Podcasts about nuclear non proliferation treaty

Subscribe now to listen to the entire 17-minute episode (or preview 7 minutes). The precarious international consensus on nuclear non-proliferation is cracking. The Trump administration announced a civilian nuclear agreement with Saudi Arabia — long sought by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — which experts fear could lead to the Saudis pursuing nuclear weapons in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The deal allows for the kingdom to enrich uranium and reprocess plutonium on its own soil. In this episode, Joe Cirincione explains the potential danger to the U.S.-led nuclear order. Recommended reading: Trump's Saudi pact could be the worst nuclear deal in history by Joe Cirincione (MS Now)

Subscribe now for an ad-free experience. Sina Azodi, assistant professor of Middle East politics and director of the Middle East Studies program at George Washington University, returns to the show to talk about Iran's nuclear program. The group discusses the Shah's nuclear agenda, Atoms for Peace, Iran's signing of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, how the Iran-Iraq War influenced Iran's nuclear policy, missed opportunities for diplomacy after 9/11, Trump's withdrawal from the JCPOA and why Biden didn't revive the deal, and the recent war with Iran. Grab a copy of Sina's book Iran and the Bomb: The United States, Iran, and the Nuclear Question. And contribute to GiveDirectly's campaign to help survivors of the earthquake in Venezuela. Note: In lieu of a news episode this week, we will be posting an interview about the holiday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sina Azodi, assistant professor of Middle East politics and director of the Middle East Studies program at George Washington University, returns to the show to talk about Iran's nuclear program. The group discusses the Shah's nuclear agenda, Atoms for Peace, Iran's signing of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, how the Iran-Iraq War influenced Iran's nuclear policy, missed opportunities for diplomacy after 9/11, Trump's withdrawal from the JCPOA and why Biden didn't revive the deal, and the recent war with Iran.Grab a copy of Sina's book Iran and the Bomb: The United States, Iran, and the Nuclear Question.And contribute to ⁠GiveDirectly's campaign to help survivors of the earthquake in Venezuela⁠.Note: In lieu of a news episode this week, we will be posting an interview relevant to the holiday.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Memorial Day brings out a lot of scripted lines, but we want to talk about the part that gets avoided: what American wars actually cost, who pays, and how often the public is left holding the bill while elites chase ideology, influence, and profit. We start by looking at the human consequences for service members and veterans, and why so many deployments overseas end with the same problems still on the table, just with more graves and more resentment. Then we shift into the biggest moving story right now: Iran negotiations, the Iran nuclear program, and why the phrase “on the brink of a deal” can be more propaganda than reality. We break down uranium enrichment in plain language, what the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty allows, and why demanding “zero enrichment” is not a technical detail but a deal-killer. We also explain how Lebanon and Hezbollah change the endgame, why escalations in southern Lebanon can function as sabotage, and how the Strait of Hormuz becomes real leverage that reshapes every calculation. We also react to Trump's messaging, including his push to fold Iran into the Abraham Accords, what those normalization deals have meant in practice, and how they can drive an arms race while adding impossible complexity to already fragile diplomacy. Along the way, we play and respond to clips featuring Cory Booker, plus a debate moment where Mearsheimer and Walt confront Pompeo and Nuland's talking points, and we close with a quick look at Thomas Massie signaling a possible national run.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is the "glue" that holds the entire global nuclear security architecture together — but is it fraying? I spent much of last month at the United Nations covering the review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This is a conference of all members of the NPT that happens every five years. Countries come together to assess progress toward the treaty's goals and plot ways to enhance the treaty's impact and effectiveness in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, reducing nuclear stockpiles, and supporting the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. That's the idea. But on Friday, as the conference gaveled to a close, the 191 states parties could not come to an agreement. The conference failed to achieve consensus on a way forward for the NPT. And this failure comes amid a host of other challenges in the nuclear security landscape: China's rapid buildup; the end of all bilateral arms control agreements between the United States and Russia; the U.S.-Israel war on Iran; Russia's war on Ukraine; the increasing integration of AI into nuclear weapons systems; and more and more countries openly suggesting that nuclear weapons may be a solution to their security challenges. My interview guest today is Alexandra Bell, head of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — the organization perhaps best known for the Doomsday Clock. We kick off by discussing what the NPT has achieved since it entered into force more than 50 years ago, and what this major conference at the United Nations suggests about the state of global nuclear security today? This episode is produced in partnership with Ploughshares, a foundation committed to reducing and ultimately eliminating nuclear threats.

This week's show features stories from NHK Japan, France 24, Radio Havana Cuba, and Radio Deutsche-Welle. http://youthspeaksout.net/swr260522.mp3 (29:00) From JAPAN- The UN conference on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is concluding this week. The Chinese and Russian Presidents met in Beijing, saying their relationship has reached unprecedented heights. There was a BRICS meeting in India where Iran accused the UAE of being directly involved in the US/Israeli war on Iran. Iran listed its proposal to the US. Israel detained 432 activists on a flotilla bringing aid to Gaza- the Israeli security minister had himself videoed humiliating those detained- international opinion was very critical. US news site Axios accused Cuba of planning to attack US targets with Iranian and Russian drones. From FRANCE- A press review on the international outrage after the Israeli minister taunted kidnapped detained flotilla activists. From CUBA- Cuba thoroughly denies as propaganda the Axios report of plans to attack the US with drones. Then recent death tolls from Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank. From GERMANY- British journalist and author Carole Cadwalladr discusses the relationship between Trump and what she named the Broligarchy, tech executives who travelled to China with him. Carole believes the surveillance state is a danger to freedom, and it is owned by the people who put anti-democratic populists in office. She talks about why the EU is trying hard to curb the power, which she says is beyond what the Stasi took in East Germany. She and 5 other women journalists quit working for the Guardian and formed a micro-news organization the Nerve.news. She is also available on Substack.. Available in 3 forms- (new) HIGHEST QUALITY (160kb)(33MB), broadcast quality (13MB), and quickdownload or streaming form (6MB) (28:59) Links at outfarpress.com/shortwave.shtml PODCAST!!!- https://feed.podbean.com/outFarpress/feed.xml (160kb Highest Quality) Website Page- < http://www.outfarpress.com/shortwave.shtml ¡FurthuR! Dan Roberts "Google is just a private corporate version of the NSA." --Julian Assange Dan Roberts Shortwave Report- www.outfarpress.com YouthSpeaksOut!- www.youthspeaksout.net

This Week’s Featured Interview: Links from Interview: Nuclear Hotseat Hot Story with Linda Pentz Gunter Numnutz of the Week (for Outstanding Nuclear Boneheadedness): If you get ’em while they’re young, you’ve got ’em! That’s the adage followed by the nuclear industry with their propaganda, uh. outreach to young high school students and even the Scouts!

“Iran's nuclear program was obliterated” is a bold claim to make under oath, especially when the same testimony implies Iran's ambitions remain. We sit down with Jim Webb to pull apart the contradictions, the messaging, and the strategy vacuum that shows up when leaders sell total victory while hinting we may need the next round of strikes. We get into the details most coverage skips: what uranium enrichment levels do and don't mean, how the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty shapes the argument, and how the U.S. exit from the JCPOA changed Iran's incentives. From there, we stress-test the scare stories by looking at deterrence and mutually assured destruction, then compare the “North Korea path” framing with the darker lesson many governments took from Libya: give up your leverage and you might not survive. The second half turns practical and blunt. We talk about the Strait of Hormuz, global oil prices, and what a real negotiation might require, including the controversial question of U.S. military bases in the Middle East and whether they deter conflict or simply create targets and hostages. We also break down reports of deploying Dark Eagle hypersonic missiles, shrinking standoff-munitions inventories, and what it signals when targets move inland and our “easy options” disappear. If you care about U.S. foreign policy, Iran negotiations, Middle East escalation risks, and the real state of American military capacity, this conversation is for you. Subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review with your answer: what would a realistic endgame with Iran look like?

Trump meets Brazil's Lula at the White House, Israel kills a Hezbollah commander in its first strike on Beirut since April's ceasefire, Iran reviews Washington's latest proposal to end the war, North Korea rejects the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the U.S. and Russia are accused of fueling Alberta's separatist movement, millions of voters head to the polls across Britain, a U.S. judge releases Jeffrey Epstein's alleged suicide note, EU auditors warn that billions in COVID recovery spending remain unaccounted for, Nearly 500 homes are damaged in Mississippi amid multiple tornadoes, and Anthropic signs a deal to use SpaceX's Colossus 1 computing capacity. Sources: Verity.News

SCOTUS just delivered a massive victory for color-blind elections! In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana's congressional map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The state's attempt to create a second majority-black district went too far by making race the predominant factor — and the conservative majority said enough is enough. Justice Samuel Alito wrote the opinion, making it crystal clear: Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act cannot be used to force states into race-based discrimination that violates the Constitution. This landmark decision limits how heavily race can be used when drawing voting districts and opens the door for other states to redraw their maps without fear of activist courts demanding racial quotas. We also cover: Florida Democrat's FULL meltdown after new congressional map. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth addresses “quagmire” comments. Vice President JD Vance's update on Minnesota fraud. Iran was elected VP of the 2026 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Pat & crew predict when the Iran war will end. If you believe in fair elections and rejecting racial division, this is a ruling worth celebrating. Drop a LIKE if you support the Supreme Court's decision, COMMENT below with your thoughts on racial gerrymandering, and tell us which states should redraw their maps next! 00:00 Pat Gray UNLEASHED! 00:20 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 00:38 R.I.P. Tommy DeCarlo & Brad Delp 03:05 Radio Station Discussion 06:09 Talking about the Michael Jackson Biopic 15:56 Gerrymandering Situation 20:02 Hakeem Jeffries Has a Meltdown 20:55 Angie Nixon's Megaphone Meltdown 22:27 9-0 Ruling for Pregnancy Center Donors 23:12 Samuel Alito VS. Geoffrey Pipoly 31:31 Pat Talks about Radio VS. Spotify 33:55 Fat Five 49:30 Pete Hegseth on State of U.S. / Iran Conflict 52:48 John Garamendi on President Trump & Pete Hegseth 53:57 Pete Hegseth's Response to Iran Quagmire Claim 56:14 Bombs Dropped on U.S. Bases in Iran? 1:13:42 Fuel Prices in the U.S. 1:15:50 Out of Iran Conflict by July 4th? 1:20:45 Iran as VP of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Review Conference?! 1:29:27 JD Vance on Fraud in Minnesota 1:31:52 Trump Welcomes Artemis II Crew to White House 1:32:59 Trump Asked about UFO Files 1:34:03 Trump Jokes about Jared Isaacman's Ears Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The UN Secretary General has given a dire warning about the waning influence of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It's being reviewed in the shadow of a tense ceasefire between the US and Iran. Will the agreement survive? And is it enough to prevent a nuclear disaster? In this episode: Tariq Rauf, Former Head of Verification and Security Policy Coordination at the International Atomic Energy Agency Kelsey Davenport, Director for Nonproliferation Policy at the US Arms Control Association Seyed Hossein Mousavian, former Iranian nuclear negotiator Host: Mohammed Jamjoom Connect with us: @AJEPodcasts on X, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is the most important and impactful global agreement on nuclear weapons. 191 counties have joined the NPT since it entered into force in 1970, with just a few notable exceptions, including India, Pakistan, Israel and South Sudan. The NPT has three essential pillars: countries that do not have nuclear weapons cannot acquire them; countries that do have nuclear weapons need to work towards disarmament; and countries should have the ability to access civilian nuclear technologies, under proper safeguards. Every five years, the parties to the NPT come together for what is known as a Review Conference in which they assess progress towards these three pillars and discuss ways to enhance the treaty. The NPT RevCon, as it's known, is one the major multilateral conference on nuclear security, and it is taking place at UN from April 27 to May 22. Joining me to discuss the significance of this NPT Review Conference is Kelsey Davenport, Director for Nonproliferation Policy at the Arms Control Association. We kick off with a discussion of the NPT itself, and it's impact over the decades and then have a long conversation about the key storylines, diplomatic intrigues and key policy debates that will unfold over the next three weeks at the UN. Consider this episode your curtain-raiser for the most important global gathering on nuclear security of the half-decade. A few notes. This episode is produced in partnership with Ploughshares, a foundation committed to reducing and ultimately eliminating nuclear threats. I'll have a follow up episode at the end of conference that discusses what exactly happened during the NPT RevCon. Also, I'll be attending much of the RevCon in person. I'll be serving as something akin to a "pool reporter," covering this conference in support of dozens of international journalists who report on nuclear security issues and feeding them news and insights from the confab. This project is backed by the Stanley Center for Peace and Security Developing Story Project, an initiative to support, strengthen, and sustain reporting on nuclear weapons and related issues. I'm looking forward to this. If you are around the UN, say hi.

