>> you are writing a book at a time, we are about to transition administration, people would be coming to you if they haven't already, should i go into government and follow your example and take my great principles and my background and try to make change, what do you tell people. what are the great things about going to work in the government and trying to make change and what are the hard parts. >> the great thing is you learn how the sausage factory operates and if you care about making change whether you think to yourself i want to spend the rest of my career in government or journalists or academic or work in the private sector, you have to know how it works, nobody ever really knows how nobody ever really knows how it works, but it much too complex for any of us even in and that the defense department after 26 i felt like i was finallyy beginning to lenders andnn something about how it works and i suspect he will retire after

40 word years and still feel that way. but it was fascinating. i met wonderful people. and that awful people and i met with a much clearer understanding of how it sometimes can happen and why change also doesn't happen that i think has been really useful to me and how i talk to people and how i write and so forth. it would be really useful if i ever went back in a different administration in different plays. when people come and say should i do this, i usually say absolutely. that doesn't mean you should stay forever.. if you care about any public policy issue by the on the new national care decide whether domestic policy side, if you care about being an advocate or a reformer, you will learn so much that is valuable in your credibility will be forever higher if you go and learn a

little bit or how it works and how it doesn't work. i think it is a great thing to do. the one danger is people can get corrupted very easily. it is easy to go insane and part of the solution and that is becoming part of the problem, but that is something that is i suppose always true for everybody. >> well, it's a fascinating read. your experience in the pentagon have graced her retelling. hopefully he'll be back again with another book telling us how to solve these problems. >> thank you so much. >> c-span, created by america's cable television companies and brought to you as a public

[inaudible conversations] >> good evening, everyone. welcome to the half king. how is everybody doing tonight? [cheers and applause] things are coming out. my name is brian. i am the host and the curator of the weekly readings series here. we are here -- we have great authors here and great readers like yours out, so i appreciate you all coming together for a fantastic evening. before we get started, let's turn off our cell phones or the ring or at least beard if you wanted to do social media to hang, you are welcome to do so. i want to let you know that dan will be signing books after their reading and we have copies of "almighty" for sale in the corner.

please stick around and support this hard-working author right behind me. i am going to send around our mailing list. if you are not already on our list, please sign-up. if the best way to find out what is happening at the half king. we have lots of great stuff. so please circulate that around the room. c-span is here filming for booktv. if you are curious about why we had the video camera, and that is what is going on. we are excited and hopefully you can tell your friends who aren't here to catch the broadcast that another time. next week we are off to in fact, we are after in all of august. so we will see you back for the next reading in september. please check your inboxes for e-mail about that.

now on to tonight's main event. i am honored to be hosting dan zak here at the half king, the author of the new book about living with her nuclear arsenal, "almighty: courage, resistance, and existential peril in the nuclear age". he is a reporter for the "washington post" and he has written on a white or righty of topics, news stories, narratives and profiles malan mobile, national and foreign assignments he is from buffalo, new york and he lives in washington d.c. tonight hubby and conversation with a documentary filmmaker and tv news producer who is currently in production on the documentary nuclear insecurity. without further ado, please give them a warm welcome. [applause] >> kia, helen. how are you?

>> let's start at the beginning. what motivated you to write the book? >> it was actually kind of happened and. a colleague of mine used to cover national security was working on a piece about how the nuclear arsenal in the u.s. is aging and while she was working on this piece, three-piece act to this broke into those weapons facility in east tennessee. that story didn't fit into what she was reporting on, but she thought someone should write about it. it made its way up to me. i'm a writer at the "washington post" so i wrote out a range of topics. it seemed like a very curious, weird story and is just going to be a normal article about an 82-year-old catholic sister. they got so far into one of the

most secure facilities in the u.s. where we store all of our highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. as i started to report i'm not an educated myself on the topic to tell the story in a responsible way, i realized it was a far larger story to tell with more concepts needed in a normal kind of story the newspaper would allow. i think what motivated me initially was how much i didn't know about it. you could say it was a sense of guilt. i knew nothing about the u.s. nuclear arsenal, what with done what i'm, what we do with them now and in the future. i thought they were maybe some people like that besides me who could benefit from that contact but also this interesting dory. a kind of false darted because of guilt for not knowing more about it.

>> speaking of not knowing more about it, the facility that these three act to this penetrated is a very important place in the united states. tell us more about what y-12 is. >> sure. facility they broke into was the national security complex, which sounds very banal and it sounds like it is doing a useful thing, which some of you say it is doing useful things. but it is beside at which we enriched all of the uranium for the bomb that was dropped almost 71 years ago. it was a facility created during the manhattan project to enrich uranium. that was its first mission and its mission since then is diversified, but it's always been in support of the arsenal. we've done machine work for

nuclear weapons they are. they no longer in which uranium, but they story. they've got all the way to the facility next door. >> that is the highly enriched uranium facility. so the facility that they actually were able to reach is a very important one. >> yacht, the highly enriched uranium material facility. it's a big storehouse for the type of fuel we use. tons of it. the fact amount is classified. a lot of people say it's the greatest fissile material on the planet. so it's a pretty important and dangerous building. >> to three people really a hard if you're found, three act based to begin your boat with a very dramatic and i've been preparing to undertake their action.

