 Yeah, the military in Hawaii countering collective nuclear blackmail here with Dan Lee, Dan Leaf, our regular host, and Howard Dallas-Pomson, his friend, and co-collaborator on the military in Hawaii shows. But let's not stop there, Dan Big. Can you give a proper introduction to Dallas? Aloha, Jay. Thanks, and thanks for having us. Proper introduction, as he's a good friend. Dallas Thompson is the retired Air Force two-star general fighter pilot of many fighter platforms. He's been on pigments twice, talking about Top Gun Maverick. We did a very popular review of it, and also talking about his experience flying the Russian SU-27 Flankerback in 1994. But we're also at the serious side of it to us, and we recently penned an article on countering nuclear blackmail. And Dallas has the background for that, because in addition to his flying and combat experience, he was a ground representative to the naval component for the Air Force during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and served as the chief of staff at NORAD, North American Air Defense Command, and truly understands missile defense deterrent theory and the threat of nuclear war. So I'm glad to partner with him all these years. Thank you. Fig is a retired three-star from the Air Force. Dallas, you want to rebut in anything that Fig said about you? Tell her I'll maybe the good friend for it. It depends on who buys the most my ties at the Holocaust. There you go. Well, we have a pretty heavy topic today, countering nuclear blackmail. And we've seen that with Vladimir Putin, the early part of the Ukraine invasion. We hear that there's more nuclear weapons in Russia, and 3,000 of them, the last I recall, as opposed to US 2000 and change. And if he can do it, others can do it. You know, it's the old story of Dr. No and Peter Sellers and the mouse that roared. And so we have to deal with the possibility that any autocrat will use this technique. But first, let's discuss how serious the armament is right now. It's more advanced. There are more of them. Those numbered cities in Russia cranking out the physics experts, the nuclear experts and they're making bombs. Howard, why don't you start and tell us the state of affairs on nuclear armament in the world today? Well, Jay, the the issue is less about numbers on either side. What is troublesome and what Fig and I have spoken to in our piece is over the past number of years, Russia has and China have created all new classes, nuclear weapons. Back when I was at nor at Northcom, the missile defense agency focused almost exclusively on North Korean ballistic missiles. Back then, the Russian cruise missile threat, stealthy long range cruise missiles, was still classified. They they that's now an open source and they are all fielded and they're very capable. And we have no defense against them. Since then, also a whole new class of weapons called hypersonic weapons have been developed by both Russia and China. Very capable. And we have no defenses against those. So it's this nexus of our vulnerability to these weapons. The rhetoric coming out of Mr. Putin and Kim Jong-un and to some degree, Xi Jinping and the which Fig will speak to later this shift in Russian military doctrine, where the Russians explicitly state that they reserve the right to use nuclear weapons in a conventional conflict in order to force cessation on terms favorable to themselves or force capitulation on the part of the adversary. So that's the environment that we big and I are attempting to speak to. Yes, absolutely. So so Fig, you know, we're in a new time where the meaning of deterrence has changed, where the meaning of threat has changed, where the chess game around blackmail we've seen has changed. Do you want to talk about that the evolution of the blackmail aspect of nuclear weapons? Yeah, it is, I think, a very important paradigm shift that has not been fully appreciated in US defense or in electrical circles. And we think we see it because North Korea used to be the sole nuclear blackmailer with nuclear weapons. Then Russia and China's assertions regarding Taiwan and their willingness to go to what I would call extreme measures for unification, along with the partnership, new security partnership between China and Russia mean that we have a collection of autocrats who could use nuclear blackmail. And that's in very sharp contrast to the old paradigm of mutually assured destruction. And mutually assured destruction was kind of a carefully constructed paradigm back in the 50s, 60s, 70s that achieved a balance where it was lose, lose for anybody to use nuclear weapons. And as as onerous as the threat of nuclear war was, we were at a bit of a standoff. Regional conflicts still occurred, but there was always some bit of moderation. And I think that has eroded. And I think that it means we have to look at deterrence differently, instead of this broad global thermal nuclear war deterrent model, get to more specific deterrence with autocrats who may be willing to use both the threat and the reality of nuclear weapons on a more limited sense. Dallas and I shared an article that Alice sent it to me actually this morning by Dr. Keith Payne. It's a great article of reviewers who like to Google it deterrence is