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Nukes are way scarier than you think — Transcript

by Johnny Harris · 7,748 words · 1,093 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00(plane engine roaring)
0:03- I'm in Washington, DC right now,
0:04and I want to visualize for you what it would look like
0:07if a nuclear weapon landed on the nation's capital.
0:10So, for our scenario, there is a nuclear weapon
0:12headed towards the city right now.
0:15(dramatic music)
0:18A large nuclear weapon flying
0:20headed towards Washington, DC.
0:23The actual bomb is actually in here.
0:26This cone that's about two meters tall, six feet.
0:29It's falling back into the atmosphere.
0:31Here it comes.
0:33And then,
0:38for a moment, right here is the hottest thing
0:41in our solar system, hotter than the sun.
0:44100 million degrees Celsius as it expands out.
0:49Everything around it turns into dust.
0:51I mean, smaller than dust.
0:53Atoms are ripped apart.
0:55This fireball instantly vaporizes everything
0:57within a half a mile radius.
1:00And here comes the blast wave,
1:02a wall of high-pressure air that is moving faster
1:05than the speed of sound.
1:07It creates wind behind it that is faster
1:09than anything ever observed in nature.
1:14Everything within two and a half miles is leveled.
1:17And then there's the heat wave,
1:19which burns everything within five miles.
1:22Nearly everyone in this city is either dead
1:24or severely injured.
1:28Everything that can be on fire is now on fire
1:31as this huge mushroom cloud rises into the air,
1:34dragging with it a storm of dust, dirt, and debris.
1:38But this isn't normal dust anymore.
1:41The bomb has done something to it, to its atoms,
1:45making them fall apart in slow motion,
1:47shooting out invisible, deadly energy.
1:50This poison dust drifts all across this region.
1:53It clings to soil and plants and people,
1:56hundreds of miles away.
1:58(soft music)
2:00These poisoned atoms will keep firing off radiation
2:03for years, for decades, centuries, even thousands of years.
2:09This is a disaster that humans made.
2:11And that was just for one of these cones.
2:14A rocket fired from an American submarine
2:17can carry eight of these cones at once.
2:20If all of those hit one target,
2:22it would be a much worse situation.
2:25(soft music)
2:30A lot of global politics centers around this,
2:33making sure this does not happen.
2:36But everything I just showed you is very possible.
2:39We have the capabilities to do this right now.
2:42And in fact, a lot of countries
2:43have their finger on the trigger,
2:45able to launch one of these at a moment's notice.
2:48And I've spent a very long time trying to understand why.
2:52Why have we done this?
2:53And why these nuclear weapons,
2:55which were famous during the Cold War, are back.
2:58They're back in a new way.
2:59They're once again becoming the center of global politics.
3:02- We are entering one of the most dangerous periods
3:05in nuclear history.
3:06We're on the cusp of this third age.
3:08That nuclear is back.
3:09- That's Sam from Search Party.
3:11He also made a video about nuclear weapons,
3:13but it's different than mine.
3:15It went live yesterday.
3:16In this video, I'm gonna show you how these things work,
3:18what countries have them,
3:20and how they're used on the global stage.
3:22And then Sam's video will take you
3:23into this specific moment in time
3:26and what to look out for going forward.
3:28Help you understand why nuclear weapons
3:29are back on the world stage.
3:33We're headed into a world that is more and more informed
3:36by nuclear weapons and nuclear politics.
3:38So it's time we start paying attention.
3:40Let me show you.
3:42(gentle music)
3:45Everyone's telling me that they don't like
3:47that my screen shakes.
3:48Listen, I can't help it.
3:50This thing's big.
3:51It's unruly.
3:53Sorry.
3:54Okay, so what is this thing?
3:58Well, it's a bomb, obviously, a very destructive bomb.
4:04And it's one that messes with the very building blocks
4:07of everything, the atom.
4:09- [Narrator] Atoms are the tiny building blocks,
4:12which make up everything in the world.
4:14- So an atom, of course,
4:15is the smallest unit of matter, right?
4:18And it's made up of several subatomic particles,
4:21electrons, protons, neutrons.
4:23- I talked to Destin from the YouTube channel
4:25Smarter Every Day.
4:26He's a real scientist, engineer.
4:28He's making a bunch of videos on nuclear energy.
4:30And I talked to him because I wanted to make sure
4:31I was grounded in my understanding
4:34of the physics of a nuclear bomb.
4:35Everything is atoms.
4:37Everything that you can touch, the air,
4:40everything is atoms, different kinds of atoms.
4:42And these atoms have a little secret hiding in them.
4:47Every single atom can be turned into energy.
4:51Like actually matter, like atoms and energy
4:55are the same thing.
4:56They're just in different states.
4:57- When I was growing up,
4:58dad used to always say matter is frozen energy.
5:01- Like this could be turned into energy
5:03and actually a lot of energy that could like fuel a car
5:07or like power my house or like fly me to the moon.
5:10And it doesn't take that much mass
5:12to create a lot of energy.
5:13Let me show you this really quick.
5:18This little piece of metal
5:20is probably a little more than a gram.
5:23Not very heavy, not a lot of mass, right?
5:27If we zoom way into this little clip,
5:29you're gonna see a bunch of atoms.
5:33Now there are some powerful forces working on this atom,
5:37keeping the nucleus really tightly glued together,
5:40keeping the atoms separate from each other
5:42so they don't like blob into one another.
5:44And thank God for this
5:45because otherwise nothing would be solid.
5:47You would sit in a chair and just sort of fall through.
