Why Nuclear War Is More Likely Than You Think (with Carlo Rovelli)

Why have we stopped talking about the risk of nuclear war when the risk is greater than ever? What is a ‘nuclear winter’ and why are nuclear exchanges such extreme risks for the future of humanity? And should the UK be investing in nuclear weapons – or could this make the country more vulnerable? Rory is joined this week by physicist and philosopher, Carlo Rovelli for the next episode in his series on Existential Risk. Catch up on episode one with Yuval Noah Harari ⁠here.⁠ To hear the whole epiosde, sign up at therestispolitics.com Producer: India Dunkley Researcher: Evie Townend Video Editor: Josh Smith Social Producer: Celine Charles Executive Producer: Isabella Soames Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:09Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to The Rest Is Politics for a new series on existential risk. And I'm joined today by somebody I admire immensely, Professor Carlo Rovelli. I hope many people listening will already be familiar with his works because he writes very, very beautifully about physics and the universe. Some of the books that you may have come across, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Reality is Not What It Seems, it's a lovely title. I like Reality is Not What It Seems. But today, he's here actually engaging much more in something much more political. And he's here to talk to us about nuclear war. I think I'm going to begin you there, Professor, and then we'll come back to talk about who

• 0:54Rory Stewart?

  you are and bring out some of this wonderful lively mind. But let's begin with that. Nuclear war feels a quite unfashionable subject. It feels like something that, you know, my father-in-law and mother-in-law were worried about in the 1960s. They were all building bunkers. They all thought the Cuban Missile Crisis was coming. Everybody was writing books. The end of the world is nigh, nuclear war is happening. And then it didn't happen for more than 50 years, 60 years. And so people maybe aren't talking about it quite as much as they were. Is this because the risk has changed? Why are we talking about it less than we were, do you think?

• 1:33Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me, Rory. Thanks for this very kind introduction. I think that what you just said is the source of the risk and the reason for me for writing this book about the risk. Namely, it does sound unfashionable, doesn't it? Think of the 60s, when there were atomic refuges and things like that. We're over that. And that's exactly the problem because objectively, and I use this word with a lot of caution, but I think it has to be used, the risk is higher than the 60s. The title of my book is 85 Seconds to Midnight, refers to the slogan used by the Bulletin

• 2:18Speaker 01

  of Atomic Scientists, which is a committee of scientists that tries to use objective parameters to evaluate the risk of a nuclear catastrophe. And they come out with the conclusion, they do this every year since the Cold War, and they came out with the conclusion that now the risk is higher.

• 2:41Rory Stewart?

  What are the factors which might make it more likely today than it was in the 1960s?

• 2:44Speaker 01

  There are several, at least four. Let me make a short list of them. First of all, what you said at the beginning, talk about atomic bombs looks out of fashion. Nobody's talking about that. So people are forgetting the essential risk that they imply. The political discussion in many countries, and especially in Europe, about the rearmament, it doesn't include the part, yes, and then if there's war, this war is nuclear. So the nuclear issue is not in the center of the discussion as it should and as it was in the 15s and 60s. So that's one reason.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  The second reason is that it's not anymore two superpowers. The world has changed. The Cold War has ended. Soviet Union gave up essentially. The Soviet liberty should decide if we can become capitalist like you, it's better for us. Now there is a third nuclear superpower which is coming out, which is China. And it's not clear what Europe is going to do with its French and British nuclear armaments, which are far less than the other three. Game of three is completely different to game of two. Because a game of two is one watch one another and we agree not to go disaster. Game of three is completely different because there's a complicated thing about trust

• 4:07Speaker 01

  and there is a clear advantage in everybody having the other two going to work. So somebody is pushing always for the other two going to work. That's the second reason. The third reason is artificial intelligence. Because not using artificial intelligence in a game which may be a game of minutes, very fast decisions, remember. Now, we have the equivalent of nuclear bombs in Turkey. Nuclear bombs are very close to Russia right now. So AI, it's likely to be used in combination with nuclear technology, but AI is not fully reliable in these things.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Because the type point of AI take decision faster than humans. So you don't want to slow down it with humans. And then you put your hands in the decision of AI system. And we know that they are completely unreliable on substantial things today.

• 5:07Rory Stewart?

  And the interesting question is, with AI is so manifold, and we can get into that in a second, but there's a question of unreliability, hallucination. There's also a question of rigidity. There's a question of these models being trained to follow a particular form of logic, which may be exactly the logic that the military advisers of Kennedy and Kristoff would have pushed for, which leads to war, as opposed to the strange forms of political imagination which allowed the three people to say that.

• 5:36Speaker 01

  Exactly. That's exactly the case. And then governments, top governments are put in a sort of catch 23, catch 22, what was it? Because if you don't rely on AI, you weaken yourself. If you do, you increase the danger. So what do you do?

• 5:52Rory Stewart?

