More nukes, more problems

0:00A live short, daily news podcast focused on just one story. But right now, you probably need more. On up first from NPR, we bring you three of the world's top headlines every day in under 15 minutes. Because no one's story can capture all that's happening in this big, crazy world of ours on any given morning. Listen now to the up first podcast from NPR. Nick is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Insurance isn't one size fits all. That's why drivers have enjoyed Progressive's Name Your Price tool for years now. With the Name Your Price tool, you tell them what you want to pay and they'll show you options to fit your budget. So whether you're picking out your first policy or just looking for something that works better for you and your family, they make it easy to see your options. Visit Progressive.com. Find a rate that works for you with the Name Your Price tool. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law. This show is supported by ODO.

1:00When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. ODO solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. ODO is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out ODO at odo.com. That's odo.com. U.S. leaders have long assumed that possessing enough nuclear weapons to end civilization was sufficient to deter enemies from launching nuclear missiles at us. In fact, that belief allowed for the U.S. and Russia to mutually agree to trim their stockpile starting in the 1980s. But earlier this year, the Pentagon announced it was undertaking a nuclear strategy review for the Trump administration, which is to say they're exploring whether we need to add

2:03more. From KERA in Dallas, this is think. I'm Chris Boyd. It's an interesting problem for national defense experts to work out because while the United States may indeed ward off certain kinds of attacks simply because other countries know we have the option to go nuclear, my guess says there's a point at which too many weapons makes us more of a target and more vulnerable to catastrophic miscalculations. Aaron D. Dumbacher is Stanton Nuclear Security Senior Fellow and Director of the Defense at National Security Program at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her essay, America doesn't need more nuclear weapons, appears in Foreign Affairs magazine. Aaron, welcome to think. Thank you so much for having me. You open with what sounds like a Bob Dylan style rhetorical question, but it's actually a real consideration for national security professionals. How many nuclear weapons are enough? How have US leaders answered that question over the decades?

3:04This is really a question that has haunted policymakers and scholars for 80 years since the United States developed the first nuclear weapons and then used them the only time in war in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. And over those years, over those decades during the Cold War, the United States expanded its nuclear stockpile, Soviet Union did the same. Eventually, the US and the Soviet Union had more or less parity when it comes to how many total nuclear weapons they had in each other's arsenal. But then there came a time somewhere in the 1980s in particular where both countries came together and said, this is enough. We no longer need to keep growing our arsenals. And through arms treaties, arms control measures, the two mutually decided to take some steps back to reduce the size of the arsenals.

4:04And that's the world that more or less I and a lot of your listeners have grown up in, the sort of post-arms control era, the last arms control treaty, however, between the United States and Russia just expired. And that was called the new start treaty that expired earlier this year in February 2026. And at that point, both the United States and Russia had 1,550 deployed strategic weapons in the arsenals. And now that that treaty is no longer formally in place, both countries have the option to reevaluate just how many nuclear weapons they think are enough. And then of course, there's now a third player, which is China, whose nuclear arsenal is also growing. Yeah, how many nuclear weapons does China have currently? China's nuclear arsenal has been growing, but is nowhere near the size currently as we

5:06understand it, of US of US and Russian nuclear weapons. So they're in the hundreds now, and they're on track, according to the Pentagon and other open source intelligence analysis. They're on track to perhaps reach something close to that parity number around the 1500 number, but not until 2035 or so. So they're right now, it looks like they're on track to have over 1,000 nuclear weapons in their arsenal by 2030. When new start was in place between 2010 and the beginning of this year, besides setting that limit of 1550 on the number of weapons the US and Russia could each possess, what sort of like verification of compliance did it require? Oh, all sorts of verification. So your listeners might recall the importance of sort of the phrasing from US policy makers over the year that we need to both trust but also verify the sizes of nuclear arsenals,

6:09and that's exactly what new start had put in place. So in addition to some what experts would call normative measures or sort of like expectations that both countries say that they will agree to, things like we will not blind or blitz one another satellites, because those satellites are important for making sure that we're keeping a good eye on each other in terms of what the nuclear stockpiles and the nuclear arsenals and the nuclear forces are doing. So so new start within it had an agreement to not disrupt one another's national technical means, the the the spy satellites and all of the infrastructure that each military used to keep keep an eye on one another's nuclear forces. It also had on site verification measures. So that meant there were US experts showing up in Russia and vice versa for a time that did end a few years before the the agreement actually formally ended around COVID.

