The Engineered Nuclear Danger: A History of Mutual Assured Destruction, Expert Conformity, and the Doomsday Machine

This podcast features Daniel Ellsberg, author of *The Doomsday Machine*, in conversation with Rob Johnson, exploring the profound and often unacknowledged dangers of nuclear arsenals, primarily focusing on the US and Russia. Ellsberg argues that the military-industrial complex, coupled with inherent tribal pressures and conformity within expert communities, has fostered a dangerous environment where the existential threat of nuclear war is not adequately confronted. He recounts his personal horror upon discovering US war plans in the early 1960s that projected 600 million deaths from a US first strike, including NATO allies killed by radioactive fallout, highlighting the moral and strategic bankruptcy of such planning.

Ellsberg draws a critical distinction between the theoretical "sword of Damocles" over a ruler, as described by JFK, and the actual sword wielded by the US over global humanity. He introduces concepts like radical uncertainty, contrasting it with deterministic game theory, and references economists like Frank Knight and John Maynard Keynes. A pivotal revelation discussed is the concept of "nuclear winter," understood since 1983, which demonstrates that even a limited nuclear exchange, particularly involving cities, would generate immense smoke plumes that block sunlight globally, leading to mass starvation and the death of 90% or more of humanity—a far greater catastrophe than earlier calculations of blast and fallout alone.

Practical insights include the fact that the "doomsday machine" capability, capable of causing widespread death, has existed since 1952, even with atom bombs, due to the firestorms they ignite. Ellsberg critically examines the continued reliance on vulnerable Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) which, being fixed targets, create a hair-trigger incentive for a first strike during perceived attack, despite the existence of invulnerable submarine-launched weapons. He reveals that false alarms have brought the world to the brink of nuclear war multiple times, with critical decisions resting on individuals like Yeltsin or Brzezinski. The urgent recommendation is to dismantle these doomsday machines for human survival, even if some nuclear deterrents are maintained.

The broader context of the discussion delves into the political economy of the arms race. Ellsberg explains that the persistence of ICBMs, despite their anachronistic nature and immense danger, is driven by vested interests of defense contractors (Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon), campaign donations, and job creation in congressional districts. This creates a bipartisan consensus on massive military budgets, diverting funds that could address critical issues like climate change. The episode sets the stage for future discussions on the evolution of military tactics from conventional warfare to civilian targeting, the dynamics of nuclear proliferation, and the systemic impediments to genuine disarmament efforts.

"the danger now to humankind to our children's future is enormous because of some of the ways in which we are not facing the challenge of what you might call being an independent expert like yourself in the context of this politics and these tribal behaviors"

"it was a sword of damocles not over the ruler but over all the people in the world"

"our own attack would have wiped them out with uh with this full mode" (referring to NATO allies killed by fallout from US attack)

"how could this be what does it tell me not just about my country but about our species organized as we are international states with huge military apparatuses"

"the smoke would go into the stratosphere we learned in 1983... that would blot out 70 of the sunlight reaching the earth in the southern hemisphere where no warheads would land"

"the food goes nearly everyone starves not everyone as scientists alan roebuck brian toon have told me some people will live on seafood and mollusks in australia in new zealand northern australia a significant number will survive perhaps one percent perhaps as many as 10 of the world's population"

"putin is protecting kaliningrad the same way we protected west berlin not more foolish or less foolish is it insane well it was the heart of nato's strategy for uh 50 years and that was to blow up the world if they uh started to move into westbrook"

"our whole system on each side is based on the idea of going first under those circumstances not out of the blue as we describe pearl harbor but uh in the event that we think we're about to be attacked"

"it's not only president donald j trump who can launch our weapons it is the case that many many other people could launch those weapons outside washington some of them not necessarily more stable than the president"

"you can't get rid of that hair trigger the icbms because a raytheon and boeing and lockheed and we'll make those systems depend on them for part of their profits and they in turn control to a very large extent of the parts of congress who control the budget for this buy campaign donations"