In this episode, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael M. Grossi discusses his candidacy for UN secretary-general, his plans and priorities for the future of the United Nations, and the challenges facing nuclear security, nuclear energy, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty regime.   Host: Esther Brimmer, James H. Binger Senior Fellow in Global Governance, Council on Foreign Relations   Guests: Rafael M. Grossi, Director General, International Atomic Energy Agency; Nominee, Position of UN Secretary-General   Want more comprehensive analysis of global news and events sent straight to your inbox? Subscribe to CFR's Daily News Brief newsletter.   To keep tabs on all CFR events, visit cfr.org/event. To watch this event, please visit it on our YouTube channel: 2026 UN Secretary-General Candidates Series: A Conversation With Rafael M. Grossi

国会近くで集会を開く日本被団協の田中熙巳代表委員ら被爆者、１７日午後、東京・永田町日本原水爆被害者団体協議会は１７日、米ニューヨークで２７日から始まる核拡散防止条約再検討会議を控え、東京・永田町で集会を開いた。 Nihon Hidankyo, or the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, held a rally in Tokyo on Friday ahead of a review conference of the signatories to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, scheduled to be held in New York from April 27.

Nihon Hidankyo, or the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, held a rally in Tokyo on Friday ahead of a review conference of the signatories to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, scheduled to be held in New York from April 27.

US President Trump says Iran's new leadership have been very reasonable as more US troops arrive in the region; Iranian parliament considers leaving Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; and in sport, Melbourne Storm player Tui Kamikamica is in hospital following a suspected stroke.

In this bulletin, US President Trump says Iran's new leadership have been very reasonable as more US troops arrive in the region; Iranian parliament considers leaving Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; and in sport, Melbourne Storm player Tui Kamikamica is in hospital following a suspected stroke. - इन्धनमा लाग्ने कर आधा कटौती गर्ने सङ्घीय सरकारको घोषणा लगायत आजका प्रमुख अस्ट्रेलियन समाचार छोटकरीमा सुन्नुहोस्।

In this bulletin, US President Trump says Iran's new leadership have been very reasonable as more US troops arrive in the region; Iranian parliament considers leaving Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; and in sport, Melbourne Storm player Tui Kamikamica is in hospital following a suspected stroke.

The spokesperson for the Iranian Parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee says the treaty has failed to protect Iran's nuclear facilities from attacks, and international documents and agreements have been completely ignored.

At one time, North Dakota could have claimed recognition as the third-largest nuclear power if it were a separate country, with about 250 Minuteman III missiles, each carrying up to three warheads. Deterring Soviet aggression was a primary goal of the United States during the Cold War. Several factors led to placing nuclear missiles in the state. The wide expanses of open land allowed them to be located far from densely populated areas. This also made the sites easier to protect.

China has urged the Japanese government to abide by its nuclear non-proliferation treaty obligations (01:08). The U.S. has seized two tankers that it says are linked with Venezuelan oil shipments (13:05). Protests and anger have erupted over the fatal shooting of a 37-year-old Minneapolis woman in the latest immigration crackdown by the Trump administration (22:36).

PREVIEW 4 Unanswered Questions on Iran's Nuclear Program John Batchelor converses with Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, regarding challenges faced by the IAEA concerning Iran's nuclear program. European nations and the US have sanctioned Iran, which seeks to avoid further economic penalties. A key difficulty is accounting for uranium, as the initial amount is unknown and covert production may have occurred. If Iran fails to comply, Germany, the UK, France, and the US might impose more sanctions, potentially prompting Iran to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

記者会見する石破茂首相、９日午後、長崎市石破茂首相は９日、長崎市で開かれた原爆の日の式典に出席した後、市内で記者会見した。 Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Saturday reiterated his view that his country should strive for a world without nuclear weapons within the framework of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, signed by both nuclear powers and nonnuclear states.

Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Saturday reiterated his view that his country should strive for a world without nuclear weapons within the framework of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, signed by both nuclear powers and nonnuclear states.

Beginning on June 13th and ending with a ceasefire on the 24th, the recent Israel/Iran conflict may have been relatively short lived, but its consequences will likely be long felt and widespread.Could they even perhaps precipitate the collapse of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?John O'Brennan is Professor of European Politics at Maynooth University, and he has been writing about this in the Irish Examiner. He joins Seán to discuss.

Beginning on June 13th and ending with a ceasefire on the 24th, the recent Israel/Iran conflict may have been relatively short lived, but its consequences will likely be long felt and widespread.Could they even perhaps precipitate the collapse of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?John O'Brennan is Professor of European Politics at Maynooth University, and he has been writing about this in the Irish Examiner. He joins Seán to discuss.

The consequences for nuclear proliferation of the Israeli - Iran War The Black Spy Podcast, 200, Season 21, Episode 0001   This week's Black Spy Podcast looks at the consequences of the Israeli attack on Iran and the subsequent 12 day war for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. As part of Carlton's ‘Critical Thinking' orientated episodes, where he asks listeners to think beyond the mass media fed narrates that state's wish their citizens to imbibe, Carlton outlines massive anomalies, double standards and hypocrisy. Learn about IAEA position, which states already possess nuclear weapons and the value of these weapons to those states. Carlton uses his decades of expertise in the UK's national security, secret intelligence and governmental close protection fields to assess this area of his previous work including his feel for the situation due to non-proliferation counter intelligence role. So, if you want to continue learning whilst being entertained this and next week's continuation of this subject are must listen episodes. Please don't forget to subscribe to the Black Spy Podcast for free, thereby you'll never miss another episode. To contact Firgas Esack of the DAPS Agency go to Linked In To contact Carlton King by utilising any of the following: To donate - Patreon.com/TheBlackSpyPodcast Email: carltonking2003@gmail.com Facebook: The Black Spy Podcast Facebook: Carlton King Author Twitter@Carlton_King Instagram@carltonkingauthor To read Carlton's Autobiography: “Black Ops – The incredible true story of a (Black) British secret agent” Click the link below: https://amzn.eu/d/fmzzq9h  

- Trump's Predicted Attack on Iran (0:11) - Fact-Based Statements and Initial Reactions (4:04) - Iran's Compliance with Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (6:03) - Legal and Moral Implications of Trump's Actions (9:47) - Scott Ritter's Analysis of Trump's Attack (12:21) - Best and Worst Case Scenarios (23:07) - Preparation for Potential Conflict (54:45) - Final Thoughts and Call to Action (58:10) For more updates, visit: http://www.brighteon.com/channel/hrreport NaturalNews videos would not be possible without you, as always we remain passionately dedicated to our mission of educating people all over the world on the subject of natural healing remedies and personal liberty (food freedom, medical freedom, the freedom of speech, etc.). Together, we're helping create a better world, with more honest food labeling, reduced chemical contamination, the avoidance of toxic heavy metals and vastly increased scientific transparency. ▶️ Every dollar you spend at the Health Ranger Store goes toward helping us achieve important science and content goals for humanity: https://www.healthrangerstore.com/ ▶️ Sign Up For Our Newsletter: https://www.naturalnews.com/Readerregistration.html ▶️ Brighteon: https://www.brighteon.com/channels/hrreport ▶️ Join Our Social Network: https://brighteon.social/@HealthRanger ▶️ Check In Stock Products at: https://PrepWithMike.com

Donald Trump has urged everyone to evacuate Tehran, warning “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon” as conflict with Israel intensifies, Israeli strikes on Iran's state broadcaster and nuclear sites have left approximately 1,400 people dead since the beginning of the conflict, with Iran now threatening to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iranian strikes against Israel since Friday have resulted in 24 deaths.

Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya on Monday urged all signatories to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to collaborate to adopt outcome documents at the 2026 review conference.

【ニューヨーク時事】岩屋毅外相は２８日、米ニューヨークで始まった核拡散防止条約再検討会議第３回準備委員会で演説した。 Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya on Monday urged all signatories to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to collaborate to adopt outcome documents at the 2026 review conference.

