Mary Louise Kelly
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
World news is changing by the hour.
On Sources and Methods, NPR's national security podcast, we zoom out to explain shifting alliances, global flashpoints, and what's really happening in places like Iran, Venezuela, Greenland.
Our reporters on the ground connect the dots to help you understand a world order changing beneath our feet.
Listen to Sources and Methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
When I was a kid, back in the 80s, my school held emergency drills.
Fire drills, tornado drills, nuclear drills.
The plan for the latter was we were supposed to crouch under our classroom desks, arms crossed over our heads for protection.
With the benefit of hindsight...
Hiding under our desks probably would not have protected us much from an incoming nuclear warhead.
Well, fast forward four decades, we seem to be in a new nuclear era.
Cold War is over, but the questions, how do we secure the nukes, whether to build more nukes, they're as live as ever.
And those questions are on the minds of national security leaders gathering here in Munich among them.
Christine Wormuth, former Army Secretary, now President and CEO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative.
That's a nonpartisan group dedicated to reducing the nuclear threat.
Secretary Wormuth, great to see you.
So to take stock of where we are at this moment, the last nuclear arms treaty between the United States and Russia just expired.
Late last month, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, their doomsday clock was set to 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been in nearly eight decades of doing it.
How dangerous is the current moment?