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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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How interesting! Thanks!
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Stephen Schwartz@atomicanalyst.bsky.social |
2073 followers 404 following 3377 posts
Editor/Co-author, “Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of US Nuclear Weapons Since 1940” • I write primarily about nuclear weapons (including history, costs, accidents, and policy), and the Presidential Emergency Satchel (aka the nuclear “Football”).
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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How interesting! Thanks!
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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“This is the moment where prime ministers say the reality of the job dawns on them, and that may be a reason why it keeps being done in this way.” — James Strong, Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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This seems relevant again, for some reason.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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For what it's worth, I read it more as "Bloodless as long as the Left allows us to have our way with the country (and everyone living in it)." Which is no less disgusting, or chilling.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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Ah. Well, maybe. Though, of course, we have already seen her multiple times with the backup satchel.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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I am not so pessimistic as to accept that as a foregone conclusion.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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And here is the same aide deplaning Air Force One while carrying the Presidential Emergency Satchel at Dane County Regional Airport near Madison a few minutes ago. She was met by the Marine Corps aide, who will be responsible for the “Football” during President Biden’s time on the ground in Madison.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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A new White House Military Office Coast Guard aide was on “Football” duty for President Biden’s departure this afternoon for Madison, Wisconsin. The ~45-pound satchel follows Biden 24/7, enabling him to authorize the use of any of our ~1,770 deployed nuclear weapons—up to 900 on alert—at any time.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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Classified. But we have multiple means of communicating with our submarines when they are on patrol.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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And a blown-up black and white version of the same photograph can be seen on the wall directly behind the desk in the office of FBI Deputy Director Gordon Cole, the profoundly hard-of-hearing character reprised by Lynch in his 2017 Showtime limited series “Twin Peaks: The Return.”
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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The Hood test holds a strange fascination for director David Lynch, who was born in 1946. A small framed photograph of its large mushroom cloud rising over the Nevada desert appears on the wall in Henry Spencer’s sparsely furnished bedroom in Lynch’s experimental 1977 horror film “Eraserhead.”
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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Here is a contemporary British Pathé newsreel report about the test, which misleadingly asserts that because the device was suspended 1,500 feet above the ground by a balloon, the resulting mushroom cloud was “purified of much of its radioactive poison.”
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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Exercise Desert Rock VII, conducted in conjunction with Shot HOOD, included troop indoctrination and maneuvers by more than 2,000 Marines (many placed in trenches just 2 miles from ground zero)—the largest such exercise held in Nevada—as well as air operations by 124 military aircraft.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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Today in 1957, the United States conducted Shot HOOD—a reduced-yield, 74-kiloton thermonuclear test—even as the Atomic Energy Commission insisted that no such tests were taking place at the Nevada Test Site due to concerns over radioactive fallout. Hood was largest-ever atmospheric test in Nevada.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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“China has much more to gain from resumed testing than we do,” said Dr.[Siegfried] Hecker, the former Los Alamos director. “It would open the door for others to test and reignite an arms race to the peril of the entire world. We shouldn’t go there.” This is the world Trump and his enablers want.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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For more about the process by which the United Kingdom’s sea-based nuclear weapons would be launched in the event of a nuclear war, see: www.twz.com/7300/letters...
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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For additional useful background information on this distinctively British approach to the end of the world should a nuclear war obliterate the country’s entire leadership and its means of communicating with the submarines, see below and this article from 2016: www.politico.eu/article/the-....
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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Callaghan’s statement is quite remarkable. He says he would have ordered a nuclear attack if deterrence failed because nuclear weapons are only useful as a deterrent. But if he truly believed that, what would be accomplished by using them as retaliatory weapons in an actual war?