5:49There's a lot of forces happening down with the atoms,
5:52keeping everything stable, everything solid.
5:55We like these forces.
5:57They make it so that my little paperclip thingy
5:59doesn't explode
6:00and everything doesn't sort of spontaneously come apart.
6:03Stable, good.
6:04- Those forces, those subatomic forces
6:06are very, very strong.
6:07- Now you can break these forces holding atoms together.
6:12If you rock their world hard enough,
6:13they will kind of rearrange.
6:15They will break.
6:16And then they'll quickly like reorganize
6:18to try to form some sort of stable atom.
6:21But in the process,
6:22a little bit of matter is left with nowhere to go.
6:26It can't bond to anything.
6:27And so it spontaneously turns into energy.
6:31Every single thing around you,
6:33everything could be turned into energy,
6:36an enormous amount of energy.
6:37How much energy?
6:39I'm glad you asked
6:41because this is the moment
6:42that I've been waiting for since I was a child,
6:45where in my real adult career,
6:47I'm going to be able to invoke the famous equation
6:51of our very own Albert Einstein.
6:54Yep, I'm pulling, I'm doing this.
6:55I'm doing the chalkboard thing.
6:59For those of you who already know about E equals MC squared
7:02and exactly what it means,
7:04like skip like 45 seconds ahead
7:06because I'm about to explain it in a way
7:08that I've always wanted someone to explain it to me.
7:11And I'm gonna do that for you.
7:13(soft music)
7:18Could have guessed that was gonna happen.
7:23So what does Einstein say about how much energy
7:26is contained in my little paper clippy thing?
7:28The E is energy.
7:32The M is mass.
7:34How much mass are we turning into energy?
7:38And the C is the speed of light in meters per second.
7:43Speed.
7:48The mass of my paper clip is one gram.
7:51Because this is in kilograms, it's gonna be 0.001.
7:54I just need to times this by speed of light squared
7:59is about 299 million meters per second.
8:03But we have to times it by itself,
8:05which comes out to be 89 quadrillion,
8:09875 trillion,
8:12570 billion,
8:14873 million,
8:17681 thousand,
8:20764.
8:27Whoa.
8:28So my paper clip mass times this.
8:30Einstein says we have to multiply that big number
8:33by the mass of this paper clip
8:35to find out how much energy is inside of it.
8:38And if you do that math with my one gram,
8:40you get 89 trillion joules.
8:44That's enough energy to power 100,000 homes for two weeks
8:47or one home for 2,000 years.
8:52Just inside of this.
8:54Because of that.
8:57(soft music)
8:59Okay, giant caveat for everyone watching
9:02and those who study physics will be clamoring for this.
9:06You can't actually do that with like an iron paper clip.
9:09The amount of energy you would need
9:10to like turn this into energy
9:13would sort of be more than the energy you get out of it.
9:16To actually do this, to release the energy from matter,
9:19you need different kinds of atoms,
9:20like big unstable ones, like the ones we see in uranium.
9:24My point here is not that this is ever gonna like break
9:26and turn into energy, but that when you mess with atoms,
9:29the bonds within atoms,
9:31and you release a little bit of matter into energy,
9:34you don't need very much to create a huge amount.
9:37That's what we're about to see in real life.
9:39- So fission is a big atom splitting.
9:42Fusion, little atoms coming together.
9:45- I had a fun time watching Destin show me
9:47how fission works in his studio
9:49with his very cute looking neutrons and mouse traps.
9:53He made a whole video about it that you can check out.
9:54Now for most of time, the only place
9:57that this sort of turning matter into energy was happening
10:00was not here on earth, but in the center of stars.
10:04- And this is the kind of stuff that happens
10:06in the core of the sun, for example,
10:07- where immense heat and pressure
10:09is smashing atoms together so hard
10:12that they fuse.
10:13They rearrange a little bit,
10:14a little bit of matter that isn't fused,
10:17turns into energy and you get the literal sun.
10:20That's called fusion.
10:23But then in the 1900s,
10:26the humans on earth decided they wanted to start
10:29to do something like this themselves.
10:36It was the 1930s in Germany
10:38and some scientists were tinkering with atoms
10:40and they found a way to break some atoms apart
10:43and get in on this insanity of E equals MC squared.
10:46- Pretty crazy how safe nuclear power is.
10:48But nuclear weapons are scary, aren't they?
10:50- Yeah.
10:51- When uranium-235 exists in nature,
10:54it's not real happy.
10:56It's kind of unstable.
10:57If a U-235 atom ever gets hit by a neutron,
11:01which I have, I happen to have a neutron here.
11:04If U-235 ever gets hit by a neutron,
11:08then it gets really unstable and then it breaks apart.
11:13That right there breaks into two other atoms.
11:17I threw my neutron across the room.
11:19That's dangerous when you've got U-235 around.
11:21I think of U-235 like a mousetrap.
11:26So if you think about it, you've got this atom chilling out
11:29and it's got all these neutrons right there, ready to go.
11:34If it ever gets triggered, then it will fire
11:37and it will throw off these other neutrons and they go off.
11:41And so if you have a clever arrangement
11:44of more U-235 atoms around that,
11:47then you can start what's called a chain reaction.
11:50- [Narrator] Those neutrons bombard other uranium atoms,
11:53causing them to split and split still others.
11:57The result, a chain reaction.
12:01- They were doing fission,
12:02the breaking of big unstable atoms apart.