let's talk a little bit about who these three people are. >> sure. the three activists the book focuses on, mr. makin writes, they are all lifelong christian and peace activists. mr. makin was 82 at the time. she is 86 now and though going strong. she was born in manhattan, raised in manhattan. she was born during the depression and grub as the manhattan project was getting going at columbia university. she became a catholic sister and she spent 40 years teaching in africa. building schools, teaching biology in nigeria. when she decided to retire, she came back to the u.s. and instead of taking it easy, decided to break into one of the

most secure facilities on the planet. and her two compatriots, a vietnam veteran, and lived in washington for 20 years now at the catholic worker house in washington and greg is from iowa and he is a longtime act of it committed actions like this and by action kids breaking the weapons facility. this action and white 12 and i think the sixth action he served multiple years in prison for committing this action. they came together and decided this was the site to do it and the three of them hiked over in the middle of the night. four years ago this weekend

actually. they got as far as they did on the reason where all sitting here right now. >> when the story of roe, obviously it was shocking because y-12 is where other countries bring their nuclear materials for his keeping. as you detail in the book there were four separate congressional hearings to get to the bottom of how this could happen, how an 82-year-old catholic nun could test the facility is. so when that story broke there is a tremendous amount of interest in getting to the problem of how this could happen. there were four separate congressional hearings and then you'd get a lot of great reporting on what would wrong on july 28, 2012 and allowed this to happen. what did go wrong? >> the >> everything that could go

wrong did go wrong. this is a place run by private contract years. the department of energy of the federal department said that the odeon of warheads are not deployed, and meaning a missile somewhere. these contract there is, there is a culture of complacency at the site. it was a sight that was dealing with the dozen plus false alarms every day caused by deer and the wind and foliage. and so when these three act to this broke in, they were breaking into his site it was so used the alarms going off that it really didn't matter that they were going off even in the middle of the night. so despite the fact that the alliance or the alliance or not show the pathway of intrusion, they were dismissed because of this culture with false alarm.

that is really the main reason. it also came out that the security camera that was supposed to cover the area when they were intruding was not working at all. in fact, there were multiple cameras around the area that were not working. and so, you know, this incident was set up to have been basically. >> wasn't a true that they were not working for six months or so? >> is a maintenance backlog. cameras wouldn't be fixed for months. obviously there is also an issue that was not taking care of. good maintenance issues with language. no one dare really thought anything like this would have been. everything got lost in paperwork and bureaucracy and coming in now, how to capitalize on the

site that have gotten very lax. >> give us a sense of house. a security breach it was. he talked to a lot of backs are his. what could've happened if these were not passed this? >> there's some people, some security asked her to say but the time this act to decide just outside this building, if they had wanted to call mayhem, they could have brought explosives with them, blowing a hole in the wall of the facility, hiding enriched uranium. i have to stress that the chances of this scenario are extremely small. if you did to properly formed chunks of uranium, you can take a 50-pound chunk of highly enriched uranium and drop it from the college a nuclear explosion. the chances of that happening are very, very land, but you

could argue the chances of an 82-year-old nun breaking into the most secure facility is pretty fun, too. so that was the scenario that people could get into this building and cause this kind of distraction. of course the building was designed to withstand the impact of the jet. whether or not a band of terrorists could have an explosion that could get into the building, that is highly unlikely. i always go back to these people going as far as they did. one has to think about nightmare scenarios. on a less serious level by level of less magnitude, breaking into this site could've caused harm to the act to this. it could've been a misunderstanding and overreaction and people could have gotten killed. they cut to a zone of the facility is a lethal force

authorized, meaning the guard for sarah could've shot them dead. if you're in there, that could happen. that's another difference scenario. the >> let's run the subject to little bit and talk about nuclear weapons in general. you do give this very analysis of the whole issue. how many nuclear weapons do we have in the world right now in how many in the united states? [inaudible] last night's >> also 15,000 nuclear weapons on the planet right now. of course they are divided into weapons awaited that are retired and they are divided into weapons that are deployed and not deployed. the total number is 15,000 about 92% of those are possessed by the u.s. and russia.

the right guys the right not to speak, the u.s. has 2000 nuclear weapons that are deployed, which means that they are sitting on the top of the missile ready to fly, both in the upper plains region of the united states in north dakota, montana, nebraska and colorado and also patrolling the pacific and atlantic. loaded and ready to go. the closest one to new york would depend on whether submarines are. nuclear weapons? no. in connecticut and make a manufacturer and submarines occasionally. the closest might be in the ocean right now. >> what is the system in the u.s. are securing our nuclear weapons? you do some really great reporting about the contractors versus the federal government overseers, the department of

people. talk about that? >> nuclear weapons are not on the bomber or not in submarines. there's the custody of the department of energy, which i didn't even know when i began reporting on it. i thought the department of energy dealt with the power grid and renewable energy. one of the main missions is nuclear weapons and nuclear material. as has been the case for many decades, this is true of a lot of the government. we hire federal contractors to do this highly specialized work. so there are plenty of department of energy sites around the country that technically belong but are run by for-profit corporations. they kind of police themselves and hear their own oversight and cut corners because they have