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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Only one British prime minister has ever publicly commented on this unique decision-making process:
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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The identical, handwritten letters are delivered to each of the four submarines and locked in a safe inside another safe, which only the commander and deputy commander can open. They are retained for the duration of a prime minister’s tenure. The previous PM’s letters are destroyed, unread.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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A new prime minister reportedly has four basic choices (which may be combined) for instructing a ballistic missile submarine commander: 1. Retaliate 2. Do not retaliate 3. Put yourself under command of the US or Australian navy (if they still exist) 4. Use your own best judgment
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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This afternoon or evening, Keir Starmer, the United Kingdom’s newest prime minister, will be briefed on its nuclear war plans and then pen a new “Letter of Last Resort” to the commander of each of its four Vanguard-class SSBNs, to be opened and read only if a nuclear war destroys the country.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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In 2002, the mediocre film “K-19: The Widowmaker” purported to tell the story of the catastrophic 1961 accident, but many of the actual sailors objected to how they and their dead crewmates were portrayed, particularly the inclusion of fictitious incidents of cowardice and a non-existent revolt.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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After the K-19 returned to service following two years of repairs (its radioactive reactor compartment was dumped into the Kara Sea), the crew nicknamed the submarine “Hiroshima.” It subsequently suffered several additional serious accidents, including two fires and a collision.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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HISTORICAL FOOTNOTE: a sailor named Vasili Arkhipov was among the crew of the K-19. The following year, while aboard another submarine operating in international waters off Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he twice prevented the firing of a nuclear torpedo that could have ignited World War III.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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They were successful. However, all seven members of engineering crew as well as chief engineer Lieutenant Yuriy Povstyev died from acute radiation sickness one to three weeks later. Fifteen other sailors who were on board the K-19 during the accident died over the following two years.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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Under orders of Captain Nikolai Vladimirovich Zateyev, and at great risk to their own health, the engineering crew jury-rigged a backup cooling system for the 70-megawatt starboard reactor (because one had not been installed prior to setting sail) to keep it from melting down.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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Today in 1961, K-19—the Soviet navy’s first nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine—suffered a complete loss of reactor coolant during its initial patrol while off the southeastern coast of Greenland, sending dangerously-radioactive steam into every compartment of the boat.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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Two minutes!
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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I also wonder what the evidently sky-high expectations of the harshest critics were, because Trump has participated in dozens of "debates" since 2015 and as best I can recall, no one, Republican or Democrat has effectively demolished him because the truth means nothing to him and he has zero shame.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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The ageism really troubles me. Biden didn't do a superb job, but neither did he totally fail. He had a cold, he was tired, he was over-prepared, he was under-prepared. Whatever it was, I think it's fixable if he commits to it _and_ we let him. Right now, we're creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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That's a heck of a conclusion to draw, but it's your right to do so. Just, please, stop insisting he refused to be investigated when the facts demonstrate just the opposite. And, yes, of course he is responsible for his own actions. But neither of us was there so we don't really know what happened.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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No, that's incorrect. Franken himself asked the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate his alleged behavior. The committee agreed and began an investigation. Six days later, Senator Schumer gave him an ultimatum to resign or else, which he did the next day. Don't believe me? Read the news coverage!
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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Bingo
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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I sincerely hope that if you are ever accused of anything—by 1 person or 100—you are afforded more of an opportunity to defend yourself than Senator Franken. Again, this is not about numbers or even specific accusations but about the American right to due process in any adversarial legal matter.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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No, Franken resigned because Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer threatened him with censure and the loss of his committee seats, and because the majority of his Democratic colleagues turned against him. He supported the ethics committee investigation, as did Leeann Tweeden, his principal accuser.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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I’m absolutely not defending Franken. I am criticizing the process—actually, the lack of due process—by which his own colleagues (many of whom are on the record as retrospectively regretting their decision) forced him from elected office without any investigation. Sorry you can’t understand that.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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Also worth noting the allegations were first publicized by Trump confidante and right-wing operative Roger Stone, who tweeted “It’s Al Franken’s ‘time in the barrel.’ Franken next in long list of Democrats to be accused of ‘grabby’ behavior,” and boasted to Alex Jones, “Get ready. Franken’s next.”
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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I'm with Christine Blasey Ford's lawyer, Debra Katz—“The allegations levelled against Senator Franken did not warrant his forced expulsion from the Senate, particularly given the context …. All offensive behavior should be addressed, but not all offensive behavior warrants the most severe sanction.”
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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For what it's worth, I've never been a fan of SNL (or of Franken) and couldn't even tell you which years Franken was part of the cast.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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Not nursing anything (seriously). Just pointing out a somewhat relevant incident from the not-too-distant past for those who may have forgotten.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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I stand corrected. I was thinking (too narrowly, obviously) only of national politics and Congress.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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What position of power? The inciting allegations—the ones most people heard about or remember—concern a U.S.O. tour in 2006, some three years before Franken took office, when he was a comedian and private citizen. That's not excusing anything that may have happened, just saying it can't be "abuse."
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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I am, because it was.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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Not saying that you did. Only pointing out the logical conclusion of supporting taking aggressive, conclusive action in the absence of any kind of legal proceeding, let alone a basic investigation of the allegations.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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So due process and the rule of law should just give way to whatever a majority feels is right in the moment?
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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That happened three years later, but okay.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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There was not even an investigation, which both Franken and his principal accuser, Leeann Tweeden, had called for.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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Well, it all happened very quickly, and it was more than six years ago.
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Stephen Schwartz
@atomicanalyst.bsky.social
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Allegations of sexual misconduct, the details of which were unproven. Also worth noting that the those allegations were publicized by Trump confidante and right-wing operative Roger Stone, who tweeted “It’s Al Franken’s ‘time in the barrel,’ and boasted to Alex Jones, “Get ready. Franken’s next.”
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