The New Age Weapons Deterrence

David:

Welcome to Disarming Data. It's Paige and me, David, talking to extraordinary people about interesting things and extraordinary things they've done. The twist is, we're doing so from two generations. I'm an old boomer.

Paige:

I'm a millennial who grew up in the tech generation.

David:

I don't know anything about tech. I usually lose my cell phone rather than use my cell phone. I'm a tech novice, but in this podcast I think I can handle it because we're going to be talking to some really interesting people, including psychologists, chefs, undercover agents, active veterans, and on and on.

Paige:

And dad, you forgot about whistleblowers and other people who are interesting and influential to us.

David:

And Paige, you forgot to say thank you for listening to the show.

Paige:

Thanks for listening. Welcome to Disarming Data. This is a podcast where we talk about a ton of different topics from two different generational perspectives. I'm the millennial and my dad is the boomer. Today we're so excited to have Leonor Tomero on the podcast. She is a leading expert on nuclear deterrence, national security, space and missile defense, including applying innovative technologies and concepts for strategic deterrence. She served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Missile Defense Policy, and as counsel and Strategic Forces Subcommittee, Democratic staff lead on the House Armed Services Committee. And I'm going to let her explain what all of that is to us. But thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Leonor:

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited. And I love the concept of the two generation podcast. This is going to be a great discussion.

David:

Leonor, you can tell who runs the show here. I take a back seat. This is David. Anyway, good to see you. Thanks for joining us.

Leonor:

Yeah, thank you so much again.

Paige:

So, we just always like to ask our guests to start where they're from, how they grew up and how you became interested in nuclear deterrence and what you do today?

Leonor:

So, I grew up in Geneva, Switzerland. My parents were civil servants at the United Nations. My mom was from New York and my dad was from Spain. And so, after high school, I moved to the United States to go to college, so I did my undergrad at Cornell and then moved to D.C. since I was interested in international relations. Did a few internships and fell into the world of nuclear non-proliferation, nuclear deterrence. And so, I did that for a few years and got a master's degree in national security studies at Georgetown while I was working. And then it seemed to me that everybody who is senior in government in D.C. was a lawyer. And so, I thought I'd go to law school, which I did, and focused more on environmental law while I was there. But I really loved and missed the national security policy environment. And so, ended up after law school going back into that field and working for a nonprofit organization called the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation after I'd done a little bit of consulting work on environmental law.

And so, spent several years in that advocacy field working with Congress. And then from there went to the House Armed Services Committee and worked for the Democratic side. And as you said, I was the staff lead for the Strategic Forces Subcommittee, which means I covered missile defense, nuclear deterrence, nuclear non-proliferation and space. So, national security satellites. And then when the Biden administration came in, I went to the Department of Defense and was the deputy assistant secretary for defense for nuclear and missile defense policy in the Department of Defense. And I think it's been really an interesting time in that there's so much transformation in technology, in space, in AI. And so, right now I'm focusing more time on thinking about how innovation should be applied to deterrence and how that field is impacted by these new developments and how these tools can be used to strengthen deterrence, which I think is really fascinating because I feel that's a little bit, at least for nuclear deterrence, that's a bit stuck in 20th century architectures in thinking.

Paige:

Can you explain more about how it's stuck in the 20th century? Because I feel like when people think about the other side of cyber attacks, it's very much technology forward. So, how has deterrence not caught up with that?

Leonor:

So, nuclear deterrence, you think about threatening the use or using nuclear weapons, this would be in the very worst circumstances in a conflict. And so, the thinking really evolved from the 1940s, '50s, '60s. And we still really have those same parameters of mutually assured destruction and really having the strategy and the capabilities to make sure that nobody uses nuclear weapons and that this would be a losing proposition if anybody ever did. So, that's the principles of deterrence. Within that we also extend deterrence to our allies so that they don't develop their own nuclear weapons. And so, the strategy and capability was really developed and formed in the '50s, '60s, '70s. In terms of capabilities, we have a nuclear triad, which means we have the nuclear submarines, which are the most survivable leg of the triad. When they're at sea nobody knows where they are. And the nuclear submarines carry about 70% of our nuclear warheads currently under the U.S. and Russia New START Treaty.

And then you also have the air leg of the triad, which is the bombers. And those used to be on alert and flying armed during the '50s, '60s. There were several near accidents. And so, now they aren't on alert, but they're ready to fly if needed, and ready to be deployed. And then there's the ground leg, which is the intercontinental ballistic missiles. We have 400 deployed ICBMs. Those are the three main capabilities. The platforms are developed and deployed by the Department of Defense. And then the associated nuclear warheads that go on the platform are maintained by the Department of Energy. That's really the same construct that we've had for decades. In my thinking now on how do we strengthen deterrence, we need to be thinking about new concepts and new architectures and capabilities for several reasons. Nuclear threats are increasing.