Experts from Japan and abroad kicked off two-day talks in Tokyo on Sunday for compiling proposals to realize a world without nuclear weapons in the run-up to next year's review conference for the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Michael Elliott talks about the intricate process of nuclear planning and outlines the eight-step nuclear planning process, emphasizing the collaborative efforts required from various military and intelligence agencies. He addresses common misconceptions about nuclear launch protocols, highlighting the rigorous safeguards in place to prevent unauthorized or accidental launches. The conversation provides valuable insights into the complexities of nuclear strategy and the importance of informed policy-making in today's geopolitical landscape.Mr. Elliott is a retired member of the Senior Executive Service and current National Security Consultant. Mr. Elliott is an adviser to the Nuclear Deterrence External Advisory Board for Sandia National Laboratories.From September 2010 to November 2015 Mr. Elliott was Deputy Director for Strategic Stability, Plans and Policy Directorate, The Joint Staff. In this capacity he was a senior advisor to the Director, Plans and Policy and Chairman for shaping and implementation of national security plans and policy. He represented the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Interagency Policy Committee debate on such diverse topics as National Nuclear Technical Forensics, implementation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, Chemical Weapons Convention, Biological Weapons Convention, Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, CFE, Vienna Document, Open Skies Treaty and the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. In 2015 the President conferred upon Mr. Elliott the rank of Meritorious Executive in the Senior Executive Service.From April 2009 to August 2010, Mr. Elliott served as the Chairman's representative to the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty negotiations with the Russian Federation.From June 2003 to April 2009 Mr. Elliott was a member of United States Strategic Command, culminating his tour as the Deputy Director for Plans and Policy, responsible for the shaping and implementation of national security plans and policy as it applied to the Command and the execution of its mission.Mr. Elliott returned to government service in June 2003, following 7 years in the private sector, where he was an Assistant Vice President with Science Applications International Corporation.Mr. Elliott retired from the United States Air Force, in January 1996, following 25 years of service. Mr. Elliott's duties included a distinguished flying career in the B-1B, FB-111, and B-52G.Chapters00:00 Introduction to Nuclear Planning and Michael Elliott15:03 The Eight-Step Nuclear Planning Process30:00 Collaborative Efforts in Nuclear Strategy30:35 Misconceptions About Nuclear Launch ProtocolsSocials:Follow on Twitter at @NucleCastFollow on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/nuclecastpodcastSubscribe RSS Feed: https://rss.com/podcasts/nuclecast-podcast/Rate: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nuclecast/id1644921278Email comments and topic/guest suggestions to NucleCast@anwadeter.org

Send us a textEpisode 172In June of 1994, with tensions escalating on the Korean Peninsula, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter undertook a bold mission to Pyongyang, North Korea. At the time, the world was teetering on the brink of crisis as North Korea threatened to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, sparking fears of a potential war. Carter, acting as a private citizen, crossed the heavily fortified DMZ into uncharted diplomatic territory.Over three tense days, Carter met directly with North Korea's leader, Kim Il-sung, a figure long shrouded in mystery and mistrust. Against all odds, the meeting bore fruit. Carter secured a pledge from Kim to freeze North Korea's nuclear program in exchange for dialogue and aid—a breakthrough that paved the way for the Agreed Framework later that year.Carter's trip wasn't without controversy; critics saw it as undermining the Clinton administration's official stance. Yet, it was undeniably a moment of remarkable diplomacy, showcasing the power of dialogue to defuse even the gravest of threats. In the end, the trip not only prevented an imminent crisis but also highlighted the profound impact of one man's determination to pursue peace.Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States and a tireless champion for peace, passed away at the age of 99. Known for his humility, humanitarian efforts, and unwavering commitment to diplomacy, Carter's legacy extended far beyond his presidency. From his groundbreaking 1994 trip to North Korea to his work with Habitat for Humanity, Carter's life was a testament to the power of service and compassion.Support the showInsta@justpassingthroughpodcastContact:justpassingthroughpodcast@gmail.com

Charles Moxley is the principal of Moxley ADR, a law firm specializing in arbitration and mediation. He is an Adjunct Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. His recent treatise on “Nuclear Weapons and International Law” highlights the major challenges with nuclear weapons.   The UN's Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty has kept the numbers down somewhat; however, some countries are looking at upgrading their aging nuclear stockpiles that will cost trillions of dollars. Years ago the US spent $150 million per day on maintaining the aging nuclear stockpile. 90% of the 13,000 nukes today are held by Russia and the USA.  Media, educational system, and Members of Congress must be educated regarding the potential threat. Several Congresspeople and politicians put out misinformation that we could do a limited nuclear exchange. As an example, former president Donald Trump cavalierly said he would destroy North Korea with nuclear weapons, which displays his ignorance of the issue.

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: New career review: Nuclear weapons safety and security, published by Benjamin Hilton on May 16, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum. Note: this post is a (minorly) edited version of a new 80,000 Hours career review. In 1995, Jayantha Dhanapala chaired a pivotal conference that led to the indefinite extension of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. This meant committing 185 nations to never possessing nuclear weapons[1] Dhanapala's path started at age 17, when - after winning a competition with an essay about his hopes for a more peaceful world - he was flown from Sri Lanka to the US to meet Senator John F. Kennedy. That meeting led to a career in diplomacy (he had previously wanted to be a journalist), during which he focused on keeping the world safe from nuclear threats. His story shows that with dedication, persistence, and a little luck, it's possible to contribute to reducing the dangers of nuclear weapons and making the world a safer place. Summary Nuclear weapons continue to pose an existential threat to humanity. Reducing the risk means getting nuclear countries to improve their actions and preventing proliferation to non-nuclear countries. We'd guess that the highest impact approaches here involve working in government (especially the US government), researching key questions, or working in communications to advocate for changes. Recommended If you are well suited to this career, it may be the best way for you to have a social impact. Thanks to Carl Robichaud and Matthew Gentzel for reviewing this article. Why working to prevent nuclear conflict is high-impact The risk of a nuclear conflict continues to haunt the world. We think that the chance of nuclear war per year is around 0.01-2% - large enough to be a substantial global concern. If a nuclear conflict were to break out, the total consequences are hard to predict, but at the very least, tens of millions of people would be killed. It's possible that a nuclear exchange could cause a nuclear winter, triggering crop failures and widespread food shortages that could potentially kill billions. Whether a nuclear war could become an existential catastrophe is highly uncertain - but it remains a possibility. What's more, we think it's unclear whether the world after a nuclear conflict would retain what resilience we currently have to other existential risks, such as potentially catastrophic pandemics or risks from currently unknown future technology. If we're hit with a pandemic in the middle of a nuclear winter, it might be the complete end of the human story. As a result, we think that the risk of nuclear war is one of the world's biggest problems. (Read more in our problem profile on nuclear war.) Despite this, many of the people with influence in this area, including politicians and national leaders, aren't currently paying much attention to the risks posed by nuclear weapons. So if you can become one of the several hundred people who actually contribute to decisions that affect the risk of nuclear war, you could have an enormous positive impact with your career. What goals should we be aiming towards? Ultimately, decisions around the deployment and use of nuclear weapons are in the hands of the nuclear-armed states: the US, the UK, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea. Most plausible paths to reducing nuclear risk involve changing the actions of these countries and their allies. So, which actions would be most beneficial to pursue? Note, we're focusing on the US (and NATO countries) here, because those are the countries most of our readers are well-placed to work in, but we'd expect many of these policies to be useful across the world. (We've written elsewhere about working on policy in an emerging power.) Overall, after talking to experts in the area, we think there's substantia...

The final Cheap Talk podcast of 2023: Thanks for visiting our store at cheaptalk.shop; Beast Train follow-up; EU regulation and the project of AI governance; the tension between domestic and international action; the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is a poor analogy for an international agreement on AI; an agreement at the Climate Summit; non-binding agreements and screening for national preferences; the role of nuclear energy in combatting climate change; and Marcus will see you next yearGet all your holiday gifts at the new Cheap Talk shop!We'll be back in January, 2024. Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your podcast player of choice to be notified about new episodes.Send us your questions via email or voicemail.Further Reading:Oscar Martinez. 2013. The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail. Verso.Pedro Ulteras. 2010. La Bestia. Ian W. Fieggen. 2023. “Granny Knot Info.” Ian's Shoelace Site.Ian W. Fieggen. 2023. “Granny Knot Analyser.” Ian's Shoelace Site.See all Cheap Talk episodes

It's widely seen as one of the Middle East's worst-kept secrets - Israel's nuclear programme. Believed to have originated in the 1950s, Israel possesses approximately 90 nuclear bombs, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.  Israel has never officially acknowledged the existence of its nuclear weapons, but they're believed to be aimed at rivals in the region like Iran. The country is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. So the statement by a cabinet minister saying Israel could opt to drop an atomic bomb on Gaza is raising alarm. More so, since hardliners like Ami-chai Eliyahu - such as National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich - are part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet.  So, as Israel continues its bloodbath in Gaza - should the world be worried about its nuclear arms programme?   Join Host James Bays Guests:  Rabia Akhtar - Director, Centre for Security, Strategy and Policy Research, the University of Lahore.  Ahmed Abofoul - International lawyer.  Patrick Bury - Defence and security expert, University of Bath.

In this week's episode, CODEPINK Congress Coordinator Marcy Winograd interviews economist, publicpolicy analyst and prolific author Jeffrey Sachs on how the bloated military budget drives the debtcrisis. Sachs estimates US debt at $24-trillion dollars, much of it the result of US wars in Iraq, Afghanistanand Ukraine, as well the maintenance of 800 military bases abroad, development of new weapons systems and a nuclear rearmament program in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which the USratified over 50 years ago. Sachs says no to NATO expansion and warns the US must seek a ceasefire in Ukraine and not start another proxy war with China over Taiwan. Peace is the path forward, according to Sachs.

