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Annie Jacobsen

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2024-03-22

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2024-03-22

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1. “And there's a meanwhile I learned this only in reporting the book. There is a identical black book inside the Stratcom bunker in Nebraska. Okay. So let me three command bunkers are involved when nuclear war begins, right? There's the bunker beneath the Pentagon, which is called the National Military Command Center, okay? Then there is the bunker beneath Cheyenne Mountain, which everyone has, you know, many people have heard of because it's been made famous in movies, right? That is a very real bunker. And then there is a third bunker. Which is the bunker beneath strategic command in Nebraska. And so it's described to me this way, the Pentagon bunker is the beating heart. The Cheyenne Mountain Bunker is the brains, and the Stratcom bunker is the muscle.”

   2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Systems to use. And that is what is on according to Buzz Patterson, a piece of like sort of laminated plastic. He described it like a Denny's menu. And from that menu, the president chooses targets and chooses weapon systems.”

   2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “Okay, so Well, okay, first of all, that is, you know, people are incredibly classified. I mean, people talk about UFOs. It's incredibly, I mean, come on, guys. That is nothing burger, right? You want to know what's really classified, what's in that football, right? What's in that satchel? But the PED, presidential emergency action directives, right? Those have never been leaked. No one knows what they are. What we do know from one of the mill aides who spoke on the record, a guy called Buzz Patterson, he describes the president's orders, right? So if a nuclear war has begun, if the president has been told there are nuclear missiles, one or more coming at the United States, you have to launch a counterattack, right? The red clock is ticking. You have to get the blue impact clock ticking. He needs to look at this list to decide what targets to strike and what weapons.”

   2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “You realize what goes into every single one of these decisions. You realize the massive system of systems behind every item you might just see in passing and glancing on the news as you see the mill aide carrying that satchel. Well, what's in that satchel? I really dug into that to report this book.”

   2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Also, in charge of the president's detail. President Clinton, this was before he was director of the Secret Service. And he told me the story about how, he said, the football is with the president at all times, period. They were traveling to Syria, and Clinton was meeting with President Assad. They got into an elevator. Clinton and the secret service team and one of Assad's guys was like, no, you know, like about the mill aid. And Lou said, it was like a standoff because there was no way they were not going to have the president with his football in an elevator. And it kind of sums up for me anyways”

   2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “I think Americans are familiar with the football, at least anyone who sort of follows national security concepts because it's a satchel. It's a leather satchel that is always with a military aid in secret service nomenclature. That's the mill aid. And he's trailing around the president 24, 7, 365 days a year, and also the vice president, by the way, with the ability to launch nuclear war in that six-minute window all the time, okay? That is also called the football. And it's always with the president to report this part of the book I interviewed a lot of people in the secret service that are with the president and talk about this. And the director of the secret service, a guy called Lou Merletti, told me a story that I just really found fascinating.”

   2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “Violates treaties. So, yes, that is where the intelligence agencies. But, you know, at a point, it's overkill, literally and figuratively, right? People are up in arms about these hypersonic weapons. Well, we have a hypersonic weapons program, you know, Falcon, Google Blackswift, right? This is Lockheed's doing, you know, DARPA exists to create the vast weapon systems of the future. That is its job. It has been doing that since its creation in 1957. I would never believe that we aren't ahead of everyone. Call me, you know, overinformed or naive one or the other. That would be my position because DARPA works from the chicken or the egg scenario, you know, that like once you learn about something, once you learn Russia's created this typhoon submarine, which may or may not. You know, be viable, it's too late if you don't already have one.”

   2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “Capable is very real because of the escalating tensions around the world. And that's where the CIA would guess is doing most of its work right now.”

   2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “In all of this because it's decades old is really well known. If you go to the Federation of American Scientists, they have a team led by a guy called Hans Christensen who runs what's called the nuclear notebook, and he and his team every year are keeping track of this number of warheads on these number of weapon systems. And because of the treaties, the different signatories to the treaty all report these numbers. And of course the different intelligence community people are keeping track of what's being revealed honestly and reported with transparency and what is being hidden. The real issue is the new systems that Russia is working on right now. And that will lead us, you know, we are kind of moving into an era whereby the threat of actually having new weapon systems that are nuclear”