Of course, we're all familiar with Putin's saber-rattling and threatening the use of nuclear weapons in the context of his invasion of Ukraine. China is pursuing very significant expansion of nuclear weapons.So, the projections and what China has said is they're looking to have at least 1,500 nuclear weapons by 2035, which is a huge increase over the few hundred nuclear weapons that they have now. So, there are very significant increases in nuclear dangers, both in terms of quantities and expanding numbers in the world, but also reducing potentially the threshold for using nuclear weapons. So, that's one complicating factor. That's not new. We had this in the Cold War, again, Cuban Missile Crisis. But the new pieces I think is that leaders are willing to take more risks in China and in Russia.

Part of the complicating factors with China expanding its nuclear weapons is, we don't have with China the same history we have with Russia, which is the history of arms control, some degree of transparency, cooperation, legally binding limits on the numbers of nuclear weapons. At least until the Ukraine war started, we had strategic stability dialogue with Russia, which means regularly the United States and Russia sat down, talked to each other about their doctrine, what they meant in terms of their strategy. So, there was a good understanding and a mechanism to avoid misunderstanding or setting inadvertent conditions that would lead to a nuclear war that nobody-

David:

Is that still going on now? Are we still having that dialogue?

Leonor:

We still have the treaty in place, but the dialogue is suspended.

David:

Okay.

Paige:

Because of Ukraine, I'm assuming?

Leonor:

Yes.

Paige:

Okay.

Leonor:

And that has its own challenges because that forum is used to, again, understand Russia and U.S. nuclear doctrine, but it's also used as the first step to initiate negotiations. And the only current surviving nuclear arms control treaty is going to expire in 2026. And we're not, neither United States or Russia are negotiating any new agreement. So, for the first time in decades we might have no arms control treaty.

Paige:

And is that the New START Treaty?

Leonor:

Yes.

Paige:

Okay. All right.

Leonor:

And that New START Treaty is legally binding on both countries to constrain the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons to 1,550 on each side. And then it also limits the platforms.

Paige:

Even though it's suspended and we're not talking anymore, was Russia keeping up with their end of the treaty or not as much? Is it hard to say?

Leonor:

The understanding is that they haven't materially breached so that they're not significantly going over the numbers. We don't know what their numbers are, because they haven't allowed inspections, the onsite inspections that are necessary for verification. And they're also not providing the periodic exchanges of data. So, we don't know. But that's part of the problem is it's introducing some uncertainty. But the real danger is that when the treaty expires, there'll be no constraint. So, Russia could rapidly upload and increase its number of deployed nuclear weapons.

Paige:

Okay. And do you think that's something that they would probably do most likely?

Leonor:

It's hard to tell. You have a treaty that's in both countries' mutual interest, it provides some predictability and some stability in that both countries know that there's a top limit on the number so that you're avoiding an arms race that is dangerous and destabilizing, is very costly for both sides. So, there's still a lot of reasons that you would want to keep those constraints in place. But, again, the geopolitical factors are complicating this level of dialogue and the possibility of negotiating a follow on. Which is, again, depending on what you're trying to do. And if you're making significant changes to the treaty that means significant changes in verification, it's very complicated and we need to be talking to Russia now to start sorting out all those issues.

David:

Did we cut off the discussions or did Russia cut off the discussions?

Leonor:

The Russians stopped during COVID, for obvious health reasons and safety the inspections stopped, but then the Russians didn't allow the United States to resume inspections. So, neither country is doing inspections. Earlier in the year the United States called out Russia and said you need to allow inspections. And again, this is all in the context of the war in Ukraine as well.

David:

Okay.

Paige:

And this is just out of curiosity honestly, did you see the war happening yourself just personally, or no, did you not think that Putin would? Because I heard so many mixed things before it happened. There were so many people, and I listened to a lot of international relations podcasts that were like, no, there's no way he would ever do that. He's not that stupid. And then a week later they were all on the podcast like, well, we have to swallow our words a little bit on this one. What was your opinion about what would happen?

Leonor:

It was such a brazen and illegal invasion. I don't think anybody thought he would actually do it, but he was mounting tens of thousands of troops on the border and we all saw that and that was very visible. I don't think anybody thought he would miscalculate. I don't think Putin or even the world understood how ready Ukraine was, their level of readiness to fight, their willingness to fight. United States, since the Russian invasion of Crimea, had been providing several hundreds of millions of dollars to Ukraine in security and defense training. And apparently in those seven years they were very ready and they used that funding very efficiently. They were very serious. They clearly saw the threat. So, on that level, I think Putin miscalculated, Putin miscalculated what the world's reaction would be, the level of sanctions, how much unity there was within NATO transatlantic cooperation and unity, and really the world standing up against Russia.

