I had high hopes for director Kathryn Bigelow’s House of Dynamite, a new Netflix movie about U.S. nuclear command and control. There’s so much potential for cinema to unpack the dilemmas and tragedies of living under a nuclear sword of Damocles, and my initial reaction was disappointment at the ways this fails to be that movie. But for all its shortcomings, the film also serves as a sobering reminder of the profound peril nuclear weapons entail. (Heads up, spoilers follow if you haven’t yet seen it.)

I write from the perspective of someone who works on nuclear (as well as biological and chemical) weapons policy at intersection of academia, think tanks, the private sector, and government. I, and people like me, i.e. almost everyone reading this, are obviously not the primary audience for this movie. But the movie is an opportunity for us to engage wider audiences than we usually do, and also to have conversations among ourselves.

A reminder that we’re still living with nukes

This isn’t news to anyone who’s paying attention, but the movie is a reminder that we live in a world in which nuclear weapons continue to exist. They’re less marginalized today than they’ve been since the Cold War ended, which the movie flags via some opening text, but then doesn’t further unpack.

The movie introduces non-specialists to the “hair trigger” (the military loathes that terminology) systems set up to facilitate rapid action because of fear of, and most importantly to try to deter, decapitating and/or disarming strikes. It does a solid job characterizing how a lot of people, in a lot of bureaucracies, interface via standard operation procedures. It nicely conveys the shift from routine (seemingly just another missile test) to crisis (the missile’s trajectory is inbound toward the United States). And it appropriately conveys that human beings, with human foibles, are filling these roles. Those humans’ competence and emotional regulation matters a lot, though the movie’s characters are more fragile than I expect many of their real-world equivalents would be.

A missed opportunity to grapple with core nuclear challenges and dilemmas

I have some modest quibbles, like the use of cellphones in and to talk with others in secure facilities. But what disappointed me most was the missed opportunity to unpack some of the most profound challenges and dilemmas of living with nuclear weapons. The scenario at the heart of the movie is frankly bizarre. A single long-range missile is likely armed with a nuclear warhead. Assuming the warhead is present, the missile may detonate over a major city. The missile was launched either by accident or incompetent malfeasance by a state whose identity remains a complete mystery. That obviously represents a horrific tragedy if a warhead detonates, but less of a leadership challenge or dilemma.

What disappointed me most was the missed opportunity to unpack some of the most profound challenges and dilemmas of living with nuclear weapons.

The appropriate response to this bizarre contingency seems obvious: do everything possible to intercept it. Surge intelligence resources to try to better attribute the source of the attack or accident. Prepare for both conventional and nuclear military operations if needed, including, but not limited to, raising nuclear alert levels. Extend diplomatic engagement with both allies and potential antagonists, so that relevant information can flow both to and from other countries. And activate response capabilities to try to mitigate consequences.

The movie implied some of these options, but primarily focused on prompt and substantial nuclear strikes. Officials fire a mere two missile defense interceptors and hold the rest in reserve for a subsequent attack. The movie doesn’t delve much into the specifics of the potential strikes, or even whether the president ends up authorizing them. But the strikes apparently involve significant, but not all-out, attacks on multiple nuclear-armed states, one of whom might be behind the single incoming missile. The logic the movie’s characters articulate is that failing to do so will make the United States look weak and be unacceptable to the American people, whereas doing so, it’s implied, will motivate the targeted countries to collectively back down.

To put it mildly, this is hard to take seriously. And it doesn’t really speak to the nuclear environment in which we find ourselves, with the exception that the movie is fairly faithful to U.S. nuclear command and control procedures. Similarly, many viewers will surely reflect on how the sitting U.S. president and his team might comport themselves in a nuclear crisis.

Movies not made

So what would speak to the current environment? A few possibilities among many:

1. In the context of a conventional war, early warning systems in the United States, or Russia, or perhaps another country, suggest an incoming large-scale strike. On a tight timeline, officials grapple with whether to launch nuclear weapons rapidly and risk unnecessary escalation or delay, and risk leadership decapitation and/or significant degradation of their retaliatory capabilities.
2. Russia conducts a limited nuclear strike to signal that its red lines around the Ukraine war have been crossed, engaging in a form of “escalate to deescalate.” The United States and its allies face challenges and risks in threading the needle. They must decide between responding too weakly—which risks being perceived as permissive by Russia and undermining allied confidence—or too forcefully, which risks further escalation, potentially to all-out nuclear war.
3. War breaks out with China over Taiwan, and because China co-locates nuclear and conventionally armed missiles, striking its conventionally armed missiles could destroy, and could be interpreted as a strike on, its nuclear weapons and be escalatory.
4. War breaks out on the Korean Peninsula, or perhaps the current North Korean regime collapses, and concerns about the control and/or use of North Korean nuclear weapons grows. The United States, South Korea, and other states face challenging choices about when the risk of attempting to preventively or preemptively strike North Korean nuclear forces would outweigh the risk of not trying to do so.

Real-world reflections

In reflecting on both the strengths and missed opportunities of this movie, I’m reminded of a recent email from a colleague who served on the White House National Security Council staff some decades ago. In that role, he was assigned to role play the president in a nuclear crisis exercise, i.e. he experienced a simulated version of what this movie tries to depict. The colleague gave me permission to share his vivid recollections with my students, and I’m sure he would be fine with my publishing them here. But he is sadly no longer with us, so I cannot ask him, and out of an abundance of caution, I won’t identify him here.

And [the movie’s plot] doesn’t really speak to the nuclear environment in which we find ourselves, with the exception that…many viewers will surely reflect on how the sitting U.S. president and his team might comport themselves in a nuclear crisis.

As [White House National Security Council staffer], I was advised at one point…that there was going to be a full-up, “nuts to bolts,” live exercise simulation of a bolt out of the blue nuclear attack on the US, that I was to role play being POTUS [president], and that when the phone call came I was to run—not walk—to the South Lawn, where a Marine One helo would whisk me and the MIL AIDE with the nuclear “football” away.

Several weeks later that call came. I ran from West Exec to the South Lawn, met the MIL AIDE and we jumped into the helo enroute to Andrews to transfer to a jet that was waiting to take us to an undisclosed airfield to join up with the E-4 NEACAP [actually NEACP, often referred to as “kneecap,” the National Emergency Airborne Command Post].

In one sense, it worked. We were airborne out of Andrews within the 30 minutes before first detonation on CONUS [continental United States]. And the NEACAP [sic] is of course an extraordinary C2 [command and control] platform.

But my main take-away was the impossibility during the first minutes on the helo of making a coherent retaliatory counter strike option decision. The noise level was very high, the back and forth on the radio between the participants on the USSTRATCOM conference call as the incoming missile target info was being determined along with projections of likely damage with constant updates on remaining time to impact, and the almost continuous simultaneous explanations coming from the MIL AIDE as to highly differentiated response options as he thumbed through the “book” was all exceptionally challenging.

The bottom line was that all these factors tend to drive any POTUS, at least in my humble opinion, to order a code for a maximum (and not limited and selective) response. But/but—that is still better than the only three other alternatives: decapitation of the National Command Authority, delegation of launch authority to some echelon of STRATCOM, or even worse, an AI-controlled “dead hand” mechanism.”

There’s a lot one could unpack further here, but I’ll leave that to readers and close on this both sobering and thought-provoking note.