   2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “Average American isn't going to go for like the ICBM road mobile launcher driving down the street in your town or city, which is why the Defense Department will justify we need the second strike capacity capability, the submarines, right? Because wonky stuff that is worth looking into if you really dig the book and are like, wait a minute, it's all footnoted where you can learn more about how these systems have changed over time and why more than anything it's very difficult to get out of this Catch 22 conundrum that we need nuclear weapons to keep us safe. That is the real enigma because The other guys have them, right? And the other guys have sort of more sinister ways of using them, or at least that's what the nomenclature out of the Pentagon will always be when anyone tries to say we just need to really think about full disarmament.”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “They're all there, and before they were there on Google, they were there in maps because we're a democracy and we make these things known. Now what's tricky is that Russia and North Korea rely upon what are called road mobile launchers, right? So Russia has a lot of underground silos. You know, all of the scenario takes you through these different facilities that really do exist. And they're all sourced with how many weapons they have and their launch procedures and whatnot. But in addition to having underground silos, they have road mobile launchers. And that means you just have one of these giant ICBMs on a 22 axle truck that can move stealthily around the country so that it can't be targeted by the U.S. Defense Department. We don't have those in America because presumably the”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “The submarines take about fourteen or fifteen minutes from the presidential from the launch command to actually launch. And that has to do, I surmise, with the location of the submarine, its depth. Some of these things are so highly classified, and other details are shockingly available if you look deep enough or if you ask enough questions and you can go from one document to the next to the next and really find these answers.”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “So, what's interesting about the silos America has 400 silos, right? We've had more. But we have 400 and they're underground. They're called Minutemen, right? After the revolutionary war heroes. But the sort of joke in Washington is they're not called Minute Men for nothing because they can launch in one minute, right? So the president orders the launch of the ICBMs, ICBM stands for intercontinental ballistic missile. He orders the launch and they launch 60 seconds later. And then they take 30 some odd minutes to get to where they're going.”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “They're undetectable. The map making is done after the fact because of a lot of underwater surveillance systems that we have, you know, but in real time you cannot find a nuclear summary. And you know, just the way a submarine launches goes 150 feet below the surface to launch its ballistic missile. I mean, it comes out of the missile tube and with enough thrust that the thrusters, they ignite outside the water. And then they move into boost. And so the technology involved is just stunning and shocking. And again, trillions of dollars spent so that we never have a nuclear war. But my God, what if we did?”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Hundred miles. Yes, they weren't precise on the number, but when you look at the map And that's when you're talking about under 10 minutes from launch to strike.”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “And they're moving around throughout the oceans, hours, Russia's, Chinas, maybe North Korea's, constantly, and we now know they're sneaking up to the east and west coast of the United States within a couple hundred miles. How do we know that? Why do we know that? Well, I found a document inside of a budget that the Defense Department was going to Congress for more money recently and showed maps of precisely where these submarines, how close they were getting to the eastern seaboard.”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “When you thought it was really bad. And then you kind of realize about the submarines. I mean, the submarines are what are called second strike capacity, right? And, you know, it was described, submarines were described to me this way. They are as dangerous to civilization. And let me say, a nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered submarine is as dangerous to civilization as an asteroid. They are unstoppable. They are unlocatable. The former chief of the nuclear submarine forces, Admiral Michael Connor, told me it's easier to find a grapefruit sized object in space than a submarine under the sea, okay? So these things are like hell machines.”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “Know we've had 75 years since there have been two superpowers with the nuclear bomb. So that threat has been there for 75 years. And we have managed to stay alive. One of the reasons why so many of the sources in the book agreed to talk to me, people who had not previously gone on the record about all of this was because they are now approaching the end of their lives. They spent their lives dedicated to preventing nuclear World War III. And they'll be the first people to tell you we're closer to this as a reality than ever before. And so the only bright side of any of this is that the answer lies most definitely in communication.”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “I mean, I think what you're after, and I couldn't agree more with, is like, Why is this? Fundamentally annihilating system, a system of mass genocide, as John Rubel, you know, in the book refers to it. Why does it still exist?”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “To the east coast of the United States. You get the idea it's about 30 minutes. But hopefully now that allows readers to suddenly see all this as a real, you almost see it as, you know, as poetry, as terrible as that bay sound. You can visualize it and suddenly it makes sense. And I think the sense-making part of it is really what I'm after in this book because I want people to understand. On the one hand, it's incredibly simple. It's just the people that have made it so complicated.”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “And moving very fast and with the earth. Until it gets very close to its target, and the last one hundred seconds, our terminal phase, it's where the warhead re enters the atmosphere and detonates. twenty six minutes and forty seconds Now in my scenario I open with North Korea launching a one megaton nuclear warhead at Washington DC. That's the nihilistic madman maneuver. That's the bolt out of the blue attack that everyone in Washington will tell you they're afraid of And North Korea has a little bit different geography, and so I had MIT professor emeritus Ted Postel do the math 33 minutes from a launch pad in Pyongyang.”