And even beyond the sanctions. And this comes to innovation and the power of the private sector that you had dozens of major companies pulling out of Russia. McDonald's, Starbucks, Nike, there's a long list, Marriott, all pulled out. So, there was a huge impact on Russia beyond government imposed sanctions. So, again, I think that was a very good and strong message. But again, it didn't deter, I guess the signals ahead of time weren't strong enough to deter Russia from invading Ukraine. Where there's debate too, is did deterrence fail? In a sense, yes, because they invaded Ukraine. But in another sense, a lot of national security experts, and I agree, say that deterrence has held with regard to NATO. Ukraine isn't part of NATO, they're not part of Article 5, and Russia hasn't attacked NATO. So, in that sense, our formal alliance has worked.

Paige:

Okay. That does make sense.

Leonor:

Of course, a lot of lessons learned of the importance of deterrence. How do you enhance deterrence to not only avoid the use of nuclear weapons, but preventing conflict from the beginning?

Paige:

And this is a question about the history that I'm curious about. After World War II, was the issue of nuclear deterrence immediate, or was it after the Cold War more?

Leonor:

Russia has been the major adversary that poses existential risk to the United States and its allies. And so, of course the Cold War, it was very salient. And one of the key pieces of the Cold War with NATO, the Warsaw Pact, change that we're seeing now is that of course China also has had nuclear weapons for decades. But what's causing more concern now is increasing numbers. And so, what does that mean in terms of the United States and its allies facing two nuclear peers? And so, there's a lot of focus on this, and to come back to the earlier part of the discussion, there's a lot of discussion of, well, we've got China significantly increasing its numbers, Russia developing novel nuclear weapons systems that don't count under the treaty, so aren't treaty limited. You have the treaty about to expire in 2026.

So, what does that mean? Are we going to need to increase U.S. numbers of nuclear weapons? Do we need new kinds? For example, one of the new types of nuclear weapons that the Trump administration proposed was the sea-launched nuclear cruise missile. So, this would be a lower yield nuclear weapon deployed on attack submarines. That was pretty controversial. Is going to lower yield nuclear weapons, does that lower the threshold for using nuclear weapons? The platform was controversial, they'd be deployed on, right now, the submarines that deploy nuclear weapons are SSBNs, bigger submarines. This new sea-launched nuclear cruise missile would be deployed on attack submarines, which is a different type or a different platform.

And of course, the cost and actually would it contribute to deterrence? So, there are arguments on both sides. The Biden administration canceled that new program in their nuclear posture review, which they did when they came in, in 2021. So, again, do we need more? Do we need new types? That's a very live discussion. I think what we're missing though is looking at the broader framework of how both China and Russia are looking at making threats and are looking at deterrence. Of course, they're making very heavy investments in nuclear weapons, that's undeniable, that's posing very grave threats.

David:

Both countries are?

Leonor:

Both. Russia is developing novel nuclear weapons systems as well. But what they're also doing is they're investing in cyber attacks. China particularly has made a lot of investments in counter space weapons and so has Russia. And so, when you think about how to deter conflict with Russia, say over the Baltics or within NATO, and then how do we deter conflict with China over Taiwan, and certainly deterring a conflict that could escalate to become a nuclear conflict. We need to be looking at the other pieces beyond the nuclear threats. So, how do you deter them from attacking space or doing cyber attacks? It's very likely that in the context of a conventional war, both Russia and China would conduct space attacks, cyber attacks, and the danger, and this is part of the new threats that's developing beyond the nuclear threats, is that there's a lot of room for misinterpretation and misunderstanding.

They could, for example, attack assets in space that we use for nuclear command and control. And they might just be attacking those satellites because they're used for satellite communications and they might just intend to attack them to disrupt our satellite communications in the context of conventional war. But the United States might see it as a precursor that they're planning a nuclear attack and that they're attacking our strategic assets. Another example is, a lot of conventional weapons systems depend on GPS. And again, GPS also helps for a whole host of civilian applications, agriculture, ATMs, a lot of financial tools depend on GPS and the precision timing.

And so, what if they attack GPS? And that could very quickly escalate. And so, we need to be thinking about these new types of attacks that could occur either in the cyber domain or the space domain where maybe one adversary might not see it as very escalatory and the other side might see it as incredibly escalatory. So, there's a lot of potential for miscalculation that could lead to either escalating a conventional conflict or even leading to the use of nuclear weapons unintentionally. Those are the things we need to be thinking about instead of just preserving the triad or thinking about, do we need more numbers of nuclear weapons or new types, to me that's too narrow a debate. What we need to be thinking about is how do you build resilience? How do you increase deterrence to make it much less likely that China or Russia would even start a conventional war, let alone a nuclear war?