not rocket science is a title with the subtitle it is more difficult. And that's true deterrent theory is really difficult. The construction of mutually assured destruction paradigm involves the very best minds not just in making weapons, but in figuring out how we deter. We've got to take that same approach to shifting, modifying, making more flexible art of deterrent approach, analyzing the geographic and capability gaps and being ready to counter such a threat. Well, I mean, that sets out a pretty dark picture. Can you summarize the article? Yes. Well, Dallas, Dallas, I think summarized it at the end, we know who wrote each part, of course, having worked out together. But a key is readiness and missile defense, which I'll toss to Dallas to talk about some of the specific measures that need to be taken capability wise. Before we go to that, though, it seems to me this is a chess game. And it's a chess game played by heads of state. You know, you can't say that Putin is a nuclear scientist or Kim Jong-un or for that amount of Xi Jinping, not nuclear scientists. And yes, they use this on a chess board, you know, the analogy is so clear. They use it with sort of a geopolitical psychology. And the question I put to you, let me ask you this question thing. Is this real? Are the threats real? Are we really closer to nuclear conflagration? Do I know definitively that we are? No. Is it possible? Yes. Can we afford to be wrong? No. And let's look at things we didn't think would happen. We didn't think. We thought Putin could be deterred from invading Ukraine. Wrong. We tend not to want to think that China won't take military action against Taiwan. And yet the statements are to the contrary and very strong statements and a very firm commitment to unification by Xi Jinping. And then when you add North Korea to the mix, all we have to do is go back to the missile attack, false alarm in Hawaii to have a sense of how real this could be. They have the capability. They've implied or made the threats. We can't be wrong about this. Well, you know, one thing we got two systems going out of the world. We have the autocrats who can cause things to happen almost instantaneously as a matter of geopolitical psychology or worse. And we have the democracies, which require that you have a kind of representative government approach to things where it's staffed out, where there are committees, where there are think tanks and so forth. And I think that Xi Jinping and Putin know that we're not likely to pull a trigger. Are they right? Well, they may be right, but I think you've hit on one of the key elements of this shift in the nuclear paradigm. And then the mutually assured destruction, not exactly that. The end of the antagonists, they're the end of the existence of nations or perhaps the human race. In this case, what's at risk is the end of a rules based order that is provided the tremendous advances in the human condition over the last two centuries. Because if we allow autocrats to impose their will based on the threat of nuclear weapons, the rules based order will quickly erode and the fabric of global society will tear. And that outcome is something that pre nations like mine and nations and believe in the rule of law and bring open commerce and the exchange of information that we can't tolerate that. It would be the end of the world in a different way. Well, Dallas, some people think we're heading there. And if you read the newspaper on a connected dot spaces, there seems that way sometimes. So my question to you, and I guess this goes to the article is, what can we do? You mentioned that these autocrats have weapons that are better than ours. Where were we when they were developing these weapons? And where are we now in terms of dealing with their new psychology, their blackmail psychology? Because I think they all took a page on a Putin's book. If Putin did it to us in Ukraine, perhaps the other one will do the same. Xi Jinping lesser, but Kim Jong-un for sure, threatening us all the time. So the question I put to you was, and I'm sure you covered this in the article is, what do we do? What do we do to catch up? What do we do to get back to mutually mutual deterrence? Well, and this goes back a little bit to your question that you asked vague about, are we closer to a nuclear conflagration? I will answer your question, but I'd like to piggyback on that real quick. First, I don't believe we're closer to a strategic nuclear exchange. I think we're on the precipice of nuclear weapons being acceptable use by some in the world. And that is the threat that we speak, that we are speaking to, that the old doomsday clock that we used to have when we were growing up as kids, that was pointing towards the conflagration that you described. What we fear is the one-off, the nuclear blackmail of a undeterred autocrat such as Putin, being able to exercise the use of a nuclear weapon without us being able to deter. So to get to the solutions, the first is we have to recognize the situation exists. Leadership in Congress and administration, the department all have to understand that we are vulnerable to this threat. The second thing is you asked where we were. Our attention has been diverted for decades against a terrorist