter yes
59:39china uh at first we thought china
59:42couldn't afford
59:43more weapons than it had in in the 70s
59:46it had about a dozen
59:47weapons capable of hitting the united
59:50states and that lasted in the 80s and
59:52the 90s
59:53so at first he said well they can't
59:54afford more no they they can't afford
59:57more
59:58and they have chosen to do what they
1:00:00said was minimum deterrence
1:00:02which was proposed by our navy back in
1:00:0459
1:00:05and beaten back by eisenhower and the
1:00:08air force
1:00:09uh just rely on some submarines of
1:00:11course the navy wanted more submarines
1:00:13than you needed but
1:00:14for this but nevertheless they finally
1:00:16the navy stopped its
1:00:18uh stopped its opposition when kennedy
1:00:21chose to give
1:00:23the air force what it wanted and the
1:00:25navy what it wanted so
1:00:27the navy stopped arguing about that what
1:00:29the air force wanted
1:00:31was vulnerable and dangerous and
1:00:33unnecessary
1:00:34as it was but ran didn't notice that
1:00:37because we worked for the air force
1:00:39so uh the china china has had it seems
1:00:42to me
1:00:43for the last 70 years starting in 64
1:00:47when they fir
1:00:47or you know at a certain point when they
1:00:49first exploded the weapon
1:00:51and we failed not to
1:00:54preempt them as was discussed in the
1:00:57pentagon
1:00:57and in russia both but neither did that
1:01:01and uh they got him and i think without
1:01:05their nuclear weapons in 64
1:01:09they would have experienced nuclear
1:01:11attack in the course
1:01:13of the next 10 years with
1:01:16vietnam relying on the support of china
1:01:19and russia and under a leader
1:01:22who was i have recently learned from
1:01:25vietnamese sources
1:01:26as crackpot
1:01:30or realist liz juan as the worst of our
1:01:34leaders
1:01:35and who persisted in offenses that
1:01:38others like ho ji men and von min zyop
1:01:42warned against and given that he did
1:01:45that
1:01:46the likelihood that china would have
1:01:48experienced nuclear weapons on it
1:01:50if it hadn't had any i think
1:01:53is uh very high so uh that did serve a
1:01:57deterrent purpose
1:01:58for china facing both soviet union
1:02:02and uh the u.s and right now we're
1:02:05hearing a lot about oh we've got to
1:02:07build up
1:02:07we've got to build up which we are doing
1:02:10um
1:02:11because china's building up they might
1:02:13double their force
1:02:15from 275 to 600
1:02:19maybe compared to our 3 000
1:02:22and the russian 3000 so that is again
1:02:25a totally spurious uh argument given
1:02:28especially that what they are clearly
1:02:30doing in china as
1:02:31uh as in russia for that matter is
1:02:34uh making their force
1:02:37less vulnerable to a preemptive attack
1:02:40or to abms that's
1:02:42clear the nature of the technology not
1:02:44all of which is well advised
1:02:46but that's the clear purpose of it
1:02:48pressed by us having abandoned the abm
1:02:50treaty and being on a two trillion
1:02:53dollar program
1:02:54to re-uh constitute the doomsday machine
1:02:58so there is unwisdom to go
1:03:01on every side nobody
1:03:05is acting wisely on this that i can
1:03:07point to
1:03:08in the world we lost gorbachev
1:03:11who really did get the picture here and
1:03:14for that matter
1:03:15reagan was very uh genuine
1:03:18it turns out concerned and abhorrent
1:03:22about nuclear war except that he had the
1:03:25crackpot notion
1:03:26instilled by edward tiller that he could
1:03:29build a shield
1:03:31uh with x-ray atom bomb
1:03:34prompted x-ray lasers around the world
1:03:37there would be a real umbrella that
1:03:39would keep us from being a total
1:03:41uh delusion a quite profitable one
1:03:45could have been a lot more profitable
1:03:46without uh opposition from scientists to
1:03:49it
1:03:49but still many billions of dollars went
1:03:52into people's pockets
1:03:54pursuing that phantom
1:03:58clr by the way uh daniel thank you
1:04:01so much um is do you have to hop off i
1:04:05there's a few other questions uh but you
1:04:07know we're already 10 minutes over time
1:04:09so i'm sorry to have going on i i'm
1:04:12happy to go on a little longer if
1:04:14anybody
1:04:15you can drop off or whatever but anybody
1:04:17who wants to stay on i'm happy to answer
1:04:18some questions
1:04:19that would be fantastic you just tell us
1:04:21you know when to stop
1:04:22thank you thank you and really
1:04:25appreciate it okay
1:04:26i'm adam and you had a question
1:04:30uh yes so based on everything you've
1:04:31said we got uh super lucky
1:04:33that uh we survived the cold war and
1:04:36there were no
1:04:37more weapons nuclear weapons that went
1:04:39off in anger
1:04:40after nagasaki i was wondering if you
1:04:43could quantify that so i'm just looking
1:04:44for a number
1:04:45if you re-run the simulation starting in
1:04:481945
1:04:49um a number of times what percentage at
1:04:52the time
1:04:52do we reach today without having had a
1:04:55hot
1:04:56nuclear war well look uh
1:04:59i could give you a number of examples
1:05:01where i think the nuclear weapon the
1:05:03possession nuclear weapons
1:05:04did support the status quo
1:05:08avert or deter a change in the status
1:05:11quo
1:05:12above all west berlin i think without
1:05:16nuclear weapons on our side
1:05:18which would have been insane to launch
1:05:20against
1:05:21the soviets after the early 50s
1:05:25when they would respond by annihilating
1:05:28europe
1:05:29even before they had icbms but the
1:05:31threat
1:05:32that we would or might initiate nuclear
1:05:36war kept khrushchev from
1:05:39uh going into west berlin which he
1:05:42really wanted to do
1:05:43for a number of reasons in which he
1:05:44committed himself to doing so his
1:05:46prestige was staked on it
1:05:48and he's ready to take a chance but uh
1:05:52not that much of a chance he used to say
1:05:55come on
1:05:55kennedy can't start a nuclear war over
1:05:57berlin that's ridiculous you know
1:05:59because it would be crazy as a matter of
1:06:01fact putin made an interesting statement
1:06:04uh just yesterday that i just saw it
1:06:07he was asked whether the british planes
1:06:11now let's see how to go a british
1:06:13cruiser the british cruiser in the black
1:06:15sea
1:06:16might have led to pla to world war three
1:06:19now ask yourself what do you think his
1:06:21answer was
1:06:23but i'll tell you he said no there was
1:06:25no possibility
1:06:27why is that uh it is an interview just
1:06:30the other day
1:06:31and he said even if they had sunk a
1:06:34russian ship
1:06:35or a british ship you know either way he
1:06:38said i'm sorry
1:06:39take that back even if they had sunk if
1:06:42we
1:06:42had sunk a british ship even if we
1:06:44russians
1:06:45sorry i confused that should sink a
1:06:48british ship
1:06:50there would be no world war three no
1:06:52world war three
1:06:53zero why because they know
1:06:57they would lose the war now
1:07:00that's a little ambiguous uh lose what
1:07:03and losing what sense
1:07:04uh of course black sea is closer to
1:07:07russia
1:07:08than to britain and there is the british
1:07:10navy and so forth but
1:07:12uh he could say a conventional uh fight
1:07:15will be won by us that's what he he
1:07:17might have said
1:07:18uh oh by the way uh let me i'm sorry i
1:07:23i'm sorry i keep miss stating here his
1:07:26exact words were they can't
1:07:28win that war now i saw an editorial
1:07:32which
1:07:33quoted that and simply rephrased it
1:07:37they would lose that's a bad
1:07:41rephrasing he didn't say they would lose
1:07:44relatively to russia there's no winning
1:07:48a two-sided nuclear exchange between the
1:07:53u.s and russia
1:07:54as reagan and gorbachev said and as
1:07:57biden
1:07:57and putin just agreed you they just made
1:08:01the same statement
1:08:02nuclear war the meaning two-sided
1:08:04nuclear war between superpowers
1:08:06cannot be won okay so he said
1:08:10so was he talking about a conventional
1:08:11attack but he said no it won't lead to
1:08:14world war three
1:08:15because if they did that in response to
1:08:17cruz they know
1:08:19they could not win he said quite right
1:08:22the world would be blown up
1:08:26so they won't do it right nothing to
1:08:28worry about
1:08:32i don't take that much reassurance from
1:08:34putin
1:08:35because as a matter of fact playing
1:08:37these games in the black sea
1:08:39uh i wouldn't advise the
1:08:43russians to blow up a british cruiser
1:08:46because
1:08:46nothing can happen as a result a lot can
1:08:50happen
1:08:50uh and uh actions can happen by the
1:08:53british and
1:08:54almost surely would happen which will
1:08:57confront
1:08:58russians with the challenge of meeting
1:09:00that or going beyond it bidding over it
1:09:03and that leads where it leads
1:09:07to the possible near extinction
1:09:10of the human species now what makes that
1:09:14you know there's a number of breakers
1:09:16in between that where you could stop but
1:09:19uh when we look at actual incidents like
1:09:22taiwan
1:09:22if you read that or the cuban missile
1:09:25crisis in which i participated
1:09:27or other crises you do see in the end
1:09:30the war doesn't occur
1:09:32but you see several points at which it
1:09:34goes further it keeps going
1:09:36and uh where you have to say it could
1:09:39occur
1:09:40it could have occurred so coming right
1:09:42back to your point is somebody
1:09:43who for what it's worth i wrote my phd
1:09:46thesis on subjective probability
1:09:49probability and uh axioms decision
1:09:51making under uncertainty
1:09:53i won't go into all that it's not a
1:09:55question of a precise probability
1:09:57but even in my mind in subjective
1:09:58probability uh
1:10:00betting odds or a range of betting odds
1:10:03which is
1:10:04a way of expressing uncertainty in my
1:10:06opinion
1:10:08the chance on september 26th that is a
1:10:11soviet submarine
1:10:13which was being bombarded with what were
1:10:15supposedly
1:10:17fake or practice depth charges
1:10:20but which felt to the captain of the
1:10:24ship
1:10:24like hammer blows on a barrel he felt he
1:10:27was being attacked
1:10:28and bombarded and above to go down and
1:10:31said
1:10:32to his second in command i'm not going
1:10:35down without taking them with us
1:10:38he was going to disobey
1:10:41his orders uh not to go not to use a
1:10:45nuclear torpedo
1:10:47which we didn't know he had we didn't
1:10:50know there were nuclear carpeters
1:10:51on that class of submarine four of them
1:10:54had it
1:10:55so he was ordered not to use that
1:10:57without orders from moscow
1:11:00underneath the water they couldn't get
1:11:02to moscow he thought he was being
1:11:03bombarded and go down so for the honor
1:11:05of the soviet navy
1:11:06he was going to take a cruiser carrier
1:11:09or at least destroyers
1:11:10with him he readied the nuclear torpedo
1:11:13he had all the agreement he needed
1:11:16from his second in command to send that
1:11:18off which i think by the way
1:11:21not to go through the whole chain we
1:11:23would not be here
1:11:24if his command if he had pressed the
1:11:26button on that one
1:11:27and sent the torpedo but there was a
1:11:30third man the
1:11:31uh archipelago who was the same rank
1:11:35as the captain of the submarine but was
1:11:38uh in roll higher he was a commodore of
1:11:40the four submarines
1:11:42and he happened to be on this submarine
1:11:44so his agreement was also necessary
1:11:46and he argued no you shouldn't do it
1:11:49without orders from moscow
1:11:51so we're still here what were the odds
1:11:53then
1:11:54i think if you'd known all of this up
1:11:56till that moment
1:11:58it was highly likely that the world was
1:12:00about to blow up
1:12:01um but from year to year you know
1:12:05very much lower never zero
1:12:08what should it be i would say do we have
1:12:12reason
1:12:13to be taking a non-zero risk of
1:12:15destroying most life on earth
1:12:17did we possibly have a right to do that
1:12:20well we're in the 21st century here
1:12:22we've had a century thinking
1:12:23okay we're the us or we're we're the
1:12:26third reich or whoever we have a right
1:12:28to do whatever we feel like what it
1:12:30takes for but not until
1:12:3370 years ago where any of these rulers
1:12:35able