And so, building in that resilience, taking away easy targets or easy vulnerabilities is really key. General Hyten, deputy chairman of the joint staff, he's been a longtime expert, a nuclear expert, but the national security satellites we have up in space, you have a handful. Space was always a protected domain, and now you're seeing that China and Russia can target assets in space. If it's easy to target a handful of satellites, that's a very bad position for us to be in. And so, we need to make that change where we're using new technology, new architectures, smaller number of satellites, but hundreds or thousands of satellites to make it a lot harder to target us. There's been a huge explosion in space. For example, SpaceX, just as a very clear example, first in terms of launch, they've significantly reduced the cost of launch and made it a lot cheaper to access space. Everybody's launching satellites these days.

And then two, they're putting up Starlink. And so, this is a mesh network of thousands of small satellites. And so, we need to emulate that architecture. And so, the Department of Defense is looking at that now, and they're doing that for missile warning, missile tracking. They're doing that, for example, for the transport layer, which is increasing satellite connectivity in space. But we need to be applying that to a broad array of defense missions in space. Again, so it's not about adding more nuclear weapons, it's really about enhancing deterrence much earlier in the conflict. Again, enhancing resilience, making our platforms a lot more survivable, reducing the risk of miscalculation, which I think is a key aspect which we haven't spent and applied enough focus.

Third, we need to be using new innovative technology. One example there is, again, the transformation in space. SpaceX opening the doors to space for a lot of commercial companies is that now you've got commercial satellite imagery, the kind of imagery that only the intelligence community had or only the defense department had. Right now you've got imaging companies like Planet, for example, but there's a host of others. HawkEye 360 is collecting signals intelligence. So, there's a lot of commercial capability that previously was just government capability. These images are available, they're cheap. Using this new revolution in space, for example commercial imagery, to increase transparency. And these are all unclassified images, they're commercial.

So, we've seen in Ukraine, a lot of these imaging companies, Capella is one that uses space imagery that sees through clouds using synthetic aperture radar. They were key in the Ukraine conflict in showing the lines of tanks of Russia rolling into Ukraine. So, Russia couldn't use propaganda and say, no, we were attacked, we're just defending ourselves. So, it provides more transparency to see what countries are doing, more accountability. And I think this is really key to enhancing deterrence. I think it's one of the reasons why there was so much unity in response to Russia, because everybody could see these images. 10 years ago or 15 years ago, you didn't have this capability. That's another example of using new tools that can be really key to preventing conflict from even starting. And that hopefully if conflict does start, it would prevent unintended escalation to nuclear war.

David:

On Ukraine, I just have to ask, this is a very naive question, what are tactical nuclear weapons? Do those come under the treaty? And then, is there any serious risk that Russia would use those?

Leonor:

Yeah. The concern of Russia using nuclear weapons in Ukraine would've been tactical nuclear weapons. And so, they're lower yield and shorter range, and they're not limited by the New START Treaty.

David:

Oh, they're not.

Leonor:

Mm-mm. And they've got thousands and increasing those numbers. So, the number of NATO and U.S. tactical nuclear weapons is classified, but it's a lot less than what Russia has. So, there's been an asymmetry. But part of why Russia is deploying these tactical nuclear weapons and increasing their number is they're conventionally inferior to NATO and the United States. And so, they're using these nuclear weapons to fill a conventional gap. So, we don't need to match the number, but what we do need to do is reduce the risk of Russia using those weapons, because that would be historically a game changer, that would be using nuclear weapons. And you're in a whole different ball game in terms of escalation risk.

Paige:

If countries like Russia and China, who's to say, but I think a lot of people are worried about Russia obviously because of the nuclear risks. But in my mind, I've always felt, and this is just my personal opinion, so that's all it is, is that China's always been much more of a threat than Russia at the end of the day. Would you say that isn't accurate? I just felt because of their technologies and because of how their economy has grown so much, and also just because I feel like we haven't had the same conversation with them go well over the years, even though we don't obviously have that sort of conversation with Russia right now. Is that an accurate opinion or no, not really?

Leonor:

Yeah, absolutely. The U.S. administration has said China's the pacing threat. And it's China number one threat, then Russia. I think given their very aggressive behavior in terms of not only adding significant numbers of nuclear weapons, hundreds of nuclear weapons, and in a very fast timeframe, but they're also being much more aggressive. They've built islands and they're being a lot more aggressive in their area. They've made a lot of inroads, for example in Africa. They're expanding their areas of influence. There's a lot of concern of how much access China might have. For example, with Huawei, which is their telecom, there's concern that there's Huawei towers all over the United States. How are they using those? Could those impact national security? China's taking a much broader view of the kind of threats they're making. That comes back to, this isn't just about thinking about nuclear weapons the way we thought about them in the 1960s, 1970s.

We need to take a much broader look at deterrence and resilience and make sure that there aren't easy targets. But part of the new threats too is that, for example, Russia is also developing cruise missiles. Both nuclear and conventional. Again, that's a new development that didn't exist in the Cold War in terms of Russia being able to, for example, attack critical infrastructure in the United States. And so, how do you deter those attacks? Again, if Russia were to attack mainland or critical assets in the United States, that would be very escalatory, but we need to be thinking about, again, how do you prevent those attacks through more resilience, better deterrence ahead of time, better signaling, and reducing the risk of miscalculation. Because there's a lot more pathways now, I believe, to conventional conflict leading to unintended nuclear conflict.

