Vanity Fair (why them out of all possible publications? I don’t know) got “unprecedented access” onboard a U.S. strategic nuclear submarine. There are plenty of attention-catching quotes.

As the ominous backstop to America’s national security, the Department of Defense relies on a triad: intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), long-range bombers, and submarines. The latter are considered the triad’s least vulnerable leg and carry 70 percent of all deployed nuclear warheads in the inventory. Boomers are officially known as Ohio-class SSBNs—Navy-speak for “submersible ship, ballistic, nuclear”—and were built, as even the juniormost sailor will tell you (without a hint of irony), to “preserve the peace” and, in the event of strategic attack, to inflict unimaginable destruction. “We are prepared to unleash hell,” Admiral William Houston told me, adding that, of course, “We never want to do it. Those sailors know if their weapon system is ever used, they are probably not coming home to their families. And so they take their business very, very seriously. It’s what we refer to as a no-fail mission. You are working directly for the president when you’re out there.”

Um, I’m supposed to be comforted that the missiles are under civilian control, i.e. the military will not launch the missiles themselves. There is some comfort in this I suppose in that only the person who got a majority of electoral votes (many disproportionately representing empty land rather than human voters) can annihilate the planet. The military’s senior officers seems to have more faith in the mythical constitution and presidency than most of us civilians do.

On 9/11, Packer, then a lieutenant commander, was the engineer officer on the USS Ohio, an SSBN that was in the Pacific for a worldwide war game… The United States is under attack.” Over the next few hours, the Ohio received fragmentary reports: The twin towers had been hit; the Pentagon had been struck (true) and destroyed (not true). They also understood that the president was airborne—another portentous sign to those who wait on orders from the National Command Authority, which the president directs. The Ohio, Packer recalled, began the march from DEFCON five. To four. To three. “You take actions to make the platform more ready to complete its mission. You open safes and look at and access war plans that are normally not known or accessible.” When I asked how unusual those actions were, he replied, “I’d never seen those things. Ever.” Sailors on the Ohio began to speculate about who was behind the attacks. “The consensus on the boat was that it was Iran. And, as far as we were concerned, they were going to be radioactive glass…

Chilling – why do we jump to the conclusion that there is an Iranian boogeyman behind everything, evidence be damned…

Packer, like so many others interviewed for this story, told me he is bracing for a very different battle than the ones fought in the aftermath of 9/11. “2027 is the year Xi Jinping said they need to be ready to go to war,” … “In the Taiwan fight,” Packer maintained, “we’re prepared to go into the jaws of the Chinese undersea forces and take them all out.” All the surface ships as well.

So a U.S. China war is not only a foregone conclusion, it is on the calendar…

Over the second half of the last century, Western national security officials were preoccupied with trying to keep one adversary (the USSR) in check, even as the dueling nuclear powers ratified landmark arms control treaties. With those efforts now in eclipse and nuclear proliferation a chilling reality, America and its allies are currently contending with two near-peer opponents, Russia and China, as well as their own set of allies with nuclear aspirations, including North Korea, Iran, and, by extension, the Axis of Resistance—a term that encompasses armed groups like the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, and the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq.

Axis of resistance to what? being dominated by the threat of nuclear attack?

Don’t get me wrong. I am comforted that these people take their jobs deadly seriously. because their jobs are so deadly. I just don’t really buy into the idea that the United States needs a nuclear “deterrent” of thousands of warheads to outweigh the risk of accidental or intentional use of nuclear weapons. And I don’t like the idea that arms control treaties have fallen by the wayside and we cynically assume no further progress is possible.