1:12:36to do something that would destroy most
1:12:39humans
1:12:40on earth have they developed an ethics
1:12:42or a control on them
1:12:44that would be commensurate with that
1:12:46responsibility
1:12:47not even slightly could have been worse
1:12:50could have been worse there were lots of
1:12:51times
1:12:52when a different leader different
1:12:53circumstances would have blown the world
1:12:55up we've been lucky
1:12:57and uh our policies haven't haven't been
1:12:59as bad as they could be
1:13:01uh they haven't actually led pressing
1:13:03the button although
1:13:04it they have involved some serious
1:13:06threats of nuclear weapons and i don't
1:13:09think all of them
1:13:10were bluffs so we come back to kind of
1:13:12fermi's thing
1:13:15what chance should we give to uh
1:13:18in his case atmospheric admission that
1:13:21we haven't figured something right
1:13:23um too big
1:13:26uh 10 is not bad uh
1:13:29over time but maybe it's one percent
1:13:32uh year by year except for crises and we
1:13:36are building toward crises very
1:13:38consciously we are renewing the cold war
1:13:40we're regarding the chinese and the
1:13:42russians as people so bad
1:13:44in their human rights abuses which are
1:13:47real
1:13:48so bad that we can't talk to them we
1:13:50can't uh
1:13:51biden was not able to have lunch
1:13:55with putin they didn't break bread in
1:13:58their recent summit
1:13:59that would be too intimate for their uh
1:14:01perhaps on both sides
1:14:03uh for the right wing but putin has said
1:14:05he was willing to talk
1:14:06biden it was a big step firm even to
1:14:09talk
1:14:10this is a kind of insanity it's like uh
1:14:14believing that climate danger doesn't
1:14:16exist that there's no climate problem
1:14:18which only about a third to a half of
1:14:21our public
1:14:22does believe so this this mass in senate
1:14:26has been with us in the past and it's
1:14:28with us right now
1:14:30this is not a species to be trusted with
1:14:32nuclear weapons
1:14:34and it never has been if there is such a
1:14:37species
1:14:38it's not us and uh the
1:14:42uh actual probability
1:14:46is uh i think of getting through the
1:14:47next hundred years without this
1:14:50my friends that i deal with who have
1:14:52pretty much the same perspective
1:14:54think as i do low
1:14:58very low that we survive the nuclear era
1:15:01that's in addition to all your other
1:15:02problems of time
1:15:04of ai genetic engineering
1:15:07pandemics which i just read this morning
1:15:10we're not
1:15:10we're no longer in a pandemic we've got
1:15:12an employee during
1:15:14this it'll be with us for a long time
1:15:16because it's gotten out of control
1:15:18allegedly that's one one paper i read
1:15:20today
1:15:21people could disagree with that on the
1:15:23nuclear issue
1:15:25uh saying that no one with any
1:15:29sense could say that the probability is
1:15:32almost zero
1:15:33uh that's like saying in new orleans
1:15:36which nobody did there can't be a
1:15:39category three hurricane or a four or a
1:15:41five
1:15:42everybody knew there could be and
1:15:44everybody knew in the chinese
1:15:46that it would overwhelm the levees and
1:15:48it would go over them
1:15:50and it would crack them and they were
1:15:51study after study including in the year
1:15:53before katrina
1:15:55that you had to plug those leaks and you
1:15:57had to raise the levees
1:15:58but the money wasn't there because it
1:16:00hadn't happened yet
1:16:02and everybody knew well that's what a
1:16:05category
1:16:06first they thought it was a category
1:16:08five uh but then they said a category
1:16:10three would have been just as bad
1:16:12and they were talking about if something
1:16:13would happen once every several hundred
1:16:15years
1:16:16that was wrong bad calculation
1:16:20uh way things are moving so in short i
1:16:23say the probability is
1:16:25too great it's small year by year
1:16:29but in crises with armed conflict of any
1:16:32kind with china
1:16:34or russia no matter how justified that
1:16:38armed conflict seems to be
1:16:40in ukraine or taiwan or somewhere else
1:16:43we're not threatening it for xinjiang
1:16:46that's a human rights violation going on
1:16:48that we do understand
1:16:50our military cannot solve or hong kong
1:16:54we can't protect hong kong
1:16:57can we protect taiwan safely enough
1:17:02uh i think we should be looking very
1:17:04closely at
1:17:05alternatives to conflict over taiwan
1:17:09which in which try to keep the democracy
1:17:12of taiwan that it
1:17:13has achieved in the last 20 years in
1:17:16contrast to the mainland
1:17:18yes they have every right to be willing
1:17:20to
1:17:21give their lives to protect that that is
1:17:23a cause worth protecting
1:17:25actually by our initiating nuclear war
1:17:28no how about by threatening it
1:17:32let me predict biden will do that
1:17:36he will imply that we're already
1:17:38committed to the defense of taiwan
1:17:40and he will refuse to forego the threat
1:17:44of initiating nuclear war first use if
1:17:47i'm wrong i'll i'd be the happiest
1:17:49person
1:17:50i can imagine he won't do it because he
1:17:52will be accused by the right wing here
1:17:54which we now know is pretty large
1:17:57of having invited a communist attack
1:18:01on taiwan well
1:18:04that's not a totally foolish
1:18:07supposition under current circumstances
1:18:10and so
1:18:11he will continue the threat and the risk
1:18:14and it's a real risk and i come back to
1:18:16putin
1:18:18the war will not take place because
1:18:20people know better
1:18:22he didn't say uh they
1:18:25uh would lose it they won't win it
1:18:28meaning the world will go up that's why
1:18:29they won't that's why it won't happen
1:18:31sorry about that vladimir that's a dumb
1:18:34statement he's the head of a state he's
1:18:38the head of a nuclear weapon state
1:18:40should he be telling the world that war
1:18:42is impossible because deterrence
1:18:44is absolutely certain that's idiotic
1:18:47does that mean that he's stupid no he's
1:18:50not stupid
1:18:51this whole system was constructed by
1:18:54very smart people some of them geniuses
1:18:56literally geniuses and uh
1:19:00one genius everybody agreed was a genius
1:19:03was the guy who inspired my first
1:19:05graduate work in decision theory for
1:19:07neumann my honors thesis
1:19:10uh as at harvard was written on decision
1:19:13making on rational
1:19:14rational pardon me let me lower my voice
1:19:17here rational decision making under
1:19:19uncertainty
1:19:20the contributions of von neumann and
1:19:22morgan stern
1:19:24very good silva neumann as a consultant
1:19:27who it's first proposed
1:19:30uh mating the icbm and the i mean he was
1:19:33among those he was in charge of a
1:19:34committee that proposed mating the icbm
1:19:37with the h bomber really
1:19:39great idea for americans said more than
1:19:42once
1:19:44you say that we should uh
1:19:48if you say if if i'm sorry if you
1:19:51say we should strike the superiors the
1:19:54russians
1:19:55first in a month i say
1:19:59why not tomorrow and if you say tomorrow
1:20:03i say why not today
1:20:06now that was phenomenal as a calculator
1:20:09as a mathematician
1:20:11no one that i know of has ever been
1:20:13claimed to be smarter
1:20:14than phenomenal they have different
1:20:16kinds of intelligence but he's in the
1:20:18einstein fermi feynman
1:20:20class and that was
1:20:23stupid to the point but dangerously
1:20:26stupid
1:20:28in favor of preemptive war uh
1:20:31you can look it up find that quote i'm
1:20:33sure i didn't have it exactly
1:20:35on the web of course you should go first
1:20:38rather than second
1:20:40uh let me that's you know in
1:20:43in dr strangelove that would be quite in
1:20:46character
1:20:47that's why i say strangelove was a
1:20:49documentary
1:20:50there were people like von neumann
1:20:52strictly speaking van brown was the
1:20:55nazi in the film kissinger of course
1:20:58edward teller
1:21:00all let me give you a secret kissinger
1:21:03is no genius
1:21:04but teller is probably a genius as far
1:21:08as i'm concerned
1:21:09for neumann sure why not yes yes
1:21:12not kissing uh some of these guys you
1:21:16know there
1:21:16are smart fools like uh uh
1:21:19tom friedman and then there are
1:21:23um fool's fools like douglas feith
1:21:27or the various people who uh who was
1:21:30described as
1:21:31one of the architects of the iraq war
1:21:33and the general in charge called him
1:21:35the dumbest person on the face
1:21:37of the earth and he was providing
1:21:39intelligence
1:21:40to uh george w bush to encourage him
1:21:43to go into so you have but but mostly
1:21:47mostly you don't get douglas fights up
1:21:50there
1:21:51uh paul wolfowitz example of a brilliant
1:21:53fool
1:21:54let's go into iraq and um uh democracy
1:21:58will split
1:21:58throughout the mideast is that smart
1:22:03but paul wolfo is very smart
1:22:06by all standards meaning like you you're
1:22:10all very smart i suspect on this film
1:22:13it is no protection to the world
1:22:16that you will not participate in
1:22:19disastrous
1:22:20uh choices and risk-taking that applies
1:22:23to me
1:22:24it applies to everybody on this screen
1:22:27and
1:22:27uh i don't even conclude that as
1:22:30as albert spear once said uh
1:22:34a number three man who was who raised
1:22:36production in germany
1:22:38under the bombing and in uh
1:22:41he said when he was asked how could such
1:22:44a smart person as you
1:22:46be a nazi you know under under hitler
1:22:50and he said intelligence is no
1:22:53correlation has no correlation
1:22:55with decency now these people actually
1:22:59are all decent people
1:23:00by their standards by their likes
1:23:04somebody once said so-and-so is an
1:23:06honorable man by his lights
1:23:08but his lights were dim well these
1:23:11people
1:23:11were had their own morality but it
1:23:14involved taking risks
1:23:15with the future of humanity that they
1:23:17should not have been taking
1:23:21thank you i think in ai that is called
1:23:23the orthogonality thesis
1:23:26that intelligence and alignment isn't
1:23:28always correlated
1:23:29we have one more question perhaps from
1:23:31peter norvig in case
1:23:33you have time for one more i can stay
1:23:37longer so
1:23:38it's up to you more i comment than that
1:23:41so i could use some water if you hold on
1:23:46just
1:23:49i wish i could bring you some water but
1:23:52as a moderator i'm not able to do this
1:23:54on zoom
1:23:58um but peter i think you're there yes so
1:24:00the comment was uh
1:24:02uh i heard uh george dyson
1:24:05say that uh freeman dyson uh agrees
1:24:08i'm sorry if you were asking questions i
1:24:10couldn't hear it because i didn't have
1:24:11my
1:24:11phone so headphones uh i heard george
1:24:15dyson say
1:24:16that uh it was freeman dyson's opinion
1:24:18that
1:24:19he said it would have been better if the
1:24:20nazis had uh got the bomb first
1:24:23because he said you know they would have
1:24:25bombed london once we'd lose a hundred
1:24:27thousand civilians but then uh the
1:24:29weapons would have been banned forever
1:24:32so that that well i think that's uh
1:24:34banned forever who knows but
1:24:35yes it would have been um less dangerous
1:24:39for the world for the nazis to do that
1:24:42i'll give you a reason why they didn't
1:24:43by the way
1:24:44but dyson is very interesting example
1:24:48i met him a couple of times he was very
1:24:49flattering to me because of the pentagon
1:24:51papers
1:24:52he's at princeton and he was he was
1:24:54against the vietnam war
1:24:56and dyson is a guy who i quote by quite
1:24:59a bit
1:25:00in my doomsday machine confessions
1:25:03confessions of a nuclear war planner uh
1:25:06he
1:25:07it very interesting if you see that book
1:25:09which i recommend
1:25:10look up dyson in the in the index
1:25:13and you'll see some interesting
1:25:15judgments by him
1:25:16but he and he wrote a very candid
1:25:20memoir
1:25:23in the form actually of a series of
1:25:25articles in the new yorker
1:25:26that he finally brought together in a
1:25:28series several books
1:25:29it's one of the best written memoirs
1:25:31you'll ever find
1:25:33and one of the most self-reflective
1:25:35memoirs
1:25:36but the story he tells is some summed up