12:04And this wasn't as powerful as the fusion,
12:08the combining of atoms that's happening
12:09in the center of the sun,
12:10but it was still unlike anything the world had ever seen.
12:13- Under Hitler, the country was becoming
12:15the dominant power in Central Europe.
12:17- Germany was kind of getting ready
12:18to take over the entire world.
12:20And so they thought, what if we weaponize
12:22this new nuclear breaking thing we invented?
12:25And Einstein, the E=mc2 guy was alive at this time
12:29and watching his equations be turned into weapons.
12:31And Einstein writes this letter to the American president
12:34urging the U.S. to make the bomb before Germany does.
12:38And this is where we get into Oppenheimer,
12:40the Manhattan Project, brilliant physicists
12:43building atomic bombs in the desert,
12:45racing against time during World War II.
12:47The U.S. of course wins this race for the nuclear weapon.
12:50They dropped two of these fission bombs on Japan in 1945.
12:54The war is over and the world has changed forever.
12:58Nothing would ever be the same.
13:00It was the beginning of a new way of global conflict.
13:04A few years later, the Soviets made one of their own
13:07and thus begins a new race.
13:09Who can make the bigger bomb?
13:12And this is where the U.S. is like,
13:13let's not just do the thing where we break atoms apart,
13:15let's do what the sun is doing, fuse the atoms together.
13:20That's way more powerful.
13:21And they figure it out just a few years later
13:24and the results are insane.
13:26- [Speaker] Those are capable of megatons of power.
13:29A thousand times more powerful.
13:31Because apparently leveling a city was not powerful enough.
13:38(upbeat music)
13:42- Let me show you what today's nukes look like
13:45and how they work.
13:46This is a modern nuclear weapon,
13:48sometimes called a thermonuclear weapon, hydrogen bomb.
13:51This cone is about the same height as an American male.
13:55And the actual bomb is in here.
13:57We don't know exactly how big it is,
13:58but we know it's shaped like a peanut.
14:01This cone needs to be mounted on something
14:04to deliver it to the target.
14:05In this example, it's on a huge rocket
14:10that flies to space, can carry this nuke
14:13like over a thousand kilometers away.
14:15Eventually the rocket part falls away
14:17and the cone starts falling towards its target.
14:24And then when it hits its pre-programmed altitude,
14:28it detonates.
14:30But watch what happens, this is crazy.
14:31It's actually three bombs.
14:33It starts with just a regular old explosive bomb,
14:36no nuclear stuff yet.
14:39But this bomb inside of this very small peanut shaped space
14:43triggers a fission bomb.
14:45The first type that we invented,
14:47the one that overcomes the forces,
14:48keeping an atom stable and breaks them apart
14:50and turns a tiny bit of matter
14:51into a huge amount of energy.
14:53So there's a fission reaction happening
14:55and that shoots out a huge amount of energy
14:58at the speed of light
14:59that bounces off all these shiny beryllium walls.
15:01And then it hits this, and this is the final one.
15:05It's so hot in here, 100 million degrees Celsius,
15:08that we're basically in the core of a star.
15:11It's actually hotter than the core of our sun.
15:13Hot enough to do things that stars do.
15:16So now in this third bomb, the big one,
15:18hydrogen atoms are being smashed together into a new form.
15:23A little bit of matter is escaping into E equals MC square
15:26being multiplied by the speed of light squared.
15:29And what you get is total destruction.
15:37Yeah, I mean, we made that.
15:39We made that, that is possible.
15:42Those big ones have never been used in war
15:45and hopefully they never will.
15:46Okay, but how big are these?
15:47Let's put them on a city, my city, Washington, DC.
15:51Terrible thought, but we gotta do this exercise.
15:57If you were to drop a fission bomb,
15:58like the ones we dropped on Japan
16:00that killed hundreds of thousands,
16:02it would look like this.
16:05Upgrade that to a fusion bomb,
16:08like the ones deployed today,
16:09and it would look like this.
16:12Estimated 350,000 people dead in minutes.
16:15During the Cold War, we made these things huge.
16:18If you detonate the biggest fusion bomb ever tested,
16:21it would look like this.
16:25The city would be gone and people 40 miles away
16:28in like Baltimore would have life-threatening burns
16:31from the heat wave.
16:32300 square miles of buildings destroyed.
16:35I mean, this is a horrible possibility
16:38that we have invented, and we have a lot of them.
16:41(ominous music)
16:50Let's look at a map.
16:51I like looking at maps.
16:52We can't go too long without looking at a map.
16:58Today, there are around 12,000 nuclear warheads
17:01somewhere on Earth.
17:03That's 12,000, 12,000.
17:05That's enough firepower to level every sizable city
17:08on the planet several times over.
17:11The world used to have way more,
17:13like more than triple that during the Cold War.
17:16Almost every one of these nuclear warheads today
17:19is in the hands of two countries, the US and Russia.
17:23But in total, there are nine countries
17:25that possess these destructive bombs.
17:28And one of these countries doesn't admit
17:29that they have nuclear weapons, but they do.
17:32And America's nukes aren't just in America.
17:35They're scattered all over the world,
17:37in ally countries, on land, in air,
17:40deep in the ocean, lurking in submarines,
17:42in a configuration that the US calls its nuclear posture.
17:47It's one of the most important parts
17:49of America's military strategy today.
17:51And we're about to see how it actually works in real life
17:54because these 12,000 nukes shape our entire world.
17:58Their threat is ever-present.
18:00And so it turns the chessboard of geopolitics
18:03into a different thing than it was before.