Paige:

A lot of people my age, we weren't around for the Cuban Missile Crisis. The only thing we ever knew about nuclear war was weapons that were not ever existing in Iraq. That was our generation. So, I think the fear in our age group is growing significantly just because we've never had to see these direct, and everyone's like, we're the closest we've ever been to nuclear war. We're the closest we've ever been. Would you say that is an accurate, kind of building fear that we have, or is it just overstated?

Leonor:

No, I think the threat is a lot more real. Post Cold War was a era of we tried partnership with Russia. It failed for several reasons. You're now seeing China be a lot more aggressive and ramp up its production capability. We're in a much more tenuous situation than we've been in decades. We know what the problems are, we can see them, but I think it's just making sure that we understand it in a broad enough scope. We talked about China being a key and maybe the primary threat now. I don't want to discount Putin, Putin has made very serious threats and we need to address those, but we've had the history with Russia, the challenge that we're not doing any strategic stability dialogue with them, but there are avenues of communication. The red line which we have for crisis communication with Russia, we have that.

We don't have that with China. We don't have the history of sitting down with China, certainly on nuclear weapons negotiations or threat reduction. We don't have those same open channels with China, and I think that's contributing to making China a bigger threat in that we don't have the same risk reduction history and open channels, the available processes to talk to China. And then added to that is there could be a lot of confusion in the cyber and space domain, which we didn't have in the Cold War. If somebody attacks your satellite, is your satellite just not working, did somebody attack it, can you prove that? It might take a while to figure that out. And in the fog of war, that can be really dangerous.

Paige:

If we were to look at the sky, or not just the sky, but in space, do they have as many satellites, China and Russia, as we do, or do they have as many private companies that are working on space technology as we have?

Leonor:

So, the U.S. has the most satellites in space, U.S. and its allies.

Paige:

Okay.

Leonor:

European Asian allies. And so, that's part of the increased vulnerability. We put up all these satellites for decades and space was a protected and safe domain. What's changed now is that China and Russia have developed counter space weapons in a domain that was primarily used by the United States and its allies. So, Russia does have significant amount of space assets, and they have for decades, they've had missile warning for a long time. China less, they're building up. So, China is putting more satellites in space. U.S. and its allies have the most, but China is certainly putting up a lot more now. And Russia has a lot as well. But I would say the explosion in commercial space capability, I'd say is primarily in the United States. You're seeing it, countries like the UAE and others are putting up satellites as well. There's a lot more interest and lot more access to space, not only by the commercial sector, but countries that probably didn't have satellites up in space in the 20th century.

But there's a lot of innovation happening. My argument is that we need to use U.S. innovation, and that's really our cutting edge compared to Russia or China, U.S. culture and entrepreneurship and creativity and imagination really is our unique advantage in terms of innovation. And we need to use that to strengthen deterrence. It's not just about more nuclear weapons, which I don't think will make us safer. China is also very heavily investing in innovation. They're a lot more centralized, different culture. So, debate about is that their unique strength, I think that's much more the U.S'. strength, but they are investing in innovation. They're very heavily investing in AI and machine learning. And so, there's a new technology race that we need to pay attention to.

Paige:

And is it true, this is just, I don't even know how true this is, but I've heard multiple times that a lot of China's weapons technology and military technology is stolen U.S. technology. Is that true?

Leonor:

Yeah, I would say that's true. They've had economic and cyber espionage for decades. They, again, have a much broader view of what it means to hold the United States at risk. That's not just about numbers and nuclear weapons. [inaudible] while you have the Russian interference in the 2016 elections. You have the little green men for Russia. They're taking a much broader look at, how do you disrupt societies, how do you create division? They're using social media. There's the hoards of bots that are sewing division on social media, significantly increasing divisiveness within U.S. society. People are scared, people are angry. Not that they wouldn't be without this, but that Russia and China are really exploiting the tools that can amplify that. And it can be very disruptive to society. And so, if you can do that, maybe you don't need to use weapons or attack a country. And so, we need to be looking much earlier in a conflict, much earlier in a crisis, at how we become more resilient. Making our society resilient, making our critical infrastructure resilient, and farther down the line is making your defense weapons resilient.

Paige:

And do we have strong defense? Do we put nearly as much focus into our defense weapons in the United States as we do into other weapons, or no, not as much?

Leonor:

Yeah. DOD has the biggest share of discretionary budget.

Paige:

Oh, wow.

Leonor:

So, in terms of hardware, yes. The DOD budget, is at about $800 billion per year.

Paige:

Yeah.