1:25:39at one of the ending of a chapter
1:25:41at the end of world war ii of world war
1:25:43one wait wait let me get ready
1:25:45world war ii yeah sorry brief um
1:25:50that uh he was very glad to be out of
1:25:54the war he'd been working for the
1:25:55british the raf the uh
1:25:58bomber command actually uh on
1:26:01operational aspects
1:26:03of it he's very glad it was over because
1:26:06he had started the war
1:26:08as a ghandian pacifist before the war
1:26:12and he said then i retreated from that
1:26:14and uh which
1:26:16in which i would follow him on that
1:26:17point in world war ii
1:26:19he said never kill civilians then i got
1:26:22into that and he goes from one thing to
1:26:24another he said
1:26:25by the end of the war you know he had
1:26:28been
1:26:28for everything uh which didn't look so
1:26:31good so he was disgusted by it
1:26:34but it turned out later he made a lot of
1:26:36other judgments like that
1:26:37he was a big fan of the neutron bomb of
1:26:40which
1:26:41i was not a fan uh a number of things
1:26:44and he just made judgment after judgment
1:26:46free dyson is an interesting case if you
1:26:49actually look at his
1:26:50values and what he did um
1:26:53he was always getting himself for
1:26:55intellectual curiosity or following
1:26:57orders or doing whatever
1:26:58into situations that involved violating
1:27:02his previous values interested
1:27:06was he alone in that no he was an
1:27:08exemplar of an entire
1:27:12official class or for that matter of
1:27:14scientific class
1:27:15with some good exceptions like for
1:27:18example
1:27:18zillard uh they're saying
1:27:23i don't know some of you may know
1:27:24richard garwin who i mentioned
1:27:26he actually supported a project i was
1:27:28doing but god is an interesting case
1:27:30because again a genius by all accounts
1:27:33uh and one of the very smartest guys
1:27:35dealing with the original atom bombers
1:27:37h-bomb designs and and later
1:27:40and very quite anti-nuclear except that
1:27:44as in child in in john hersey's book
1:27:48john hersey of hiroshima book the child
1:27:50buyer
1:27:51he just couldn't resist answering a
1:27:54problem
1:27:55that the air force or the labs set him
1:27:58no matter how dangerous it might be
1:28:02and uh in fact this is good for all of
1:28:05you
1:28:05i'll tell you a joke applied to richard
1:28:08darwin
1:28:08if he some of you know i don't know him
1:28:10well i just know his career
1:28:12uh he's like a lot of other scientists
1:28:15that i did know well
1:28:18garwin is accused during the revolution
1:28:20as mike will have happened
1:28:22of being a dissident and so he's to be
1:28:24guillotined
1:28:26and he's in a line of people being
1:28:27guillotined and first a bishop
1:28:30puts his head on the block the the uh
1:28:33the axe comes down
1:28:35uh first they asked the bishop you can
1:28:37be face up
1:28:39or face down he says face down
1:28:42so the x comes down halfway and stops
1:28:47and they say well gee you've been put
1:28:49through this you can go
1:28:51you're acquitted same thing happens to
1:28:54another guy who comes there face down
1:28:58stops they go guy wins turn
1:29:01he says face up he looks up and just
1:29:04before they pull the rope he says
1:29:06wait a minute i think i see your problem
1:29:10and that's in a way the the
1:29:13contributions
1:29:14that scientists have made uh so long
1:29:17uh the uh
1:29:23yeah okay anyway go on
1:29:28yeah i had something in mind but having
1:29:30a senior moment here
1:29:31at night these two happen uh i forget
1:29:34what i was about to say
1:29:36this is a terrifying portal um
1:29:39i think that we have reached the end of
1:29:42our questions
1:29:43um i would love us to perhaps conclude
1:29:46with
1:29:47uh given you know the really terrifying
1:29:50um almost humorously terrifying
1:29:52absurd account that you've just conveyed
1:29:53as um
1:29:55what can the next generation do better
1:29:58um looking forward into a world in which
1:30:00not only nukes
1:30:01are still a threat hiding in plain sight
1:30:04but we also have the proliferation of a
1:30:06bunch of
1:30:06other technologies what can we do better
1:30:10very very crucial question let me let me
1:30:12address that
1:30:13um okay
1:30:18i remember what i was about to say and
1:30:20it's related to this
1:30:22so i will i'll go ahead and say it and
1:30:24that was why
1:30:26the nazis did not pursue a manhattan
1:30:28project well
1:30:30they made a miscalculation i didn't
1:30:32remember as to how large the
1:30:34critical mass had to be but as others
1:30:36said after the war look if we really
1:30:38wanted to make this bomb for hitler
1:30:40um which and they were nazis they were
1:30:43supporting hillary
1:30:44but they did have uneasy feelings about
1:30:46hitler having that bomb
1:30:48and as some of them said uh to
1:30:51heisenberg and others if you really
1:30:53wanted to do this
1:30:54uh we would have gotten past that
1:30:56miscalculation we would
1:30:57have discovered and so forth putting
1:30:59that aside
1:31:01uh schmer is asked literally this is the
1:31:03case which prepares memoirs
1:31:05sparrow has asked in 42
1:31:09just at the very time that the manhattan
1:31:12project is getting organized it didn't
1:31:14really get started till the fall of 42
1:31:16but they joined together in june of 42 i
1:31:20think it was may or june
1:31:21at uc berkeley just the theorists
1:31:24to start discussing the theory of it so
1:31:27june was just at the time then that you
1:31:29could say
1:31:31the theorizing really started and in
1:31:33germany
1:31:34uh spare talks to all the uh physicists
1:31:37that he can
1:31:38he's not a physicist himself an
1:31:40architect an engineer
1:31:42and he reports to hitler in the fact
1:31:44that they don't think they could do it
1:31:46within less than
1:31:47four years and this is 42.
1:31:50so hitler was counting on the war being
1:31:53over one way or another
1:31:55before that so that was a factor against
1:31:57it
1:31:58but the other one was in spare census in
1:32:01his memoir
1:32:02i told him about the possibility of
1:32:05atmospheric ignition
1:32:06which as i've told you was not ruled out
1:32:10as a possibility until
1:32:13about uh 46 sometime in 46
1:32:17after the war so hitler is told about
1:32:20this
1:32:20and that there's a possibility that this
1:32:23thing will ignite
1:32:24the nitrogen in the air and the hydrogen
1:32:26in the ocean
1:32:29he said hitler was not in uh happy about
1:32:32the thought
1:32:33that he might ring down the curtain on
1:32:35mankind
1:32:37hitler and by the way the first reaction
1:32:41of uh compton when he heard about this
1:32:43was we must stop
1:32:45on this we've got to stop uh everything
1:32:48i'm telling this because
1:32:49it's so relevant you know to the kind of
1:32:51thing you face in these other
1:32:52existential
1:32:53issues so compton says you've got to
1:32:56stop you've got to
1:32:57discuss this with oppenheimer when they
1:32:59realized
1:33:00what tellers calculations which included
1:33:03an arithmetic error
1:33:04because like me tiller made arithmetic
1:33:07errors
1:33:08on the blackboard that's the the only
1:33:10thing i share with edward schiller
1:33:13and um so aside from that though they
1:33:16still had the possibility
1:33:17so to get to oppenheimer he was in a
1:33:21um in a retreat somewhere fishing
1:33:26uh compton goes across the country uh by
1:33:29by rail
1:33:30because with the secrets of this bombing
1:33:32and then they weren't supposed to fly
1:33:34he gets oppenheimer and discusses with
1:33:36him and compton's attitude is
1:33:39if there is any possibility of
1:33:42atmospheric ignition
1:33:44we cannot continue so they worked at it
1:33:47and they discovered
1:33:48uh that the uh it wasn't as possible as
1:33:52tillers
1:33:52arithmetic had suggested but still
1:33:55seemed possible
1:33:56beta who was the most knowledgeable the
1:33:59theoretical physicist at that time
1:34:01and his uh nobel prize was actually
1:34:04related to his
1:34:05thermonuclear uh studies of the sun
1:34:09um he says it's impossible beta says
1:34:12it's impossible
1:34:13well that's the best authority you could
1:34:15have except that no one
1:34:17agreed with him uh they looked at me and
1:34:20looked the calculations said
1:34:21very unlikely but it's not impossible
1:34:25and as i say fermi in the end says 10
1:34:28percent who looks
1:34:29somewhat wiser to me beta was right
1:34:32but i think fermi made a good estimate
1:34:34there and
1:34:35so throughout the war they kept redis
1:34:39young scientists kept rediscovering this
1:34:41and saying hey
1:34:42this thing may blow up all life on earth
1:34:44say no we've covered that we've gone
1:34:46into that because they had concluded
1:34:49uh compton says we can't go ahead
1:34:53unless the likelihood is less than three
1:34:56in a million
1:34:58so see okay it's less than 300 million
1:35:02so they go ahead given the risk
1:35:05of germany at that point in 42
1:35:09that seems i have to say reasonable to
1:35:11me
1:35:12that not to want the germans to have a
1:35:14monopoly although my
1:35:16later friend joe wrote blood said you
1:35:18know you couldn't have deterred hitler
1:35:20and so it gets more complicated anyway
1:35:23um they go ahead but now we get
1:35:27when i come back to what i was saying
1:35:28earlier now we get to me
1:35:31that germans have surrendered we knew
1:35:34the japanese did not have a bomb
1:35:36what do you do now do you risk
1:35:39atmospheric ignition
1:35:42fermi says maybe ten percent or what
1:35:44about one percent
1:35:46fermi gave odds the night before and
1:35:48took bets
1:35:49as to whether all of uh
1:35:52nevada would be incinerated
1:35:55or the whole world he said i can make
1:35:57book on two
1:35:58two counts here reasonable odds we don't
1:36:01know the exact odds
1:36:03but we do know now that he said this ten
1:36:05percent i don't think he was giving odds
1:36:07at three in a million that's not a bad
1:36:09people are very interested in it
1:36:11so uh okay so of course
1:36:15they should not have done that at that
1:36:17time
1:36:18would truman really have accepted uh
1:36:20fermi's estimate you know
1:36:22uh 10 or one percent shouldn't have
1:36:26but hitler said no he didn't want it
1:36:30and then hitler said despair you
1:36:32scientists
1:36:33someday you're going to find out a way
1:36:35to burn up the world
1:36:36but that will not be for my lifetime he
1:36:39says
1:36:40he died just before trinity
1:36:44and trinity could have done it that
1:36:48then he wouldn't have time to say well
1:36:51i'm glad i didn't do it you know
1:36:53nobody would have time to say anything
1:36:55so
1:36:56there we are at least that's what i was
1:36:58going to see now what should people do
1:37:00well they should be aware and i'll talk
1:37:03just to this group and by the way
1:37:06a recording of this group will sound me
1:37:08sounding more
1:37:09dogmatic uh passionate
1:37:12emotional and insulting than i have ever
1:37:15permitted myself to be
1:37:17i can't even remember it in 70 years how
1:37:20could that be well this is my last
1:37:22interview of a month where i've done
1:37:24about two or three a day
1:37:25in fact i have one more today so this is
1:37:28the next to last
1:37:29interview for this anniversary of the
1:37:32pentagon papers and my 90th birthday
1:37:35and uh and the taiwan revelations of
1:37:39last month
1:37:40so i kind of let myself go here that's
1:37:43it so just understand that that's not
1:37:46the way i talk all the time
1:37:50but right now
1:37:54we should begin to recognize
1:37:57as a method of as the pentagon papers
1:38:00could have revealed to people but didn't
1:38:02quite
1:38:06smart guys can pursue insane
1:38:09policy extremely murderously
1:38:13they don't care as much about other
1:38:16people as you imagine human leaders
1:38:18would
1:38:19but you're wrong human leaders don't
1:38:23and you can show that with enormous
1:38:25amount of data over the last 2000 years
1:38:29so the notion that um uh
1:38:32popens notion that if he really believes
1:38:35this
1:38:36there can't be any war he said the word
1:38:39impossible
1:38:40because no sane person is what he's
1:38:43saying that's a paraphrase
1:38:44which started sorry they're saying by
