Annie Jacobsen

So they can advance technology, usually in a weapons environment.

And that is always the argument, at least to the people I talk to in the, air quotes, military-industrial complex, for why strong defense is so necessary, why we must constantly be pushing the envelope.

And it's hard to wrap your brain around that

in a balance of, well, what makes the most sense and how are we not going down a path that is leading toward this dystopian future we've been talking about?

You know, I interviewed just three days ago a woman named Setsuko Thurlow who lived through the Hiroshima bombing.

She was 13 years old.

I write about her in Chapter 2 of this book.

She's called The Girl in the Rubble.

Wow.

And she's now 92 or 93.

She's alive and she's still doing interviews.

She spoke to me with a ferocity and an intensity.

She wants the world to be free of nuclear weapons.

And she's been working on this issue her whole life.

Wow.

It was so remarkable.

can be how young and spirited she was.

Like she did a Zoom with me from her apartment in Vancouver in Canada.

Like 92, 93, just as vibrant as a person could possibly be, outliving all these other people because she survived Hiroshima, because she has a clear message.

Where was she when the bomb dropped?