7:14Some of those some of those on site inspections started to slow and then eventually the Russians stopped participating. There were experts counting exactly the degree to which not just how many weapons could be found in a given like Russian military complex, but also what those looked like, how they were being stored, you know there and then we allowed some of that access for the Russians. So it was really beneficial from the US perspective certainly to maintain a clear set of expectations with your main adversary when it comes to nuclear forces in this in this way and it gave us some some reassurance frankly that Russia wasn't running away with you know growth in their arsenal or experimentation in their arsenal in ways that we also weren't pursuing. So it was really mutually beneficial and reassuring.

8:16Let's be clear the reality is that that partner that the United States had in crafting new start. It was it was first agreed to in the 2010s that partner in Russia is not the same right like their leadership now. Yes, Vladimir Putin is still there, but they they're perhaps not the the good faith actors in terms of being able to agree and formalize some of these agreements that they once were especially but not limited to the the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So I think there's there's lots of folks sort of who observed these issues and experts who all come to the same conclusion that for now arms control agreements in this area both between the US and Russia and between the US and China are are not top of the top of the attainable policy priority list you might say, but that's for now.

9:18Okay, so in March of this year the Trump administration announced it would carry out a nuclear strategy review. What is involved in a project like that and what is the goal? Yeah, this is a classified review. The Trump administration has held and and there's there's a few types of different reviews that administrations undergo. There's the more formal review more more sort of call it standard review called a nuclear posture review, which is a full sweeping sort of analysis of what the purpose of US nuclear weapons is what implications that has for our deterrence policy are also for our arms control policy. But this administration decided that they didn't want to pursue that type of big full scale usually fairly transparent. There's usually an unclassified review classified unclassified component that that comes out of the administration with a nuclear posture review.

10:20Administration officials have said that they don't want to pursue that. They are instead pursuing something that's a little bit more covert a little bit more classified to review the way that nuclear weapons are can and should be employed one day. So they have called it they've used the term nuclear strategy review, but it's a little bit more focused in terms of its scope than some reviews have been in the past. And administration officials have said that they are focused specifically on this sort of two-peer problem, which is to say both Russia and in the near future as we've already discussed, China could have as many nuclear weapons as the United States. And so this review is trying to focus on these two problems, these two peer problems. And given the fact that a new start has as the last formal barrier to a US Russian arms

11:22race essentially has fallen away when when that treaty expired earlier this year, they thought it was time to have another look. They've also said specifically within the confines of this review, although it is due to be a little bit more limited in scope, that they have said that they're going to look at the quote unquote theater nuclear forces issue, which is sort of technical code words for thinking about nuclear weapons that are more akin to the size of what the United States used in Japan than some of the very large high-kilotonage weapons that make up most of the US arsenal today for regional war. So specifically in this context, if you're thinking about China, you could imagine a war in the Western Pacific related to Taiwan. And they quote unquote theater nuclear forces issue, this administration has said that they want to review.

12:22You argue quite bluntly here that the United States should take additions to its nuclear forces off the table. What tells you that we already have enough or more than enough? Several factors. The first is that the United States already has a vast and diverse supply of nuclear weapons in case a US president were to ever decide to unleash a nuclear weapon in the devastation that comes with it on an adversary, especially in case of perhaps an attack on the US homeland. We already have enough weapons to deter such attack in my view. And some of these issues really get at the purpose of nuclear weapons, right? In my view, the purpose of nuclear weapons and the purpose of nuclear deterrence is not to have some sort of nuclear response or nuclear answer to every type of weapon that our adversaries might have, but frankly to avoid crossing the nuclear threshold in a crisis or conflict