  Because the AI, the speed of the AI reduces the length of the kill chain, famously.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 5:59Rory Stewart?

  And it does so basically by giving more responsibility to the AI to make decisions more quickly than a human.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 6:04Rory Stewart?

  And then presumably, another big change that we faced is that it's not just that China has a nuclear weapon, that's something that we've dealt with for a long time. Today, Israel has a nuclear weapon, Pakistan has a nuclear weapon, India has a nuclear weapon, North Korea has a nuclear weapon, and of course, Britain and France have a nuclear weapon.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  I have a reading of the role of the so-called small nuclear powers, which is a bit different. I think that the real existential danger comes from the big nuclear powers, not from the small ones. For a simple reason, which I think is often underplayed for convenience by the big powers, which is the following. Take North Korea, which is a quintessential small power, small country, very weak, but with nuclear weapons.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  The Americans say often, oh, I mean, Kim in North Korea had the capacity of bombing San Francisco and killing millions. True, but would he do that? Obviously, the leadership of North Korea sending a nuclear bomb on the American soil would mean with certainty 20 minutes later to be vaporized with their own friend and family and country and everything. So we're extremely careful of not to do that unless they were in a desperate situation in which they were going to die anywhere close. So nuclear Korea is not initiating a nuclear change.

• 7:46Rory Stewart?

  But you've chosen an example in which one of these countries is taking on the United States. But now imagine you're Israel. Now imagine you're a country that is increasingly nationalistic. You believe that you are surrounded by threatening neighbors. You believe that these countries are determined to eradicate the state of Israel and perpetuate another Holocaust or genocide against you. You see a state like Iran. You look at it and you think this state, if it develops its weapons, represents something that can literally wipe out our entire nation, our entire people. It seems to me there is an argument that it's that kind of state that might be more

• 8:28Rory Stewart?

  likely to use these weapons first party because they would be using it. Yeah, if the Israel did it against Iran, they'd be using it before the other state had developed its weapons. And they're not firing it at a nuclear armed power.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Look, I'm not a great supporter for Israel. But I don't think Netanyahu is going to use a nuclear weapon.

• 8:47Rory Stewart?

  The question of using it presumably is about two things. It's about fear and deterrence.

• 8:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 8:53Rory Stewart?

  Okay, so it's about trying to stop somebody from threatening you, you know, signaling, if you come after me, I have a nuclear weapon. But it's also about the level of your fear. And is it rational? Is it paranoid? Now, one of the questions, it's very difficult to ask, I'm not particularly focusing on Israel here, you can make the same argument about Pakistan and India. You can make the argument about South Korea and North Korea, not the United States and North Korea. It's necessary only for the North Korean regime, or the government in Israel, or the government in Pakistan, to feel, for whatever reason, in their national security apparatus that their neighboring country poses an existential threat to their survival, for the likelihood of this to increase.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  True, I'm not in favor of countries having nuclear war at all. I mean, obviously, like it is recognized by the majority of the world, the less nuclear war, nuclear war heads the bet for everybody. Yet, I think that the danger is posed by the big states, not the small states. Let's try the other side. Suppose Iran gets nuclear weapons, or suppose it didn't hesitate in the 90s and became nuclear, which was possible. I mean, there was a big discussion in Iran at the time.

• 10:10Rory Stewart?

  That would be interesting. But then, it's not the example I'm giving you, because that's mutually assured destruction.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 10:16Rory Stewart?

  More likely in this situation is that if Israel, they conclude that they are about to get a nuclear weapon, not that they have a nuclear weapon. Of course, when they have a nuclear weapon, it would be irrational for Israel to attack them.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 10:31Rory Stewart?

  So your risk point is not nuclear against nuclear. This is why I think, in many ways, the story presumably of the last 70, 80 years is actually mutually assured destruction is one of the reasons people haven't used them. The risk is, when a national security state with a very fearful attitude towards its neighbors possesses the weapon and its neighbors do not, that the risk emerges.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  If you were the President of the United States, most powerful army in the planet, and scientists would come in the Oval Office and say, actually, we have some new technological development. We have a good chance of destroying the majority of Soviet and Chinese weapons in, thanks to our new advanced technology. And, you know, maybe a few million people would die, but we can wipe out the majority, and so we will be really the only nuclear superpower. A president like you would be tempted to say yes, to attack. That seems the great danger to me. Or, Europe has been bombed, has bombed St. Petersburg last week.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Suppose it goes on, and Moscow is bombed, and suppose your preemptive is, at some point, there was...

• 11:45Rory Stewart?

  So, it's interesting. You've got a very interesting, that you've made this political. And this is where I'm differing with you as a politician, as opposed to a physicist. If Ukraine bombing St. Petersburg or Moscow might lead Russia to launch a nuclear weapon...

• 12:02Speaker 01

  But not for the moment, not so little.

• 12:04Rory Stewart?

