The Cold War is over. The weapons are not. The United States and Russia still hold roughly 6,000 nuclear warheads each — most on hair-trigger alert — and one person, the president, can launch them inside seven minutes with no vice president, no secretary of defense, no Congress, no court. Paul Rieckhoff opens with the news of the moment — Trump’s escalating economic war on Canada and the passing of the great Dolly Parton — before diving into a replay conversation with Joe Cirincione, one of the most respected nuclear policy voices in the world, on why this existential threat has been buried under partisan noise while a bipartisan defense-contractor machine keeps the arsenal fat and the debate quiet.
Cirincione walks through the full landscape: the seven nuclear states, the nightmare India-Pakistan scenario that could kill a billion people through nuclear winter, the atomic veterans and downwinders America poisoned and abandoned, and the new arms race unfolding in space, cyber, and hypersonics. He explains why Joe Biden — if allowed to be Biden — would cut the arsenal by a third, and why the Pentagon bureaucracy and contractor lobby make that nearly impossible. This is intelligence-grade analysis about the one threat that can end human civilization in an afternoon — and why staying vigilant on nukes is a truly independent American issue.
In this episode
- Paul on Trump’s economic war with Canada — and why he’s rooting for Canada to call the bluff
- A tribute to Dolly Parton: bigger than music, bigger than America, the best of what this country can be
- Cirincione: 6,000 warheads, seven minutes to launch, one person’s finger on the button
- The seven nuclear states — and why Israel’s undeclared arsenal is the Middle East’s worst-kept secret
- The Mumbai nightmare scenario: how a terror attack could trigger a nuclear war that kills over a billion people
- Atomic veterans, downwinders, and Marshallese Islanders — the Americans nuclear weapons have already killed
- Why the defense-contractor lobby has infiltrated the Pentagon, Congress, and even the think tanks
- The new arms race: cyber attacks on nuclear systems, weapons in space, and China’s hypersonic glide vehicles
- Why Biden would cut the arsenal by a third if the bureaucracy let him — and why he probably can’t
- The only way out: arms control, not arms racing