Leonor:

So, it's grown significantly. And part of that is also reassuring allies. We need to have the capabilities to buttress NATO, to support our Asian allies as well. We have a lot of foreign deployed bases. But within that construct, there's also a lot of money going to outdated 20th century platforms. Like aircraft carriers has always been a really central tenant to the Navy's operations and systems. But if China can take out an aircraft carrier, that could be a huge blow. So, how do we look at smaller, more survivable platforms?

And so, the issue is, we're spending a lot of money, but we need to be looking, it's not only about the amount of investment we put in, but it's what kind of weapons systems do you invest in and are you sufficiently pivoting and using innovative technologies and using commercial capability? Which is usually much faster and much cheaper. And using those capabilities to compliment big DOD weapons systems, or replace them. In some examples they're completely outdated, but there's vested interests, there's a whole industry, there's jobs. It's really hard to pivot away from that.

David:

Now, talking about deterrence, is mutually assured destruction, is that an operative principle now, or has it just been changed because of all the other means of attack?

Leonor:

No, it's a key tenet of nuclear strategy. You want to ensure that if one side attacks that each side has a survivable retaliatory capability that will ensure unimaginable destruction. And so, you want to make sure that your adversary understands that, believes it, and that's a key tenet of preventing nuclear war. But I think what we're seeing now, and it's much harder, and this is a little bit where the new debates are on. Do we need new nuclear weapons, is if Russia were to use a low yield nuclear weapon or a battlefield tactical nuclear weapon, it's not credible for the United States to say we're going to wipe you out in response to that. Russia probably wouldn't believe it. And so, if they don't believe it and it's not a credible threat, then they're not going to be deterred from using say, a few small nuclear weapons on the battlefield.

Again, that puts you on the escalation ladder. Maybe the U.S. then responds with a few nuclear weapons and then Russia responds, and then you're on the escalation ladder and it really could easily escalate to an all out nuclear war. But that's been the argument of, we need more low yield because we need to be able to threaten a response that's more credible than saying, we're going to unleash our whole arsenal, or we're going to unleash a very high yield nuclear weapon in response. And so, I think that the counterargument to that is, well, there are a couple, which is, if you're going to lower yield, you're still getting on the escalation ladder and you can't ensure that a nuclear war would remain limited. Nobody can say, well, we would respond with something similar and then Russia would stand down.

You can't ensure that, again, a limited nuclear war wouldn't escalate to an all out nuclear war. And my concern is, if you lower the threshold, then that's more risky. Once you're using nuclear weapons, we're off to the races. You can't control it. And so, how do you deter Russia from using a small nuclear weapon? And the reason they'd be using it is that they'd be losing conventionally. Thinking about Ukraine or certainly in a scenario in the Baltics or NATO, that they might be able to overrun the Baltics, but this would be a long slog. NATO, this would be a fundamental Article 5 tenet where NATO would respond. And NATO is conventionally superior to Russia's conventional capabilities. And so, if they were losing a conventional war, they might think, we either lose or we use nuclear weapons. And so, they're backed into a corner. They might not be using nuclear weapons to deter us, but they would be using because that's the only avenue they would have to not capitulate.

Adding nuclear weapons on our side wouldn't deter that outcome, because if they're already losing, they might not care that we've got nuclear weapons that could respond. It's a very difficult proposition on how do you enhance deterrence. I would say that's probably one of the hardest modern questions for nuclear deterrence is, how do you prevent Russia from using small tactical nuclear weapons? And I say small tactical, the use of nuclear weapons is a very big deal. How do you prevent that first use? Because I think once you have first use, you just can't control where that's going to go. And it's maybe not necessarily saying we would respond with a smaller yield as well, because maybe Russia will say, great, well then we'll bake in that risk. If we think you're just going to respond with something similar, then maybe that's the worst of the risk for them.

It's a lot more tricky. Maybe it's a lot more effective to say, we will end the regime. We'll have a devastating conventional response. There's, again, in the example of Ukraine, massive sanctions, which were really unexpected that Europe would go along with this, and really to the credit of Zelensky convincing Europe early in the conflict. So, massive unity in terms of sanctions, massive repercussions in terms of non-government entities, all these big multinational companies pulling out. If you can make very credible threats that you're going to destroy their economy. There are other ways of enhancing deterrence than just by saying, well, we just need to add another low yield nuclear weapon, which I think isn't the answer. And again, could even lower the threshold for use, because maybe now these are more usable weapons.

David:

I can't envision what the capabilities are actually, physical capabilities on the ground of a low yield versus a conventional. A conventional, you're talking about eliminating a city or something like that, and what's a low yield?

Leonor:

Higher yield, you're talking tens, hundreds of kilotons of TNT. Smaller yield, you're talking about a few kilotons.

David:

Oh, it's that much smaller, huh?

Leonor:

Much smaller. Even a fraction of what Hiroshima was.