13:29in the first place. So I also see other issues. So there's this question of how to handle the growth of the Chinese arsenal. But to introduce, if the United States were to introduce new nuclear weapons of any yield of any potential degree of devastation that they might have if deployed, I think that it could provoke an arms race for which the United States is at this time ill-equipped. It also invites risks of inadvertent escalation that really only make the United States and the homeland more vulnerable. So rather than focusing as the review might do, given sort of what the administration has said about where it might land, where that review might conclude, rather than focus on expanding

14:29and diversifying the US nuclear arsenal that we have today, I would advocate that Washington's deterrence strategy really needs to attend the modernization of its existing strategic forces. That modernization is behind schedule by and large. And as has been reported, especially in the context of the current Iran war, conventional arms in the US arsenal are not in the right place in terms of scale and production capacity to deter the United States greatest military threats, especially Chinese military aggression that might take place in the Western Pacific. Aaron, you said the United States might be ill-equipped if we find ourselves in a new nuclear arms race. Tell us more about that. Yeah, without arms controls in place with our adversaries when it comes to nuclear weapons,

15:33I argue that Washington and the Pentagon and US military does in fact need to modernize our strategic nuclear forces. This is a project that was started in 2010, but has had really mixed results. Several of the core programs that were modernizing the entirety of the US so-called nuclear triad. That's bombers, that's intercontinental ballistic missiles based in the American West. And it's nuclear-powered and nuclear-nuclear-nuclear-enabled submarines. And really, each of these programs, in addition to all of the communications and the command and control updates that need to happen such that the US president can call on those nuclear forces at any time, plus the bombs and the warheads that sit on top them or within them, many of those programs and those components and those initiatives are behind schedule

16:34and significantly over budget. So it looks like the best estimates today say that it's a multi-ducked program, of course, to modernize all of US strategic weapons, nuclear weapons. And it's due to cost at least $1 trillion. The decision was made in 2010. Several of these efforts are multiple years behind schedule. One program called the Sentinel Program, that's the intercontinental ballistic missiles that are being built. A few, let's see, in 2024, it was the United States, the Pentagon, went to Congress and said this program is very much over budget. It actually came up against a cap, a rule, a law called the Nunma Curdy Act that mandates that when major defense programs are laid and over budget, that you have to go to Congress and explain why.

17:34The Sentinel Intercontinental ballistic missile program was at least 81% over budget in 2024, which exceeded the Nunma Curdy rule and was the reason that that Pentagon officials had to go to Congress to explain the status of that program. So although defense contractors and Pentagon officials are really working to focus on this and make efforts, make things move forward, but defense contractors, national laboratories, they're working hard. That doesn't mean that they need more on their plate, in my view. But it's 15 years since we've started this endeavor and there's actually risk that we might sort of disarm by default. If the new systems that need to be built don't come online before the old systems must be retired. These are systems in most cases that have been life extended for years already.

18:35So the longer that the new systems take to come online, the more likely it is that we have that we have a gap. So even your average kitchen remodel can easily go over budget and take longer than expected. Why specifically though has the modernization effort for our nuclear arsenal taken so much longer and cost so much more than planners originally anticipated? This is a really important question. It is true. Every construction project that I've heard of or seen in recent years really can take additional time and money. I think there's a few reasons. One is that in some cases to be fair, we've been life extending very old systems that were designed in the 60s and 70s even before in some cases when you look at some of the bomber aircraft. We've been trying to really get as much life out of them as we can. And that also meant that the workforce and sort of the programmatic side of at the defense

19:37contractors and national labs and within the military services haven't done this in a while. We haven't built we haven't rebuilt systems as complex and important as these in some time. So not just muscle memory, but also the workforce and also the facilities needed updating, etc. There's also things that are hard to foresee. Perhaps or simply weren't calculated initially. So for example, in the Sentinel Intercontinental Obelistic Missile Program, the original plan was to use the old silos for the current fleet, which is called Minute Man 3, to use the old silos that those missiles are currently sitting in today and to put new missiles inside of them. Well, it was discovered that that was for a variety of cost reasons and functional reasons, not advisable. And so moving forward, the Sentinel program now tells us that they plan to build brand new