1:38:47other standards
1:38:49and wrong britain should not be fooling
1:38:52around in the black sea
1:38:54like this uh the russians should not be
1:38:56thinking
1:38:57and if if he really thinks he can sink
1:38:59us
1:39:00a carrier i mean a cruiser with no risk
1:39:04get him out of there but he wouldn't be
1:39:07unusual that's the kind of thinking that
1:39:08our
1:39:09our decision making was rife with
1:39:12so should you trust these people to make
1:39:14decisions in secret
1:39:16no uh should you people now here's a big
1:39:18one for you
1:39:20should you be prepared to say no to a
1:39:23president
1:39:25yes absolutely to if you're in
1:39:28office you will have taken an oath
1:39:31of office and it will not have been
1:39:34an oath to a president or to a furore
1:39:38or to a secretary general or anybody
1:39:41that both you'll take in office in this
1:39:43country
1:39:44and this may go in other countries i'm
1:39:47hearing
1:39:49happens to be to defend and support
1:39:51support and defend
1:39:52the constitution against all enemies
1:39:56foreign and domestic now it so happens
1:39:59that in some respects
1:40:00our constitution is really worth
1:40:02defending
1:40:03uh to the death everybody has a
1:40:05constitution
1:40:07and uh nowadays in the last 100 years
1:40:10and a lot of them are ignored just
1:40:13totally ignored soviet russia had a
1:40:15constitution
1:40:16for all i know north korea has a
1:40:18constitution it may not
1:40:20but most countries do they aren't
1:40:22necessarily worth much
1:40:24the first amendment has had its effects
1:40:26over here to a considerable extent
1:40:28we don't have an official secrets act
1:40:32as britain does for that reason now
1:40:35does that mean by the way that britain
1:40:37is for that reason not a democracy and
1:40:40we are
1:40:41well we can't conclude that
1:40:44however badly they've done on covet even
1:40:46worse than we have
1:40:48uh they're uh they're a democracy to a
1:40:51large extent
1:40:52uh it doesn't mean they can't make
1:40:54horrible errors
1:40:56uh or or that we can but
1:41:00we have a first amendment they don't
1:41:02they have an official secrets act
1:41:04we don't except that starting with me
1:41:08there was one earlier case that got
1:41:10dropped
1:41:11but starting with me through a
1:41:13prosecution the espionage act has been
1:41:15used
1:41:16as if it were an official secrets act
1:41:18and that was so blatantly
1:41:20unconstitutional
1:41:21that um after my provocation
1:41:24there was only two other cases that were
1:41:27brought in that century
1:41:29but under and one of them was then
1:41:31dropped by obama
1:41:33but obama brought about nine
1:41:36such cases and trump ate in his first
1:41:39term
1:41:40and they include a journalist
1:41:44julian assange for the first time if
1:41:46julian
1:41:47is indicted and
1:41:51prosecuted he will almost surely be
1:41:53convicted at the lower level
1:41:55for nothing that has not been done
1:41:59by new york times reporters including
1:42:02charlie savage a terrific reporter
1:42:04who did a great job on what i gave him a
1:42:06month ago of putting out top secrets
1:42:10could charlie be accused of the same
1:42:13crimes as julian assange absolutely if
1:42:16they are crimes
1:42:17constitutionally in this country they
1:42:19aren't but the supreme court
1:42:21has never addressed that so one thing
1:42:23then is to be
1:42:24where we do the espionage act should not
1:42:27be used
1:42:28as an official secrets act julian
1:42:30assange
1:42:32should be freed we should biden should
1:42:35stop
1:42:35appealing the order of a british judge
1:42:39that he should not be extradited that he
1:42:41should be freed
1:42:42but trump appealed that and biden has
1:42:44renewed the appeal
1:42:46to convict him if that's the case he
1:42:49will not be the last journalist he'll be
1:42:51the first
1:42:51of a flood of journalists to be and the
1:42:54first amendment
1:42:55will be gone as far
1:42:58did the first amendment protect us from
1:43:01the atom bomb
1:43:02or the uh nuclear arms race or vietnam
1:43:06or iraq no it didn't everybody kept
1:43:10their mouth shut they did not go to the
1:43:11newspapers
1:43:12and tell them what was in store yes
1:43:15rabinowitch
1:43:16of the front report said while i was
1:43:19eluding the fbi
1:43:21and uh for 13 days in 1971 he wrote the
1:43:24new york times
1:43:26and said we've been rich now who was the
1:43:28replacer
1:43:29of the frank report and he said
1:43:32in the spring of 1945 i had
1:43:36sleepless nights pondering whether i
1:43:38should not tell the american public
1:43:41of the atom bomb this was after the
1:43:43german surrender now
1:43:45of the animal he says he said in another
1:43:47piece
1:43:48i have no illusions they might have gone
1:43:49ahead with it anyway
1:43:51but at least they would have done so
1:43:53knowingly they would have
1:43:54shared responsibility for doing this
1:43:57but he didn't and he said this is in
1:44:01response to the alleged case of daniel
1:44:03ellsberg who they're looking for at this
1:44:05moment
1:44:06i'm telling you that i believe that if i
1:44:09had released that
1:44:10information in 45 i would have been
1:44:13right to do so
1:44:16and he's right he would have been right
1:44:19to do so
1:44:20and he was wrong not to do so and
1:44:23zillard who felt just as strongly
1:44:25later said wrote a piece a fiction piece
1:44:29my trial as a war criminal
1:44:32the russians have won the war and his
1:44:33peace he's being tried
1:44:35and he says but i did a petition uh
1:44:38against dropping it and the russian
1:44:41prosecutor points out
1:44:43you did it through channels knowing it
1:44:45would be blocked
1:44:47and zillard wrote this fictional piece
1:44:49said true i recognized no
1:44:52i was guilty and it's true the fbi
1:44:55tailed um zillard because they knew
1:44:59from what he was writing that he was
1:45:00against using the bomb
1:45:02so they were tailing him in case he
1:45:03should leak
1:45:05and he should have leaked but he didn't
1:45:08and rabinowitz who wasn't being tailored
1:45:11detailed
1:45:12didn't either and he regretted it later
1:45:15so all of you then face will at some
1:45:18point face this point
1:45:20shall i keep the promise i've made
1:45:24not to tell what i've learned in this
1:45:26process to anyone
1:45:27under any circumstances that my bosses
1:45:30have not authorized to get
1:45:34that promise should never be made
1:45:35absolutely
1:45:37i was just thinking this morning we
1:45:39don't have in the bill of rights
1:45:40or i'm sorry in the declaration we do
1:45:42have in the building in the declaration
1:45:44of independence
1:45:45we don't have an inalienable right to
1:45:48tell the truth
1:45:50do we uh to speak out
1:45:54it could hardly be regarded as
1:45:55inalienable
1:45:57we alienate it in every group we join
1:46:01from the pta to a book club
1:46:04we don't hear dirty laundry outside this
1:46:07group
1:46:07right right i sign a non-disclosure
1:46:12agreement i will not reveal it that's
1:46:15called alienating the right to tell the
1:46:17truth
1:46:18and non-alienation means you can't sell
1:46:20it it can't be taken away from you
1:46:22you can't voluntarily give it away
1:46:25and how about uh an alienware right to
1:46:28lie
1:46:29well officials think they have that you
1:46:31know
1:46:32but they have uh you know they've given
1:46:34away their
1:46:35right to tell the truth and they believe
1:46:39they have a right to lie to congress or
1:46:42to a court
1:46:43to keep secrets because they have
1:46:45promised to
1:46:47promise to whom promised as a condition
1:46:50of their job
1:46:52and they could lose their job they could
1:46:53lose their clearance they could lose
1:46:55their exes
1:46:56that has kept people's miles shut almost
1:46:59entirely the people who have actually
1:47:02risked their
1:47:03job to try to end the vietnam war
1:47:07i said yesterday in a another panel i
1:47:10was in
1:47:12my friend lord halpern joined my defense
1:47:14team
1:47:15he couldn't get hired that he had been
1:47:17in line to be a national security
1:47:20assistant
1:47:20that was he'd been deputy kissinger that
1:47:22was the logical job for him
1:47:25he couldn't get hired under carter
1:47:26because he worked on my defense team
1:47:29and he was challenged under clinton and
1:47:31had to take jobs that did not require
1:47:33affirmation
1:47:35he did sacrifice in his career for that
1:47:38and i can't think of
1:47:39anyone else who did
1:47:42who had a clearance anybody who worked
1:47:45for the government
1:47:46who lifted finger beyond the kind of
1:47:50protests that did not
1:47:51risk their job and there were a lot of
1:47:54that
1:47:55a lot of people said even very privately
1:47:57this is catastrophic
1:47:59catastrophic clark clifford hubert
1:48:02humphrey gee if something's catastrophic
1:48:06uh should you take part in it well they
1:48:09did because the president decided
1:48:10otherwise
1:48:11so they went ahead and supported the war
1:48:14after that having said that it would be
1:48:16catastrophic
1:48:17politically as well as humanly
1:48:20there's no other exceptions to it
1:48:21there's no exception to that
1:48:23mcnamara et cetera mcnamara could have
1:48:26ended the war
1:48:27at almost any time by telling what he
1:48:30had told the president and what he had
1:48:34what he had in his safe he had me safe
1:48:37everything i had and more
1:48:39not one line of it was shown to have
1:48:42hurt national security to be released
1:48:44but he didn't release any of it never
1:48:47did
1:48:48so anyway that's that's what we can try
1:48:51to change
1:48:52it's a human characteristic to keep your
1:48:55promises
1:48:57even when people's lives depend
1:49:00on your breaking that promise uh
1:49:03i am saying i can put it colorfully when
1:49:06you make a promise to keep secrets
1:49:08promise to keep secrets especially
1:49:11a promise to somebody who has life and
1:49:14death
1:49:14matters in their hands and that's just
1:49:16politicians
1:49:17that's engineers and scientists and
1:49:20people who inspect buildings as we've
1:49:22just seen in miami
1:49:24and how much did we we now learn that
1:49:28there are a lot of reports
1:49:29that that building that collapsed was
1:49:31unsafe
1:49:33but nobody put them out nobody made a
1:49:35public thing
1:49:36even the people who recommended that you
1:49:38must do it
1:49:39did not take the step of bringing
1:49:41people's attention to it
1:49:43or challenging it the building just fell
1:49:45down
1:49:46well that was the kind of thing my
1:49:48father you know was a structural
1:49:49engineer
1:49:51he he brought me up on tales of the
1:49:53tacoma bridge
1:49:54some of you will remember that and which
1:49:58certain wind resonance in the uh there
1:50:02made it flap like a blanket being uh
1:50:04being shaken
1:50:06and the cars tossed off it and so forth
1:50:09i see my father used to say the gothic
1:50:12cathedrals you see over there
1:50:14are the ones that didn't fall down and
1:50:17that's how engineers learn but uh
1:50:20imperialists don't learn that way
1:50:22because they don't
1:50:24they don't suffer from it the emperors
1:50:28like the ones we elect uh to manage an
1:50:31empire
1:50:33may lose their job but for mostly other
1:50:36reasons
1:50:38other reasons not for catastrophic
1:50:41acts of aggression so i i have a
1:50:45question
1:50:46about that um because the phenomena
1:50:49you're describing is clearly there i've
1:50:51seen it my whole life
1:50:52and it's mysterious to me uh
1:50:55in the following sense uh what you
1:50:57started with that it
1:50:59that it never even occurred to you not
1:51:01to release the pentagon papers because
1:51:03you were willing to risk your life in
1:51:05war
1:51:06well as as we all know there are many
1:51:08people
1:51:09willing to risk their life and war i've
1:51:11been i was part of the cypherpunks
1:51:13movement during the
1:51:14experiment did you speak a little louder
1:51:16i'm having trouble hearing your mark
1:51:18yes um is this better yes thank you
1:51:21okay um as you started with
1:51:25uh it never occurred to you not to
1:51:27release the pentagon papers
1:51:29because you had already come to the
1:51:32decision of being willing to risk your