It was a tremendous honor & pleasure to interview Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Making of the Atomic BombWe discuss* similarities between AI progress & Manhattan Project (developing a powerful, unprecedented, & potentially apocalyptic technology within an uncertain arms-race situation)* visiting starving former Soviet scientists during fall of Soviet Union* whether Oppenheimer was a spy, & consulting on the Nolan movie* living through WW2 as a child* odds of nuclear war in Ukraine, Taiwan, Pakistan, & North Korea* how the US pulled of such a massive secret wartime scientific & industrial projectWatch on YouTube. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript here. Follow me on Twitter for updates on future episodes.Timestamps(0:00:00) - Oppenheimer movie(0:06:22) - Was the bomb inevitable?(0:29:10) - Firebombing vs nuclear vs hydrogen bombs(0:49:44) - Stalin & the Soviet program(1:08:24) - Deterrence, disarmament, North Korea, Taiwan(1:33:12) - Oppenheimer as lab director(1:53:40) - AI progress vs Manhattan Project(1:59:50) - Living through WW2(2:16:45) - Secrecy(2:26:34) - Wisdom & warTranscript(0:00:00) - Oppenheimer movieDwarkesh Patel 0:00:51Today I have the great honor of interviewing Richard Rhodes, who is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, and most recently, the author of Energy, A Human History. I'm really excited about this one. Let's jump in at a current event, which is the fact that there's a new movie about Oppenheimer coming out, which I understand you've been consulted about. What did you think of the trailer? What are your impressions? Richard Rhodes 0:01:22They've really done a good job of things like the Trinity test device, which was the sphere covered with cables of various kinds. I had watched Peaky Blinders, where the actor who's playing Oppenheimer also appeared, and he looked so much like Oppenheimer to start with. Oppenheimer was about six feet tall, he was rail thin, not simply in terms of weight, but in terms of structure. Someone said he could sit in a children's high chair comfortably. But he never weighed more than about 140 pounds and that quality is there in the actor. So who knows? It all depends on how the director decided to tell the story. There are so many aspects of the story that you could never possibly squeeze them into one 2-hour movie. I think that we're waiting for the multi-part series that would really tell a lot more of the story, if not the whole story. But it looks exciting. We'll see. There have been some terrible depictions of Oppenheimer, there've been some terrible depictions of the bomb program. And maybe they'll get this one right. Dwarkesh Patel 0:02:42Yeah, hopefully. It is always great when you get an actor who resembles their role so well. For example, Bryan Cranston who played LBJ, and they have the same physical characteristics of the beady eyes, the big ears. Since we're talking about Oppenheimer, I had one question about him. I understand that there's evidence that's come out that he wasn't directly a communist spy. But is there any possibility that he was leaking information to the Soviets or in some way helping the Soviet program? He was a communist sympathizer, right? Richard Rhodes 0:03:15He had been during the 1930s. But less for the theory than for the practical business of helping Jews escape from Nazi Germany. One of the loves of his life, Jean Tatlock, was also busy working on extracting Jews from Europe during the 30. She was a member of the Communist Party and she, I think, encouraged him to come to meetings. But I don't think there's any possibility whatsoever that he shared information. In fact, he said he read Marx on a train trip between Berkeley and Washington one time and thought it was a bunch of hooey, just ridiculous. He was a very smart man, and he read the book with an eye to its logic, and he didn't think there was much there. He really didn't know anything about human beings and their struggles. He was born into considerable wealth. There were impressionist paintings all over his family apartments in New York City. His father had made a great deal of money cornering the markets on uniform linings for military uniforms during and before the First World War so there was a lot of wealth. I think his income during the war years and before was somewhere around $100,000 a month. And that's a lot of money in the 1930s. So he just lived in his head for most of his early years until he got to Berkeley and discovered that prime students of his were living on cans of god-awful cat food, because they couldn't afford anything else. And once he understood that there was great suffering in the world, he jumped in on it, as he always did when he became interested in something. So all of those things come together. His brother Frank was a member of the party, as was Frank's wife. I think the whole question of Oppenheimer lying to the security people during the Second World War about who approached him and who was trying to get him to sign on to some espionage was primarily an effort to cover up his brother's involvement. Not that his brothers gave away any secrets, I don't think they did. But if the army's security had really understood Frank Oppenheimer's involvement, he probably would have been shipped off to the Aleutians or some other distant place for the duration of the war. And Oppenheimer quite correctly wanted Frank around. He was someone he trusted.(0:06:22) - Was the bomb inevitable?Dwarkesh Patel 0:06:22Let's start talking about The Making of the Bomb. One question I have is — if World War II doesn't happen, is there any possibility that the bomb just never gets developed? Nobody bothers.Richard Rhodes 0:06:34That's really a good question and I've wondered over the years. But the more I look at the sequence of events, the more I think it would have been essentially inevitable, though perhaps not such an accelerated program. The bomb was pushed so hard during the Second World War because we thought the Germans had already started working on one. Nuclear fission had been discovered in Nazi Germany, in Berlin, in 1938, nine months before the beginning of the Second World War in Europe. Technological surveillance was not available during the war. The only way you could find out something was to send in a spy or have a mole or something human. And we didn't have that. So we didn't know where the Germans were, but we knew that the basic physics reaction that could lead to a bomb had been discovered there a year or more before anybody else in the West got started thinking about it. There was that most of all to push the urgency. In your hypothetical there would not have been that urgency. However, as soon as good physicists thought about the reaction that leads to nuclear fission — where a slow room temperature neutron, very little energy, bumps into the nucleus of a uranium-235 atom it would lead to a massive response. Isidore Rabi, one of the great physicists of this era, said it would have been like the moon struck the earth. The reaction was, as physicists say, fiercely exothermic. It puts out a lot more energy than you have to use to get it started. Once they did the numbers on that, and once they figured out how much uranium you would need to have in one place to make a bomb or to make fission get going, and once they were sure that there would be a chain reaction, meaning a couple of neutrons would come out of the reaction from one atom, and those two or three would go on and bump into other Uranium atoms, which would then fission them, and you'd get a geometric exponential. You'd get 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and off of there. For most of our bombs today the initial fission, in 80 generations, leads to a city-busting explosion. And then they had to figure out how much material they would need, and that's something the Germans never really figured out, fortunately for the rest of us. They were still working on the idea that somehow a reactor would be what you would build. When Niels Bohr, the great Danish physicist, escaped from Denmark in 1943 and came to England and then United States, he brought with him a rough sketch that Werner Heisenberg, the leading scientist in the German program, had handed him in the course of trying to find out what Bohr knew about what America was doing. And he showed it to the guys at Los Alamos and Hans Bethe, one of the great Nobel laureate physicists in the group, said — “Are the Germans trying to throw a reactor down on us?” You can make a reactor blow up, we saw that at Chernobyl, but it's not a nuclear explosion on the scale that we're talking about with the bomb. So when a couple of these emigres Jewish physicists from Nazi Germany were whiling away their time in England after they escaped, because they were still technically enemy aliens and therefore could not be introduced to top secret discussions, one of them asked the other — “How much would we need of pure uranium-235, this rare isotope of uranium that chain reacts? How much would we need to make a bomb?” And they did the numbers and they came up with one pound, which was startling to them. Of course, it is more than that. It's about 125 pounds, but that's just a softball. That's not that much material. And then they did the numbers about what it would cost to build a factory to pull this one rare isotope of uranium out of the natural metal, which has several isotopes mixed together. And they figured it wouldn't cost more than it would cost to build a battleship, which is not that much money for a country at war. Certainly the British had plenty of battleships at that point in time. So they put all this together and they wrote a report which they handed through their superior physicists at Manchester University where they were based, who quickly realized how important this was. The United States lagged behind because we were not yet at war, but the British were. London was being bombed in the blitz. So they saw the urgency, first of all, of eating Germany to the punch, second of all of the possibility of building a bomb. In this report, these two scientists wrote that no physical structure came to their minds which could offer protection against a bomb of such ferocious explosive power. This report was from 1940 long before the Manhattan Project even got started. They said in this report, the only way we could think of to protect you against a bomb would be to have a bomb of similar destructive force that could be threatened for use if the other side attacked you. That's deterrence. That's a concept that was developed even before the war began in the United States. You put all those pieces together and you have a situation where you have to build a bomb because whoever builds the first bomb theoretically could prevent you from building more or prevent another country from building any and could dominate the world. And the notion of Adolf Hitler dominating the world, the Third Reich with nuclear weapons, was horrifying. Put all that together and the answer is every country that had the technological infrastructure to even remotely have the possibility of building everything you'd have to build to get the material for a bomb started work on thinking about it as soon as nuclear fusion was announced to the world. France, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, the United States, even Japan. So I think the bomb would have been developed but maybe not so quickly. Dwarkesh Patel 0:14:10In the book you talk that for some reason the Germans thought that the critical mass was something like 10 tons, they had done some miscalculation.Richard Rhodes 0:14:18A reactor. Dwarkesh Patel 0:14:19You also have some interesting stories in the book about how different countries found out the Americans were working on the bomb. For example, the Russians saw that all the top physicists, chemists, and metallurgists were no longer publishing. They had just gone offline and so they figured that something must be going on. I'm not sure if you're aware that while the subject of the Making of the Atomic Bomb in and of itself is incredibly fascinating, this book has become a cult classic in AI. Are you familiar with this? Richard Rhodes 0:14:52No. Dwarkesh Patel 0:14:53The people who are working on AI right now are huge fans of yours. They're the ones who initially recommended the book to me because the way they see the progress in the field reminded them of this book. Because you start off with these initial scientific hints. With deep learning, for example, here's something that can teach itself any function is similar to Szilárd noticing the nuclear chain reaction. In AI there's these scaling laws that say that if you make the model this much bigger, it gets much better at reasoning, at predicting text, and so on. And then you can extrapolate this curve. And you can see we get two more orders of magnitude, and we get to something that looks like human level intelligence. Anyway, a lot of the people who are working in AI have become huge fans of your book because of this reason. They see a lot of analogies in the next few years. They must be at page 400 in their minds of where the Manhattan Project was.Richard Rhodes 0:15:55We must later on talk about unintended consequences. I find the subject absolutely fascinating. I think my next book might be called Unintended Consequences. Dwarkesh Patel 0:16:10You mentioned that a big reason why many of the scientists wanted to work on the bomb, especially the Jewish emigres, was because they're worried about Hitler getting it first. As you mentioned at some point, 1943, 1944, it was becoming obvious that Hitler, the Nazis were not close to the bomb. And I believe that almost none of the scientists quit after they found out that the Nazis weren't close. So why didn't more of them say — “Oh, I guess we were wrong. The Nazis aren't going to get it. We don't need to be working on it.”?Richard Rhodes 0:16:45There was only one who did that, Joseph Rotblat. In May of 1945 when he heard that Germany had been defeated, he packed up and left. General Groves, the imperious Army Corps of Engineers General who ran the entire Manhattan Project, was really upset. He was afraid he'd spill the beans. So he threatened to have him arrested and put in jail. But Rotblat was quite determined not to stay any longer. He was not interested in building bombs to aggrandize the national power of the United States of America, which is perfectly understandable. But why was no one else? Let me tell it in terms of Victor Weisskopf. He was an Austrian theoretical physicist, who, like the others, escaped when the Nazis took over Germany and then Austria and ended up at Los Alamos. Weisskopf wrote later — “There we were in Los Alamos in the midst of the darkest part of our science.” They were working on a weapon of mass destruction, that's pretty dark. He said “Before it had almost seemed like a spiritual quest.” And it's really interesting how different physics was considered before and after the Second World War. Before the war, one of the physicists in America named Louis Alvarez told me when he got his PhD in physics at Berkeley in 1937 and went to cocktail parties, people would ask, “What's your degree in?” He would tell them “Chemistry.” I said, “Louis, why?” He said, “because I don't really have to explain what physics was.” That's how little known this kind of science was at that time. There were only about 1,000 physicists in the whole world in 1900. By the mid-30s, there were a lot more, of course. There'd been a lot of nuclear physics and other kinds of physics done by them. But it was still arcane. And they didn't feel as if they were doing anything mean or dirty or warlike at all. They were just doing pure science. Then nuclear fission came along. It was publicized worldwide. People who've been born since after the Second World War don't realize that it was not a secret at first. The news was published first in a German chemistry journal, Die Naturwissenschaften, and then in the British journal Nature and then in American journals. And there were headlines in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and all over the world. People had been reading about and thinking about how to get energy out of the atomic nucleus for a long time. It was clear there was a lot there. All you had to do was get a piece of radium and see that it glowed in the dark. This chunk of material just sat there, you didn't plug it into a wall. And if you held it in your hand, it would burn you. So where did that energy come from? The physicists realized it all came from the nucleus of the atom, which is a very small part of the whole thing. The nucleus is 1/100,000th the diameter of the whole atom. Someone in England described it as about the size of a fly in a cathedral. All of the energy that's involved in chemical reactions, comes from the electron cloud that's around the nucleus. But  it was clear that the nucleus was the center of powerful forces. But the question was, how do you get them out? The only way that the nucleus had been studied up to 1938 was by bombarding it with protons, which have the same electric charge as the nucleus, positive charge, which means they were repelled by it. So you had to accelerate them to high speeds with various versions of the big machines that we've all become aware of since then. The cyclotron most obviously built in the 30s, but there were others as well. And even then, at best, you could chip a little piece off. You could change an atom one step up or one step down the periodic table. This was the classic transmutation of medieval alchemy sure but it wasn't much, you didn't get much out. So everyone came to think of the nucleus of the atom like a little rock that you really had to hammer hard to get anything to happen with it because it was so small and dense. That's why nuclear fission, with this slow neutron drifting and then the whole thing just goes bang, was so startling to everybody. So startling that when it happened, most of the physicists who would later work on the bomb and others as well, realized that they had missed the reaction that was something they could have staged on a lab bench with the equipment on the shelf. Didn't have to invent anything new. And Louis Alvarez again, this physicist at Berkeley, he said — “I was getting my hair cut. When I read the newspaper, I pulled off the robe and half with my hair cut, ran to my lab, pulled some equipment off the shelf, set it up and there it was.” So he said, “I discovered nuclear fission, but it was two days too late.” And that happened all over. People were just hitting themselves on the head and saying, well, Niels Bohr said, “What fools we've all been.” So this is a good example of how in science, if your model you're working with is wrong it doesn't lead you down the right path. There was only one physicist who really was thinking the right way about the uranium atom and that was Niels Bohr. He wondered, sometime during the 30s, why uranium was the last natural element in the periodic table? What is different about the others that would come later? He visualized the nucleus as a liquid drop. I always like to visualize it as a water-filled balloon. It's wobbly, it's not very stable. The protons in the nucleus are held together by something called the strong force, but they still have the repellent positive electric charge that's trying to push them apart when you get enough of them into a nucleus. It's almost a standoff between the strong force and all the electrical charge. So it is like a wobbly balloon of water. And then you see why a neutron just falling into the nucleus would make it wobble around even more and in one of its configurations, it might take a dumbbell shape. And then you'd have basically two charged atoms just barely connected, trying to push each other apart. And often enough, they went the whole way. When they did that, these two new elements, half the weight of uranium, way down the periodic table, would reconfigure themselves into two separate nuclei. And in doing so, they would release some energy. And that was the energy that came out of the reaction and there was a lot of energy. So Bohr thought about the model in the right way. The chemists who actually discovered nuclear fusion didn't know what they were gonna get. They were just bombarding a solution of uranium nitrate with neutrons thinking, well, maybe we can make a new element, maybe a first man-made element will come out of our work. So when they analyzed the solution after they bombarded it, they found elements halfway down the periodic table. They shouldn't have been there. And they were totally baffled. What is this doing here? Do we contaminate our solution? No. They had been working with a physicist named Lisa Meitner who was a theoretical physicist, an Austrian Jew. She had gotten out of Nazi Germany not long before. But they were still in correspondence with her. So they wrote her a letter. I held that letter in my hand when I visited Berlin and I was in tears. You don't hold history of that scale in your hands very often. And it said in German — “We found this strange reaction in our solution. What are these elements doing there that don't belong there?” And she went for a walk in a little village in Western Sweden with her nephew, Otto Frisch, who was also a nuclear physicist. And they thought about it for a while and they remembered Bohr's model, the wobbly water-filled balloon. And they suddenly saw what could happen. And that's where the news came from, the physics news as opposed to the chemistry news from the guys in Germany that was published in all the Western journals and all the newspapers. And everybody had been talking about, for years, what you could do if you had that kind of energy. A glass of this material would drive the Queen Mary back and forth from New York to London 20 times and so forth, your automobile could run for months. People were thinking about what would be possible if you had that much available energy. And of course, people had thought about reactors. Robert Oppenheimer was a professor at Berkeley and within a week of the news reaching Berkeley, one of his students told me that he had a drawing on the blackboard, a rather bad drawing of both a reactor and a bomb. So again, because the energy was so great, the physics was pretty obvious. Whether it would actually happen depended on some other things like could you make it chain react? But fundamentally, the idea was all there at the very beginning and everybody jumped on it. Dwarkesh Patel 0:27:54The book is actually the best history of World War II I've ever read. It's about the atomic bomb, but it's interspersed with the events that are happening in World War II, which motivate the creation of the bomb or the release of it, why it had to be dropped on Japan given the Japanese response. The first third is about the scientific roots of the physics and it's also the best book I've read about the history of science in the early 20th century and the organization of it. There's some really interesting stuff in there. For example, there was a passage where you talk about how there's a real master apprentice model in early science where if you wanted to learn to do this kind of experimentation, you will go to Amsterdam where the master of it is residing. It's much more individual focused. Richard Rhodes 0:28:58Yeah, the whole European model of graduate study, which is basically the wandering scholar. You could go wherever you wanted to and sign up with whoever was willing to have you sign up. (0:29:10) - Firebombing vs nuclear vs hydrogen bombsDwarkesh Patel 0:29:10But the question I wanted to ask regarding the history you made of World War II in general is — there's one way you can think about the atom bomb which is that it is completely different from any sort of weaponry that has been developed before it. Another way you can think of it is there's a spectrum where on one end you have the thermonuclear bomb, in the middle you have the atom bomb, and on this end you have the firebombing of cities like Hamburg and Dresden and Tokyo. Do you think of these as completely different categories or does it seem like an escalating gradient to you? Richard Rhodes 0:29:47I think until you get to the hydrogen bomb, it's really an escalating gradient. The hydrogen bomb can be made arbitrarily large. The biggest one ever tested was 56 megatons of TNT equivalent. The Soviet tested that. That had a fireball more than five miles in diameter, just the fireball. So that's really an order of magnitude change. But the other one's no and in fact, I think one of the real problems, this has not been much discussed and it should be, when American officials went to Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the war, one of them said later — “I got on a plane in Tokyo. We flew down the long green archipelago of the Japanese home island. When I left Tokyo, it was all gray broken roof tiles from the fire bombing and the other bombings. And then all this greenery. And then when we flew over Hiroshima, it was just gray broken roof tiles again.” So the scale of the bombing with one bomb, in the case of Hiroshima, was not that different from the scale of the fire bombings that had preceded it with tens of thousands of bombs. The difference was it was just one plane. In fact, the people in Hiroshima didn't even bother to go into their bomb shelters because one plane had always just been a weather plane. Coming over to check the weather before the bombers took off. So they didn't see any reason to hide or protect themselves, which was one of the reasons so many people were killed. The guys at Los Alamos had planned on the Japanese being in their bomb shelters. They did everything they could think of to make the bomb as much like ordinary bombing as they could. And for example, it was exploded high enough above ground, roughly 1,800 yards, so that the fireball that would form from this really very small nuclear weapon — by modern standards — 15 kilotons of TNT equivalent, wouldn't touch the ground and stir up dirt and irradiate it and cause massive radioactive fallout. It never did that. They weren't sure there would be any fallout. They thought the plutonium and the bomb over Nagasaki now would just kind of turn into a gas and blow away. That's not exactly what happened. But people don't seem to realize, and it's never been emphasized enough, these first bombs, like all nuclear weapons, were firebombs. Their job was to start mass fires, just exactly like all the six-pound incendiaries that had been destroying every major city in Japan by then. Every major city above 50,000 population had already been burned out. The only reason Hiroshima and Nagasaki were around to be atomic bombed is because they'd been set aside from the target list, because General Groves wanted to know what the damage effects would be. The bomb that was tested in the desert didn't tell you anything. It killed a lot of rabbits, knocked down a lot of cactus, melted some sand, but you couldn't see its effect on buildings and on people. So the bomb was deliberately intended to be as much not like poison gas, for example, because we didn't want the reputation for being like people in the war in Europe during the First World War, where people were killing each other with horrible gasses. We just wanted people to think this was another bombing. So in that sense, it was. Of course, there was radioactivity. And of course, some people were killed by it. But they calculated that the people who would be killed by the irradiation, the neutron radiation from the original fireball, would be close enough to the epicenter of the explosion that they would be killed by the blast or the flash of light, which was 10,000 degrees. The world's worst sunburn. You've seen stories of people walking around with their skin hanging off their arms. I've had sunburns almost that bad, but not over my whole body, obviously, where the skin actually peeled blisters and peels off. That was a sunburn from a 10,000 degree artificial sun. Dwarkesh Patel 0:34:29So that's not the heat, that's just the light? Richard Rhodes 0:34:32Radiant light, radiant heat. 10,000 degrees. But the blast itself only extended out a certain distance, it was fire. And all the nuclear weapons that have ever been designed are basically firebombs. That's important because the military in the United States after the war was not able to figure out how to calculate the effects of this weapon in a reliable way that matched their previous experience. They would only calculate the blast effects of a nuclear weapon when they figured their targets. That's why we had what came to be called overkill. We wanted redundancy, of course, but 60 nuclear weapons on Moscow was way beyond what would be necessary to destroy even that big a city because they were only calculating the blast. But in fact, if you exploded a 300 kiloton nuclear warhead over the Pentagon at 3,000 feet, it would blast all the way out to the capital, which isn't all that far. But if you counted the fire, it would start a mass-fire and then it would reach all the way out to the Beltway and burn everything between the epicenter of the weapon and the Beltway. All organic matter would be totally burned out, leaving nothing but mineral matter, basically. Dwarkesh Patel 0:36:08I want to emphasize two things you said because they really hit me in reading the book and I'm not sure if the audience has fully integrated them. The first is, in the book, the military planners and Groves, they talk about needing to use the bomb sooner rather than later, because they were running out of cities in Japan where there are enough buildings left that it would be worth bombing in the first place, which is insane. An entire country is almost already destroyed from fire bombing alone. And the second thing about the category difference between thermonuclear and atomic bombs. Daniel Ellsberg, the nuclear planner who wrote the Doomsday machine, he talks about, people don't understand that the atom bomb that resulted in the pictures we see of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, that is simply the detonator of a modern nuclear bomb, which is an insane thing to think about. So for example, 10 and 15 kilotons is the Hiroshima Nagasaki and the Tsar Bomba, which was 50 megatons. So more than 1,000 times as much. And that wasn't even as big as they could make it. They kept the uranium tamper off, because they didn't want to destroy all of Siberia. So you could get more than 10,000 times as powerful. Richard Rhodes 0:37:31When Edward Teller, co-inventor of the hydrogen bomb and one of the dark forces in the story, was consulting with our military, just for his own sake, he sat down and calculated, how big could you make a hydrogen bomb? He came up with 1,000 megatons. And then he looked at the effects. 