In Tuesday’s State of the Union address, President Donald Trump called for a modernization and rebuilding of our nuclear arsenal. Daniel Ellsberg, most notable for leaking the Pentagon Papers in 1971, recently revealed new secrets he kept while working as a government consultant at the RAND Corporation in his new book The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. He joins Michele and Igor to discuss the real threat of nuclear destruction, whether President Trump is fit to operate control of our arsenal, the recent false alarms in Hawaii and Japan, and why they are proof nuclear war may come by human error. Plus, Thinking CAP national security correspondent Mike Fuchs, also former deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, breaks down President Trump’s speech on Tuesday and the story behind the sudden reversal on Trump’s pick of Victor Cha to be the U.S. envoy to South Korea.
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Michele Jawando is a vice president at the Center for American Progress. Igor Volsky is a vice president at the Center. Sally Tucker is the radio coordinator for Communications at the Center. Rachel Rosen is the senior director of Broadcast Communications at the Center. Michael Fuchs is a senior fellow at the Center.