Sep 11, 2026 · 1 hr 4 min · 14 segments
The world is entering a nuclear era with more players, fewer restraints, and a dangerous new confidence that escalation can be controlled. In the opening episode of Season 3, Vladimir Bobetic speaks…
Ankit PandaGuest
Vladimir BobetićHost
During the Cold War, two superpowers with thousands of warheads avoided the direct war.
Today, there are more nuclear players, more technology, and almost no arms control.
Are we closer to nuclear war now than we were during the Cuban Missile Crisis?
And I know President Biden in 2022 said that we had gotten the closest to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I think the Cuban Missile Crisis was just a uniquely and horrifically dangerous moment in the nuclear age.
I think most people who look at the history of the nuclear age will understand why I'm saying that.
But I think you highlighted what I really try to zero in on on my book from last year, The New Nuclear Age, where I tried to identify why we need to pay attention to nuclear weapons again.
I'm not sort of ringing the bell that we're going to end up in a nuclear conflict.
There has been a serious inflection point in the level of, let's just call it secular nuclear risk in the international system.
If there's a coefficient of nuclear risk in the international system, that coefficient is bigger than it was in the 1990s, the 2000s, and the 2010s.
And it's on the wrong trajectory, right? So the slope of the curve is heading in the wrong direction.
The main difference, though, between now and the Cold War, I think it's about the notion of control.
And this gets back to our earlier discussion about early warning systems, decision making under time pressures, etc., You know, one of the answers for why we didn't see a nuclear war during the Cold War, and there's many debates, you know, the Cold War was this incredibly dangerous time, tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, total explosive yields of the U.S. and Soviet arsenals, I think, reached 7.8 gigatons at the height of the Cold War, right? I mean, this is apocalyptic level stuff, very far from where we are today.
We have a lot of nuclear weapons today, but we're not in the range of 7.8 gigatons across the nine nuclear states.
So one of the answers is that neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union believe that nuclear war could be controllable.
During the Cold War, two superpowers with thousands of warheads avoided the direct war.
Today, there are more nuclear players, more technology, and almost no arms control.
Are we closer to nuclear war now than we were during the Cuban Missile Crisis?
And I know President Biden in 2022 said that we had gotten the closest to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I think the Cuban Missile Crisis was just a uniquely and horrifically dangerous moment in the nuclear age.
I think most people who look at the history of the nuclear age will understand why I'm saying that.
But I think you highlighted what I really try to zero in on on my book from last year, The New Nuclear Age, where I tried to identify why we need to pay attention to nuclear weapons again.
I'm not sort of ringing the bell that we're going to end up in a nuclear conflict.
There has been a serious inflection point in the level of, let's just call it secular nuclear risk in the international system.
If there's a coefficient of nuclear risk in the international system, that coefficient is bigger than it was in the 1990s, the 2000s, and the 2010s.
And it's on the wrong trajectory, right? So the slope of the curve is heading in the wrong direction.
The main difference, though, between now and the Cold War, I think it's about the notion of control.
And this gets back to our earlier discussion about early warning systems, decision making under time pressures, etc., You know, one of the answers for why we didn't see a nuclear war during the Cold War, and there's many debates, you know, the Cold War was this incredibly dangerous time, tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, total explosive yields of the U.S. and Soviet arsenals, I think, reached 7.8 gigatons at the height of the Cold War, right? I mean, this is apocalyptic level stuff, very far from where we are today.
We have a lot of nuclear weapons today, but we're not in the range of 7.8 gigatons across the nine nuclear states.
So one of the answers is that neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union believe that nuclear war could be controllable.
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