1,000 megatons would be a fireball 10 miles in diameter. And the atmosphere is only 10 miles deep. He figured that it would just be a waste of energy, because it would all blow out into space. Some of it would go laterally, of course, but most of it would just go out into space. So a bomb more than 100 megatons would just be totally a waste of time. Of course, a 100 megatons bomb is also a total waste, because there's no target on Earth big enough to justify that from a military point of view. Robert Oppenheimer, when he had his security clearance questioned and then lifted when he was being punished for having resisted the development of the hydrogen bomb, was asked by the interrogator at this security hearing — “Well, Dr. Oppenheimer, if you'd had a hydrogen bomb for Hiroshima, wouldn't you have used it?” And Oppenheimer said, “No.” The interrogator asked, “Why is that?” He said because the target was too small. I hope that scene is in the film, I'm sure it will be. So after the war, when our bomb planners and some of our scientists went into Hiroshima and Nagasaki, just about as soon as the surrender was signed, what they were interested in was the scale of destruction, of course. And those two cities didn't look that different from the other cities that had been firebombed with small incendiaries and ordinary high explosives. They went home to Washington, the policy makers, with the thought that — “Oh, these bombs are not so destructive after all.” They had been touted as city busters, basically, and they weren't. They didn't completely burn out cities. They were not certainly more destructive than the firebombing campaign, when everything of more than 50,000 population had already been destroyed. That, in turn, influenced the judgment about what we needed to do vis-a-vis the Soviet Union when the Soviets got the bomb in 1949. There was a general sense that, when you could fight a war with nuclear weapons, deterrence or not, you would need quite a few of them to do it right. And the Air Force, once it realized that it could aggrandize its own share of the federal budget by cornering the market and delivering nuclear weapons, very quickly decided that they would only look at the blast effect and not the fire effect. It's like tying one hand behind your back. Most of it was a fire effect. So that's where they came up with numbers like we need 60 of these to take out Moscow. And what the Air Force figured out by the late 1940s is that the more targets, the more bombs. The more bombs, the more planes. The more planes, the biggest share of the budget. So by the mid 1950s, the Air Force commanded 47% of the federal defense budget. And the other branches of services, which had not gone nuclear by then, woke up and said, we'd better find some use for these weapons in our branches of service. So the Army discovered that it needed nuclear weapons, tactical weapons for field use, fired out of cannons. There was even one that was fired out of a shoulder mounted rifle. There was a satchel charge that two men could carry, weighed about 150 pounds, that could be used to dig a ditch so that Soviet tanks couldn't cross into Germany. And of course the Navy by then had been working hard with General Rickover on building a nuclear submarine that could carry ballistic missiles underwater in total security. No way anybody could trace those submarines once they were quiet enough. And a nuclear reactor is very quiet. It just sits there with neutrons running around, making heat. So the other services jumped in and this famous triad, we must have these three different kinds of nuclear weapons, baloney. We would be perfectly safe if we only had our nuclear submarines. And only one or two of those. One nuclear submarine can take out all of Europe or all of the Soviet Union.Dwarkesh Patel 0:42:50Because it has multiple nukes on it? Richard Rhodes 0:42:53Because they have 16 intercontinental ballistic missiles with MIRV warheads, at least three per missile. Dwarkesh Patel 0:43:02Wow. I had a former guest, Richard Hanania, who has a book about foreign policy where he points out that our model of thinking about why countries do the things they do, especially in foreign affairs, is wrong because we think of them as individual rational actors, when in fact it's these competing factions within the government. And in fact, you see this especially in the case of Japan in World War II, there was a great book of Japan leading up to World War II, where they talk about how a branch of the Japanese military, I forget which, needed more oil to continue their campaign in Manchuria so they forced these other branches to escalate. But it's so interesting that the reason we have so many nukes is that the different branches are competing for funding. Richard Rhodes 0:43:50Douhet, the theorist of air power, had been in the trenches in the First World War. Somebody (John Masefield) called the trenches of the First World War, the long grave already dug, because millions of men were killed and the trenches never moved, a foot this way, a foot that way, all this horror. And Douhet came up with the idea that if you could fly over the battlefield to the homeland of the enemy and destroy his capacity to make war, then the people of that country, he theorized, would rise up in rebellion and throw out their leaders and sue for peace. And this became the dream of all the Air Forces of the world, but particularly ours. Until around 1943, it was called the US Army Air Force. The dream of every officer in the Air Force was to get out from under the Army, not just be something that delivers ground support or air support to the Army as it advances, but a power that could actually win wars. And the missing piece had always been the scale of the weaponry they carried. So when the bomb came along, you can see why Curtis LeMay, who ran the strategic air command during the prime years of that force, was pushing for bigger and bigger bombs. Because if a plane got shot down, but the one behind it had a hydrogen bomb, then it would be just almost as effective as the two planes together. So they wanted big bombs. And they went after Oppenheimer because he thought that was a terrible way to go, that there was really no military use for these huge weapons. Furthermore, the United States had more cities than Russia did, than the Soviet Union did. And we were making ourselves a better target by introducing a weapon that could destroy a whole state. I used to live in Connecticut and I saw a map that showed the air pollution that blew up from New York City to Boston. And I thought, well, now if that was fallout, we'd be dead up here in green, lovely Connecticut. That was the scale that it was going to be with these big new weapons. So on the one hand, you had some of the important leaders in the government thinking that these weapons were not the war-winning weapons that the Air Force wanted them and realized they could be. And on the other hand, you had the Air Force cornering the market on nuclear solutions to battles. All because some guy in a trench in World War I was sufficiently horrified and sufficiently theoretical about what was possible with air power. Remember, they were still flying biplanes. When H.G. Wells wrote his novel, The World Set Free in 1913, predicting an atomic war that would lead to world government, he had Air Forces delivering atomic bombs, but he forgot to update his planes. The guys in the back seat, the bombardiers, were sitting in a biplane, open cockpit. And when the pilots had dropped the bomb, they would reach down and pick up H.G. Wells' idea of an atomic bomb and throw it over the side. Which is kind of what was happening in Washington after the war. And it led us to a terribly misleading and unfortunate perspective on how many weapons we needed, which in turn fermented the arms race with the Soviets and just chased off. In the Soviet Union, they had a practical perspective on factories. Every factory was supposed to produce 120% of its target every year. That was considered good Soviet realism. And they did that with their nuclear war weapons. So by the height of the Cold War, they had 75,000 nuclear weapons, and nobody had heard yet of nuclear winter. So if both sides had set off this string of mass traps that we had in our arsenals, it would have been the end of the human world without question. Dwarkesh Patel 0:48:27It raises an interesting question, if the military planners thought that the conventional nuclear weapon was like the fire bombing, would it have been the case that if there wasn't a thermonuclear weapon, that there actually would have been a nuclear war by now because people wouldn't have been thinking of it as this hard red line? Richard Rhodes 0:48:47I don't think so because we're talking about one bomb versus 400, and one plane versus 400 planes and thousands of bombs. That scale was clear. Deterrence was the more important business. Everyone seemed to understand even the spies that the Soviets had connected up to were wholesaling information back to the Soviet Union. There's this comic moment when Truman is sitting with Joseph Stalin at Potsdam, and he tells Stalin, we have a powerful new weapon. And that's as much as he's ready to say about it. And Stalin licks at him and says, “Good, I hope you put it to good use with the Japanese.” Stalin knows exactly what he's talking about. He's seen the design of the fat man type Nagasaki plutonium bomb. He has held it in his hands because they had spies all over the place. (0:49:44) - Stalin & the Soviet programDwarkesh Patel 0:49:44How much longer would it have taken the Soviets to develop the bomb if they didn't have any spies? Richard Rhodes 0:49:49Probably not any longer. Dwarkesh Patel 0:49:51Really? Richard Rhodes 0:49:51When the Soviet Union collapsed in the winter of ‘92, I ran over there as quickly as I could get over there. In this limbo between forming a new kind of government and some of the countries pulling out and becoming independent and so forth, their nuclear scientists, the ones who'd worked on their bombs were free to talk. And I found that out through Yelena Bonner, Andrei Sakharov's widow, who was connected to people I knew. And she said, yeah, come on over. Her secretary, Sasha, who was a geologist about 35 years old became my guide around the country. We went to various apartments. They were retired guys from the bomb program and were living on, as far as I could tell, sac-and-potatoes and some salt. They had government pensions and the money was worth a salt, all of a sudden. I was buying photographs from them, partly because I needed the photographs and partly because 20 bucks was two months' income at that point. So it was easy for me and it helped them. They had first class physicists in the Soviet Union, they do in Russian today. They told me that by 1947, they had a design for a bomb that they said was half the weight and twice the yield of the Fat Man bomb. The Fat Man bomb was the plutonium implosion, right? And it weighed about 9,000 pounds. They had a much smaller and much more deliverable bomb with a yield of about 44 kilotons. Dwarkesh Patel 0:51:41Why was Soviet physics so good?Richard Rhodes 0:51:49The Russian mind? I don't know. They learned all their technology from the French in the 19th century, which is why there's so many French words in Russian. So they got good teachers, the French are superb technicians, they aren't so good at building things, but they're very good at designing things. There's something about Russia, I don't know if it's the language or the education. They do have good education, they did. But I remember asking them when they were working, I said — On the hydrogen bomb, you didn't have any computers yet. We only had really early primitive computers to do the complicated calculations of the hydrodynamics of that explosion. I said, “What did you do?” They said, “Oh, we just used nuclear. We just used theoretical physics.” Which is what we did at Los Alamos. We had guys come in who really knew their math and they would sit there and work it out by hand. And women with old Marchant calculators running numbers. So basically they were just good scientists and they had this new design. Kurchatov who ran the program took Lavrentiy Beria, who ran the NKVD who was put in charge of the program and said — “Look, we can build you a better bomb. You really wanna waste the time to make that much more uranium and plutonium?” And Beria said, “Comrade, I want the American bomb. Give me the American bomb or you and all your families will be camp dust.” I talked to one of the leading scientists in the group and he said, we valued our lives, we valued our families. So we gave them a copy of the plutonium implosion bomb. Dwarkesh Patel 0:53:37Now that you explain this, when the Soviet Union fell, why didn't North Korea, Iran or another country, send a few people to the fallen Soviet Union to recruit a few of the scientists to start their own program? Or buy off their stockpiles or something. Or did they?Richard Rhodes 0:53:59There was some effort by countries in the Middle East to get all the enriched uranium, which they wouldn't sell them. These were responsible scientists. They told me — we worked on the bomb because you had it and we didn't want there to be a monopoly on the part of any country in the world. So patriotically, even though Stalin was in charge of our country, he was a monster. We felt that it was our responsibility to work on these things, even Sakharov. There was a great rush at the end of the Second World War to get hold of German scientists. And about an equal number were grabbed by the Soviets. All of the leading German scientists, like Heisenberg and Hans and others, went west as fast as they could. They didn't want to be captured by the Soviets. But there were some who were. And they helped them work. People have the idea that Los Alamos was where the bomb happened. And it's true that at Los Alamos, we had the team that designed, developed, and built the first actual weapons. But the truth is, the important material for weapons is the uranium or plutonium. One of the scientists in the Manhattan Project told me years later, you can make a pretty high-level nuclear explosion just by taking two subcritical pieces of uranium, putting one on the floor and dropping the other by hand from a height of about six feet. If that's true, then all this business about secret designs and so forth is hogwash. What you really need for a weapon is the critical mass of highly enriched uranium, 90% of uranium-235. If you've got that, there are lots of different ways to make the bomb. We had two totally different ways that we used. The gun on the one hand for uranium, and then because plutonium was so reactive that if you fired up the barrel of a cannon at 3,000 feet per second, it would still melt down before the two pieces made it up. So for that reason, they had to invent an entirely new technology, which was an amazing piece of work. From the Soviet point of view, and I think this is something people don't know either, but it puts the Russian experience into a better context. All the way back in the 30s, since the beginning of the Soviet Union after the First World War, they had been sending over espionage agents connected up to Americans who were willing to work for them to collect industrial technology. They didn't have it when they began their country. It was very much an agricultural country. And in that regard, people still talk about all those damn spies stealing our secrets, we did the same thing with the British back in colonial days. We didn't know how to make a canal that wouldn't drain out through the soil. The British had a certain kind of clay that they would line their canals with, and there were canals all over England, even in the 18th century, that were impervious to the flow of water. And we brought a British engineer at great expense to teach us how to make the lining for the canals that opened up the Middle West and then the West. So they were doing the same thing. And one of those spies was a guy named Harry Gold, who was working all the time for them. He gave them some of the basic technology of Kodak filmmaking, for example. Harry Gold was the connection between David Greenglass and one of the American spies at Los Alamos and the Soviet Union. So it was not different. The model was — never give us something that someone dreamed of that hasn't been tested and you know works. So it would actually be blueprints for factories, not just a patent. And therefore when Beria after the war said, give us the bomb, he meant give me the American bomb because we know that works. I don't trust you guys. Who knows what you'll do. You're probably too stupid anyway. He was that kind of man. So for all of those reasons, they built the second bomb they tested was twice the yield and half the way to the first bomb. In other words, it was their new design. And so it was ours because the technology was something that we knew during the war, but it was too theoretical still to use. You just had to put the core and have a little air gap between the core and the explosives so that the blast wave would have a chance to accelerate through an open gap. And Alvarez couldn't tell me what it was but he said, you can get a lot more destructive force with a hammer if you hit something with it, rather than if you put the head on the hammer and push. And it took me several years before I figured out what he meant. I finally understood he was talking about what's called levitation.Dwarkesh Patel 0:59:41On the topic that the major difficulty in developing a bomb is either the refinement of uranium into U-235 or its transmutation into plutonium, I was actually talking to a physicist in preparation for this conversation. He explained the same thing that if you get two subcritical masses of uranium together, you wouldn't have the full bomb because it would start to tear itself apart without the tamper, but you would still have more than one megaton.Richard Rhodes 1:00:12It would be a few kilotons. Alvarez's model would be a few kilotons, but that's a lot. Dwarkesh Patel 1:00:20Yeah, sorry I meant kiloton. He claimed that one of the reasons why we talk so much about Los Alamos is that at the time the government didn't want other countries to know that if you refine uranium, you've got it. So they were like, oh, we did all this fancy physics work in Los Alamos that you're not gonna get to, so don't even worry about it. I don't know what you make of that theory. That basically it was sort of a way to convince people that Los Alamos was important. Richard Rhodes 1:00:49I think all the physics had been checked out by a lot of different countries by then. It was pretty clear to everybody what you needed to do to get to a bomb. That there was a fast fusion reaction, not a slow fusion reaction, like a reactor. They'd worked that out. So I don't think that's really the problem. But to this day, no one ever talks about the fact that the real problem isn't the design of the weapon. You could make one with wooden boxes if you wanted to. The problem is getting the material. And that's good because it's damned hard to make that stuff. And it's something you can protect. Dwarkesh Patel 1:01:30We also have gotten very lucky, if lucky is the word you want to use. I think you mentioned this in the book at some point, but the laws of physics could have been such that unrefined uranium ore was enough to build a nuclear weapon, right? In some sense, we got lucky that it takes a nation-state level actor to really refine and produce the raw substance. Richard Rhodes 1:01:56Yeah, I was thinking about that this morning on the way over. And all the uranium in the world would already have destroyed itself. Most people have never heard of the living reactors that developed on their own in a bed of uranium ore in Africa about two billion years ago, right? When there was more U-235 in a mass of uranium ore than there is today, because it decays like all radioactive elements. And the French discovered it when they were mining the ore and found this bed that had a totally different set of nuclear characteristics. They were like, what happened? But there were natural reactors in Gabon once upon a time. And they started up because some water, a moderator to make the neutrons slow down, washed its way down through a bed of much more highly enriched uranium ore than we still have today. Maybe 5-10% instead of 3.5 or 1.5, whatever it is now. And they ran for about 100,000 years and then shut themselves down because they had accumulated enough fusion products that the U-235 had been used up. Interestingly, this material never migrated out of the bed of ore. People today who are anti-nuclear say, well, what are we gonna do about the waste? Where are we gonna put all that waste? It's silly. Dwarkesh Patel 1:03:35Shove it in a hole. Richard Rhodes 1:03:36Yeah, basically. That's exactly what we're planning to do. Holes that are deep enough and in beds of material that will hold them long enough for everything to decay back to the original ore. It's not a big problem except politically because nobody wants it in their backyard.Dwarkesh Patel 1:03:53On the topic of the Soviets, one question I had while reading the book was — we negotiated with Stalin at Yalta and we surrendered a large part of Eastern Europe to him under his sphere of influence. And obviously we saw 50 years of immiseration there as a result. Given the fact that only we had the bomb, would it have been possible that we could have just knocked out the Soviet Union or at least prevented so much of the world from succumbing to communism in the aftermath of World War II? Is that a possibility? Richard Rhodes 1:04:30When we say we had the bomb, we had a few partly assembled handmade bombs. It took almost as long to assemble one as the battery life of the batteries that would drive the original charge that would set off the explosion. It was a big bluff. You know, when they closed Berlin in 1948 and we had to supply Berlin by air with coal and food for a whole winter, we moved some B-29s to England. The B-29 being the bomber that had carried the bombs. They were not outfitted for nuclear weapons. They didn't have the same kind of bomb-based structure. The weapons that were dropped in Japan had a single hook that held the entire bomb. So when the bay opened and the hook was released, the thing dropped. And that's very different from dropping whole rows of small bombs that you've seen in the photographs and the film footage. So it was a big bluff on our part. We took some time after the war inevitably to pull everything together. Here was a brand new technology. Here was a brand new weapon. Who was gonna be in charge of it? The military wanted control, Truman wasn't about to give the military control. He'd been an artillery officer in the First World War. He used to say — “No, damn artillery captain is gonna start World War III when I'm president.” I grew up in the same town he lived in so I know his accent. Independence, Missouri. Used to see him at his front steps taking pictures with tourists while he was still president. He used to step out on the porch and let the tourists take photographs. About a half a block from my Methodist church where I went to church. It was interesting. Interestingly, his wife was considered much more socially acceptable than he was. She was from an old family in independence, Missouri. And he was some farmer from way out in Grandview, Missouri, South of Kansas City. Values. Anyway, at the end of the war, there was a great rush from the Soviet side of what was already a zone. There was a Soviet zone, a French zone, British zone and an American zone. Germany was divided up into those zones to grab what's left of the uranium ore that the Germans had stockpiled. And there was evidence that there was a number of barrels of the stuff in a warehouse somewhere in the middle of all of this. And there's a very funny story about how the Russians ran in and grabbed off one site full of uranium ore, this yellow black stuff in what were basically wine barrels. And we at the same night, just before the wall came down between the zones, were running in from the other side, grabbing some other ore and then taking it back to our side. But there was also a good deal of requisitioning of German scientists. And the ones who had gotten away early came West, but there were others who didn't and ended up helping the Soviets. And they were told, look, you help us build the reactors and the uranium separation systems that we need. And we'll let you go home and back to your family, which they did. Early 50s by then, the German scientists who had helped the Russians went home. And I think our people stayed here and brought their families over, I don't know. (1:08:24) - Deterrence, disarmament, North Korea, TaiwanDwarkesh Patel 1:08:24Was there an opportunity after the end of World War II, before the Soviets developed the bomb, for the US to do something where either it somehow enforced a monopoly on having the bomb, or if that wasn't possible, make some sort of credible gesture that, we're eliminating this knowledge, you guys don't work on this, we're all just gonna step back from this. Richard Rhodes 1:08:50We tried both before the war. General Groves, who had the mistaken impression that there was a limited amount of high-grade uranium ore in the world, put together a company that tried to corner the market on all the available supply. For some reason, he didn't realize that a country the size of the Soviet Union is going to have some uranium ore somewhere. And of course it did, in Kazakhstan, rich uranium ore, enough for all the bombs they wanted to build. But he didn't know that, and I frankly don't know why he didn't know that, but I guess uranium's use before the Second World War was basically as a glazing agent for pottery, that famous yellow pottery and orange pottery that people owned in the 1930s, those colors came from uranium, and they're sufficiently radioactive, even to this day, that if you wave a Geiger counter over them, you get some clicks. In fact, there have been places where they've gone in with masks and suits on, grabbed the Mexican pottery and taken it out in a lead-lined case. People have been so worried about it but that was the only use for uranium, to make a particular kind of glass. So once it became clear that there was another use for uranium, a much more important one, Groves tried to corner the world market, and he thought he had. So that was one effort to limit what the Soviet Union could do. Another was to negotiate some kind of agreement between the parties. That was something that really never got off the ground, because the German Secretary of State was an old Southern politician and he didn't trust the Soviets. He went to the first meeting, in Geneva in ‘45 after the war was over, and strutted around and said, well, I got the bomb in my pocket, so let's sit down and talk here. And the Soviet basically said, screw you. We don't care. We're not worried about your bomb. Go home. So that didn't work. Then there was the effort to get the United Nations to start to develop some program of international control. And the program was proposed originally by a committee put together by our State Department that included Robert Oppenheimer, rightly so, because the other members of the committee were industrialists, engineers, government officials, people with various kinds of expertise around the very complicated problems of technology and the science and, of course, the politics, the diplomacy. In a couple of weeks, Oppenheimer taught them the basics of the nuclear physics involved and what he knew about bomb design, which was everything, actually, since he'd run Los Alamos. He was a scientist during the war. And they came up with a plan. People have scoffed ever since at what came to be called the Acheson-Lilienthal plan named after the State Department people. But it's the only plan I think anyone has ever devised that makes real sense as to how you could have international control without a world government. Every country would be open to inspection by any agency that was set up. And the inspections would not be at the convenience of the country. But whenever the inspectors felt they needed to inspect. So what Oppenheimer called an open world. And if you had that, and then if each country then developed its own nuclear industries, nuclear power, medical uses, whatever, then if one country tried clandestinely to begin to build bombs, you would know about it at the time of the next inspection. And then you could try diplomacy. If that didn't work, you could try conventional war. If that wasn't sufficient, then you could start building your bombs too. And at the end of this sequence, which would be long enough, assuming that there were no bombs existing in the world, and the ore was stored in a warehouse somewhere, six months maybe, maybe a year, it would be time for everyone to scale up to deterrence with weapons rather than deterrence without weapons, with only the knowledge. That to me is the answer to the whole thing. And it might have worked. But there were two big problems. One, no country is going to allow a monopoly on a nuclear weapon, at least no major power. So the Russians were not willing to sign on from the beginning. They just couldn't. How could they? We would not have. Two, Sherman assigned a kind of a loudmouth, a wise old Wall Street guy to present this program to the United Nations. And he sat down with Oppenheimer after he and his people had studied and said, where's your army? Somebody starts working on a bomb over there. You've got to go in and take that out, don't you? He said, what would happen if one country started building a bomb? Oppenheimer said, well, that would be an act of war. Meaning then the other countries could begin to escalate as they needed to to protect themselves against one power, trying to overwhelm the rest. Well, Bernard Baruch was the name of the man. He didn't get it. So when he presented his revised version of the Acheson–Lilienthal Plan, which was called the Baruch Plan to the United Nations, he included his army. And he insisted that the United States would not give up its nuclear monopoly until everyone else had signed on. So of course, who's going to sign on to that deal? Dwarkesh Patel 1:15:24I feel he has a point in the sense that — World War II took five years or more. If we find that the Soviets are starting to develop a bomb, it's not like within the six months or a year or whatever, it would take them to start refining the ore. And to the point we found out that they've been refining ore to when we start a war and engage in it, and doing all the diplomacy. By that point, they might already have the bomb. And so we're behind because we dismantled our weapons. We are only starting to develop our weapons once we've exhausted these other avenues. Richard Rhodes 1:16:00Not to develop. Presumably we would have developed. And everybody would have developed anyway. Another way to think of this is as delayed delivery times. Takes about 30 minutes to get an ICBM from Central Missouri to Moscow. That's the time window for doing anything other than starting a nuclear war. So take the warhead off those missiles and move it down the road 10 miles. So then it takes three hours. You've got to put the warhead back on the missiles. If the other side is willing to do this too. And you both can watch and see. We require openness. A word Bohr introduced to this whole thing. In order to make this happen, you can't have secrets. And of course, as time passed on, we developed elaborate surveillance from space, surveillance from planes, and so forth. It would not have worked in 1946 for sure. The surveillance wasn't there. But that system is in place today. The International Atomic Energy Agency has detected systems in air, in space, underwater. They can detect 50 pounds of dynamite exploded in England from Australia with the systems that we have in place. It's technical rather than human resources. But it's there. So it's theoretically possible today to get started on such a program. Except, of course, now, in like 1950, the world is awash in nuclear weapons. Despite the reductions that have occurred since the end of the Cold War, there's still 30,000-40,000 nuclear weapons in the world. Way too many. Dwarkesh Patel 1:18:01Yeah. That's really interesting. What percentage of warheads do you think are accounted for by this organization? If there's 30,000 warheads, what percentage are accounted for? Richard Rhodes 1:18:12All.Dwarkesh Patel 1:18:12Oh. Really?  North Korea doesn't have secrets? Richard Rhodes 1:18:13They're allowed to inspect anywhere without having to ask the government for permission. Dwarkesh Patel 1:18:18But presumably not North Korea or something, right? Richard Rhodes 1:18:21North Korea is an exception. But we keep pretty good track of North Korea needless to say. Dwarkesh Patel 1:18:27Are you surprised with how successful non-proliferation has been? The number of countries with nuclear weapons has not gone up for decades. Given the fact, as you were talking about earlier, it's simply a matter of refining or transmuting uranium. Is it surprising that there aren't more countries that have it?Richard Rhodes 1:18:42That's really an interesting part. Again, a part of the story that most people have never really heard. In the 50s, before the development and signing of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which was 1968 and it took effect in 1970, a lot of countries that you would never have imagined were working on nuclear weapons. Sweden, Norway, Japan, South Korea. They had the technology. They just didn't have the materials. It was kind of dicey about what you should do. But I interviewed some of the Swedish scientists who worked on their bomb and they said, well, we were just talking about making some tactical

