Category: Nuclear Strategy

“A House of Dynamite” New Netflix Nuclear Catastrophe Film: Fiction, for Now

Sophia MerynModernization, Nuclear Forces, Nuclear Policy, Nuclear Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Plutonium Pit Production, Washington DC

The reviews are rolling in for “A House of Dynamite,” which premiered in Europe earlier this month before coming to the U.S. on October 10th, with a full Netflix release scheduled for the 24th. Here’s the trailer, and see the schedule for Santa Fe theater showings here:

This Week! Santa Fe Theater Screenings for the Film “A House of Dynamite”

I attended one of these screenings last night, and I’ll let the professional critic reviews give the gist:

The Kathryn Bigelow thriller looks at what might happen if a ballistic missile were headed to the U.S. The director hopes the movie will start a conversation. New York Times: At Venice, ‘A House of Dynamite’ Is Scarier Than Most Horror Films

“The Netflix thriller captures from multiple perspectives the White House response to an unattributed missile launch headed for a major U.S. city in the harrowing 20 minutes until projected impact…”An unrelenting chokehold thriller so controlled, kinetic and unsettlingly immersive that you stagger out at the end of it wondering if the world will still be intact.” ‘A House of Dynamite’ Review: Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson in Kathryn Bigelow’s Precision-Tooled, Viscerally Unsettling Nail-Biter

“Told from the perspective of soldiers at a remote Alaskan missile base, staffers in the White House situation room, military officials at US Central Command (CENTCOM), and the president of the United States, the film weaves an overlapping timeline to show how the United States would respond to a missile attack…The film doesn’t want viewers to ask themselves how to thwart a nuclear attack on the United States. Rather, it wants the viewer to question the value of having nuclear weapons at all. ‘None of this makes sense,’ the President (Idris Elba) bemoans, ‘Making all these bombs and all these plans.'”

“A House of Dynamite is a terrifying examination of how terribly wrong things can go even with highly competent people in charge…But that’s also not necessarily the world we’re living in…The film shows why the worst can happen, even when competent, well-meaning people are trying to do the right thing.

But what if competence and decency are in short supply?” A House of Dynamite: Bigelow’s latest thriller shows why nuclear bombs are only part of the danger

This film left me reeling with tension and anxiety and exactly as the Times article titles it, is scarier than most horror films. Unlike ‘Oppenheimer,’ which largely glorified the invention of the atomic weapon, ‘A House of Dynamite’ makes it impossible to ignore the threat that nuclear weapons pose to our world. Working backwards from perspectives, and focused on how we can actually improve our odds of keeping this story a fictional one, here is what struck me most about this film:

    1. Only one person decides what happens. But the real threat isn’t one reckless leader — it’s a reckless system. The final segment of the film features the “nuclear football” heavily, a briefcase containing launch procedures and options. In the United States, the president holds the sole and absolute authority to order the use of nuclear weapons. In the film, there are many voices in the President’s ear, but two primary perspectives quickly emerge after the defense fails and the ICBM remains inbound to its U.S. target: “One side advocates a retaliatory strike; the other, nothing. ‘It’s surrender or suicide,’ one adviser tells the President,” – thebulletin.org. The military aide carrying the nuclear football is tasked with providing the President the list of options if retaliation is chosen. An absolute must-read, Daniel Ellsberg’s book “The Doomsday Machine” breaks down many of the themes in the film with pure and terrifyingly honest account of Cold War-era nuclear strategy. In terms of launch authority, he describes how the inherent instability of the delegated command structure of the nuclear apparatus makes accidental or unwanted war an ever-present danger.

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Plutonium Pit PEIS Scoping Hearing Presentation: Slides and Recording

Sophia MerynDOE, Environmental Impact, Kansas City Plant, LANL Cleanup, Lawrence Livermore Nat'l Lab, Los Alamos Nat'l Lab., Modernization, NEPA, Nevada National Security Site, New Mexico, NNSA, Nuclear Policy, Nuclear Strategy, Nuclear Waste, Nuclear Weapons, Plutonium Pit Production, Savannah River Site, WIPP

Get Prepared: A coalition of advocacy groups, including Union of Concerned Scientists, Tri-Valley CAREs, and NukeWatch New Mexico recently held a training to help participants prepare effective comments.

Watch the recording here
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The U.S. Nuclear Policy of Deterrence: What if it Fails?

Sophia MerynModernization, Non-Proliferation Treaty, Nuclear Policy, Nuclear Security, Nuclear Strategy, Nuclear Weapons, Washington DC

The U.S. nuclear strategy of deterrence “aims to prevent an adversary from launching a nuclear weapon by assuring that any first strike will be followed by a retaliatory second strike, whose effects will equal or exceed the original damage and may eliminate the adversary altogether.” From a purely theoretical standpoint, its premise is simple: the threat of overwhelming retaliation should prevent adversaries from launching a first attack. As illuminated in an insightful analysis in the Boston Review, current deterrence policies use perpetual threats of annihilation as a means of coercion. Our most “successful” solution so far to the threat of catastrophic nuclear war has been a tool of extortion, rather than genuine security measures such as binding arms control and nonproliferation agreements.

Deterrance is “framed wholly as defensive and preventative (and from day to day, largely successful in deflecting our attention from the actual first use stance the country has had for nearly eighty years).” [Boston Review] But what if this strategy fails? What if deterrence doesn’t work as intended?

The policy of deterrence assumes that rational actors will always act in their own self-interest to avoid nuclear war.

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Current U.S. Nuclear Weapons Issues Updates — October 15, 2021

Sophia MerynBiden Administration, China, North Korea, Nuclear Forces, Nuclear News, Nuclear Policy, Nuclear Strategy, Nuclear Weapons

Congress passed a continuing resolution that keeps the government running until December 3. It freezes funding at 2021 levels which at least prevents short-term budget increases for nuclear weapons modernization programs and has no “anomalies” (i.e. exceptions) for these programs. That said, Biden passed on most of Trump’s nuclear weapons excesses forward in his FY 2022 budget, so it’s not like it makes a whole lot of difference.

Mitch McConnell agreed to let the Democrats raise the national debt ceiling, thereby averting national and international economic disaster. How gracious of him.

Democrats and Republicans joined together to roll Biden on the money in the FY 2023 Defense Authorization Act for the entire military (including the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). These bipartisan porkmeisters added $23.9 billion for $768 billion in total defense spending. The new bogeyman China was repeatedly invoked as the rationale (in comparison China now spends around $250 billion annually on its military).
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