threat. And during that time, our strategic threats or challenges, whether you call them adversaries, went to school on the American way of war, one of which was the use of cruise missiles, which Russia learned that lesson very well, and developed great classes of very capable, very stealthy cruise missiles. So what do we do? We need to understand the pickle that we're in. We need to devote sufficient resources and that, and I don't mean, and in the piece, we don't say that this is a call to throw a bunch more money at the problem. There are a number of efforts going on within the department right now. For example, the next generation intercept program is being very well managed and led by the Missile Defense Agency. That is the capability against North Korean, for example, ICBMs. But the efforts against cruise missiles and against hypersonics are siloed, disjointed. There is no coherent unity of effort. We make the point that what is desperately needed is policy guidance to bring all of these currently disconnected lines of effort into a common thread. How would you neutralize a fellow like Vladimir Putin who is trying to out-psychus and blackmail using that kind of global psychology? Yeah, Fig has one on that. Yeah, there is no, we can't wrap the entire nation in Kevlar. There's no solution that will make us invulnerable. So what we have to do is, first of all, increase the doubt that Putin might have it succeeding in such an attack, such an employment of the weapons. And you do that with countermeasures and defenses, missed defense and things like that. And the second thing we have to do is be well aware of where that threat might manifest itself and ensure that not just our weapons systems are effective at countering an unexpected location or situation, but that our command and control can respond to it as well. So Del's talked about the comprehensive effort that can't be in silos. We're addressing this issue and we're addressing that issue. And that's key to being flexible and responsive. Additionally, I'd say that to further sow the seeds of doubt in any autograph, this has to be treated with a chronological priority, if not a fiscal priority. We can't operate at the normal speed of the Department of Defense. And Del's and I have both worked in its senior levels in Department of Defense. We're a big country where democracy were encumbered by rules and ethics and laws and everything else. But we have to have a sense of urgency here because we're not far away from the potential of one of the aforementioned bad leaders, frankly, in trying to impose their will on us through nuclear black. But Del's, let me ask you, what role does public communication have to do with this? I mean, for example, early on we saw this administration sort of telegraph its intelligence, sometimes for a good effect and sometimes not. And to a world that was curious through a global audience, if you will. And so in the world of blackmail, propaganda and public communication has a leverage. What about that? Is that part of a solution here? Absolutely. Last week, the Chief, the Commander of the British Army, at a video interview in which he stated that the Western democracies are facing their 1937 moment, implying that the Donbass and that regions are the 21st century sedate land. That is what is unfolding in our opinion. You ask public what we attempt to do through the public. We have to recognize as a country, as an alliance in NATO, that we may very well be at that inflection point in our history. And we as a country have got to be able to come together and understand where we are and what it will take as a country to pull together and execute what we have to do to counter this. We make the point early that if Putin succeeds in Ukraine, the next move is against a land bridge to Kaleningrad, a land continuing on to Moldova, it will not stop there. Putin has telegraphed his intent for years. A couple of years ago, Marvin Kalb was the CBS Moscow bureau chief, wrote an excellent book called Imperial Gamp, where he talks about Putin's aspirations to rebuild not the Soviet Union, but the Russian Empire. He's been very clear in stating this for years. We just haven't taken him seriously and we need to. Yeah, big. Yeah, and I would add to that and say that's the smaller problem. Okay, the fact that Putin wouldn't be deterred, even if deterred, and even if he fails deterred with regard to Ukraine and rest of Europe, that does not guarantee that others or Putin in other circumstances won't attempt nuclear blackmail to achieve their aims. And we can look at the amount of money that we're pouring into supporting the Ukrainian Armed Forces, 50-some billion dollars. That's expensive and it's expensive because deterrence failed. The potential fiscal cost and cost in lives beyond that of failing in the broader deterrence of the three or four mention autocrats, it is incalculable. So yeah, we have to succeed now in deterring further adventureism by Putin with regard to Ukraine and Europe. But the broader success will require investment and focus. You both have referred to the notion of learning from the other guy. We develop weapons and they watch. They watch publicly. They read the newspapers and they watch in the