for-profit corporations. i would argue that there's anywhere you don't want to cut corners is protecting this kind of material. but this is the system in place. most of the sites are run by these companies. either the management and operations of the site themselves for the security force, the manpower force. you also detailed because of the way the system is set up with the private contract tours of the federal managers, there are glaring cases of waste and the comic case in point the new facility that is going up as y-12. tell us about that. >> this question these activists rode into. one of the reasons they chose the site was because of a construction project which has been underway for years now and

it's called the uranium processing facility. they knew the site was planned was over budget and running behind agile in constructing the facility was one way the u.s. is reinvesting its nuclear arsenal and so they said we are going to break into the site to call attention to the project which was supposed to originally be $3 million then it became $6 billion now it's $20 billion. it has been quite a catastrophe. they spent tens of millions of dollars on the design phase of this facility before they realized they had designed the facility with ceiling that were too short for the machinery that had to go in there. there's really been no big penalty for the contract nurse in charge of it.

this kind of run amok, so apart from being a waste of tax they are dollars, this act is too broken to the facility say we should not be building the buildings anyway because we don't need state-of-the-art facilities for weapons we should be getting rid of. >> )-right-paren i think he's paying the book originally the cost of uranium processing facility was supposed to be 600,000 to a billion dollars in 2005 but then acquitted 19,000,000,019,000,000,000 they found out it is 13 feet to low and that design defect cost something like half a million dollars. >> i think more than that. it's funny people use that as a way to criticize the contractor system. you have for-profit contract is running the show without proper oversight. this mistakes will be made and will collect their fees.

>> speaking about money, the united states is about to make a huge investment in this nuclear arsenal. tell us about that. >> where i want has to for the warheads, the bombs themselves in the delivery system. there is a lot of terminology in the field that is kind of a nerd. the delivery system is the thing that brings these bombs to where they are going. there's an aircraft, submarines, that kind of thing. we are kind of long past due for refurbishing them. last time we have a wholesale recapitalization of the modernization of these weapons and so if we are going to can tv or to possess them, they have to work and be safe and secure. of course that is what the government is saying. there is an estimate that says

we'll be spending $1 trillion over the next 30 years to do that, to make new submarines, new bombers, new intercontinental ballistic missiles and a lot of people think that is an absurd amount that if we had pledged to get rid of them, which we did was sign the non-proliferation treaty, committing to spend a trillion dollars in the next 30 years is not a good-faith move. there's plenty of people in shooting officials in washington who say this is an absurd amount. there is a better way to do it. do we need to deliver weapons they seek, by air, by land. can we go down to just submarines and bombers? why do we need north dakota, montana. can you get rid of some of this and still made her quote,

unquote security objectives. i don't think they get a lot these days, but if they do it's because of the price tag. the money is what can get through people that are otherwise paying attention. >> i was going to ask you, we just got through the primary season and we are in the of a presidential campaign and yet we haven't heard very much about this show you dollars potential investment. why do you think that is? >> a couple of reasons. i should first note during a presidential campaign, we revert to the button. as a society, as a culture, we recognize subconsciously that is the preeminent power rear of the someone to possess ultimately. the nuclear weapons that we have are essentially under the control of one person come in the commander-in-chief is the

person cannot the rest soul authorizer. so it's funny how we may not talk in detail the one we talk about certain candidates, we talk about very comfortable with this and having their finger on the button. but the symbolism is rare. as far as these two candidates currently, trump has said and will come to no surprise that he will sound contradict jury about this. at the same time, he is, he said maybe south korea should have their own. which flies in the face of many decades of non-proliferation ideology. so in a way you make some people start talking about it because it is somewhat inflammatory rhetoric. the only time i heard hillary clinton talk about the money, the modernization is i can't remember what organization they were from, but someone said you

think we should he spending a trillion dollars on this modernization program? she was shaking hands and said the ad doesn't make much sense. i'll have to think about it kind of kept going. that's the only time someone has asked her directly or in front of the camera about it. the official democratic platform was just arrived at last we said that while we are going to maintain the arsenal, way to look at the funding of it. so it is the credit platform. as far as why we don't talk about it more, i know this is a long answer. but i think there's three reasons we don't talk about it as a culture anymore. i was more in 1983. i don't remember the cold war. they're a generation that went through it formerly, nuclear weapons with the soviet union

and this mattered more to everyone. i did not have that kind of asked. it's growing out. i think that is one reason that there's multiple generations not based in a culture where you could be annihilated at any minute. i think that is one thing. the other is what these weapons can do is so immense that it's almost abstract. they have not been demonstrated in any way in many decades. they have not been used in combat 71 years. they have not been detonated aboveground in 1963. the consequences of the use of these weapons is abstract and kind of hidden at this point. the third and final 10 and this is the wall i ran into and maybe you did, too. it is a highly technical