20:39silos in the American West to house these these missiles and keep in mind these are intercontinental ballistic missiles were where I in layman's terms, I think of them as like space launch vehicles. They are going out of the earth out in a sphere with warheads on one more head at least perhaps in the future more warheads on top and and need to target they they can target a US adversary within 30 minutes and they're they're not recallable. Once the US President makes the decision to launch and that's the decision. So these are really complex systems and everyone wants to get over all of the details right and that takes time and and and the military services tell us and the defense contractors tell us that that takes a lot more money that are originally expected. I'm going to thank you in advance for your patience with my relative ignorance on this, but when we talk about modernizing, is it literally, you know, do you carefully pry the nuclear ballistic from an old missile or delivery system and then the idea is that you

21:44build a new missile or delivery system around that weapon? That is an ignorant question. All it's a very important question. The reality is that in each systems case, the details differ slightly, but in some of these instances, yes, that level of work is being done at a minimum. If you're going to discontinue use of let's say an ICBM, you want you are going to have to be very, very careful about how you teammate and really, really brief structure and take the warhead and take good care of it as you are doing the construction work. In a lot of instances too, the national laboratories and contractors are actually just building new bonds and warheads to work with the new systems as well. You mentioned that we may not be in a great position to win a new arms race if one gets started in earnest, but I mean, what does winning in that case even look like if we already

22:47with our not fully modernized systems have sufficient capacity in this country to literally destroy the planet with the nukes we have on hand? This is a good question and it's theoretical, thankfully. So to be fair to those with whom I disagree, you know, they make a case that, you know, if our adversaries have a certain type, then we need to match that, that we need to have at least as many, if not more, of that type of weapon in order to achieve US national aims. I argue, however, that, you know, it's outdated logic, I think, to think about an escalation scenario with a US adversary as sort of a ladder. That's how experts originally thought of things back in 1965 when we were trying to figure out what a nuclear age really looked like. You know, they thought of a ladder and they thought of rungs on that ladder and those experts at the time said, you know, we need nuclear weapons for rung 22 all the way through rung

23:5144 and like smaller weapons further down in the ladder, et cetera, et cetera. And so I do find that those who are advocating for more and more diverse nuclear weapons today are still relying on that outdated construct of we can match one for one at each rung of the so-called ladder and that, you know, I don't, I just don't think that modern reality would, would fit that. So if the first nuclear weapon is used, whether it be by the United States or one of our adversaries, then I don't think it's going to be a clear, cogent process by which leaders really start to advocate and deploy additional nuclear forces. I don't think it's going to be clear to either side what kinds immediately, what kinds of weapons were immediately used with a scale of their devastation is and therefore what one leader should respond with.

24:52One of the things that I talk a little bit about in the article is this idea that it's really difficult to distinguish or discriminate between what is an incoming conventional missile and what's an incoming nuclear tipped missile if they both, for example, are coming out of a fighter jet or a nuclear submarine, right? And I think that if we start to introduce into the US arsenal additional diverse, more varied types of nuclear weapons of varying yields, then it doesn't necessarily advocate or support US interests in the event of a crisis. I think it actually could lead to a greater number of miscalculations and signaling problems if you're trying to convey something to your adversary. Some of the earliest theorists in nuclear scholarship in the dawn of the so-called nuclear age, sort of early Cold War, they talked about the need in deterrence, not just to deter

25:55and sort of convey to your adversary if you take X step, I will take Y step, therefore you should never take X, but that you also need to read a sure your adversary that there's a better path. Don't just take X step, take X because also A looks a lot nicer, the carrot over there, in addition to the stick that I have, is also going to move us all forward to a better place in this crisis or conflict. I'm still trying to get my head around something you said earlier, which is that the weapons that we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki would today, based on their yield, be classified as theater or tactical nuclear weapons rather than strategic nuclear weapons. These are the pardoning expression of the smaller scale weapons that you're really worried about here. I'm worried about introducing new small scale nuclear weapons. Now, it's important to note that the U.S. already has some of these still in our arsenal, and yes, the kilotonage in used in Japan is something around 15 and 21 kilotons, respectively,