Paige:

Oh, okay. Because my understanding is the nuclear weapons today, Hiroshima would be like nothing compared to a lot of the nuclear weapons that are out there now.

Leonor:

Yes, that's correct. Most of our nuclear weapons are much bigger, much higher yield. Hiroshima was like 15 kiloton range. So, low yield might be smaller, 3, 5, 7, 10 range.

Paige:

And then we don't have many of those low yield weapons ourselves, we just didn't want to put the amount of investment into that because of the reasons that you're saying essentially?

Leonor:

No, we have those capabilities. So, we've got lower yields that fit on the air leg. So, we've got gravity bombs, all the nuclear weapons deployed in Europe are smaller yield. And then again, the Trump administration, one of the, I talked about the sea-launched cruise missile that they were proposing that would be a lower yield, but they also modified an existing Navy nuclear warhead. The W76, which is a strategic weapon, a certain portion of those were modified to be lower yield and those are now deployed on submarines. So, we do have that capability. So, again, I think you're making a good point that it's not that we don't have it, the debate is do we need more?

Paige:

I'm just thinking if I'm China or Russia, I would want to have a stronger alliance. The Eastern Alliance, there's no NATO for the East, which is a good thing for us, I guess. But I'm just curious if that's starting to form now with Iran and North Korea and China and Russia, or no, if they're still hesitant about that?

Leonor:

No, I think we're seeing a lot closer relations between China and Russia. They've been adversaries in the past. I don't think we're going to see any formal treaty alliance. They have divergent geopolitical interests, but they definitely, I think, have the same view of needing to counter the United States. And that's creating a lot more economic cooperation and some defense cooperation certainly. We just saw the summit with Putin and Xi getting together, having a high level summit two months ago. And so, I think we are seeing that increased level of cooperation between China and Russia certainly. I think you're right that it's not a formal alliance, it's opportunistic. And as long as it helps both of them counter the United States, they're going to continue doing that. But there's a lot of concern of, we don't really know what'll happen in the 2030s, 2040s.

China's moving really quickly in terms of expanding its capabilities. Could this morph into more direct or stronger alliance between the two? That's a little bit of an unknown, but certainly what's driving a lot of the concern about being able to predict what the situation will be in 10, 20, 30 years. And part of that too is that there was a lot of surprise. Nobody knew China was going to certainly embark on a huge nuclear expansion. And that took everybody by surprise. This was in 2020, 2021, we discovered the missile field silos where three big nuclear weapon ICBM silos that they built. They built them really fast. Nobody really saw it until we saw discovered hundreds of holes in the ground. And that, again, it was very fascinating that usually that would be something that the intelligence community would see, and these would be classified images, it would be hard to, you'd have to go through a whole process of declassifying to be able to show the world and share and say, look, this is what they're doing.

That was seen with commercial imagery and geo and non-governmental sources. One was Jeffrey Lewis at the Monterey Institute for International Studies, saw it. One was Hans Kristensen at the Federation of American Scientists that saw these images, was able to analyze and say, this is what this is. And it appeared on the front page of The New York Times. That makes two points that China moves quickly. It didn't mean that all those silos were filled. So, they've got holes in the ground. You don't know if each one already has nuclear weapons in it or not. So, it's not necessarily that they have, that meant hundreds more nuclear weapons instantaneously, but certainly they're building towards that.

The missile fields quickly coupled to we think that they're going to expand to at least 1,500 by 2035, created a lot of concern because it happened very quickly. Five years ago, nobody thought that's where... There was concern about China, certainly, but this was a rapid expansion that folks didn't anticipate. So, that's one piece. And then the second piece is commercial. This was all on classified commercial capability. Private sector saw this. I think it's just indicative of how the world is changing and how national security is changing.

Paige:

Because it seems like the future is us relying more and more and more on the private sector to have a leg up. And do you think that the U.S. government is hesitant about that, especially because a lot of this information should be or would be classified or whatever, and now it's just so easily you open Facebook or whatever and it's there, do you think the government is concerned about that?

Leonor:

Yeah. I think that's a great question. So, I would say a large part of the government culturally has not adapted yet. They're still used to being able to control the information. It's government assets, the capabilities you want to use are government developed and operated capabilities, and they're usually very expensive. Like these big imagery satellites where billion dollar satellites. And so, there is a cultural shift, I think, is starting and happening, but it's slow. So, it's two concepts. One on the strategy and policy side. How do you deal with this? What does this mean for deterrence? What does this mean for the policy and strategy of optimal defense? So, there's the ideas and concepts piece that needs to come along and change. And I think that's starting. But the other piece is the acquisition, and I'm talking about Department of Defense, it's just what I'm more familiar with, but it's the acquisition piece of, there's so much technological advancements and innovation that is happening really quickly.

