Did those mistakes have any impact on the CIA at the time?

So it is absolutely correct that the agency missed some big things.

I do want to say a kind word for the agency, though, in the sense that these were very early days of technical intelligence.

There were no intelligence satellites.

We had these spy planes, the U-2 planes, that... took pictures.

The moment they got the photographs, they were very quickly able to say, oh my goodness, these are nuclear missiles under construction because they had seen that type of missile in the Soviet Union before.

So what Khrushchev wanted to do is to present Kennedy with something that was already done.

So what should we learn today?

How important do you think that decision was, and how comfortable should we be that the decision to use a nuclear weapon rests with a single person, even if it is the president of the United States?

Well, as Alex said, Truman's role was really to say, "Wait, stop doing more atomic bombing unless I, the president, authorize it." But there was a broader shift as well that the scientists involved in the Manhattan Project lobbied for, which was, "Let's not give this weapon entirely to the military.

This is a political weapon, a weapon that threatens all of human civilization.

This should be controlled by the political leadership." Once they're ready to go, they're in the military's hands, but still, you have one person in charge of decisions that might lead to the deaths of tens of millions or hundreds of millions of human beings, and the destruction of much of civilization as we know it.

I think that's crazy.

I think that these kinds of decisions need to be made by some kind of group.

It's just crazy to make decisions about whether to launch nuclear weapons in minutes.

If an American government was preparing to use the bomb today, what do you estimate would be the opposition to its use, A, among scientists, and B, among the general public?

And what kinds of rules or safeguards perhaps could be put into a deal that would prevent Saudi Arabia from using this technology to develop weapons versus th- their, the goal of developing a civilian nuclear program?

Well, unfortunately, the Trump administration dropped an insistence on what r- the United States has been insisting with many countries that they accept the broader set of international inspections included in what's called the additional protocol.

Instead, the Trump administration, uh, has worked out a, uh, bilateral US/Saudi set of inspection arrangements that haven't yet been revealed to the public exactly what they are, but apply only to what the US would provide, not to the overall nuclear program in Saudi Arabia.

What happens if Saudi Arabia were to begin working on a weapon in secret? Is there anything that the United States or anyone else could do to stop them?

Well, there is a global effort to stem the spread of nuclear weapons that has been strikingly successful.

There's only nine states that have nuclear arms today, uh, and US, uh, intelligence and US pressure and US military capabilities have been an important part of that global effort.

I think it's very likely that if Saudi Arabia moved in this direction, the United States, uh, would have a variety of tools to try to pressure them.

But still, agreeing to this kind of an agreement, uh, especially if it does lead to selling Saudi Arabia the uranium enrichment technology that would allow them to make bomb material, does pose some increased risks.

Help us understand why that's significant.

Well, it's not yet clear exactly what's in the agreement.

The reports to the Congress that have surfaced so far say suggest that it's contemplated that at some point in the future, there might be an agreement on enrichment.

As far as we know, there isn't an existing deal to provide enrichment technology to Saudi Arabia.

The problem with uranium enrichment technology spreading or plutonium reprocessing technology spreading is that those are the two key technologies that allow you to make material for nuclear bombs.

Uranium enrichment also can make civilian fuel, but the problem is that it's the same technology for either the bomb material or the civilian fuel.

That's why Iran's uranium enrichment program has been such a global concern and ultimately led to the strikes in 2025 and now at least is part of the rationale for the war that we're in today.

What has the Saudi government said about its intentions on how it would use this uranium?

Help us understand why that's significant.

Well, it's not yet clear exactly what's in the agreement.

The reports to the Congress that have surfaced so far suggest that it's contemplated that at some point in the future, there might be an agreement on enrichment.

As far as we know, there isn't an existing deal to provide enrichment technology to Saudi Arabia.

The problem with uranium enrichment technology spreading is or plutonium reprocessing technology spreading is that those are the two key technologies that allow you to make material for nuclear bombs.

Uranium enrichment also can make civilian fuel, but the problem is that it's the same technology for either the bomb material or the civilian fuel.

That's why Iran's uranium enrichment program has been such a global concern and ultimately led to the strikes in 2025 and now at least is part of the rationale for the war that we're in today.

What has the Saudi government said about its intentions on how it would use this uranium?

We began the task force with this question: Does nuclear non-proliferation still warrant being a top American foreign policy priority? It almost seems like a strange question to start the task force with, but why, why was that necessary? Why do you think we needed to examine that, and who was arguing otherwise?

So thanks, uh, for that question, and thanks, uh, I also wanna honor Al Carnesale, who has, uh, often been a source of wisdom, uh, in my career as well.

Uh, and on the history, I should mention that, uh, my father's role.

Uh, he wrote the legislation that created the Arms Control Disarmament Agency that hired Al and was one of the negotiators of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty.

So I'm one of a modest number of second-generation nuclear people.

I believe it remains a fundamental US national security objective because of the nightmare that Kennedy outlined.

We don't wanna be in a world with twenty or thirty fingers on the nuclear button because there's gonna be much more chance that the nuclear button is going to get pressed, and that the United States might be dragged into, uh, whatever takes place.

In a decade.

President Trump has said repeatedly that Iran's nuclear program was completely obliterated after the strikes last June.

Yeah, that statement is just not true.

Um, you can't say that a program that still has enough nuclear material for a bunch of nuclear bombs is obliterated, unfortunately.

There's no doubt that the combination of the strikes in June of last year and the ongoing war have seriously set back Iran's capabilities, but the remaining capabilities are substantial.

You can't bomb away their knowledge.

Dr. Matthew Bunn says any nuclear agreement should not be based on trust, but verification.

Iran has been lying about its nuclear weapons effort for over 20 years now.

They have always claimed, "Our program was 100% peaceful.

So I expect that played a role for perhaps tempered willingness to engage in any conversation around Apollo 1 to New START.

Let me draw back a little bit to even bigger picture in a certain sense.

So we had this agreement, and then we have ended up in a world where it's completely a bilateral agreement.

China's forces aren't limited at all.

And all of a sudden, China started building up its forces rapidly.

So in President Trump's first term, he sent his arms negotiator, who wasn't appointed until very late in the term, to say to China, you know, you really need to agree to limits as well.

And China said, why should we do that? And so there was no progress when he was hinging any progress on nuclear arms control to making it trilateral rather than bilateral.

How concerned should we be?