18:10- Nuclear weapons, of course, did revolutionize warfare,
18:13so Bernard Brody in 1946 calls them the absolute weapon.
18:16He says that basically before the bomb was invented,
18:18the fundamental purpose of military establishments
18:20was to plan for, fight, and win wars,
18:23and now it would be to prevent them altogether.
18:25- So what stops countries from nuking each other?
18:28Well, uh-oh, my camera's shaking again.
18:32See you in the comments, folks.
18:33I don't have a way to stabilize this
18:34in a way that really keeps it from bouncing around.
18:39If you have suggestions on a better camera arm,
18:42I'll take it.
18:44So the central idea of all of this is pretty simple,
18:45pretty intuitive, kind of,
18:47but then it kind of messes with your brain in weird ways,
18:48and we'll see how that works.
18:51You've got these two big empires, they're rivals,
18:54they're competing with each other
18:55as big countries do and have always done,
18:57and maybe someday they won't, but they do for now.
18:59If there's no nukes in this equation,
19:01history has taught us that these two big empires
19:04will fight each other over land, over influence,
19:06over resources, over honor, over who knows.
19:09They will fight each other.
19:10That always has happened.
19:11That is the central threat of humanity,
19:13is big, powerful entities will fight each other.
19:16In recent centuries, it's gotten really destructive.
19:18Think of Europe and Asia in the 1940s.
19:20Countries are fighting because there's a chance
19:23that one of them can win.
19:25Okay, now, after 1945, put nukes on the board
19:29and watch what happens.
19:30- This new weapon that could inflict damage
19:32of the kind that we just never before imagined
19:35in human history.
19:36- Now, if these two empires get into a war with each other,
19:38they both know that it will escalate.
19:42They will keep using more and more extreme force
19:46until eventually one side will use nukes,
19:49to which the other will respond with their own nukes.
19:52And then it's game over for everyone.
19:55Nobody wins, everybody loses, the world is on fire.
19:59The concept of victory becomes irrelevant
20:01because everyone's dead.
20:03This creates a calculus of fear,
20:06an understanding that you will inflict
20:08way more consequences on yourself
20:10if you go to war with your geopolitical rival.
20:13And this threat of total destruction
20:15is stronger than the urge to fight and dominate.
20:19After World War II,
20:20after we witnessed this destructive bomb
20:22in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, something changed.
20:26We crossed a line of understanding
20:28that there really was something
20:29that could really sort of end it all.
20:31- It's about convincing the other side
20:33that attacking is just not worth it.
20:34Convincing both sides that the price is just too high.
20:37And unfortunately that means deterrence.
20:38- Deterrence, that is the word, that is the key concept.
20:42Comes from this root of like avoidance of something
20:47because of terror, fear.
20:49Terror prevents you from acting.
20:51And it weirdly, strangely, paradoxically kind of works.
20:56Though this is debated by scholars
20:57and when I was in grad school
20:58for peace and conflict resolution,
20:59there was a lot of compelling evidence
21:00that deterrence doesn't work,
21:02but I'm not getting into the literature right now.
21:04It is widely accepted that one of the major reasons
21:07great powers have not gone to war with each other directly
21:09in the last 70, 80 years is because of nuclear weapons.
21:13For those who wanna dispute that claim,
21:15I am so stoked for your good faith argument
21:18and dissent in the comments.
21:20I will read it and respond 'cause I love this stuff.
21:22Anyway, global politics today leans heavily
21:25on this grim logic, this balance of deterrence
21:29created by very destructive bombs that split atoms.
21:32But in order for deterrence to work,
21:34it can't just be the bombs.
21:35It has to have some other important ingredients.
21:39(upbeat music)
21:41First up, the threat needs to be believable.
21:44It needs to be credible.
21:45Your enemy has to believe that you will actually,
21:48credibly fire back a nuke,
21:50that you're not just making empty threats
21:52and bluffing all the time,
21:53that you actually have the ability and appetite
21:56to fire one of these things off.
21:57What that means is you gotta have these things
22:00ready to go at all times.
22:01You gotta have maps of targets to hit,
22:03thousands of targets in some cases,
22:05like here in these giant maps in a bunker command center
22:09that the U.S. had showing all the targets
22:11in the Soviet Union that they were ready to hit.
22:13The Soviets, of course, had a similar map
22:15of all the targets they were ready to hit.
22:17During the Cold War, the U.S. had a bomber plane
22:20with a nuke on it in the air 24/7 for eight years.
22:25It wasn't the same plane.
22:26They were obviously doing patrols,
22:27but there was always one in the air ready to drop a nuke.
22:30And this is why it remained a Cold War.
22:32But the Soviet Union fell and the big standoff
22:35kind of chilled out a little bit.
22:36But today, credibility is just as important
22:39to all of the nuclear powers,
22:41especially the big dogs, U.S., China, Russia.
22:43They all still have their nukes pointed
22:45at each other all the time.
22:47And all three make it really easy
22:50to make the decision to launch one.
22:51They centralize the decision-making
22:53into one person, the top leader.
22:55Like in the United States, we do this.
22:56The president is the sole authority
22:58who can authorize a nuclear strike.
23:01And legally, no one can veto his decision.
23:03He could launch a nuke within five minutes
23:05using some special authorization codes
23:08and relying on this football.
23:09I know it's not a football.
23:11It's a briefcase, but it's called the nuclear football.
23:13And inside of this, there's a phone
23:15and a scary black book that lists out
23:18all of the potential targets
23:19that the president could authorize a strike on.
23:21How many people would die?