complicated, classified round. it is not an easy topic to understand and to get information from. it has been like that is the manhattan project. you have to kind of fight your way through a lot of secret information and also a lot of jargon, too. the kind of language used to talk about nuclear weapons kind of makes it opaque and makes it seem like machines. for those reasons, they are easy to ignore and not be exposed to. >> i do think the fund commission to study to look at why people are not engaged on this issue. one of the points that was raised as people are paralyzed by it. as you pointed out, the issue is so a man and so difficult to wrap your head around that

people of faith unless the politicians are somebody at a higher pay grade deal with this, not me. the other thing is nuclear weapons, for example, some video games use nuclear weapons so people equate them with the positive, using a weapon to cap your enemy is what i'm positively some instances. the mac if you look at movies that came out during the cold war, nuclear weapons for the things that were terrible. you think about the day after on television. the movies become the devices to save the day that we've designed. in popular culture there is a narrative that they are more a plot device than anything. one other thing i think that is important in and this is a not scientific conclusion that i

came to myself from working on this i think every generation navy has enough raise base and we're talking about being paralyzed by some rain. enough brains is to grapple with one crisis at a time. it's environmental, climate change, slowly removing hot point of no return. that is enough to think about it and if you want to throw on top of that the fact that actually we could be asked english instantly instead of gradually will ruin your whole day. i don't fault people for not thinking a lot about it. the last thing i'll say about it is you talk about people than in the government take care of it, but plenty of people in congress have no idea. i forget who did this.

it might've been a nonprofit who works against nuclear weapons would find politicians, congressmen on the street and say how many nuclear weapons to a house. the answers were not right. there were people that should know this but don't. these are elected officials in charge of funding who are not quite sure how many we have. >> well, one that most of us do that was the number of nuclear weapons have dropped dramatically since the cold war. at the height of the cold war we had something like 60,000 or so. 70,000. my question is this. we have a reduced stockpile. as the cost drops with the numbers? >> it is not. it's gone up. if we're adjusting for inflation has gone up to the bombing of warheads has gone down. the cost to maintain that and modernize them has gone out.

which i think would concern any normal tax paying citizen. there's been a lot of great work done by non-proliferation folks to decrease the number of warheads on the planet that's really good and important work. the u.s. government says we have reduced our start pile to 85%. that is good work being done. right now because the modernization program, the warheads that we do have, we have introduced and in making them better, making them more precise, more customizable. you can say that even though the number has gone down, the capability of them is more and more refined. you could argue that the work is continuing at that pace even though there is this reduction.

>> let's talk a little bit about the capability of modern-day ceremonial weapons. you gave a very interesting example of the bomb in hiroshima and how much has that fissile material been used and not tom? you compare this to the bomb that dropped on hiroshima killed 160,000 people. a used 141,000 pounds in only two pounds actually underwent. compare that to modern-day nuclear weapons. how powerful are they? >> sure, the bomb that fell as the total amount of highly enriched her brain and on the amount that underwent was about two pounds. you can destroy the city.

you need all that uranium, but the amount i've really detonate his two pounds a day, kind of extraordinary. the most powerful nuclear warhead that we deployed right now is 20 times as powerful as the one in hiroshima. you might argue that the one liz trotta sufficient to to render a city incapacitated. we have what did they do that 20 times over. we have far more powerful weapons, too. we had detonated weapons in the pacific that were a thousand times the power of in hiroshima bomb, whose fallout went all around the planet. we used to have far, far greater in terms of yield nuclear weapons. the most powerful one was hiroshima good >> i want to pick up on the

climate issue because you talked about how so many people today are engaged in that. in the book, you make a connection between climate change and its connection to regional new layer war. let's talk about that a little bit. >> sure, the example that his views as india and pakistan which are both nuclear armed states. he talked to most security experts and i think there's some kind of nuclear warfare that starts their comment that are growing the size of the nuclear arsenal, that are historically not good friends and who have territory between them. the person that i quote in the book is talking about kind of developing a glacier in the availability of fresh water. you know, agriculture indication to fight over food and water and

not error sparks a conventional military exchange that could escalate into nuclear exchange in there are climatologists that say if 100 nuclear weapons are exchanged in this regional warfare in india and pakistan at that killed 2 billion people and not just because the detonation of the weapon, because of the set and debris in the atmosphere and agriculture. a lot of people try to make noise and remind people that even the two countries might exchange nuclear weapons that affects the whole planet and we should treat it as such. that is one specific instance of how changing climate and agriculture could inflame tensions that we should nuclear conflict that could be bad for everyone. >> right. the scientists are saying a regional war between india and pakistan would create a mini ice age affecting us here. >> at the low concept in the