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “And it happens in three phases. Very simple and interesting to remember because then suddenly all of this makes more sense. Boost phase, mid course phase, and then terminal phase, okay? Boost phase, five minutes. That's when the rocket launches. So you just imagine a rocket going off the launch pad and the fire beneath it. Again, that's why the satellites can see it. Okay, now it's becoming visual. Now it makes sense to me, right? Five minutes. And that's where the rocket can be tracked. And then imagine learning, wait a minute, after five minutes, the rocket can no longer be seen from space. The satellite can only see the hot rocket exhaust. Then the missile enters its midcourse phase, twenty minutes, and that's the ballistic part of it where it's kind of flying up between 500 and 700 miles above the Earth.”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “Wasn't out there. And I felt like, wow, Herb Bjork left these behind for someone like me to find, right? And what the process he wanted to know, the answer to your question. And as the guy in charge of it all, so he hired this group of scientists who then and still are, in many ways, like the supermen scientists of the Pentagon, and they're called the Jason scientists. Many conspiracies about them abound. I interviewed their founder and have interviewed many of them. But they whittled the number down to seconds, okay, specifically for Herb Bjork. And it goes like this, because this is where my jaw dropped and I went, wow, okay. So 26 minutes and 40 seconds from a launch pad in the Soviet Union to the East Coast.”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “When I was writing an earlier book on DARPA, the Pentagon science agency, I went to a library down in San Diego called the Giza Library to look at Her Bjork's papers. Her Bjork was the first chief scientist for the Pentagon for DARPA, then called ARPA. And I had been trying to get the number from the various agencies that be to answer you. Like what is the exact number and how do we know it? And like, does it change? And, you know, as technology advances, does that number reduce? All these kinds of questions. And no one will answer that question on an official level. And so much to my surprise, I found the answer in Herb York's like dusty archive of papers. And this is information that was jealously guarded. I mean, it didn't, it was not, it's not necessarily classified, but it certainly...”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “So that's the triad, right? And we have the triad and Russia has the triad. Tactical nuclear weapons are smaller warheads that were designed to be used in battle. And that is what Russia is sort of threatening to use right now. That is this idea that you would make a decision on the battlefield in an operational environment to use a tactical nuclear weapon. You're just sort of upping the ante. But the problem is that all treaties are based on this idea of no nuclear use, right? You cannot cross that line. And so the what would happen if the line is crossed is so devastating to even consider I think that the conversation is well worth having among everyone that is in a power of position. How as the UN Secretary General said, this is madness, right? This is madness. We must come back from the brink. We are at the brink.”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “cannot be recalled or redirected, and speaking of how little the president generally know, as we were talking a moment ago, President Reagan in nineteen eighty three gave a press conference where he misstated that submarine launched ballistic missiles could be recalled. They cannot be recalled. So that gives you, here's the guy in charge of the arsenal if it has to get let loose, and he doesn't even know that they cannot be recalled. So this is the kind of misinformation and disinformation. And, you know, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres recently said when he was talking about the conflicts rising around the world, he said, we are one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear armageddon.”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “O my God, almost certainly, and again any person in the National Security Environment will agree with that, right? Certainly on the American side. Strategic weapons, those are like big weapons systems. The America has a nuclear triad. We have our ICBMs, which are the silo-based missiles that have a nuclear warhead in the nose cone. And they can get from one continent to the other in roughly 30 minutes. Then we have our bombers, B52s and B-2s, that are nuclear capable. Those take travel time to get to another continent. Those can also be recalled. The ICBMs cannot be recalled or redirected once launched.”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “A fundamental security that if someone were to use a tactical nuclear weapon, oh well, it's just an escalation. It's far more than that.”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “That's not to mention the $12,500 nuclear weapons amongst the nine nuclear armed nations. But when you think about those kind of arsenals of just between the United States and Russia, and you realize everything can be launched in seconds and minutes, then you realize the madness of Matt that this idea that No one would launch because it would assure everyone's destruction, yes, but what if someone did? And in my interviews with scores of top tier national security advisors, people who advise the president, people who are responsible for these decisions if they had to be made, every single one of them said It could happen. They didn't say this would never happen. And so the idea is worth thinking about because I believe that it pulls back the veil on”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “When nuclear war starts, there's no like battle for New York or battle for Moscow. It's just literally, you know, it was called in the Cold War push-button warfare. But in essence, that is what it is. Let's get some numbers on the table, if you don't mind, right? Because when you're saying, like, wait a minute, we're just hoping that it holds, right? Let's just talk about Russia and the US, the arsenals that are literally pointed at one another right now, right? So the United States has 1,770 nuclear weapons deployed, meaning those weapons could launch in as little as sixty seconds and up to a couple minutes. Some of them on the bombers might take an hour or so. Russia has one thousand six hundred and seventy four deployed nuclear weapons. Same scenario, their weapon systems are on par with ours.”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “And again, all the presidents come into office, I have learned understanding the idea that of deterrence, this idea that we have these massive arsenals of nuclear weapons pointed at one another, ready to launch, so that we never have nuclear war. What we're talking about now is what if we did? What if we did? And what you've raised is like this really spooky, eerie subtext of the world right now because Many of the nuclear armed nations are in direct conflict with other nations, and for the first time in decades, nuclear threats are actually coming out of the mouths of leaders. This is shocking.”