Putin is threatening to deploy Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus. This could amount to a violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. China and Japan have opposing attitudes to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which shows a clear divide between the two major Asian powers. In a new episode of the series Around Ukraine, Volodymyr Yermolenko, UkraineWorld's chief editor, speaks to UkraineWorld analyst Maksym Panchenko. Explaining Ukraine is a podcast by UkraineWorld.org, a website in English about Ukraine, brought to you by Internews Ukraine. Support us at patreon.com/ukraineworld. Support our humanitarian trips to the frontline areas: Paypal - ukraine.resisting@gmail.com

When Ukraine acceded to Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1994, the country's leaders fulfilled a vow they had made as soon as Ukraine became an independent state in 1991. Ukraine would relinquish the thousands of nuclear warheads and intercontinental ballistic missiles on its territory – it's “nuclear inheritance” after the collapse of the USSR. Looking back at that decision through the lens of Russia's invasion one year ago, some observers now contend that Ukraine made a mistake by voluntarily ceding its potential nuclear deterrence, although Ukraine never had independent operational command and control over the weapons. Moreover, as political scientist and nuclear historian Mariana Budjeryn demonstrates in her new book, “Inheriting the Bomb,” the majority of Ukrainian political and military leaders in the early 1990s viewed holding onto the nukes as more dangerous than it might be worth. In this episode, Budjeryn discusses the momentous events and decisions that resulted in Ukraine transferring all its nuclear weapons to Russia to be dismantled. She illuminates an important chapter in international relations that left Ukraine in a diplomatic and political no man's land from which it could not completely extract itself over the next 30 years.

