Annie Jacobsen

nuclear war by seeing a film.

And so when I look to today and I consider that the current president isn't speaking to the president of Russia, it doesn't make any sense to someone like me.

That's probably why I wrote this book.

Like, please understand this.

And I...

One has to imagine that the current president with all his decades in office understands all of this.

And so I don't fundamentally understand why there is no communication.

It is way too dangerous.

Hence, what you just showed us, the facts will come in of whose weapon systems those are.

But either way, the perception, to your point,

The fact that the perception, a misperception could ignite nuclear war, could ignite that situation that is unreversible, that should be astonishing to all of us.

That's terrifying.

Well, it's terrifying.

But the one hopeful part of it would be, again, going back to the Reagan reversal, by the way, is the only glimmer of hope I ever found in all of this.

Tell me what you mean when you say compromised.

Absolutely.

So then you have to ask yourself what is also going to happen now that these big contracting organizations, Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed, are now being threatened by Silicon Valley, by the new defense contractors that are coming into the pipeline, that are threatening their contracts because they can do it faster and cheaper.

And so I fear that you will see even more of that entrenchment that you're talking about, even more of the, you know, the bureaucracy churning out more weapons under the guise of defense.

Because they'll have to ramp it up.

Yeah, because there's a competition, you know, which is that double-edged sword because competition is what makes America great.