1:51:34life in war
1:51:35being willing to risk your life for
1:51:36things that you care about
1:51:38many people do come to those decisions
1:51:41of being
1:51:41willing to risk their life in certain
1:51:43causes
1:51:45i was one of the cypherpunks and i both
1:51:48saw and participated
1:51:50during the era of export controls of
1:51:52people taking it on themselves to risk
1:51:55their lives
1:51:56and careers to get cryptography out into
1:51:59the world
1:52:01the so so we do see a certain
1:52:05level of of this kind of courage
1:52:09uh in individual actions in some parts
1:52:13of the world
1:52:14and at the same time we see
1:52:17other parts of the world like the
1:52:19national security apparatus
1:52:21able to keep secrets to an astonishing
1:52:24extent
1:52:25um you know that out of millions of
1:52:27people
1:52:28you have you know one or two that has
1:52:31enough
1:52:31conscience to decide to risk things in
1:52:34order to get things
1:52:35uh out there in public um i don't
1:52:39understand how both of those can be true
1:52:42how how there can be so little courage
1:52:46of the people holding the the important
1:52:49secrets within the
1:52:50the national security state
1:52:53okay very good uh i've i've
1:52:57puzzled with that for 50 years
1:53:00a little more than 50 years myself and
1:53:02don't have
1:53:03a strong answer to it but as a
1:53:06phenomenon
1:53:07i have come to see the contours of it a
1:53:09bit more
1:53:11of all people bismarck uh famously if
1:53:14you
1:53:15follow bisford had a quotation
1:53:19physical courage is commonplace on the
1:53:22battlefield
1:53:23is commonplace among our people he was
1:53:26speaking of prussia
1:53:28he said but civil courage is
1:53:31it which is civil courage or often
1:53:33translated as moral courage
1:53:36is very rare even among people who are
1:53:39otherwise very decent
1:53:41and responsible and the
1:53:44when you say this circumstances matter
1:53:47yes
1:53:48very sharply in a certain sense in
1:53:50wartime
1:53:52both sides uh fight with ground troops
1:53:55and
1:53:56fighter pilots and all their
1:54:00risk-taking troops
1:54:03having trained them without much trouble
1:54:06as
1:54:06teenage boys are a little older
1:54:10to take enormous physical risks for
1:54:12their team
1:54:14for their country for a cause but really
1:54:16uppermost in their mind they're trained
1:54:18as
1:54:18for the other people that are risking
1:54:20their lives for me and i'll risk my life
1:54:22for them
1:54:22and when you say it's commonplace when
1:54:24one says it's commonplace i
1:54:26saw that on the field as a former
1:54:29peacetime
1:54:30marine company commander i i knew enough
1:54:33about
1:54:33walking in combat without having been in
1:54:36it initially
1:54:37uh to go with troops to walk with troops
1:54:40a lot in vietnam
1:54:41and i saw that kind of courage
1:54:44everywhere
1:54:45on both sides actually is the
1:54:48typical thing so uh yes you can train
1:54:52people to be courageous that way and
1:54:53without
1:54:54it isn't too hard even to train them
1:54:57that way and
1:54:58all armies know how to do it um
1:55:03but civil courage for civilians and now
1:55:06you're talking about
1:55:07when it comes well there when it comes
1:55:10to risk what i
1:55:11keep saying over and over risking one's
1:55:14job
1:55:15one's advancement one's promotion one
1:55:17status
1:55:18one's clearance wants access
1:55:21very rare to find anybody who takes any
1:55:23risk at all
1:55:25now some of the people who get ahead
1:55:26fastest
1:55:28are people who do take some risks of
1:55:30that of angering their boss
1:55:32by persisting in something the boss
1:55:35doesn't like
1:55:36or even going around them bypassing them
1:55:39very dangerous that can lose your career
1:55:42fast
1:55:42but it can also if it works and you're
1:55:45vindicated in
1:55:46your point of view is a fast route a guy
1:55:49like macarthur
1:55:51got high by being fairly insubordinate
1:55:54much of his life
1:55:55and uh i was uh
1:56:00i was not insubordinate as a marine but
1:56:02uh
1:56:03but i i definitely had it in mind that
1:56:06if i got a bad order i wasn't just gonna
1:56:08salute that's not
1:56:09people think that's the way maroons are
1:56:11trained like robots
1:56:12that's not that's not the case uh you're
1:56:16you're as an infantry officer you are
1:56:18supposed to have a mind and
1:56:19take in what's actually happening in
1:56:21front of you and so forth
1:56:22and not simply obey or unquestioningly
1:56:26or by road and it was that very
1:56:29experience
1:56:30that led me when i was looking at
1:56:32nuclear command and control
1:56:34to say when my good conscientious
1:56:37officers who've been told not to launch
1:56:40weapons until the president
1:56:42demands it when might they disobey that
1:56:45i did that because i'd been a marine i
1:56:47would uh if i got an absolutely stupid
1:56:49order
1:56:50i wasn't going to obey it just
1:56:52automatically i was in situations like
1:56:54that actually
1:56:55so uh i said where are these guys
1:56:58and i discovered i could easily generate
1:57:01you can see the details in my book
1:57:04circumstances where as the kind of thing
1:57:06in doctor strangelove somebody thinks
1:57:08the right thing to do is disobey this
1:57:10order as a matter of fact
1:57:12since i've told you so much already
1:57:14about that submarine by
1:57:16savitsky in 1940-62
1:57:20when the submarines who did surface
1:57:22under our supposed
1:57:24practice grenades and they surfaced
1:57:26under american destroyers
1:57:27including savinski who did not use his
1:57:30torpedo
1:57:31he was reprimanded when he got back
1:57:35for not using it he shouldn't have gone
1:57:37to the bottom without using every weapon
1:57:39he had
1:57:41and instead of surfacing although
1:57:44he did have an order you shouldn't use
1:57:46that weapon
1:57:47he assumed they would want him to use it
1:57:49back there
1:57:50being a very conscientious officer for
1:57:52the honor of the navy
1:57:54they were all told the four
1:57:56subcommanders when they went back
1:57:58they had dishonored the soviet navy
1:58:02by obeying that order and and
1:58:06coming up in front of american warships
1:58:08and revealing themselves
1:58:10so i mean that's the kind of thing i
1:58:11knew as a marine
1:58:13that's how i knew it uh that that kind
1:58:16of thing could be done
1:58:17so we could try to learn
1:58:21a different ethic it's uh mark i would
1:58:25disagree with you on one thing
1:58:27the people who kept their promise of
1:58:29secrecy and all these matters as in iraq
1:58:32nearly everyone active duty saw that
1:58:35as a disastrous intervention
1:58:39military man i've never heard of a
1:58:41single general of brigadier ranker hire
1:58:44who agreed with that invasion uh that's
1:58:46an amazing statement
1:58:48but that's i believe the truth there was
1:58:50some retired people
1:58:51like kay him and said cakewalk let's do
1:58:55it
1:58:55um and uh but the military officers
1:58:59no they didn't want to do it but they
1:59:01didn't talk
1:59:02they didn't say that they kept their
1:59:04promise of sounds now
1:59:05how about the ones who do then the
1:59:07edward snowden chelsea manning
1:59:09or me i think it's misleading to think
1:59:13imply that we had more conscience or we
1:59:16had a conscience in the other student
1:59:18i believe the others had as much
1:59:20conscience and as much consulting
1:59:22as me or ed or anybody else
1:59:26but their conscience told them different
1:59:28things why in my case
1:59:30was it different well i'd had i'd had
1:59:32the experience
1:59:33of meeting draft resistors who'd said no
1:59:35it's possible to say no
1:59:37you don't have to go but the result is
1:59:39prison all right
1:59:41prison but better than my killing in an
1:59:43unjust war
1:59:45or being killed uh so they chose that
1:59:49and that revealed to me wait a minute
1:59:50there is a choice
1:59:52these other people it wasn't they had no
1:59:54conscience
1:59:55it was that their conscience didn't even
1:59:57call on them to imagine
1:59:59doing something for which they would be
2:00:01reproved
2:00:02by their team and their bosses
2:00:06as having betrayed the team being a
2:00:09traitor
2:00:10being ostracized make it as i'll make it
2:00:13very large what i've learned at 90.
2:00:16humans will do and almost will consider
2:00:20and do almost anything to avoid being
2:00:22ostracized
2:00:23by a group that they value being part of
2:00:26and of course you're part of many groups
2:00:28some in competition with each other
2:00:30and they overlap and they're different
2:00:32and so forth
2:00:33but for nearly everyone in the world
2:00:377.8 billion people most of them are
2:00:41outside any group you're a part of
2:00:44and my sad
2:00:47realization of human leaders is that
2:00:50they're like other people
2:00:52they don't care at all for the majority
2:00:55of humanity
2:00:57that is not us in the widest sense
2:01:01they don't have a species sense any more
2:01:03than other humans do
2:01:05we with rare exceptions they're either
2:01:08rare exceptions
2:01:09they're very rare really rare less than
2:01:12three in a million
2:01:13i'll tell you that to pick a number off
2:01:16the wall
2:01:17uh who actually and that's a large
2:01:20number altogether
2:01:22but if you have 7.8 billion people
2:01:26but most of them
2:01:29citizens leaders subordinates
2:01:32go along with almost any act of cruelty
2:01:36or inhuman what is called inhumanity but
2:01:38is very human actually
2:01:40inhumane action against people who are
2:01:44them other us not us
2:01:47that's that's the way it is now can we
2:01:50get can we somehow
2:01:51transcend that change human nature it's
2:01:54not impossible
2:01:56that's not impossible just as admiral
2:01:59charles richard
2:02:01the commander of our strategic command
2:02:04in charge of all the nuclear weapons the
2:02:07said almost all there may be somebody to
2:02:10strategic command says this year
2:02:14under biden
2:02:17war with russia we have to be prepared
2:02:19to fight
2:02:21war with russia or china
2:02:24or both and is that a pure
2:02:27hypothetical possibility he said no i
2:02:30used to think nuclear war was impossible
2:02:33but it is not impossible
2:02:36now how would it start he's almost
2:02:40surely in most situations talking about
2:02:42the u.s
2:02:43starting that because we have a sphere
2:02:45of influence
2:02:46that goes right up to russia and right
2:02:48up to china
2:02:49unlike them so thousands of miles from
2:02:52us
2:02:53and we're the ones who are likely to be
2:02:55outnumbered in some place like taiwan
2:02:58or south korea even something like that
2:03:01not necessarily but possibly so the
2:03:04thought of fighting russia and china is
2:03:06for the u.s starting nuclear war
2:03:10that's insane that should be a category
2:03:14in our decision theory not just wrong
2:03:17not just ignorant but insane
2:03:20but who decides that well nobody decides
2:03:22that nobody is the last person
2:03:24the uh not me not anybody uh
2:03:28but you can't look at that and say that
2:03:31world retreat
2:03:33nuclear war with china and russia you're
2:03:36talking about near extinction of human
2:03:38species
2:03:38aren't you or do you happen to be
2:03:41ignorant of that
2:03:43you may not know about nuclear winter is
2:03:45that possible
2:03:47i'm sorry to say yes it's it's possible
2:03:50uh it seems amazing but i have to say
2:03:53it's possible
2:03:54then get less ignorant uh that's been
2:03:58we've known that since 1983 that's
2:04:00almost 40 years ago
2:04:02so uh get on the ball on that one but
2:04:05how about forget nuclear winter i don't
2:04:07believe nuclear winter like
2:04:09the people who don't believe climate
2:04:10change fine
2:04:12just believe the destruction of the
2:04:16northern hemisphere
2:04:17by blast heat radiation immediate prompt
2:04:21radiation
2:04:22and fallout without the smoke that goes
2:04:25around the globe
2:04:27the southern hemisphere survives there's
2:04:29almost no targets down there
2:04:31that's what uh that's what rumsfeld who
2:04:34just died the other day
2:04:35said why he didn't want to bomb
2:04:38afghanistan
2:04:40he wanted to bomb iraq after 9 11.