In 1974, India surprised the world with “Smiling Buddha”: a secret underground nuclear test at Pokhran, Rajasthan. India called it a “peaceful nuclear explosion”—but few outside of India saw it that way. The 1974 nuclear tests became a symbol of India's ability to help itself, especially given how the country was left out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, an agreement the country argued was colonial. But, as Jayita Sarkar's Ploughshares and Swords: India's Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2022) points out, India's nuclear program was in fact the product of Cold War tensions and international networks–including some foreign sources of nuclear knowledge and material. (An open-access version of Jay's book can be found here) Jayita Sarkar is Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow and the Founding Director of the Global Decolonization Initiative. She can be followed on Twitter at @DrJSarkar, and her Linktree can be found here. In this interview, Jay and I talk about India's nuclear program, from its very beginnings through to when India was brought back into the world's—or, at least, the U.S.'s–nuclear good graces in 2008. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Ploughshares and Swords. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In 1974, India surprised the world with “Smiling Buddha”: a secret underground nuclear test at Pokhran, Rajasthan. India called it a “peaceful nuclear explosion”—but few outside of India saw it that way. The 1974 nuclear tests became a symbol of India's ability to help itself, especially given how the country was left out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, an agreement the country argued was colonial. But, as Jayita Sarkar's Ploughshares and Swords: India's Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2022) points out, India's nuclear program was in fact the product of Cold War tensions and international networks–including some foreign sources of nuclear knowledge and material. (An open-access version of Jay's book can be found here) Jayita Sarkar is Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow and the Founding Director of the Global Decolonization Initiative. She can be followed on Twitter at @DrJSarkar, and her Linktree can be found here. In this interview, Jay and I talk about India's nuclear program, from its very beginnings through to when India was brought back into the world's—or, at least, the U.S.'s–nuclear good graces in 2008. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Ploughshares and Swords. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/history