23:22What the effect would be?
23:24It's all right there by his side all the time.
23:26And for those wondering, yes, it's that kind of football.
23:29Sorry, world.
23:31This is America.
23:34Okay, the next ingredient to deterrence
23:36is the ability to hit back.
23:38Meaning if one nuclear country
23:40is able to destroy all of your nukes in a surprise attack,
23:43then the whole thing falls apart.
23:44They now are not deterred because they can disarm you.
23:48So you gotta have more than one nuke
23:50and you kinda gotta spread them out and hide them.
23:53The US does this by spreading its nukes
23:55out all throughout the world
23:56and dividing them up by delivery methods.
23:58Some are sitting in these big underground silos
24:02that are spread all across the middle of the country.
24:04There's just rockets in here,
24:06ready to launch at a moment's notice.
24:10Others are sitting on airplanes
24:12positioned all around the globe.
24:13And as of two weeks ago,
24:15the US positioned 10 of its bombers,
24:19probably carrying nukes,
24:20here on this tiny little island in the Indian Ocean
24:23called Diego Garcia,
24:24which I've made a video about
24:25and want to make another video about 'cause it's wild.
24:28And yeah, there's just nukes on this island.
24:30North Korea, China, Russia, Iran,
24:32beware, there's nukes here, says the United States.
24:35And then of course,
24:36we've got nukes lurking in the depths of the ocean,
24:40sitting on submarines.
24:41These underwater buildings that are weapons
24:44and bases and command centers all in one.
24:47They can carry up to 20 missiles,
24:50each of them with multiple warheads.
24:52It's like the amount of destruction capability
24:54designed into these weapons is kind of unfathomable.
24:57And that's kind of the point.
24:59It has to be so bad, so easy to launch
25:01that your enemy's like not messing with that.
25:03Anyway, these different delivery systems
25:05are called the nuclear triad.
25:06Russia has something like it too.
25:08China's kind of developing their own triad.
25:10And all of this is so that we have
25:12that second ingredient of deterrence,
25:14the ability to strike back.
25:16These things are safe from a surprise attack
25:19that would take out all of our nukes.
25:22Okay, so you've got credibility in that you're ready to go.
25:24You've got a second strike capability,
25:26but where the rubber meets the road is the last ingredient.
25:29And this is where the mind games begin.
25:34Red lines.
25:35You have to signal to your enemy
25:37what they would have to do to warrant an attack.
25:40- The signal to each other
25:42on what to do and what to not do.
25:43So you can create guardrails for your competition.
25:46- The cleanest and safest way to do this
25:48is to just say, "Hey, we will not attack anyone
25:51"with our nukes unless they attack us
25:53"with their nukes first."
25:54This is called a no-first-use policy or nuclear doctrine.
25:58It's pretty straightforward,
25:59and it's much more about just protecting
26:02your national survival.
26:03And this is what China has articulated as their policy.
26:06Most countries operate with this
26:08as their kind of de facto policy.
26:10"Don't attack us with nukes or we'll nuke you back."
26:12It's a way of deterring anyone from trying to attack them.
26:15- Most other countries that has nuclear weapons
26:17fundamentally relies on them to assure
26:19the existence of their country.
26:20You have nuclear weapons and they're survivable,
26:22your country's probably not gonna be wiped off the map
26:24or be invaded.
26:25- But for the two big dogs on the stage,
26:28Russia and the United States,
26:30red lines are a way for them
26:31to kind of play mind games with each other
26:33because they believe that it would incentivize their enemy
26:36to do everything short of a nuclear attack.
26:40Chemical weapons, conventional attacks,
26:42all these other things that we also wanna deter.
26:44So both of them keep their red lines
26:47intentionally vague and fuzzy,
26:49forcing each other to constantly be questioning,
26:52where's the red line?
26:54Like, am I going too far?
26:55Am I gonna trigger a nuclear strike if I do this or that?
26:58This keeps both sides very far away
27:01from provoking each other
27:02'cause they're not sure where the red lines are.
27:04And this is the mind game
27:05at the heart of modern nuclear politics.
27:08It's a very dangerous mind game,
27:10but it's nonetheless the one we have.
27:12- If deterrence ever fails,
27:14then you just have this really terrible thing
27:16that could affect humanity's long-term survival.
27:19(ominous music)
27:23- Okay, now time for some payoff.
27:25I'm gonna apply this to the real world.
27:26We've been doing this kind of like conceptual,
27:28theoretical deterrence talk.
27:29I'm now going to show you how all of these ingredients
27:31and this deterrence plays out in the real world.
27:35(soft music)
27:39First, Ukraine.
27:40- People will say, didn't Western deterrence fail
27:44because Russia attacked it all?
27:46And I would say, absolutely not.
27:48In fact, it is a case study
27:50of how nuclear deterrence actually works.
27:52- I'm gonna make a list of all the moves and counter moves
27:55that these two nuclear powers play on each other.
27:56- The day the conflict started,
27:58Putin announced that he was putting his nuclear forces
28:01on high alert.
28:02It didn't quite have the intended effect.
28:03So like a few days later, he remade the same announcement.
28:07This time he had a photograph taken.
28:08That's a nuclear signal.
28:10But he meant that specifically for people like me
28:12who read that kind of stuff to say,
28:14oh, they're serious.
28:15I better tell Biden that this is serious.
28:16- Russia has shamelessly violated the core tenets
28:20of the United Nations Charter.
28:22- Putin was very clearly manipulating nuclear risk.
