This makes for chilling reading. Did you know that the U.S. could not retaliate against a nuclear strike from North Korea without sending its land-based missiles over Russian territory, and Russia's missile detection technology is inferior to ours, so they are less reliable at tracking the course of a nuclear missile, and thus more likely to think they are being attacked. Some President better get a handle on this situation, and Congress really needs to reign in control of use of nuclear weapons, before every other issue is moot. And the situation will get worse as the technology "improves," and nuclear warheads are attached to hypersonic missiles, so that instead of six minutes to figure out what is happening, leaders will have 2 minutes or less. This does not end well.
UPDATE: Philosopher David Wallace writes:
[W]hile I thought there was a lot of interesting content in Jacobsen’s book, and while it’s right to remind people that the stresses on the President could lead to catastrophe, I found the way her scenario played out to be really implausible. The reason for launch-on-warning is that the Russians might launch an attack large enough to destroy the US’s land-based missiles before they’re fired, so you need to fire them immediately. (FWIW I think that argument ceased to be plausible once we developed accurate submarine-launched missiles, and getting rid of launch-on-warning would be a very good idea.) But there is zero possibility that NK could destroy US missile siloes like that, since its arsenal isn’t nearly large enough (and in Jacobsen’s scenario it’s obvious they’re not trying to). I don’t see why the US wouldn’t respond to a small-scale NK attack by prioritizing getting the president out of DC and then considering a response at relative leisure (including taking the time to talk to the Russians and Chinese). (Disclaimer: I don’t have genuine professional expertise in this, though I’ve had a lay interest for many years.)
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