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “The ballistic missile seen from outer space by the satellite. And then there also must be a second confirmation from a ground radar system. But in that process, which is just a couple minutes, everyone is getting ready to notify the president. And one of the first people that gets notified by NORAD or by Stratcom or by NRO, these different parties that all see the early warning data. One of the first people that's notified is the Secretary of Defense, as well as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, because those two together are going to brief the president about, you know, sir, you have six minutes to decide. And that's where you realize the immediacy of all of this is so counter to Imagining the scenario”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “He noticed how President didn't want to ever really deal with the nuclear issue because he had so many other issues to deal with and that only when Panetta became Secretary of Defense, he told me, did he really realize the weight of all of this? Because he knew he would be the person that the president would turn to. Were he to be notified of a nuclear attack? And by the way, it's the launch on warning. It's the”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “I mean, one of the things I found shocking was how little apparently most presidents know about the responsibility that literally lays at their feet, right? So you may think through this six minute window, I may think through this six-minute window, but what I learned, like for example former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, was really helpful in explaining this to me because before he was SecD, he served as the director of the CIA. And before that, he was the White House chief of staff. And so he has seen these different roles that have been so close to the president. But he explained to me that when he was the White House chief of staff for President Clinton,”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “Speed, you talk about the six minute window. And some people say, oh, that's ridiculous. How do we know that six minute window? Well, here's the best sort of, you know, hitting the nail on the head statement I can give you, which is in President Reagan's memoirs, he refers to the six-minute window and he says he calls it irrational, which it is. He says, how can anyone make a decision to launch nuclear weapons based on a blip on a radar scope? To unleash Armageddon, and yet that is the reality behind nuclear war.”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “In addition to the launch on warning concept, there's this other insane concept called sole presidential authority. And you might think in a democracy that's impossible, right? You can't just start a war. Well, you can just start a nuclear war if you're the commander-in-chief, the president of the United States. In fact, you're the only one who can do that. And we can get into later why that exists. I was able to get the origin story of that concept from Los Alamos. They declassified it for the book. But the idea behind that is that nuclear war will unfold so fast only one person can be in charge, the president. He asked permission of no one, not the Secretary of Defense, not the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, not the US Congress. So built into that is this extraordinary.”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “And that was one of the most remarkable details to really nail down for this book when I was reporting this book and talking to Secretary of Defense, for example, who are the people who advise the president on this matter, right? You say to yourself, wait a minute, how could that possibly be? And so let's unpack that, right?”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “The reason that the United States is so ferociously watching for a nuclear launch somewhere around the globe is so that the nuclear command and control system in the US can move into action to immediately make a counter strike because we have that policy launch on warning, which is exactly like it says. It means the United States will not wait to absorb a nuclear attack. It will launch nuclear weapons in response before the bomb actually hits.”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “So the way it starts is in space, meaning the US Defense Department has a early warning system. And the system in space is called Sivers. It's a constellation of satellites that is keeping an eye on all of America's enemies so that the moment an ICBM launches, the satellite in space, and I'm talking about one-tenth of the way to the moon, that's how powerful these satellites are in geos They see the hot rocket exhaust. On the ICBM In a fraction of a second after it launches, a fraction of a second. And so there begins this horrifying policy. Launch on warning, right? And that's the US counterattack, meaning.”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “In the words of Richard Garwin, who was the first Nuclear weapons engineer who drew the plans for the Ivy Mike thermonuclear bomb, the first thermonuclear bomb, ever exploded in nineteen fifty two. Darwin shared with me his opinion that all it takes is one nihilistic madman with a nuclear arsenal to start a nuclear war. And that's how I begin the scenario.”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “The common denominator that nuclear war is insane. You know, first millions, then tens of millions, then hundreds of millions of people will die in the first 72 minutes of a nuclear war. And then comes nuclear winter where the billions happen from starvation. And so the shock power of all of this is meant For each and every one of us to say Wait what? This actually exists behind the veil of national security, and I don't know, you know, most people do not think about nuclear war on a daily basis, and yet hundreds of thousands of people in the nuclear command and control are at the ready in the event it happens.”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “So to start off, the reason I wrote the book is so that readers like you could see in appalling detail just how horrific nuclear war would be. And as you said, second by second, minute by minute, the book covers nuclear launch to nuclear winter. I purposely don't get into the politics that lead up to that or the national security maneuvers or the posturing or any of that. I just want people to know. Nuclear war is insane. And every source I interviewed for this book from Secretary of Defense all retired nuclear sub force commander Stratcom commander FEMA director on and on and on nuclear weapons engineers they all shared with me.”

    2024-03-22 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #420 – Annie Jacobsen: Nuclear War, CIA, KGB, Aliens, Area 51, Roswell & Secrecy · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source