A House of Dynamite: a nuclear weapons expert answers our questions about the Netflix film

If the United States were attacked, as is the case in the film, how quickly would the United Kingdom become involved in this situation?
He would be involved immediately. Under NATO, an attack on one is an attack on all. A country can trigger Article 5, which begins the process of getting other countries to participate in collective defense, and the United Kingdom is the United States’ strongest ally. I don’t think there would be a situation where the UK would go back on this, unless it had improbable political leadership. However, it is not clear that we would use our nuclear weapons in this situation. It’s more likely that the US will want to use its own weapons, and I’m sure the UK would be very happy to do so.

Is it possible that successful negotiations while an intercontinental ballistic missile is still in the air will result in the sender somehow deactivating it?
No. These missiles are very mechanical and are not digitally interceptible. This would make them vulnerable to jamming, misdirection, or anything else. So it’s a bit like throwing a tennis ball. Once it goes up in the air, it comes down.

I think a lot of people will come away from this movie thinking, “Should I really be worried?” How concerned should we be about a situation like the one depicted in the film, or any other nuclear attack situation?
I honestly think people should be very concerned. I say this because the situation has never been stable and is becoming more and more unstable. This situation should be equated with climate change as a parallel existential threat that humanity faces daily. We’re going from a Cold War situation where two superpowers were balancing each other to some degree — which carried major risks but also some stability — to a unipolar moment where the United States essentially ruled the world, to what has happened over the last decade or more, where countries have begun to challenge that dominance: China, Russia, and, somewhat less overtly aggressive, countries like India, which are expanding and will continue to develop, and perhaps Brazil.

We are therefore in the presence of multipolarity, which means that there are many more possible directions and that the system is less clearly stable. Added to this are new technological developments which are developing rapidly. New systems are being put into operation all the time. There is major collaboration between the weapons and space domain, and there are questions about whether it will be possible to find submarines, which was supposed to be the last degree of stability. You can always send the sub back because you can’t find it. But what will happen if you find it?

Things are changing so quickly, with AI, quantum technologies and so much more, that the assumptions the world has relied on about nuclear stability — the classic view of deterrence — are simply no longer axioms we can stick to. There is now only one arms control treaty between the United States and Russia. In recent years, the United States and Russia have torn up all the agreements reached in the 1980s and beyond that stabilized relations between these two countries, and they have almost all disappeared. The last one will expire in February. The United States has the option to extend it for another year, which Russia recently proposed. And that’s all for now.

We therefore find ourselves in a situation of uncontrolled competition, significant investments in new technologies, and dialogue between countries is really poor. So we need films like this because we need the public, the philanthropy, the foundations, to stand up and remember that this is a serious subject that needs to be treated seriously for the good of all. I wish I could give you a more positive answer, but that is the situation.

Article originally published on British GQ