Robert Wiblin: Just before we move on from the book, what do you think are the other best sources that people who want to pursue a career in nuclear security should read. I guess Eric Schlosserâs âCommand and Controlâ often comes up as a good read. Is there anything else that youâd recommend?
Daniel Ellsberg: Well, by the way Schlosserâs book is so good that when I read it I thought, âGee. Well, now I donât have to write mine.â You know, itâs all out there. And then when I reread it some more, I said, âNo, I have a number, a few points to make that he doesnât.â He did get some things that almost nobody else had. The delegation issue for example is in there. I alone was the person talking about that for decades. And he has a number of, heâs much more on the accident problem and the false alarm problem than I have. In my book I just referred to his to a large extent and to Bruce Blair and Scott Sagan and a few others. So, thatâs an excellent book to read.
Helen Caldicott, a former head of the Physicians for Social Responsibility here, the American part of the group that got the Nobel Prize in the 90s for nuclear war, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Helen Caldicott edited in Australia a book called âSleepwalking to Armageddonâ, which is very, very good last year on where we are right now. More up to date than mine is. In fact, it came out just after mine had been printed or I would have referred to it more.
Those are two good ones. But I would put my book as one definitely worth reading in that trio. So, on the question there are of course many others going back in history. Fred Kaplanâs the âWizards of Armageddonâ is very good. On the Cuban Missile Crisis, I think itâs called âOne Minute to Midnightâ or something a very good one on the Cuban Missile Crisis.
From the 80,000 Hours interview with Daniel Ellsberg:
Links to these books:
Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety by Eric Schlosser
Sleepwalking to Armageddon: The Threat of Nuclear Annihilation edited by Helen Caldicott
The Wizards of Armageddon by Fred Kaplan
One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War by Michael Dobbs, read by Bob Walter
(The only one of these Iâve read myself is Command and Control.)