In 1974, India surprised the world with “Smiling Buddha”: a secret underground nuclear test at Pokhran, Rajasthan. India called it a “peaceful nuclear explosion”—but few outside of India saw it that way. The 1974 nuclear tests became a symbol of India's ability to help itself, especially given how the country was left out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, an agreement the country argued was colonial. But, as Jayita Sarkar's Ploughshares and Swords: India's Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2022) points out, India's nuclear program was in fact the product of Cold War tensions and international networks–including some foreign sources of nuclear knowledge and material. (An open-access version of Jay's book can be found here) Jayita Sarkar is Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow and the Founding Director of the Global Decolonization Initiative. She can be followed on Twitter at @DrJSarkar, and her Linktree can be found here. In this interview, Jay and I talk about India's nuclear program, from its very beginnings through to when India was brought back into the world's—or, at least, the U.S.'s–nuclear good graces in 2008. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Ploughshares and Swords. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/military-history

In 1974, India surprised the world with “Smiling Buddha”: a secret underground nuclear test at Pokhran, Rajasthan. India called it a “peaceful nuclear explosion”—but few outside of India saw it that way. The 1974 nuclear tests became a symbol of India's ability to help itself, especially given how the country was left out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, an agreement the country argued was colonial. But, as Jayita Sarkar's Ploughshares and Swords: India's Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2022) points out, India's nuclear program was in fact the product of Cold War tensions and international networks–including some foreign sources of nuclear knowledge and material. (An open-access version of Jay's book can be found here) Jayita Sarkar is Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow and the Founding Director of the Global Decolonization Initiative. She can be followed on Twitter at @DrJSarkar, and her Linktree can be found here. In this interview, Jay and I talk about India's nuclear program, from its very beginnings through to when India was brought back into the world's—or, at least, the U.S.'s–nuclear good graces in 2008. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Ploughshares and Swords. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/political-science

In 1974, India surprised the world with “Smiling Buddha”: a secret underground nuclear test at Pokhran, Rajasthan. India called it a “peaceful nuclear explosion”—but few outside of India saw it that way. The 1974 nuclear tests became a symbol of India's ability to help itself, especially given how the country was left out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, an agreement the country argued was colonial. But, as Jayita Sarkar's Ploughshares and Swords: India's Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2022) points out, India's nuclear program was in fact the product of Cold War tensions and international networks–including some foreign sources of nuclear knowledge and material. (An open-access version of Jay's book can be found here) Jayita Sarkar is Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow and the Founding Director of the Global Decolonization Initiative. She can be followed on Twitter at @DrJSarkar, and her Linktree can be found here. In this interview, Jay and I talk about India's nuclear program, from its very beginnings through to when India was brought back into the world's—or, at least, the U.S.'s–nuclear good graces in 2008. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Ploughshares and Swords. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/world-affairs

In 1974, India surprised the world with “Smiling Buddha”: a secret underground nuclear test at Pokhran, Rajasthan. India called it a “peaceful nuclear explosion”—but few outside of India saw it that way. The 1974 nuclear tests became a symbol of India's ability to help itself, especially given how the country was left out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, an agreement the country argued was colonial. But, as Jayita Sarkar's Ploughshares and Swords: India's Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2022) points out, India's nuclear program was in fact the product of Cold War tensions and international networks–including some foreign sources of nuclear knowledge and material. (An open-access version of Jay's book can be found here) Jayita Sarkar is Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow and the Founding Director of the Global Decolonization Initiative. She can be followed on Twitter at @DrJSarkar, and her Linktree can be found here. In this interview, Jay and I talk about India's nuclear program, from its very beginnings through to when India was brought back into the world's—or, at least, the U.S.'s–nuclear good graces in 2008. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Ploughshares and Swords. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/south-asian-studies

In 1974, India surprised the world with “Smiling Buddha”: a secret underground nuclear test at Pokhran, Rajasthan. India called it a “peaceful nuclear explosion”—but few outside of India saw it that way. The 1974 nuclear tests became a symbol of India's ability to help itself, especially given how the country was left out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, an agreement the country argued was colonial. But, as Jayita Sarkar's Ploughshares and Swords: India's Nuclear Program in the Global Cold War (Cornell University Press, 2022) points out, India's nuclear program was in fact the product of Cold War tensions and international networks–including some foreign sources of nuclear knowledge and material. (An open-access version of Jay's book can be found here) Jayita Sarkar is Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow and the Founding Director of the Global Decolonization Initiative. She can be followed on Twitter at @DrJSarkar, and her Linktree can be found here. In this interview, Jay and I talk about India's nuclear program, from its very beginnings through to when India was brought back into the world's—or, at least, the U.S.'s–nuclear good graces in 2008. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Ploughshares and Swords. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/science-technology-and-society

The warning from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres came at a conference to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.