  But imagine, imagine it's a hypothetical thing. Why would that not be true of Israel against Iran? Let's say Iran mounted sufficient attacks against Tel Aviv, or supported Hezbollah and proxies, some reincarnation of Hamas, and Israel really believed that it faced not just what Russia would face. I mean, Russia wouldn't think that it was facing genocide, horror caused existential extinction, it's just losing cities.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  So that's why it's not, that's why it's not, it's not...

• 12:30Rory Stewart?

  But in the case of Israel, for reasons of history, memories of Yom Kippur in 67...

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Fine, I would add Israel to my dangerous possible point of escalation.

• 12:41Rory Stewart?

  Or again, India, Pakistan, you're saying that this doesn't happen because of mutually assured destruction. But South Korea, North Korea? I mean, who knows what sort of... If South Korea doesn't have the ability to respond, you know, where is the... And the North Korean regime is paranoid enough.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  I'm not defending small countries with nuclear weapons, and I'm not saying that, oh, there is no problem there. What I'm saying is that I see very clearly why small countries might have an interest in having nuclear weapons. And in the book, I have a chapter which compares North Korea with Libya. Gaddafi started a nuclear weapon program at some point.

• 13:26Rory Stewart?

  So across right and left, there is a complete consensus, basically, that Britain needs to spend more on defense. Across the whole of Europe, there is a consensus that we need to spend more on defense. In fact, what you hear every European leader from left and right say is, Donald Trump was wrong about many things, but the one thing he was right about is Europe needs to spend more on defense. Now, add to that in Britain, where are we spending the money? Nuclear weapons. This entire new, really big investment, basically, the British military has decided that they're going to spend about 25% of this money on nuclear weapons, that actually, there is no money for anything else.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 14:04Rory Stewart?

  It's all going to be spent on Trident submarines incidentally with these American manufactured

• 14:10Speaker 01

  I heard.

• 14:10Rory Stewart?

  nuclear missiles.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Unfortunately.

• 14:12Rory Stewart?

  Okay. Here's your chance. You are right in the heart of something that is so relevant. What would you say to these people?

• 14:19Speaker 01

  The result of this is increasing the likelihood of a catastrophic war very soon. The result of this is making Russia panic, triple the number of H-bombs that they have, increasing the tension. And to the people who are doing that, I would like to tell me what they expect Europe and Russia be 10 years in the future. Do they have a story? I don't hear this story. I mean, Germany is putting even more money than Britain into rearment, right? So we are rearming Germany in anti-Russian reason, okay? Which is something we have already played in Europe, and we saw how it happened. That's exactly what happened in the 30s.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Germany was allowed to close, put, create a colossal army in anti-Russian... In fact, Germany then attacked Russia. That was its purpose. London and Paris were very happy of that. We saw how it ended. It's the second act of the Europe suicide, from a global superpower to nothing.

• 15:22Rory Stewart?

  From Trump and J.D. Vance's point of view, they have two requests for Europe. One is that they spend much more money on weapons, and secondly, that they elect far-right nationalist governments.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 15:33Rory Stewart?

  So what could possibly go wrong?

• 15:35Speaker 01

  I think, I think they're both aiming at weakening Europe, and not aiming of strengthening Europe. From the perspective of the Americans, you know, 10 years ago, the GDP of Europe and US was similar. Now, Europe has been collapsing with respect to America. So Americans have their own interest. The interest of Europeans is to get back to a... living together with the Russians. And the Russians did something completely stupid. They know it, of course, because Ukraine was a crazy adventure. They thought it would go in one way, and it didn't go the way, obviously, in way they expected.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  They don't know how to get out of that. The interest of Europe is to find a, go back to a living together with Russians, how it was in one way or the other through the Cold War, and then at the time of Angela Merkel, and then until, until recently. I think, look, so often disasters arrive when you don't expect it, or when you think you're... And I think we might be in a situation like that. My father used to tell me that the Repubblica di Salò, which is the last political entity of Mussolini, of fascist Italian, the week before it collapsed completely

• 17:00Speaker 01

  under the invasion of the Allied and from the south, the Parliament of the Republic was debating and approving a reform of the postal system. Meaning they had no idea, in spite of, historically, from seeing from today being obvious, they had no idea that in a week they would be disappeared. A week before the Sarajevo killing of the Emperor of Austria, a person who inherited the empire, nobody would expect Europe to fall into First World War. So disasters arrive, and disaster arrive when people think, oh, we're avoiding them by doing things like rearming.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  I think we are, nobody's talking about that. And that's what I would like a common discussion to take. Because you're right, that politicians look at the short term, there are things which are hard to say, and blah, blah. But there are people who have... Politicians are not stupid. They have, I believe there are many of them which are intelligent and can look at the long term.

• 18:08Rory Stewart?

  To hear the rest of my interview with Carlo Rovelli, sign up at therestispolitics.com. That's therestispolitics.com.