80s that the nuclear winter. essentially a mini nuke leer winter with 15,000 on the planet. you have to cut up -- you have millions of people at risk. >> throughout the book, darius is seen of secrecy that you talk about. it was one portion you're talking about the manhattan project which of course was the secret project since we were trying to create the bomb. the level of secrecy was intense. you talk about the high school girls who are hired to work there to operate the machinery that they're actually making ice cream every time they would turn however, what was interesting to me in the book is you found out

even today the secrecy continues to pervade y-12. talk about that a little bit. >> always been very secretive. the modern classification system is classifying information started during the manhattan project because they had to protect the secrets. it is actually the secrecy of bad the first kind of launched itself. she lived in a building full of columbia university is who are working on the project. she recalled as a young girl people talking about secret work in someone's father across the hall working on something that he can't talk about it to his wife and children. she remembers thinking that doesn't make any sense mimicking secretive like that must not be a good thing. that motivated her from the get-go. the u.s. is a lot more open and transparent about it nuclear

arsenal. of the world of which there are nine, we do a decent job being a transparent stop while numbers, about our policy of using them or not you see men. but still, getting information is like pulling teeth. i had to file my share of freedom of information request to get information from the department of energy. one in particular that i filed in 2013 or 2014 took two years to get a wreath on. i was asking for a document. i got the document inside gray, took two years but i caught it. it was 100 pages in every single one was blacked out. it took them two years to give me completely redacted document. big battle is traced the bureaucracy of it, the slow-moving nature of that, but also the fact that there is

still this information today, including essentially fabricated to support the facility is off to the select into. oak ridge, tennessee. every year they had a secret city festival. it is still a place where jumping ahead to these activist went to trial. and of course you have to do jury selection. part of jury selection is figuring out, do they have any connection to this site. if they have a family working at a campy part of this jury. i was there for jury selection in the lawyers are asking a committee of anyone connected to the site? my father and my uncle worked there. the jurors say i'm not really sure. this is in 23rd team. it is still very much a secretive round. it's hard to get information but for me in particular that was the motivating her.

you can't have intelligent voting to send if the government keeps information. >> that surplus back to sister mica and greg and mike. tell us what usher says. >> the actions are kind of an entrusted strain of several resistive that began in 1980. dan barry ken and others decided that what was necessary in order to call public attention into nuclear weapons was breaking into these facilities. this is the first such action before reagan was elected in 1980. there have been many cents am the one that i detail in the book was the most recent one in 2012. the idea was to take the words on the book of isaiah in the

bible, which is we should serious and permanent permanent transfer of devices aboard and devices that use, was really the kind of mantra that these activist and this is the word they use, and flashed the word of god. you know, the word of the prophet isaiah which as we are going to go into these weapons sites and we going to start chipping away. it is symbolic in some way, but it also literal. they brought sledgehammers with them. they were trying to get into the building, but they're chipping away at the foundation because they believe the words of isaiah are something people should be doing in real life. in their mind, that was the first step in transforming the highly funded operation into a place that doesn't manufacture and maintain bombs, but maintained that match --

manufactures and. this is kind of the latest in the movement which began in 1880. >> in my film, i have two actions that i look at. one is about sister mica and an earlier one that occurred in 2009 at the largest and most important nuclear weapons based in the united state is the nuclear submarine base near seattle that has an estimated 1300 warheads. in that case, five activists all over the age of 60, including a catholic nun and priest in their 80s broke into the base and are able to get to at the nuclear weapons are stored. it turns out that incident or that action inspired mr. meek and to her action. >> that's kind of how it works. they make this heavy-handed point in the book. it's a chain reaction among

people. they cause a reaction that far outpaced those the size of a non. you know, you could look at people the same way. individual actions. sister and montgomery who was enough action in washington state in 2009. sister mica announced for trial in tacoma, washing and said this is amazing. i have to do one of these myself. she went and did a couple years later. >> what is interesting is in both cases the activists in the trial in tacoma and in knoxville, they tried to raise the same defense and in both cases they were shut down. let's talk about that. >> so the action, breaking into a place is one part. the other part is actual trial. i think i can safely say on behalf of these activist that it's important to get these issues into a court of law because they believe they are in

accordance with a higher law in the u.s. is doing something illegal by possessing and deploying i'm essentially threatening to use these weapons. some of the arguments they may try and bring it to court are things like justification defense if they had to act because they are a citizen in a country created an international war crime. they bring up something called the necessity defense, where we had to act because there is danger from its weapons. arguments are thrown out in pretrial hearings by any judge. but you really believe that they are the ones complying with the law by doing these illegal things. it is their duty as citizens to object and they believe this is rooted in the norberg principle, that were crafted if your

country is doing something illegally, you should stand up and check to and be counted. that is kind of what they do during the trial phase or >> interest in the enough, randall clarke had testified in pretrial hearing in both cases. in the case of the people on the west coast, in my film there is a nuclear submarine captain who talks about how he feels now that he's retired. he has been in the navy for 30 years. using one of these weapons does violate humanitarian law or the law above conflict because weapons cannot be contained. they cannot distribute between combatants and noncombatants. they destroy the environment. they are disproportionately horrible at any rate. so they would try to raise defenses and were not allowed to. >> nuclear weapons are the only weapons of mass deception not

end by international law. which is really aimed to you badmouth a slightly lesser weapons of mass destruction, but you don't ban what is distract you. you are absolutely right. the law of proportionate armed conflict. being able to control what these weapons do in time and space. i mentioned earlier you cannot to countries that exchange nuclear weapons that affect people outside of the country and one might argue totally disrupts the law of war and therefore they should be illegal under international law. >> okay. i want to know the little bit closer to modern times. president obama gave that same speech in prague in 2009 where he committed the united states to a pursuing a world without nuclear weapons than many believe that won him the nobel peace prize. how do you assess progress on the issue?