28:24He wanted all of Europe to know
28:25that Russia had nuclear weapons
28:27and they should remember that.
28:29- The West immediately responded with sanctions,
28:31punishing Russia's economy.
28:33But beyond that, there was a big debate.
28:35There was some fear, some deterrence.
28:37Should we send military troops?
28:39Should we send weapons?
28:41Maybe just send money?
28:42We don't wanna cross Putin's line.
28:44- The Russians drew a number of what they wanted us
28:48to believe were very clear red lines.
28:49If you supply them with mobile artillery,
28:52it'll be World War III.
28:53- Whoever would try to stop us
28:54and further create threats to our country,
28:57to our people, should know that Russia's response
29:00will be immediate and lead you to such consequences
29:03that you have never faced in your history.
29:06- See what he's doing here?
29:07Like, do you see how vague that language is?
29:09It's grand, it's scary, it's not specific.
29:12This is a blurry red line
29:14that forces the West to fill in the blanks for themselves,
29:18to think twice before sending troops or sending support,
29:20because what if he's serious?
29:22All right, your move, NATO.
29:23- Hundreds of thousands of NATO troops on heightened alert.
29:27- We're also taking steps to defend our NATO allies,
29:29particularly in the East.
29:31- Putin's saber-rattling did instill some fear in the West.
29:35So instead of sending troops to Ukraine,
29:37NATO deployed 40,000 of their troops to the border,
29:41just outside of Ukraine.
29:45And then the West responded
29:47by doing some signaling of their own,
29:49saying that the use of nuclear weapons would result in,
29:51quote, "catastrophic consequences for Russia."
29:55- The wind of the conflict sort of blew some sand
29:58over the red lines and they got into,
30:00turned into pink fuzzy lines
30:01that the West eventually started to test and tolerate.
30:03- And then the NATO countries do start sending weapons,
30:06but they don't send them all at once.
30:08They're worried that might cross his line.
30:09So they have to calibrate their response
30:11and they start sending weapons a little at a time.
30:14I mean, it wasn't a little, it was a lot of weapons,
30:15but they could have sent way more
30:17and it could have actually made
30:18a big difference in Ukraine,
30:19but they didn't wanna cross his red line.
30:21And they don't totally know where it is.
30:22- It's like adjusting a thermostat.
30:24Like, you don't want the temperature to get too hot.
30:25You don't want it to get too cold.
30:26Nuclear deterrence deeply frustrated not just the Russians
30:28and deeply frustrated the West
30:30and frustrated the Ukrainians.
30:31And so it's this thing we rely on for security,
30:34but it also endlessly, I think,
30:36makes the world we inhabit
30:37a lot more complicated to maneuver.
30:39- Throughout this war,
30:40Putin continues issuing nuclear threats.
30:42And then he moved some of his nukes to Belarus,
30:45another move on the chessboard.
30:47He even officially changes Russia's nuclear doctrine,
30:50which is like their public facing policy
30:52on when they'll use nukes.
30:53He changes it to have a lower threshold,
30:55like to make it easier for Russia to use nukes.
30:59The US is getting ready to send long range missiles
31:01to Ukraine so that Ukraine can strike Russia
31:04deep into the country.
31:05But Putin says that if he does this,
31:07it's gonna have big consequences
31:09and it actually gives then President Biden some pause.
31:12He's deterred for a little bit,
31:13being like, "Am I gonna cross a red line
31:15if I send these missiles to Ukraine?"
31:17Eventually the pressure mounted
31:18and he did end up sending the long range missiles.
31:21Ukraine used them.
31:22Russia was angry, but they didn't use nukes.
31:25It was once again a bluff.
31:26So ultimately, Putin did slow down the West's support,
31:30deterred them a little bit with his bluster.
31:32- They kind of worked,
31:34not as effectively as Russia would want.
31:35Putin's threats to slow American and Western support
31:39in ways that was deeply damaging to Ukraine's defense.
31:42But they did have a time limited effect
31:44that eventually the West called their bluff.
31:46- People will talk about Putin's nuclear blackmail.
31:49And like, I'm sorry, I have no love for Vladimir Putin.
31:52There is no such thing as nuclear blackmail.
31:54It is all nuclear deterrence.
31:55What he was doing was practicing nuclear deterrence.
31:58We love deterring
31:59because it makes our national objectives
32:01easier to accomplish.
32:02But when the other guy does it to us,
32:04it kind of ruins our day
32:05and we call it nuclear blackmail.
32:07- I mean, listen, Russia and the United States,
32:09they've been playing this chess game
32:10of red lines and nuclear weapons since the '50s.
32:12So it's like, they kind of know each other's red lines.
32:15And most experts I talked to were like,
32:17yeah, there was a lot of nuclear bluster,
32:18but it was a lot of show.
32:20It was not actually close to a real strike.
32:23That being said, all it takes is one dude
32:28having a bad day and getting emotional
32:30about his pride and honor to change everything.
32:34It's a really fragile, terrifying balance
32:37that relies on Vladimir Putin's brain.
32:40And during a lot of this,
32:41you saw Russian elites and journalists
32:43and even policymakers clamoring
32:46to use nuclear weapons to reset the credibility.
32:50They're like, dude, you're losing the credibility.
32:51We're gonna lose the deterrent.
32:52Use a small tactical nuke in Ukraine
32:55and your credibility will be restored.
32:57- A hawkish voice in Moscow is now advocating
32:59that Russia should launch a limited nuclear strike.
33:03- And certainly Putin considered that.
33:05But luckily, sanity prevailed and he didn't do it.
