Sam Harris

The steps we've had to take to figure out what to do in the event of a full-scale nuclear exchange

It's so deeply impractical and insane.

Again, it's easy to see how we have escalated ourselves into this untenable situation.

You've got this perverse ratchet that just keeps turning in one direction, but that we got there and we're left with the machinations that...

that we imagine is going to safeguard our survival.

It's just, it's bonkers.

So let's take those separate cases.

Let's talk about Russia and Ukraine first.

The threats we've heard from Putin and other spokespeople in Russia are

Have those all been with respect to the use of tactical weapons in the theater of conflict in Ukraine, or have there been... Usually it's not specified.

So when this war started and the obvious threat of nuclear escalation was first discussed, many people immediately drew the lesson

seemingly the wrong lesson from the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is that you just can't blink, right?

You can't give in to nuclear blackmail.

We don't want to set that, one, as a terrible precedent because it means that anyone who has nuclear weapons can basically do whatever they want conventionally, you know, as long as they purport to be suicidal.

And

I guess I'm just wondering what you think about what we've done so far and whether you think we have been, we, the U.S., I guess, and NATO, have been impeccable in how we have not caved in to...

What do you think we would do if Russia used tactical nukes on Ukraine?

But who knows?

There are not that many stages beyond that, right?

That seems completely sensible to me.