>> well, i think it is mixed. president obama hasn't had nuclear weapons on his brave as he was in college. i mean, he went to columbia. a million people marched in central park when he was against nuclear weapons in 1982. he wrote his senior thesis on nuclear weapons and non-proliferation. when he got to the senate decades later, he was very interested. he would travel with other senators to former soviet state. you could tell he was concerned about the protection of fissile material. and so, he shows us the topic for his first speech in 2009, you know, that we should be seeking peace and security of the world and he did win a peace prize because of it you the citation from the committee says it's worked against the clear

weapons. within a year, in order to get the new s.t.a.r.t. treaty ratified with russia, he essentially had to endorse a modernization plan, otherwise the senate which is republican control would not ratify this treaty. does a compromise. he said a few ratify this i will say yes, we should reinvest in their mall. for someone who seems so peace minded and so aware of what nuclear weapons can do, he presided over this decision to recommit to them. at the same time, he looks like he's been at the first president since reagan not to have another nation of the world join the nuclear club and a lot of people give him credit for the iran deal, which we can talk about until the cows come home for good and bad of that. at least it is designed and appears to be working in terms of preventing iran from getting nuclear weapons in a matter of months which is the case before

him so there's a lot of people who think that is a great idea. he's also hosted for nuclear security summits which were designed to bring leaders of the world to conferences to talk about securing the material. so he's done a lot to keep the world somewhat focused on this. but at the same time, a lot of people including act to this day because you are endorsing and oversaw this recommitment to these weapons that they -- the we should be gotten rid of. better than a president who wasn't paying any attention at all. >> , it's time do we have? >> time for a couple more. >> in this book, you travel to the marshall islands and you

talk about a lawsuit that is now underway. let's talk about the marshall islands. >> i mentioned we used to do testing in the pacific and we did that in the marshall islands, which is an island nation can equal distance between hawaii, australia and japan. for 12 years we did offer a big nuclear testing there. because it was so remote because it was off people's radar. if you were to parcel out the power -- the total power of these weapons that we detonated the evenly over 12 years, it was the equivalent of setting up 1.6 bombs every day for 12 years. kind of hard to wrap your head around. we were testing weapons of such size that the life and music oceans have seen thousands of miles away in japan it's insane.

fallout from these explosions was detected in cattle. these are kind of biblical. anyway, we did that for 12 years. you would imagine that's not very good for the people who have people who happen to be living there. all these years later, they decided to sue the u.s. and the other nuclear armed they. and not for compensation because the paid compensation to them to say we are sorry for what they did. here is some money. but they filed the lawsuit a couple years ago on principle and they said, you know, we are pretty unique in the world because these detonations of the conduct that there said we believed that gives us a moral, legal authority to do the

nuclear armed nation for treaty noncompliance with the non-proliferation treaty in the late 60s says exchange for a nation not pursuing their own nuclear weapons that nuclear armed states will get rid of fares. the grand bargain. that is not happen. we reduced the stock pile, but it dead years and we have not reached any kind of design. so enough is enough. if some publicity gets awareness, but also on principle wheeler either filed this lawsuit in the international court of justice. i just think it's an under told story. i was so floored that the testing we did there i felt like they should be part of the story. in addition to that, it made sense because they are alleging

the u.s. is in violation of the treaty just like sister megyn, michael were alleging. with its disarmament pledges breaking into the site as the marshall islands, they are not in good states. we are going to sue them. i felt a connect to the issue between the small nation in the pacific and the three hot to this who did this action. >> that brings us to the treaty that you just brought up. the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which is the treaty that made this grand bargain. the nuclear weapons states promise to give up their weapons in exchange for the non-leer weapons are developing there. every five years it is reviewed. last year was the review conference which you covered. you write in the book that if

you take us inside the review conference, you describe it as a carnival of did will not and agitators all colliding in the general assembly building for the first time in five years. tell us what happened at the review conference last year? >> the treaty has been around for decades. one gets together to review progress. every reaching the goals we've set for ourselves and so the latest one was in may of last year. as it came time, the marshall islands allegation is better. outside of the u.n. and inside the u.n. to move things forward. and no, they were to goals of this review conference and one is to come up with a length of action items to further this treaty somehow. that was kind of the goal of it.