academic world. Who knows how they get their information? Maybe through espionage. I mean, we know there's a certain amount of espionage going on about weapons, of course. And likewise, we learn about blackmail. We learn how Putin did that a couple of months ago. We learn how to manipulate the press and the propaganda. And I think it's not your point so well taken. It's not just Putin. It's all the people learning from Putin who will emulate him and also learning about our moves, who will figure out ways to defeat our moves by watching us move in this administration or in any other. So it seems to me that this is a very dynamic in the sense we are all learning from each other. It's very dynamic, Jay. And we did learn well in the early days of the Cold War and put a lot of effort, as I said, into building our approach to nuclear deterrence and the potential need to respond to a nuclear attack and the building of the single integrated operational plan we have. And Allison, I know this. We have a very well thought out approach. And that's not all we can say. It's very well thought out. It needs to be equally well thought out in terms of what steps would be taken, what our thresholds are, I hate to say red lines, what the branches and sequels of an unfolding nuclear blackmail situation, whether or not weapons are actually used will be so that that thoughtful strategy can be applied rapidly in an unfolding situation. This can't be left. We're really good. The U.S. military and even the government are very good at responding to dynamic situations within reason. You can't do that in the nuclear world. You have to be ready. You have to have thought out the second and third order effects of doing something or not doing something. And that's why we think that the focus needs to be on this emerging shift in paradigm and the nuclear paradigm. I'm getting a vision of a command control center where everybody is working on not only response, but using computers and AI in order to figure out the next move, sort of an automated chess game. This is a little scary in the sense that Barbara Tuckman wrote a book called Guns of August, where she demonstrated that Europe was bristling with weapons and war plans. And those weapons and war plans essentially got out of control on all sides. In most of the countries in Europe were pulling the trigger on the basis of pre-programmed arrangements. And I guess the real question is, will we be able to control this? Let me ask you, Dallas. We would be able to control this once it goes into that command control center. With you, yes. But here we have to, like Fig was saying, this shift in paradigm does not fall into our previous understanding of deterrence. So we have to clearly understand what we will and we will not do if someone were to use a small tactical nuclear device against us, allies, Ukraine, whatever. The options Dr. Kissinger stated, the worst thing we could do is do nothing because that makes us susceptible for further blackmail. Deterrence often calls for a response, a measured response. We currently don't have an offensive nuclear capability of that small size to respond in kind and measurable. So then we would have the alternative to use a very escalatory strategic weapon, which is not a good choice either. This is why we're trying to highlight, this needs to be obviously very behind closed doors. This doesn't need to be done in the public eye necessarily, but the public servants, the public servants of the people need to be working with the administration within their roles on the committees in Congress and with the Department of Defense to begin to have this debate and have solutions on the table were the worst to happen. The article, who is the article addressed to? Who do you want to read it? Who do you want to see this program? Who do you want to appeal to? Well, clearly, Jay, we're trying to influence decision makers, the folks who will do this and allocate resources with time, not just money, but time and effort, intellectual capital to it. But I think they also agree, we like everybody to look at this. This is a big change that threatens life as we know it, not by wiping it off the planet, but by changing the circumstances of the world. And there are many big issues from climate change to, and I don't want to trigger anybody, so I won't list all the all the issues that confront us. This is, and I don't think it's hyperbole, the shift in nuclear blackmail has the potential to be an existential threat to world order, certainly world peace, but to world order. And it could affect the planet, not just the United States. So we'd like folks to appreciate that we don't necessarily want them to be frightened by it. It is kind of frightening, but we have to appreciate how big this change is and what kind of a broad effort that involves not just the military, not just the Department of Defense, but the whole government to counter it and reduce the likelihood that the United States and in the countries that believe in a rules-based order will be held hostage to the nuclear threat. Well, the stakes are so high. We talk about escalation. I mean, how much difference is there between the tactical nuclear weapons and the escalation to more serious nuclear