27:02for the two uses. The average size of the bomber warhead in the U.S. arsenal today is much higher. It's in the 100 kiloton range or more. So yes, I worry about introducing new additional variety, if you will, into the U.S. nuclear arsenal. But it is true that we do still have, and we certainly don't have as many as the Russians we believe have, of the so-called non-strategic forces or someone say tactical nuclear weapons. But we have some in our arsenal around probably closer to the 200 range that one could use. I am advocating here that we not introduce additional of those. Erin, do our nuclear stockpiles, whatever is contained within them, also offer some protection to our NATO and Pacific treaty allies that don't maintain any supply of nuclear

28:07weapons? They do, and that extends actually to the couple of countries within NATO that do have their own nuclear stockpiles, that would be the United Kingdom and France. In addition to all of the other members of NATO that do not have nuclear weapons today, the longstanding policy from the U.S. side has been called extended deterrence. We extend our deterrence to our allies and partners. That's the European side of the coin. We also have partners in Asia who are under that so-called nuclear umbrella. That would be Japan, South Korea, for example, that we have committed to use our nuclear weapons to defend if need be. I am really curious about the Trump administration's position on this. What evidence do you see that this nuclear strategy review could result in moving forward

29:10with commissioning new weapons? We will have to wait and see the details for what comes out from the review. The final version, frankly, is likely to be classified, but there are some mechanisms by which Congress really needs to not just pursue its own classified oversight, but also prompt some reporting from the Pentagon on really what the review concluded. That would be, that's important, I think, not just for experts to have a look and get a sense, but for the American people to understand really how does its leadership choose to use nuclear weapons today? This administration has not been clear about that in a way that some prior administrations have. I think it's important for this administration to in this review, and I've written a little bit about this. I think we can't just look at nuclear weapons in isolation.

30:15Conventional forces, conventional munitions, they're not a substitute for nuclear weapons. That's clear. But if we want to credibly deter China and Russia, we need non-nuclear options to do that first and foremost, in part because nobody really wants to fight a nuclear war, I don't believe. What's interesting, the Trump administration has taken some steps recently to what I would argue is weakening US conventional deterrents, so deterring Russia and China with conventional non-nuclear weapons in the past year. For example, we paused arm sales, conventional arm sales to Taiwan. We've shifted munitions to the Middle East away from the Asia Pacific theater. We've started to withdraw American troops from Germany, and then there's a broader conversation of course happening and conversations within NATO about burden sharing, which many of which are very healthy conversations to be had.

31:15I'm pleased to see many of our European allies spending more on defense and taking steps to help defend Ukraine and help defend the European continent. But is it truly credible for the United States to say we will only defend our European or our Asian allies and partners with, we're only here to supply the nuclear weapons. We need to increase our production of conventional forces that can be capable of facing the persistent threats that we see to ourselves and to our allies in Asia and in Europe. Aaron, to the extent that we are moving out of an era of significant nuclear de-escalation, what factors contributed then to the success of that de-escalation? It's a great point. I think it's important to recognize that as the Soviet Union transformed itself into

32:15the Russian Federation in the early 1990s that some folks in the strategic community and even in the US military said, you know what, maybe we can take a little bit of a pause from building up our forces. We had arms control agreements in place with the Russian Federation. You were supporting and cooperating with the Russian Federation on many aspects actually on that were of global concern. For example, on nuclear security matters, making sure that terrorists couldn't get a hold of a weapon of mass destruction. The US and Russia were partners in that. We were also partners in outer space. Rose Gautamiller who negotiated the new start agreement recently published a book on just that topic. I think it's important to recognize that that era might now be over, I think it's fair to say, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we need to restart or turn back on some

33:20of the mechanisms that we had in place in the early cold war before the United States and Russia started to reduce the size of the nuclear arsenals in the 1980s. The global nuclear environment is changing. We now also have China really building up its nuclear weapons arsenal. That's concerning. That's something that the United States National Defense strategies and plans need to accommodate. There's no question in my mind about that. But I would advocate that first before we think about expanding the scope of our nuclear modernization and adding to the to do list that defense contractors and national laboratories and the US military are working really hard to achieve in terms of modernizing and rebuilding, just recapitalizing our current US nuclear forces. We also really need to be focusing on the non nuclear options so that we never get to the point of needing to use a nuclear weapon in the first place.