it is a document that prescribes what is done in the future. every single delegation, 191. there is one country that objects to this document and you've got to wait another five years to have another to do list. this past may there was -- it kind of fell apart. it's a slow process, lots of negotiation, lots of languages whose responsible for what, who was sacked in good faith and all of that. at the end of it, the u.s. and canada said we can't sign off on the documents. >> there is a cliffhanger regarding a nuclear weapons free zone in the middle east. >> this gets real wonky. i'm happy to take your questions, too. the thing that tripped

everything up as there are countries that wanted to put language into the document saying we need to establish a nuclear weapons free zone in the middle east. so we kind of over the years have done snail regional bands. no nuclear weapons by international in america and africa. this was the next step to have a nuclear weapons free zone in the middle east and countries like egypt. we want to start that process to a rise in this region and they wanted to do it really, really fast. the problem with that if israel has nuclear weapons and although they have not publicly admitted to it, they have about 80 nuclear weapons. they are the only nation in the middle east in a nuclear armed

state and of course the u.s. has been a strong ally of israel, which is not sign. so they weren't officially they are. anyway, this middle east free zone was the thing that tripped everything out. it was other middle eastern nations wanting the language in their and alleys of israel saying this is moving too fast. all regional act does have to be at the table for this. i'm the last day of the process, this painstaking process that the to-do list saying here are the next steps to getting rid of nuclear weapons. it all fell apart. ..

>> we're never going to get rid of them as long as the stated u.s. policy is -- and this is written down, it's official white house policy. i'm paraphrasing, but as long as nuclear weapons exist be, we will maintain an arsenal of them. that, to me, seems like a paradox. they're never going to go away. so there is this movement of

countries saying we waited long enough, we waited 40 plus years after this treaty was signed, and so we're going to organize a convention and ban them, get together 100-plus nations and say these weapons are not to be possessed because they're in violation of international law. it's kind of what happened in ottawa in 1996. the u.s. was not at the ottawa convention, but other countries banned classs of weapons of mass destruction. and that established a norm that the u.s. has abided by since. and so that is the goal of this movement that started a couple years ago, is these countries are working and maybe in a year or two they might say, okay, we're signing these treaties ourself. doesn't matter that the united states is not here, that russia's not here. these weapons are banned, and we hope that the nuclear-armed states catch up. >> well, thank you very much. [applause]

>> questions. >> any questions? >> [inaudible] the same question -- [inaudible] but i think it's relevant for a larger audience which is, it's a political question. how -- if you were to ask every political leader in the world are you against nuclear weapons, most of them would say they're horrible except maybe the guy in north korea who likes them. but given the fact that -- [inaudible] there's always one who has it. what's, i mean, you gave a good answer, but i want to -- [inaudible] how do we get that process started? if he's got it, they have it, iranians got it, we have to have it. north korea has, we have it.

so that's that conundrum. and unless that's spoken to, there's no way. >> right. the question is how do you get rid of them if, you know, the policy is if someone else has it, we have to have it. and i don't know the answer to that. the if i did, i would get a peace prize. [laughter] you know, it's -- i don't know. i don't know what it would take. because, you know, we won't reduce, you know, the pentagon has said we have, we can reduce the amount of our deployed nuke watches by a third and still -- weapons by a third, but we won't get rid of those weapons unless russia does the same thing. and i think that encapsulates this conundrum. you know, berriesinging nothing -- berriesinging nothing disturb by risking nothing, but russia won't do it.

i think it would take a move like that, you know? a president saying, well, you know, russia's not going to work with us right now, but we don't news these weapons, and in good faith we are getting rid of one-third of our stockpile. if congress doesn't provide the funding to do that, you know, there's checks and balances. it's not like the president can say we're getting rid of these because it's going to require money to get rid of them. so i don't know. i mean, every single u.s. president since the dawn of the atomic era has talked publicly about how nuclear weapons are the worst thing in the world, and they should never be used. jfk talking about the sword of damocles hanging overhead, ronald reagan saying nuclear war cannot be won, but every single president has decided, made a decision to either grow the arsenal or improve the arsenal in some way. so i don't know how you break

that, but it does seem to be something that is a conundrum that is inherited by each president. and, you know, i tried for a year to get an interview with president obama, because i want to know what it's like to be in that position of authority and how to compromise with what you believe in. because i, you know, everything about his life says he would love to just goat rid of -- get rid of these weapons. but when you reach that position of authority, it becomes less easy to do. and i would love for him to put into words that frustration. i can only imagine he's very frustrated that he can't do more than he's already done. how do you resolve that? i don't know. i just know that it seems to be endemic to the office of the president. do you have any thoughts? >> well, i do think that there are verification systems that are being worked on that would give assurances to countries when nuclear weapons are removed

that, in fact, you know, no one's cheating. i know that sam nunn's group is working on that verification. >> former georgia senator. >> former armed services committee chairman who heads up the nuclear threat initiative. they're working on developing a verification process so that if, let's say, country x says we're reducing our stockpile by, you know, i don't know, a hundred weapons, you can actually verify that. i think what you're saying is that how can you get rid of your weapons and then, you know, russia doesn't. so you'd be left without your weapons, is that your point? yeah. >> [inaudible] >> china or, yeah. but i do feel that, you know, united states leads the world, i believe. and i think the point that a lot of people don't miss is that, yeah, we have our weapons pointed at russia, but they have

their weapons pointed at us too. so it is in our interest, i believe, and i, you know, experts have told me this too, that it is in our interest to actually lower the number because if we take that initial step like you're talking about, then the russians will follow suit because we have more than enough weapons to blow the world up several times over. and i think, i think the weapon that -- the w88, i think that weapon is 30 times the hiroshima bomb. >> oh, is it? okay. >> so just one of those bombs dropping on new york city would kill 1.6 million people in one fell swoop. we're talking about weapons that are magnitude times more powerful than the ones dropped in hiroshima. but to answer your question, i think that the united states can lead on this as it has in so many other areas.