A startup within six months can make very rapid progress. Within three years could have the capability and scale up. And compared to government acquired capability where DOD would take 10 years, they're using prime contractors, the Raytheons and Lockheeds of the world. Money would be massive, very exquisite. And that's a term of art, but very complicated and meeting very specific defense requirements. And these, again, would be billion dollar programs over 10 years. And so, we're still going to do that, but we need to be using all the commercial capability that's very rapid development. Like iPhones significantly changed. There's a new iPhone every, I don't know, what is it, year or two. So, we need to be able to absorb these very rapid developments and this rapid innovation to enhance defense. And so, from the acquisition side, separate from the policy side, again, it's a big cultural shift on how do you do that? We don't have the acquisition processes in place that make it easy to do that.

I'll give you an example of how the Department of Defense plans and acquires, and that's over years. So, first the surfaces have to decide, well, first it starts with the requirements. So, the combatant commands will say, here are the things we need to fight a war or be prepared. So, the combatant commands come up with requirements. And that can also take a year or more because everybody has to get together, you have to prioritize, you have to rack and stack, who gets what, they're asking for more than they're probably going to get given that it's probably costly. So, you need to go through that process of requirements. Then once you've got the requirements in place, the military services, so, Air Force, Navy, Army, Marines, Space Force, they come in and they're the ones who do the organized train and equip.

So, the equip piece means they're the ones buying the weapons systems. So, they need a plan. So, they need to figure out how much a certain system is going to cost, what it's going to look like. They need to put out the solicitation, they have to put money into the congressional budget. That goes to Congress. Congress looks at that for a year. The defense authorization bill, which is what I worked on when I worked in the House Armed Services Committee. And then there's the appropriations piece, which is the corollary of deciding actually how much funding each program is going to get. That cycle, the budget is submitted in February usually, usually appropriations and authorizations are done by December. Sometimes authorization is later if there's continuing resolutions into the next year. So, that's been at least 18 months or two years since the services decided what they needed and planning out the funding.

And then they need to disperse the money. And so, that takes several months. So, you're talking about two and half to three years before they even start and money to start a program. And that is a huge impediment when the combatant commands need capability quickly. And there's a lot of frustration because a lot of the commercial companies say, look, we've developed this, we have it, buy it as a service. And so, it's doing this cultural shift within the acquisition community to have that go a lot more quickly or to have certain budget lines that say, this is going to be for commercial acquisition, and how do you rack and stack that funding. You've got the big programs of record that have funding and those are protected. So, nobody wants to give up money to be able to allocate funding to buy commercial. So, you need to really change the structure and one, make the requirements go a lot faster and have the acquisition be a lot faster.

There's an independent congressional commission looking at this, the PPBE commission, that's going to make recommendations on what reform is needed to introduce more speed and more opportunities to leverage commercial. You've got a few pockets within DOD. So, the Defense Innovation Unit, DIU, is going really quickly. They allocate money to prove out concepts and do prototypes, but again, they're not doing at scale. You've got the Space Development Agency within the Space Force that's launching small number of satellites, but hundreds every two years. And as a general rule, they launch every two years in what they call tranches. So, tranche one, tranche two of satellites, but the replenishment satellites wouldn't be the same copy as the previous ones.

They would be able to integrate technology advancements that would've happened in those two years. So, you've got pockets of DOD where this is starting to happen, but it's very much in the, let's prove it out, we need to see if it works. If it does work, how do you expand this to the rest of DOD? And that's a struggle, because culturally they're not used to doing that. So, it takes a lot of top leadership, but it also takes breaking through the bureaucratic morass that's just used to doing things the same way they've done things for decades. And so, that's an example for DOD, but it really applies to all agencies.

David:

It's like these large corporations, they'll have these little small venture funds that'll be their innovative funds, and they'll fund these smaller companies.

Leonor:

Yeah. And I think, David, that's a really interesting piece of this that I think the big companies are seeing that they need avenues to incorporate things faster and smaller. So, if they have their own innovative units or companies or acquire smaller companies, then they can integrate that with what they're doing. But, again, still big current companies are set up to be able to address and develop and manufacture really big defense programs that will take years. So, I think it's really good. And you're seeing these shifts. And I certainly think you need the primes to carry a lot of that, because they have enough money to float. If a startup has a great idea and they get seed money and do their Series A, B or C and do great, but they still need money to be able to scale up, and if they don't get that in a year, they might not make it. Whereas primes can float that over several years. So, this partnership I think is very necessary, certainly until DOD figures out how to allocate and disperse funding a lot more quickly.

David:

This has really been great, Leonor.

Leonor:

Oh, I loved it. Thanks for the great conversation.

Paige:

Thank you so much for coming on. You answered so many interesting questions.

Leonor:

I've really enjoyed it. Thank you.

Paige:

Thank you for listening to Disarming Data and thank you to Eric Montgomery for producing this podcast. To support the podcast, please rate, review and follow on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. If you'd like to learn more about the current state of data security, head on over to our website, disarmingdata.com.