34:22I think we need to be mindful that if we were to build a larger and a more diverse nuclear arsenal, we'd really be potentially undermining rather than strengthening our deterrence. That's why I'm calling for strengthening conventional deterrence to preclude escalation in the first place and really attending to and focusing on the modernization of our existing nuclear capabilities. When you said earlier, no one wants a nuclear war. That's one small comfort in these scary scenarios. Everyone understands how potentially catastrophic this could be. But at the risk of making it hard for everyone to sleep tonight, how could a miscalculation happen if we add more of these smaller-scale nuclear weapons to our existing arsenal? Yeah, I think introducing new smaller-scale nuclear weapons could raise risks there.

35:25I don't see, and there's been some scholarship on this. I don't think nuclear weapons are an effective tool for coercing an adversary and trying to get them to back down amidst a conflict. Every day, better and better research on how the human brain works, psychology, especially psychology, when under stress. Psychologists call it the domain of losses. If you are threatened at a time, in any context, whether you be the leader of a nuclear arms state or you're thinking about that kitchen renovation we were discussing earlier, any human who is under threat in that instance is much more likely to act irrationally than rationally. They're likely to take on more risk in those moments. I worry about additional low yield, low relatively low yield nuclear weapons in such an instance

36:28of a crisis or conflict. No matter whether or not one of those is deployed and used, if it's a similar yield or comparable or causes some sort of comparable damage to one that I might have just deployed myself if I'm a leader, the opponent is not likely to back down in that instance. The damage assessments would be really hazy, trying to get a sense for what really happened would be hazy in the midst of a crisis. I think leaders would be taking on more, not less risk. They might become more inclined to widen the war and to respond with additional nuclear attacks, including potentially on US territory. Deterrence really requires that an adversary not just perceive the consequences of what their actions might bring, but also that they see an alternative, better course of action that is preferable to them. I think introducing new risks, new weapons complicates that.

37:34And especially in a moment of crisis or a concerning moment, when for example, the leaders aren't in good communication with one another, they're much less likely to be in good communication with one another after the first nuclear weapon is fired. And so I think it really just complicates any attempts to reassure the adversary or find a way to de-escalate a conflict. If the US comes out of this nuclear strategy review and decides to refrain from adding to the numbers of nuclear weapons in its possession, what effect is that likely to have on the interest that current non-nuclear states have in acquiring such weapons? Honestly, I'm not sure it will have a huge effect. I think every state so far that has developed nuclear weapons and given the strength of the international regime and treaty that we have in place to really limit how many countries around the world have nuclear weapons to only nine today.

38:37It was feared back in the Kennedy administration. He warned, John F. Kennedy, President Kennedy warned that there could be at least 20 or more states with nuclear weapons. That was the fear in the early 1960s, but we've been able through really diligent, careful, difficult work over the decades to cap that and really limit it only. There's only nine today that have nuclear weapons. Every state makes independent decisions. If a, and there are a number of states with the resources and the acumen, frankly, that if they decided one day that they wanted to switch from having simply a peaceful nuclear program to actually weaponizing something, there are ways and mechanisms by which they can sovereignly do that. They don't necessarily need permission from the United States and they don't need permission from anyone else to do so. This might be an opportunity for the United States to lead and demonstrate, again, both to our allies who have the capacity one day if they so choose to go nuclear.

