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.
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