and, you know, i do believe that this incremental reduction in weapons is good and warheads is good. but as dan pointed out, after 45 years a lot of these countries that have been patiently waiting for the nuclear weapon states to fulfill their promise, the promise that they made under the treaty, are becoming very impatient. and, you know, justifiably so. and they're saying, okay, well, we're going to take our own steps to do something. but to answer your question, i think a verification regime can be established that would give assurances to the countries that that reduce their weapons that, in fact, there's no cheating going on. >> [inaudible] >> sanders? i don't know, has he said anything about it? >> i actually don't know. >> yeah. >> i feel like it's been underdiscussed in the campaign. >> yeah. any other questions?

>> talk about the challenges that civil society faces. or really just the populace in general -- [inaudible] in '81, '82, there was a million people in central park, the is there even -- [inaudible] do you have any faith this is popular again, reactivating a popular movement around nuclear weapons? and how? >> the question is, you know, we had a million people in central park in 1982, you know, resisting, protesting nuclear weapons. is that possible today. and the answer if you had asked me two or three years ago, i would have said it seems impossible. but then i followed a state department official to europe a year and a half ago to one of these conferences on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons. and this was a conference that has multiple government officials at from different countries and had a lot of young

people, especially a lot of young europeans. and they were all there, you know, thousands talking about the impact that these weapons would have if used. and i had not detected that kind of interest and momentum in the u.s., but it certainly exists abroad, and those conferences yielded this movement of countries that have signed on to eventually have some kind of ban convention. and so i think that that is the strategy now. it's not necessarily marching on central park, but it is getting partners, partner countries together to establish a ban that then establishes a norm saying that can be used, essentially, to shame the u.s. and other nuclear countries saying, well, we have this ban now, you know? you're way behind the times here, and you're making the world less safe for us. so, yeah, is there going to be a huge march? probably not. but there is this movement that's happening kind of more inside the system.

>> [inaudible] >> it was sparked in 2010 by norwegian officials and by a non-governmental organization called the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons. and it was government officials and activists and people from civil society saying we need a different strategy, and and we need to take back these weapons from that tech no-strategic, jargonistic thing where you talk about stockpiles and treaties, and it's all very kind of wonky. and we need to remind people what these can actually do and what they're made for, which is to kill millions of people. so from those conversations came these conferences where states attended and talked about what happens s. and from those conferences came this movement. and from this movement might come a ban. so that's -- it kind of, again, we go back to that chain reaction. we start small, and it grows into something that has a massive impact.

>> i think the biggest problem that i've seen on this issue is lack of public awareness. people just are not, it's not on their radar, and i think that if there could be a movement that you, you know, referred to, that would really, you know, turn politicians on. but it's not this right now. it's not there right now. >> i think we have time for just one more question. and i think i'm going to take that privilege. [laughter] which is that i'm wondering if you can draw the connection between the conversation around nuclear weapons and the conversation around nuclear energy, especially we've seen with, you know, a few years ago in japan with fukushima the

fragility of the system of nuclear energy and the dangers of that. and has that sparked any conversation around the damage nuclear weapons can cause? >> uh-huh. so i'll preface my answer with saying that i deliberately focused on weapons for the book, because i didn't want the book to be 1200 pages long. and, you know, i've gotten some flak from activists who say these are connected, we have to talk about both at the same time. but, you know, as a non-activist, as just a curious citizen, i wanted to focus for brevity's sake on the side of nuclear energy designed to kill people. you know, you could argue that nuclear energy in a power plant is actually designed to help people. a lot of people would say that's not the case, it's too dangerous, the effects are

actually harmful to people, and i get that, but the intent is a little more more in a gray arean the weapons that are supposed to annihilate. so for the sake of the story, i focused just on weapons. but in the title of the book, you know, i titled it "almighty" because after the first atomic test ever 71 years ago month in new mexico, and i quote this gentleman in the book, he said -- and i'll paraphrase, but he said, you know, now we have powers. humanity has powers here to four reserved -- heretofore reserved for the almighty x. a constant source of concern and a theme for this book is human beings are frail. they make mistakes. if a human being is involved, nothing is 100%. anything created by a human being is not 100%.

any machine breaks down, anything can go wrong. the frailty of humanity is involved. and so that's kind of where i sit in terms of an opinion on this. i say nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, this force that is so god-like being controlled by man and by man's creation, you shouldn't be surprised when something goes wrong. and i think that is the question we have to ask ourself is, is it worth that risk, is it worth, you know, every couple of years, every couple generations having a disaster like fukushima. is it worth continuing to push our luck with accidents involving nuclear weapons or miscalculations, you know? and that's where i came back to every time, is human beings are frail be, make mistakes and build faulty machines. and do we really think the risk and the harm that comes from these things and how they function, is it worth the good they can do?