33:13So India and Pakistan both have nukes.
33:15And this is really the only place
33:16where two nuclear powers fight each other directly.
33:19India has 172 nukes and they use them
33:22not just to deter Pakistan, but also China.
33:25For a long time, India did what the big powers do
33:27and kept their red lines vague,
33:30using that ambiguity to make their neighbors think twice
33:33about trying to take any of this disputed territory
33:36up in the mountains.
33:37But in an effort to influence stability
33:40and be a responsible nuclear power,
33:41in the early 2000s, they said they were joining China
33:43to adopt a no-first-use policy,
33:46meaning they won't nuke anyone unless they get nuked first.
33:49Now, ironically, some have pointed out
33:51that this actually invites attacks up on these borders,
33:55as we've seen in recent years.
33:57So Pakistan has around 170 nukes as well,
34:00but they've opted to keep the vague red line
34:02that makes India's much more powerful military
34:04think twice before attempting to conquer
34:06any of this disputed territory.
34:15All right, nuclear deterrence is playing a huge role
34:17in Taiwan, where nuclear-armed China
34:22is constantly flexing its power
34:24as it becomes more and more powerful in the region,
34:26but is, inconveniently for them, running into this.
34:29This is America's nuclear umbrella in Asia.
34:32We call it an umbrella because it covers our allies.
34:36It's basically a promise to defend South Korea and Japan
34:40if they're ever attacked.
34:41And the red lines are pretty clear here.
34:43It's a reason why these countries feel safe
34:45and why they feel like they don't need
34:47to get a nuclear weapon for themselves
34:48because the U.S. has their back, okay?
34:51They've got a nuclear deterrent protecting them.
34:52But Taiwan is different.
34:54It is widely seen as like the top place on Earth
34:57where a miscalculation could escalate
35:00into war between two nuclear powers
35:02because China has vowed to take Taiwan.
35:05They believe that it's rightfully theirs,
35:07it always has been,
35:08and that eventually they will take it, even if by force.
35:11But deterrence is a major reason
35:13why they haven't done so yet.
35:16And it's the U.S. that's playing
35:17the fuzzy red line game here.
35:19If China invades Taiwan, will the U.S. come to its rescue?
35:23Who knows?
35:24- U.S. forces, U.S. men and women,
35:27would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion.
35:30- Yes, if in fact there was an unprecedented attack.
35:33- Whoa, Biden just said they would,
35:35but then, seconds later,
35:37the White House retracted that statement and apologized.
35:40- The White House is now walking back
35:41President Biden's comments on Taiwan.
35:43- [Reporter] Officially, the U.S. will not say
35:46whether American forces would defend Taiwan.
35:49- Blurry red line.
35:50Will they protect Taiwan or will they not?
35:53Now, the U.S. might be bluffing here.
35:55They might actually not be willing
35:57to go like send their own troops in
35:59to confront China if they invade Taiwan,
36:01but they need Beijing to think that they might
36:04because that is such a horrifying potential
36:06that it will prevent China from
36:08attacking in the first place.
36:09And that's deterrence.
36:16Okay, pan up here to another nuclear chess game
36:21of high stakes and irrational minds and fuzzy red lines.
36:25- North Korea has the world's lowest realistic threshold,
36:29I think, for nuclear weapons used today.
36:31- North Korea has got 50 warheads
36:33and they actually have a very clear red line.
36:36They have stated that if the regime's survival
36:39is ever threatened, they will use their nukes.
36:42And by the regime, I mean the Kim family,
36:44the dictators who've ruled North Korea since its founding.
36:47This is a terrifying prospect
36:48and they've really made us believe
36:50that this is a credible threat.
36:51They test their nukes.
36:52They're constantly like, "Dude, we're ready to attack
36:54if you ever get close to trying to overthrow the regime."
36:58And they easily could.
37:00The capital of South Korea is like right there.
37:02And as of 2017, they've got rockets
37:06that could send a nuclear weapon
37:07to the mainland United States.
37:09So now they really have a deterrent that gives us pause
37:13before doing anything to provoke them.
37:15- When you're the president of the United States
37:16and you're deciding whether you're gonna run that risk
37:18and you're gonna go all the way to Pyongyang
37:19and remove Kim from power,
37:21knowing that he's got 10 ICBMs
37:23that could hit one of your cities,
37:24that is not a decision that you make in a cavalier manner.
37:27And so that is essentially the mechanism of deterrence.
37:30It is as Dr. Strangelove says,
37:32it is creating in the mind of your enemy
37:34the fear to attack.
37:35And that is what Kim Jong-un is trying to do.
37:37- They use their nukes to basically ensure the survival
37:40and the reign of power of the Kim family.
37:43It's like a core part of what keeps them going.
37:45And of all the nuclear powers,
37:46they weaponize irrationality.
37:48I mean, this kind of theater
37:49of being like the crazy dictator
37:51with his hand on the trigger
37:52is a really powerful deterrent.
37:54It's a major reason why the US and South Korea
37:56and anyone won't get anywhere near the red line.
37:59And it forces the United States
38:01to grapple with whether or not
38:03they would provoke a nuclear attack on their soil
38:05to protect South Korea.
38:08Deterrence has so far kept the whole thing
38:10in this sort of tense, scary balance,
38:12but that could change any minute and hopefully it doesn't.
38:17(soft music)
38:20So can we just stop the nukes, please?
38:25Can we as humanity just agree
38:27that this is completely irrational, totally insane,
38:30that we've invented these things and that we wield them?