weapons? And I will throw into that the very clear indication that civilians are no longer exempt by any stretch. Vladimir Putin has shown us that you just go after the civilians, be damned the civilians, kill them just as you would kill the whole country, kill all the people. That's what he's engaged in, and I think it sets a new standard. So when you take tactical weapons and the possibility of escalation and the new rule of be damned the public, be damned the civilians, you have the possibility of the conflagration I talked about, don't you? Well, yeah, maybe not a global conflagration in this scenario that we're painting, but hundreds, thousands of civilians have died in Ukraine, hundreds in the factory, for example, that was attacked. Thousands died on September 11th. Thousands of civilians were talking about tens to hundreds of thousands of civilians potentially being killed in an instant. In an instant. Well, we all saw that very strange affair where Kim Jong-un was reputed to have sent nuclear weapons to Hawaii, remember? Maybe three, four years ago. And we all sat there wondering whether that was true, and we all sat there scanning the possibility that maybe our life and our community, our society, had come to an end. And I think that's a possibility that we have to scan now. So what's the message to the public? Dallas, you guys have said that you address these comments and this, you know, this concern to influence the government for sure, the military, those who control policy, but what's your message to the public? How should they feel about this? How afraid should they be? What steps can they take? Not, we're not like fix it. We're not looking to make anyone afraid. We are looking to empower the American people with the knowledge of where, how the world has changed and in not a good way. Our elected representatives still are accountable to us. And what I would suggest, what can they do is read up on this subject, read the article, get, understand what is going on, understand what is going on in Ukraine and Europe, in China, Taiwan, and then speak out to your elected representatives, write the White House, do all those things and register your concern. Again, as we said, the most important thing is to realize where we are. The second most important thing is to begin to build defenses that take the bat out of the hands of these autocrats so that they think twice. They really wonder whether using anything would actually work. That's the two most important points. We're trying to inspire, not incite. We're not trying to incite panic or fear or whatever, but inspire a concerted, as much as possible, non-political effort to be ready for this shift in paradigm. I guess what I hear you saying is that just as Putin and his friends like to terrorize us with threats of nuclear war, the average citizen in the United States should, we should give him more confidence. We should give him confidence that government is taking steps, that it understands these priorities, that it is developing systems that will deal with the blackmail. And I think that's really important, not only for the citizens of the United States to have and know and feel, but it's also important that Putin and his friends will see that the citizens of the United States feel this way and have the confidence in their leadership, in their military, to protect them. I'm not sure we have that now, but we certainly should have that. I think your article goes in that direction. So let's do closing comments. Dallas, you first. Take 30 seconds and leave your message. Jay, I just want to thank you for the opportunity to speak. As Figg said, we're not trying to incite any fear or lack of confidence or whatever. We've both very strongly believed that an informed public and informed decision-maker is an empowered one, and there is work to do. And we are just asking our Congress, our administration, our DOD to get that message and get to work. And Figg, your closing comments, by the way, thank you very much for standing to show up. Thanks, DJ. More of the same to what Dallas said, the public resolve to preserve our freedom in the face of this kind of threat without being held hostage to our own internal politics is important. And I'm certain that President Putin has learned that from the self-defense of Ukraine and that other autocrats will see it as well. We've got to be right. We don't have to agree on everything, but we need to understand that there is a new threat in town that must be countered thoughtfully, very thoughtfully. What did the FDR say? The important thing is fear, and the worst thing about fear is we should not fear. The only thing we have is fear itself. I wanted to toss in a quote from my daughter who was 16 when I was in the Pentagon on the September 11th attacks. And when I finally talked to her, she didn't know if I was dead or alive eight hours later. And she said kids were crying watching TV. I said, did you cry? And she said to me, dad, what good would that have done? We don't want to cry. We want to try. And we can address this threat. Thank you so much. General Dan Figg Leif and General Howard Dallas Thompson. Thank you so much for being on our show. Aloha. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.