2:04:43why there's no good targets in
2:04:45afghanistan
2:04:46and the counterterrorism chief richard
2:04:48clark says but afghanistan
2:04:50had nothing to do with this uh this was
2:04:53al-qaeda
2:04:54and he says that's what he said but
2:04:57there are no good targets
2:04:58in afghanistan and you know iraq is
2:05:02saddam hussein is a problem here well
2:05:05there are no good targets in
2:05:07in south america so if it weren't for
2:05:09the smoke
2:05:10south america would survive half the
2:05:13planet
2:05:14glass half full with smoke which
2:05:17does happen uh they don't survive
2:05:20that's the way it is but have people
2:05:22been willing to contemplate before they
2:05:24discovered nuclear winter
2:05:26killing nearly everyone in the northern
2:05:28hemisphere yes
2:05:31all of our presidents all are
2:05:34not likely they say i won't do it
2:05:38some of them said i don't think nixon
2:05:40said that i don't think eisenhower said
2:05:42that
2:05:42but actually some of them may say i
2:05:44won't do it under any circumstances
2:05:47could that be relied on no
2:05:51kennedy was one of those people i
2:05:52believe in berlin
2:05:56khrushchev could have triggered nuclear
2:05:58war
2:05:59but he didn't so we have whisper limb
2:06:03and two doomsday machines
2:06:06okay thank you i think
2:06:09this is to close it out maybe josh i had
2:06:12a question that really relates to
2:06:13what you just said you're sure if you
2:06:17would like to mute yourself
2:06:20did you were you asking for questions i
2:06:22couldn't quite hear that elephant
2:06:24yes two of us any yeah yes he has a
2:06:27question
2:06:28yeah okay uh can you hear me
2:06:32okay nobody disagrees nobody disagrees
2:06:34with anything i've said could that be
2:06:37well that's gonna be minor disagreements
2:06:40but i don't really disagree with what
2:06:41you said so i was asking a
2:06:43a slightly deeper question i did i'm not
2:06:46hearing this but
2:06:46maybe you can translate okay i'm sorry
2:06:49okay
2:06:50if i speak more slowly and more loudly
2:06:52does it work better
2:06:53help helps yes thank you okay who is
2:06:56this
2:06:59i am a cognitive scientist who is
2:07:00currently a first aid fellow
2:07:02i'm sorry i didn't hear the name who is
2:07:04who is it my name is joshua
2:07:08it's it's hard to understand oh yes i
2:07:10see it but not the picture yes okay
2:07:13um so um i
2:07:17i'm most uh my disagreements but let's
2:07:19not go into the disagreements i was
2:07:21wondering
2:07:22uh who in the present generation is able
2:07:25to keep up political thinking at that
2:07:27lizard level
2:07:28i found that uh when i was at harvard
2:07:31that
2:07:32the present generation is not trained in
2:07:34this kind of
2:07:35global non-naive thinking most of the
2:07:38thinking that i encountered was very
2:07:40ideological and short-sighted this is uh
2:07:43so i met many people in your generation
2:07:45that still have this
2:07:47global modernist perspective and is
2:07:50interacting with the ground truth
2:07:52and i found that the younger generations
2:07:53either uh
2:07:55don't really believe in the
2:07:57non-negotiability of political facts
2:07:59they think that there are social
2:08:00agreements or they have a relatively
2:08:03naive and short-sighted perspective that
2:08:05is not really
2:08:06aware of the intricacies of the
2:08:08political systems that we are in
2:08:10do you have the impression that there is
2:08:11a new generation of political thinkers
2:08:14that is able to follow up on u.s
2:08:17politics
2:08:18and repair the current system and follow
2:08:20on or
2:08:22is it my perception correct that we are
2:08:24currently
2:08:25maneuvering ourselves into a political
2:08:27vacuum
2:08:31i do have i do have the impression
2:08:35that young people
2:08:38look better in polls and in the
2:08:40attitudes they express
2:08:42than the older generations on many
2:08:44counts
2:08:45on many different counts one can point
2:08:47to that
2:08:48on the other hand that's often been true
2:08:51in the past
2:08:52and they didn't always act on that as
2:08:54they got older
2:08:55it seems like and they didn't act enough
2:08:58and
2:08:58and that's not a criticism because what
2:09:00would be enough what could they do
2:09:02they're not in positions of power
2:09:04generally
2:09:05they demonstrate they may write letters
2:09:08they might write things
2:09:10but the young people are are not running
2:09:12the country generally so
2:09:14how much do we see of their you know
2:09:16what is the effect of their attitudes
2:09:18can we put hope in the fact that um
2:09:21that they will be running things later
2:09:25yes and no as i just said um
2:09:28i have a strong feeling that greta
2:09:30tonberg will be
2:09:32taking the view she's taking on climate
2:09:35when she's older i have a lot of trust
2:09:37in her she's a hero of mine
2:09:39but that's uh that's unusual and
2:09:42uh to keep this activism going as you
2:09:45you get
2:09:46you get obligations family
2:09:49um children children's education
2:09:53um the um
2:09:57i read a book by bh little heart at a
2:09:59time when i was interested in military
2:10:01strategy
2:10:01he was a famous military historian and
2:10:04strategist
2:10:05mainly and he interviewed the german
2:10:08generals
2:10:08after world war ii and he reported
2:10:12that a lot of them thought that the
2:10:15attack into
2:10:16first they were they were very they
2:10:18thought the attacks all of hitler's
2:10:20attacks
2:10:20were very reckless but he kept
2:10:23succeeding
2:10:24and then uh czechoslovakia poland
2:10:27the rhineland and so forth so they
2:10:30they didn't feel with the same authority
2:10:32they could object as before still
2:10:34when it came to russia they thought
2:10:37that is impossible was it or wasn't it
2:10:41and they didn't succeed
2:10:43but um uh they did think however
2:10:46they thought it was catastrophic the way
2:10:49that the way that uh
2:10:51uh clifford thought clark clifford
2:10:54or hubert humphrey the vice president
2:10:56thought about the iran of the
2:10:57vietnam disastrous
2:11:01but they didn't quit because they had
2:11:04children to go to college
2:11:06and they themselves were often not of
2:11:09the
2:11:10by the hitler time the junker class the
2:11:12landed estates had a lot of
2:11:14lifetime education they were middle
2:11:15class people
2:11:17who had to earn a salary and wanted
2:11:20their children to go to college and not
2:11:22be ostracized
2:11:23and so forth so they invaded russia
2:11:27uh the uh
2:11:30so are the the young people they didn't
2:11:32save germany and they didn't
2:11:34they didn't they they haven't exactly
2:11:35saved anywhere
2:11:37although what they did do in the sixties
2:11:40was very remarkable
2:11:41the the five thousand i mentioned who
2:11:44went to prison
2:11:45uh to make the strongest possible
2:11:47statement that they could
2:11:49they were doing everything they could do
2:11:52everything they could think of doing and
2:11:54they put in my head
2:11:56things that i hadn't thought of doing
2:11:58but
2:11:59that was just not true of there are many
2:12:01people inside i've just been reading the
2:12:03diary of my former boss john mcnaughton
2:12:05extremely interesting i knew he was
2:12:08against the war
2:12:09when i worked for him in 64 65 when he
2:12:12were escalating
2:12:14and now it turns out from reading his
2:12:16diary that most people
2:12:18he's working with agreed with them and
2:12:21not one of them
2:12:22didn't war then complained to each other
2:12:25about what was happening
2:12:26and tell their friends at harvard this
2:12:29is just terrible but don't tell anybody
2:12:31i said so
2:12:32you know and so forth mcnamara at one
2:12:34point says to mcnaughton
2:12:37in 66 i want so badly
2:12:40to give the troops the order to go home
2:12:44that i can barely stand it
2:12:47but as my wife pointed out when i said
2:12:49that to her
2:12:50but he did stand it as uh
2:12:53he didn't resign he finally got fired
2:12:55when he finally told the truth to the
2:12:57president of what he thought we should
2:12:59do
2:12:59the president fired him which is why he
2:13:01hadn't said it earlier
2:13:02but could they have taken some chances
2:13:05can we demand of our officials
2:13:07is it beyond human capability for them
2:13:10to take
2:13:10some chances of their career and even in
2:13:13their children's
2:13:14limitations not to make a virtue out of
2:13:16this but i will say
2:13:17i did face the question of my children's
2:13:20education my former wife said to me
2:13:22you can't do this i said you're you're
2:13:24not going to get
2:13:25child support because i'm going to be in
2:13:26prison she said you can't do this you
2:13:28have a court order
2:13:30and i said but i won't be able to
2:13:32fulfill it because i'll be in prison
2:13:34she said what about i'm not saying this
2:13:36now as a virtue of mine
2:13:38saying this is what i what i did face
2:13:41and she said
2:13:42what about your children's college
2:13:44education
2:13:45i said they're smart they'll have to do
2:13:49the best they can
2:13:52they will have they did in fact get
2:13:54scholarships
2:13:56and they could have done it otherwise
2:13:57but yes for good or bad
2:13:59you have to face that and and yes
2:14:02people close to me actually on my team
2:14:05um
2:14:06my best friend harry rowan the president
2:14:08of rand i knew
2:14:09was going to severely uh challenge his
2:14:13career
2:14:14and he was out of work for a couple of
2:14:15years largely
2:14:17due to me but he got back in he was head
2:14:20of soviet
2:14:20uh he was head of the intelligence
2:14:22council at freya's times
2:14:23under republican presidents he was back
2:14:26again as
2:14:27uh deputy assistant secretary of defense
2:14:29maybe even
2:14:30assistant secretary he had a good career
2:14:32afterwards but i did
2:14:33cause him a lot of trouble for a couple
2:14:35of years
2:14:36and he was my best friend but i didn't
2:14:38see any way of doing it
2:14:40other than to to do that so um
2:14:44you know you were i don't know i've
2:14:46gotten away i'm sure from
2:14:48from the question but uh on the young
2:14:51yes where else to put hope not on their
2:14:54elders
2:14:57i could say that so if the young don't
2:14:59do it for us
2:15:00it won't happen and that's probably what
2:15:03will happen
2:15:03but not certainly there is a possibility
2:15:07here i think of change
2:15:08no one no none one of you no one of me
2:15:11nobody i know
2:15:12can honestly say like putin the other
2:15:15day if he believed it maybe he was just
2:15:16talking
2:15:18no this is impossible no it's not
2:15:20impossible vladimir that
2:15:22a war could expand if you sink a british
2:15:25ship
2:15:26no they should not have ships in there
2:15:28to be fired at
2:15:29uh no the british are being totally
2:15:31stupid in that
2:15:32yes they probably got their order with
2:15:34marching orders at least
2:15:36okayed by the american president
2:15:39i'd say the likelihood that the american
2:15:41biden
2:15:42was taken unawares by that british
2:15:45cruiser in the black sea
2:15:47is not impossible but very low
2:15:51i studied the suez crisis
2:15:55everybody from on a top secret basis
2:15:58higher than top secret
2:16:00so the british people didn't know that