38:32And can we all just agree
38:34that it would be better to not have them at all?
38:37Could we?
38:38Ooh, I wish, but it's a little more complicated.
38:41I mean, 73 countries have signed a treaty
38:43saying they'll never develop nukes.
38:44Could we just get everyone else to do it?
38:46Seems sensible.
38:47Unfortunately, most experts I talked to say
38:49it's not quite that simple.
38:51- Unfortunately, you can't un-invent the technology
38:54and actually, sudden disarmament
38:57would put you in a much more dangerous position
39:00where any country could suddenly leap
39:02into a position of massive power
39:03by just committing to building
39:05lots and lots of nuclear warheads.
39:07- We still live in a world
39:08where big countries are skeptical of each other.
39:11There's no central authority governing everyone.
39:14And so countries naturally compete with each other.
39:17They're constantly trying to one-up each other
39:19to protect themselves and scare their enemy.
39:22That is like a natural law of international relations.
39:25I hope it's not the case someday
39:26'cause it really, like, our world would be much better
39:28if we all just cooperated.
39:29But for now, this is how we do it.
39:32The current arrangement is that, yes, we do diplomacy
39:35and we do some international law,
39:37but a major stabilizer for the big empires
39:39is everyone having a gun pointed at each other
39:41so that no one does anything crazy.
39:43It gives way to a bunch of other types of conflict,
39:47proxy wars we've talked a lot about on this channel,
39:49but for now, it has kept the big powers
39:51from going into a full cataclysmic war.
39:54- And unfortunately, half of this community just says,
39:57"We need to get rid of all the corporates tomorrow!"
39:59(yells)
40:00And the other half says,
40:01"No, we need new corporates for everything,
40:02including stopping asteroids!" (yells)
40:06We need everyone to take a deep breath
40:08and think strategically and think in the longer term.
40:10- So how do we manage this then?
40:12During the Cold War, we saw the US and the Soviet Union
40:14figure out a way to work together while still having nukes.
40:18They could still do the deterrence thing,
40:20the credibility, the red lines, all of that,
40:22but instead of just constantly one-upping each other,
40:25they started to reduce,
40:27and that's how we went from having
40:28tens of thousands of nukes
40:29to just having 12,000 today.
40:31What's tricky about this new world we're entering into
40:34is that it's not just two powers.
40:36- Soviet Union went poof,
40:38and we had this moment of global nuclear optimism.
40:40Today, it's like all of the dynamics
40:42are heading in the wrong direction.
40:43We have competitive great power dynamics,
40:45we have new entrants like North Korea,
40:47we have India and Pakistan innovating in their own way
40:50about how they wanna fight wars under the nuclear shadow,
40:53and so all of that takes us to a place
40:54where, unfortunately, this broader toolkit
40:57that we have relied on
40:58to render this enterprise of nuclear deterrence
41:01somewhat more predictable and manageable for mankind
41:04is under great strain.
41:05- I think we'll move towards safer, smaller ones.
41:09More, I don't know.
41:10I mean, I think the US and Russia are gonna stay stable,
41:13but it depends on what China does.
41:15If China matches them,
41:17does Russia feel like they need to be bigger than China?
41:19I don't know.
41:20And if Russia races, does the US race?
41:22And then does this become a congressional thing
41:24where we say it has to be US equals Russia
41:27plus China plus one?
41:29Well, then what happens when North Korea hits 1,000?
41:31Or what happens, ah, you know what I mean?
41:32Like, if we're racing,
41:34and again, because of the asymmetries of all these races,
41:37then everybody ends up,
41:38do we end up with everybody with 10,000 in these things?
41:40I hope not.
41:42That, I really think we could have talks to get out of.
41:44- China seems to be building their nuclear arsenal
41:46very quickly,
41:48and they are not telling the world why.
41:51- Why is China doing this buildup?
41:52Like, that is still being debated.
41:53Xi Jinping has not given us a speech,
41:55like, telling us why we're seeing
41:57more nuclear weapons in China.
41:58Imaginations have run wild in Washington a little bit
42:01about what China's goals are here.
42:02- There was a moment during the Cold War
42:04where it got really bad.
42:06Cuba, the Cuban Missile Crisis,
42:07you've probably heard of it.
42:08The closest we ever got to, like,
42:10actually going full bore into a nuclear war
42:12with the Soviet Union.
42:13And that sort of woke everyone up to the insanity.
42:16It sort of, like, gave us the picture
42:18of how close we were to, like, mass annihilation.
42:21And it was that crisis that helped the two countries
42:25increase communication lines with each other,
42:28put in place some frameworks to, like,
42:31make sure that nothing crazy happens.
42:33And it really did stabilize the world
42:35and eventually led to the reduction of all of these nukes.
42:37We're going to need to do that again.
42:40Like, we're gonna have to have those conversations again.
42:42The question is,
42:43is it going to take another scary crisis
42:46and a close call to get us there?
42:49- What is it we really want?
42:50We want peace and stability.
42:51We want us all to be able
42:53to survive for another generation.
42:55How do we do that best?
42:56We need to defend ourselves
42:58and we need to redevelop the habit
43:00of thinking more strategically and diplomacy
43:03and talking to our adversaries
43:05in order to try to avoid the next conflict
43:07and get to somewhere with peace.
43:09The hard work needs to happen now.
43:11(soft music)
43:16- Hey, everyone, thanks for watching.
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43:59Thanks for being here
43:59and tell me what you want to learn about next.
44:04See ya.
44:04(soft music)

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