39:40There's active discussions amongst some of those states internally about whether or not some of those states really should do so if the United States isn't a credible partner. I think it's an opportunity now to lead and to demonstrate that non-nuclear options are really the answer. If we might be on the precipice of a new nuclear arms race, Aaron, how predictably could such an escalation play out? Will we know how things are going? In terms of arms race, I mean, I think arms races don't necessarily happen quickly or abruptly, right? We sort of see the fruits of them over years and decades, at least we have in the past. These are big complicated systems and most instances to develop. That's not to say that there would be indicators and I think there's a lot of really great open source non-governmental research being done.

40:42Now we have more satellites in orbit than we ever have had before with cameras, eyes, and ears to try to get a sense for what activities are happening here on the ground. We have a global system in place led by the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency and others to measure and be on the lookout for any nuclear testing that might take place anywhere around the world to make sure that there aren't burgeoning nuclear weapons states around the world. I think all of that is really important and that there's continuation of those activities to make sure that what holds true today in terms of our understanding of the relative size and scope of the US, the Russian, and also the Chinese and other nuclear stockpiles holds true and is consistent over time. There are some measurements and some ways of observing that.

41:45But if for example we start to hear reports that the Russians are really expanding or the Chinese are really expanding certain types of development processes for what you might call dual-use systems, that would be a signal to the United States that we too might need to take a step. That is the very arms race to Lennon that the United States and Russia work to reduce for decades through arms control agreements. If those aren't on offer today, we have some means of observing, but frankly it's much more dangerous and much more likely even if it's a so-called slow walk arms race. And if it takes place over years and decades. There is research to show that many people who own firearms want them for protection. However, there's also research to say people who keep firearms at home are significantly more likely to be killed by a gun.

42:46Is there something about any country possessing nuclear weapons that actually increases the risk counterintuitively of being attacked? Not just being attacked, but also potentially of nuclear accidents. The greater the size and scope of nuclear fleets, the nuclear arsenal, the more likelihood that we could see mistakes or accidents around the world. There are only nine countries around the world that have nuclear weapons today. Some of those are in very advanced economies with advanced militaries. I would argue that the U.S. military's ability to maintain a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent in the form of its strategic nuclear weapons is beyond the capacity of many other militaries all around the world. I think we are the gold standard when it comes to that. But even within our forces over the decades, there have been some accidents, thankfully,

43:54nothing that has resulted in a large radiological release or anything that has prompted a nuclear war or a nuclear exchange, thankfully. But it's really hard work to maintain that. The more I think it's fair to say that the more nuclear weapons there are in the world, the greater the risk that there will be not just a potential for deliberate use of those nuclear weapons, but potential for mistakes or accidents. What would it take to put the world back on a path of nuclear non-proliferation? Several efforts. I think for the world to get back on a path of non-proliferation, the first most important step is reaffirming that nuclear weapons are really not weapons of war. And for more states to recognize that. And I think the leaders of the permanent five members of the United Nations Security Council and in some ways they've agreed that their nuclear war cannot be won and therefore

44:58should never be fought. That's the old Reagan Gorbachev agreement phrase from Reckuivik. And I think the more countries, the more leaders around the world who recognize that these are really not weapons of war, but that they are truly devastating for the civilian populations if they were to ever be used for a third time in history. I think it's important that that norms sort of be reiterated and complied with, especially by the larger nuclear powers around the world. And the second piece is thinking about other ways to engage and advance national interest. I would argue that there is a greater degree of innovation and potential for conventional weapons to achieve one's aims in a crisis and especially in a limited war context as well.

46:03There are ways that we can fight differently. That preserve international humanitarian law concerns about proportionality and discrimination making sure that if there is a war that it's not affecting a civilian population, nuclear weapons are not an answer to really solving and achieving national aims. Erin Dumbacher is Stanton Nuclear Security Senior Fellow and Director of the Defense and National Security Program at the Council on Foreign Relations. For SA, America doesn't need more nuclear weapons, appears in Foreign Affairs magazine. Erin, thank you for making time to talk about this. Thank you for having me. Think is distributed by PRX, the public radio exchange. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, anywhere you get podcasts or at think.ca.org. Again, I'm Chris Boyd. Thanks for listening. Have a great day.