2:16:04eden had conspired with his israelis
2:16:08and the french in france
2:16:13everybody in the world knew it because
2:16:14the israelis and the french
2:16:16wrote memoirs about it but eden said
2:16:19no that didn't happen so i i discovered
2:16:22in britain and i
2:16:23i i earlier spent a year at king's
2:16:26college
2:16:27cambridge but later in britain at
2:16:29various conferences
2:16:30and i discovered that britons didn't
2:16:32know that they had conspired on suez
2:16:35before they didn't tell eisenhower
2:16:38which infuriated him but did that mean
2:16:40he didn't know no of course ci
2:16:42was telling him what the british were
2:16:44doing but uh but he was furious that
2:16:46they were lying to him
2:16:48and uh hoping to produce a fade-a-comb
2:16:50plea which was
2:16:53they had to assume eisenhower would like
2:16:55it
2:16:56they knew they must have known unless
2:16:58they were you know totally stupid
2:17:00that his intelligence would would reveal
2:17:02to him that they were lying to him
2:17:04officially that they weren't invading
2:17:06suez i happen to be in alexandria harbor
2:17:09on a marine troop ship taking all of the
2:17:13american immigrants uh all human people
2:17:16tourists in egypt out of egypt because
2:17:19they were getting bombed by the british
2:17:21and french
2:17:22so uh i i was involved in that i was
2:17:24reading cables at the time
2:17:26so anyway uh everybody's lying to
2:17:29everybody
2:17:30but eisenhower is furious why
2:17:33because he clearly by all accounts he
2:17:37has not told anybody what he knows that
2:17:39they're moving toward invasion
2:17:40so he hadn't given the american public
2:17:42any warning of this it implied that he
2:17:44was stupid that he didn't know
2:17:46but it very seriously implied our
2:17:49closest
2:17:49allies had lied to him and he'd been
2:17:52taken in
2:17:53so he was furious they said nobody was
2:17:56ever they
2:17:57he was given to anger to racist but
2:17:59they'd never seen a rage
2:18:00like this one not because they'd act
2:18:03because of the second thing
2:18:05they didn't get they didn't succeed
2:18:08quickly they didn't get to the canal
2:18:10they got bogged down uh after port zaid
2:18:13and he kept saying what is holding them
2:18:15up he's saying inside what is this
2:18:17he couldn't just let them go week after
2:18:19week in aggression
2:18:21without doing anything about it just
2:18:22before an election
2:18:24so he had to say no we stand for
2:18:28international law we're against
2:18:30aggression that's why i joined the
2:18:32marines
2:18:32i was very happy with him and my
2:18:35president who i had not voted for
2:18:37republican
2:18:39uh idly was standing up aggression
2:18:41against aggression
2:18:42even against our allies i was so proud
2:18:45of that and i thought
2:18:47that's why i joined the marines to be
2:18:48against aggression
2:18:50so forth uh i was misled as to how deep
2:18:54our commitment was against
2:18:55aggression daniel
2:18:59i cannot thank you enough i think this
2:19:02was the most sobering
2:19:03and at the same time inspiring
2:19:05conversations that
2:19:06i have had um potentially
2:19:09yeah potentially in my life thank you so
2:19:12so much
2:19:13no pressure on the next generation and
2:19:16on all of us who
2:19:17carry on the torch um and happy birthday
2:19:21happy 90th birthday then and happy
2:19:24birthday
2:19:24and congratulations on the pentagon
2:19:27release again
2:19:28and i think that yeah we can only pull
2:19:31through
2:19:32and really try to carry on the torch
2:19:36and yeah thank you very very much for
2:19:38joining this group
2:19:39i think i i have i just revealed one
2:19:42more senior moment that i hadn't
2:19:44mentioned
2:19:45there is a book just out called i
2:19:48believe the precipice
2:19:50which i uh there's another book called
2:19:52precedence by my friend noam chomsky
2:19:54but this book on precipice is looking at
2:19:57existential risks
2:19:59and many of you may have read it or or
2:20:01will read it yes we have
2:20:03obviously the author is very intelligent
2:20:07but what he focuses on it turns out
2:20:11is um literally existential in risks
2:20:15that lead to
2:20:16full extinction so he says
2:20:20the major thing to be concerned about is
2:20:23uh ai robots that get out of our control
2:20:28or pandemics or uh genetic engineering
2:20:32not nuclear uh being over overstudied
2:20:36over concerned we're all worried about
2:20:38nuclear but
2:20:39this is a paraphrase but this is the way
2:20:41i read them it's
2:20:43that's not a big deal
2:20:47well it's not what i'm talking about
2:20:49wait a minute
2:20:50the basis for saying that is the chance
2:20:52of total
2:20:53extinction from nuclear winter is
2:20:56very low it's not zero
2:21:00actually as he almost implies alan
2:21:03roebuck
2:21:04and brian tune who environmental
2:21:05scientists say extremely
2:21:07unlikely that nuclear winter causes
2:21:09total extinction
2:21:11something between 90 and 99 percent
2:21:14but not a hundred percent you see unless
2:21:17the ozone depletion
2:21:19uh hits us harder and finishes off the
2:21:22job
2:21:23which is not impossible and by the way
2:21:26i've alluded to the following thing a
2:21:28number of times and let me just
2:21:29quickly spell it out what fermi was
2:21:32worried about was
2:21:33a physical process they had not allowed
2:21:35for on the
2:21:36how did they mis-estimate the size of
2:21:39the
2:21:40castle bravo test on in march i think it
2:21:43was of 1990
2:21:451954. i i can get this wrong being not a
2:21:49physicist i can get this backwards but
2:21:51it doesn't it doesn't affect the main
2:21:53thing
2:21:54the fuel was a mixture of lithium-6 and
2:21:56lithium-7
2:21:58and if i recall and i can't keep this in
2:22:00my mind
2:22:01which is the one that is not supposed
2:22:04they used a mixer because it cost too
2:22:06much
2:22:06to separate it so i use the mixture and
2:22:09one of them
2:22:10i think it's lithium-7 i forgotten
2:22:14was not supposed to emit more neutrons
2:22:17when uh when the bomb went off
2:22:20but it did it wasn't connective under
2:22:23the
2:22:23provocation you might say propagation
2:22:26of the lithium-6 or the other one in
2:22:28other words it did
2:22:30triple the explosion now the reason i
2:22:33mentioned that is
2:22:34again smartest guys in the world here
2:22:38there was a physical reaction that had
2:22:41never occurred
2:22:42on earth before so it hadn't occurred to
2:22:45them what the effect would be
2:22:46after that they knew oh both of these
2:22:48are active very good
2:22:50uh so the area of
2:22:53uh under which ships were not supposed
2:22:56to enter
2:22:56which we marked off there rather
2:22:59illegally but you know
2:23:00the zone that you can didn't include the
2:23:03lucky dragon
2:23:05uh away which got irradiated by the
2:23:08fallout and they had to evacuate
2:23:09various of the marshall islands and
2:23:11various things under
2:23:13because they had underestimated the
2:23:14amount of radiation my only point is
2:23:17yes you're doing things that have never
2:23:19happened before on earth
2:23:21and there are going to be there can well
2:23:23be aspects what was the probability that
2:23:25that would be true
2:23:27fermi was saying something like 10
2:23:28percent see but you can't exactly you
2:23:31don't have a good basis
2:23:32for saying what's the probability we
2:23:35won't have allowed
2:23:36for something here uh totally it's not
2:23:40zero so um
2:23:47the first small two-sided nuclear war
2:23:52will be the first to have occurred there
2:23:55has been a nuclear war and it was one
2:23:58when reagan and gorbachev and biden and
2:24:00putin all say
2:24:02nuclear war cannot be won wrong
2:24:05the only one that was ever fought was
2:24:07run now it was against the non-nuclear
2:24:10state
2:24:10and there are non-nuclear states in the
2:24:12world still you could win a war
2:24:14against iran for example cost of
2:24:16millions of dead
2:24:18millions of innocent dead but it's not
2:24:19going to blow the world up
2:24:21almost surely but a two-sided nuclear
2:24:25war which john bolton seems to have
2:24:27wanted and by the way
2:24:29bolton seems by every account no one
2:24:31discounts it he's a very bright guy
2:24:34who seemed to want nuclear war with
2:24:36north korea
2:24:38crazy but that's not that's my
2:24:40experience
2:24:42i used to say anyone can be as dumb as
2:24:44he has to be to keep his job
2:24:46well in bolton's case he was being
2:24:48insubordinate
2:24:49under every president he was going
2:24:51beyond he wanted to do things
2:24:53in fact he even got fired for it by uh
2:24:56by trump
2:24:57but meanwhile for a year he'd been
2:24:59national security assistant
2:25:01wanting to gamble on a nuclear war with
2:25:04uh
2:25:04with north korea what's the chance
2:25:08that kim you know has provided for
2:25:12decapitation attack by having a boat
2:25:15ready to sail or having already sailed
2:25:18sitting in
2:25:19san francisco harbor with a nuclear
2:25:22device aboard
2:25:24and if they're out of communication and
2:25:26there's reason to believe
2:25:28that kim has been destroyed by our
2:25:30special forces teams
2:25:32which we have announced are ready to
2:25:34kill him
2:25:35and by our cruise missiles and by
2:25:37everything else
2:25:38that's ready to go against him if under
2:25:41those circumstances they don't get an
2:25:43order from kim they're out of
2:25:44communication
2:25:45blow up san francisco los angeles
2:25:48uh newport everywhere what's the chance
2:25:51that kim has provided for that
2:25:54not zero in fact
2:25:57i printed fairly high so
2:26:00for my knowledge in the other states as
2:26:02well so
2:26:03um let's be as smart as adolf hitler
2:26:07let's not do things that might destroy
2:26:12most human life on earth and even if and
2:26:14people who are worried about extinction
2:26:18should expand our responsibilities to
2:26:20avoiding
2:26:22near extinction which made this smart
2:26:25book by a smart guy
2:26:28just made me it disgusted me
2:26:31that he could take the trouble to right
2:26:34that's not the problem to think about
2:26:36here's the problem to think about
2:26:38in a world where we're facing a taiwan
2:26:41crisis
2:26:42that probably will not destroy all life
2:26:44on earth that he's right about
2:26:46that's idiotic as is so
2:26:49frequently the case i say to all these
2:26:52people who are younger than i so i'm not
2:26:56anybody here overnighting uh anyway
2:26:59so uh you have heard me for good or bad
2:27:02you are hey very good
2:27:03vernon smith that's a name i know do we
2:27:05know each other from rand
2:27:07i mean there was a vernon smith that i
2:27:09knew
2:27:11don't hear dan i met you at harvard you
2:27:16may not
2:27:16remember that i was a graduate student
2:27:19and it was through floyd gillis
2:27:23floyd gillis who i is the person that
2:27:27introduced me to you
2:27:28i don't know whether you remember but i
2:27:29i do definitely remember the name vernon
2:27:31you were never at rand were you yeah
2:27:34vernon maybe say a word about
2:27:36you i'm sorry
2:27:42well yes why was that i was at
2:27:45harvard uh 1952
2:27:48to 1955. well you i'm class of 52
2:27:53is that what class were you you were
2:27:54classic leader i was class of 55.
2:27:58uh-huh but i was that were you you
2:28:00weren't there uh were you in economics
2:28:02and
2:28:03i was in the society of fellows 57 to 59
2:28:06so did we i met you and
2:28:10of course i've always been admirer of
2:28:13your descent
2:28:15uh my view however
2:28:19is uh that
2:28:23descent is actually pretty
2:28:26much an important part of the american
2:28:30experiment what is i miss the word what
2:28:32is pardon
2:28:34dissent descent yes descent
2:28:38is very much the american
2:28:41experiment yes and the first were and
2:28:44i'm thinking now
2:28:45of the first world war not the second
2:28:48in the first world war 2.8
2:28:51million young men qualified
2:28:55for conscription three hundred
2:28:58thousand are failed or refused
2:29:03to report and the
2:29:07you recall that eugene victor debs
2:29:11received a 10-year prison sentence
2:29:15under the not not the uh
2:29:19espionage act but the sedition acts
2:29:22because they're very well informed
2:29:24that's a distinction almost nobody
2:29:26knows yeah you see uh debs
2:29:30made a routine socialist
2:29:35speech opposing war in general
2:29:39he never mentioned the first world war
2:29:42because he knew
2:29:43that if he did he could be arrested
2:29:47he was arrested anyway anyway
2:29:51and yes and received a 10-year
2:29:55uh prison sentence you see i in those
2:29:58days i was a socialist i came
2:30:00i was grew up in a socialist family and
2:30:03of course we were great admirers
2:30:05of of debs debs ran
2:30:09for president from his jail cell
2:30:13and polled nearly 1 million votes
2:30:17and it wasn't because these were
2:30:19socialists this these were
2:30:20this was coming from opposition to the
2:30:23first world war
2:30:25and when the the war ended there were
2:30:28thousands of
2:30:28cases pending in the courts of people
2:30:33i think was around two or three thousand
2:30:36which would have been
2:30:37larger than the 5 000 you mentioned
2:30:41relative to the population you see
2:30:45so that actually there was really
2:30:47substantial dissent
2:30:48in the first world war uh
2:30:53this and in fact the the sedition act
2:30:58which was passed by congress and the
2:31:01woodrow wilson administration
2:31:04was repealed three years later it was
2:31:06that outrageous
2:31:08even congress realized that when the war
2:31:11was over you see
2:31:13and and and so so i see that part makes
2:31:17me
2:31:17optimistic but
2:31:20what makes me pessimistic is we don't
2:31:23seem to be a this kind of descent
2:31:25doesn't seem to be able to get to the
2:31:27point of really being effective
2:31:30and so anyway that's why i've been was
2:31:33very
2:31:34interested in your comments dan about
2:31:36how we might
2:31:38try to be more effective and the need
2:31:41for people
2:31:42of in positions of power to be willing
2:31:45to be
2:31:46to honor the constitution
2:31:49you see and that's all you really have
2:31:51to do right
2:31:56i uh uh
2:31:59uh vernon you're very well informed
2:32:01because you're almost the first person
2:32:02i've heard
2:32:03who mentions debs who is not under the
2:32:06misimpression that he was a jailed under
2:32:10the same act i was espionage act of
2:32:121917.
2:32:13as you know he was jailed under
2:32:15amendments to that capacity of 1918
2:32:18uh generally known as this addiction act
2:32:20almost nobody
2:32:21knows that we weren't the same for um
2:32:25uh also emmett goldman and many others
2:32:28were deported
2:32:29and uh i'm kind of proud of the fact
2:32:31that my
2:32:33um although my father was a republican
2:32:36who supported me but
2:32:38his father was in an anarchist
2:32:41who had had an affair with emma goldman
2:32:44which was
2:32:45not any not an exclusive uh club
2:32:47actually but
2:32:48uh still i'm i'm quite proud of it
2:32:50gentlemen she was of course
2:32:52kicked out of the country um very
2:32:54favorable to the bolsheviks
2:32:56until she got there and then managed to
2:32:58see right away that
2:33:00she got kicked out of there as i recall
2:33:02so uh
2:33:03that how uh un anarchistic but how
2:33:06undemocratic
2:33:07they were anyway anyway all this history
2:33:10but yes debs is by the way
2:33:16walt whitman rostow the one
2:33:20smart guy in washington who agreed with
2:33:22the president that we
2:33:24we had to win the war along with rusk i
2:33:26should say richard
2:33:28three of them walt whitman russ though
2:33:31was the brother of eugene victor debs
2:33:34roscoe did you know that who knows
2:33:37who was in that you can imagine what
2:33:39their parents were like
2:33:41and uh he was much more hawkish
2:33:45than his brother walt ross though so
2:33:47even good parent even good genes here is
2:33:49not a
2:33:50real uh protection and
2:33:53uh debs was right unfortunately
2:33:57he didn't stop the war nor did william
2:33:59jennings bryan one of the very few
2:34:01people who
2:34:02actually resigned uh from the government
2:34:05in order to oppose
2:34:06a war almost almost unique uh cybance
2:34:11was something like that uh under carter
2:34:13with the iraq
2:34:14war the iran was it
2:34:18iraq what was that
2:34:21raid um
2:34:25iran hostages it was iran yeah iran
2:34:29forgot that we made an attack on iran
2:34:32so um uh very rare
2:34:35it hasn't hasn't protected us yet from
2:34:38any of
2:34:39any of these things and looking back the
2:34:42young
2:34:43of the 60s were just amazingly
2:34:47rebellious uh and not just about one
2:34:50issue
2:34:51there was what they called the movement
2:34:54as vernon you'll remember i'm sure
2:34:56uh mostly and when we were looking for a
2:34:59place
2:35:00to elude the fbi while i was putting out
2:35:03depending on papers the young
2:35:07indian woman janaki chan earl who was
2:35:09helping that and gar alperovitz
2:35:11who was dealing with the newspapers um
2:35:15just had to ask for help we had maybe a
2:35:17dozen 20 people
2:35:19who most of whom had beards or had long
2:35:22hair or men and women
2:35:24and you just had to ask there's
2:35:25something we have to we want to do here
2:35:27that might
2:35:27help shorten the war and it's probably
2:35:31very risky politically uh legally
2:35:34no one said no strictly speaking
2:35:37there was one exception one person said
2:35:39no
2:35:40others all said fine how can we go so
2:35:43that was a marvelous
2:35:45feeling and yes there are young people
2:35:47like that now
2:35:48and we we rely on finding a way
2:35:52to make many more of them conscious of
2:35:55that
2:35:56and get their elders to act
2:36:00actually such elders as did hacked even
2:36:02internally were often very influenced by
2:36:04their children
2:36:06or their wives i asked mcnaughton once
2:36:09what does your wife think of what we're
2:36:10doing
2:36:11and he looked up from his work and he
2:36:13said oh she thinks we're crazy
2:36:16she thinks what we're doing is insane
2:36:18let me write back
2:36:20and by the way he thought that too he
2:36:23agreed with her
2:36:24but it got done so that's the part of
2:36:27human uh
2:36:28nature it's pretty ingrained but uh
2:36:31maybe we can find a way out of it given
2:36:32the stakes
2:36:34everything is at stake and yes no doubt
2:36:37from
2:36:37ai and genetic modeling and drones
2:36:41and you know a lot of you i'm sure
2:36:43working on ai for drones and so forth
2:36:46putin has put a drone torpedo
2:36:49under the water which can't uh which we
2:36:52can't stop with our abm
2:36:54system which russian newspapers have
2:36:57said
2:36:57carries a 200 megaton warhead
2:37:01now other newspapers and our
2:37:03intelligence said oh no much smaller
2:37:05maybe 20 megatons maybe two megatons
2:37:07maybe one megaton
2:37:09but they have all said maybe 200. any of
2:37:12those
2:37:12create a tsunami of radioactive water
2:37:15against the port chicago is safe from
2:37:18this
2:37:19but nobody on the coastline is safe from
2:37:21it it's a drone
2:37:23it goes underwater it can sneak under
2:37:25there and it can lie
2:37:26there indefinitely that is a very good
2:37:30weapon against
2:37:31our abm systems if you needed it it
2:37:33absolutely negates the abm as far as our
2:37:36coastline is concerned
2:37:38is it really a good idea to have you
2:37:40know 200 megaton
2:37:42or two megaton drones sitting off our
2:37:45harbors indefinitely
2:37:47like unexploded mines in in germany
2:37:50uh unexploded bombs that still exist by
2:37:52the thousands
2:37:54which they are occasionally evacuating a
2:37:56city for half of hamburg
2:37:58while they detonate a new 750-pound bomb
2:38:02they found
2:38:03or a thousand-pound bomb and once in a
2:38:06while some one of them does go off
2:38:07accidentally and that happens in vietnam
2:38:09all the time
2:38:10with uh with lines go off so
2:38:14i don't think that's a good idea for
2:38:15putin even though it's quite clever
2:38:17answer to our abm system
2:38:20should should that exist look up
2:38:22poseidon
2:38:23on the web and see whether uh
2:38:26you would be glad to be a scientist who
2:38:29worked
2:38:29on that on that hot item
2:38:32so uh everywhere we look you know
2:38:35uh do i think that uh do i think that
2:38:39she
2:38:39ought to invade taiwan
2:38:42on the assumption that we won't after
2:38:45all uh
2:38:46carry out our commitments to fight him
2:38:48on that should he invade taiwan because
2:38:50they declare
2:38:51independence he said he would
2:38:54well many china experts tell me
2:38:58she or any other china leader would lose
2:39:00office
2:39:01if he failed to respond
2:39:04to a declaration of independence and the
2:39:08the president of taiwan a woman has has
2:39:11said
2:39:12cautiously prudently we don't need to
2:39:15declare independence
2:39:17we are independent
2:39:20so she hears that he thinks
2:39:24they're pushing the envelope here but
2:39:25maybe i will not lose office
2:39:27if i don't invade on that one uh but
2:39:30supposing
2:39:31biden does say we're gonna we're all in
2:39:34on this
2:39:36american bases are back
2:39:39i don't think the construction goes very
2:39:41far on those american bases before
2:39:44uh they get invaded and we'll see what
2:39:46happens
2:39:48so and she i'm sure is saying oh they
2:39:50won't go to nuclear war
2:39:52they know they can't win that's true
2:39:56sink an american cruiser carrier with a
2:39:59chinese
2:40:00non-nuclear missile and see what happens
2:40:03who knows
2:40:04but i don't want to find out so let's
2:40:07object to that
2:40:08even with biden who is tremendously
2:40:11better than trump
2:40:12but that's too low a bar and
2:40:16try to assure that under no
2:40:19circumstances
2:40:21should we initiate nuclear war anywhere
2:40:24even for taiwan anywhere in the world
2:40:28enough of that and stop with the
2:40:29missiles and the icdms that are for
2:40:31nothing other than to back up that
2:40:33threat
2:40:35that's not going to happen very unlikely
2:40:39impossible no nothing's impossible
2:40:42let's get rid of the icbms very unlikely
2:40:45but let's try it's almost terrifying how
2:40:49we've
2:40:50started in the history and now we've
2:40:52kind of wrapped it up
2:40:53by discussing a very present danger
2:40:57thanks for the opportunity to get all
2:40:58this off
2:40:59as well vernon i'd be happy let's make
2:41:01contact again
2:41:02okay let's uh in particular
2:41:05talk about old days here okay
2:41:09okay you have my you have my email you
2:41:11all have my email
2:41:13okay i'll be in touch okay thank you
2:41:15alison for setting this up thank you so
2:41:17much
2:41:18everyone have a lovely fantastic day if
2:41:20that's still possible after
2:41:22knowing what's on the line and daniel um
2:41:25you're a really spectacular individual
2:41:27thank you so so much for joining and
2:41:29thank you
2:41:30um yeah we have a big and we have a big
2:41:32torture carry thank you very very very
2:41:34much for your time and everyone i see
2:41:35you
2:41:36for the next keynote meeting thank you
2:41:38daniel and have a lovely day
2:41:39and thank you bye

About this transcript

This page contains the full transcript of Nuclear Risks: Doomsday (Still) Hiding in Plain Sight | Daniel Ellsberg, Author of Doomsday Machine by Foresight Institute, generated from the public captions YouTube serves with the video. The transcript has 24,100 words across 4,295 segments, with the original timestamps preserved so you can click any line to jump to that moment in the embedded player.

What you can do with it

Use the transcript to take notes, quote the speaker, build a study guide, generate a summary with ChatGPT or Claude via the YouTube Summary tool, or export it as a timed subtitle file with YouTube to SRT. You can also re-open it in the transcriber to translate the transcript into 100+ languages.

Free YouTube transcript tool

YouTube2Text is a free YouTube transcript generator — no signup, no daily limit. Paste any YouTube link and get the full transcript instantly, with timestamps, click-to-jump, translation to 100+ languages, AI prompts for ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, and exports to TXT, SRT, VTT, or Markdown.