Annie Jacobsen: evaluation

Transcript context

…Who are the people around the President of the United States that give advice in this six minute window? How many of them just, maybe you could speak to the detail of that, but also to the spirit of the way they see the world. How many of them are warmongers? How many of them are kind of big picture, peace, humanity type of thinkers? Well, again, we’re talking about that six minute window, so it’s not exactly like you can, let me put a pot of coffee on and really tell me what you think and we can strategize here, right? You have your SecDef and your chairman, maybe the vice chairman. We haven’t even begun to talk about the fact that at the same time, these advisors also have a parallel concern, and that’s called continuity of government. So while they’re trying to advise on the nuclear counterstrike in response to the incoming nuclear missile, they have to be thinking, “How are we going to keep the government functioning when the missiles start hitting, when the bombs start going off?” And that is about getting yourself out of the Pentagon, let’s say. Getting yourself to one of these nuclear bunkers that I write about at length in the book. So how much can you ask of a human, right? Because it comes down to a human. Secretary of Defense is a human. Imagine that job while trying to advise the president. And then there’s also a really interesting term which I learned about called jamming the president, which is often understood in Washington that the military advisors would, we don’t know if this is legit, we’ve never seen it put to the test, but jamming the president means the military advisors are going to push for a really aggressive counter attack immediately. And again, you’re the president who’s not really been paying attention to this because he has many other things to deal with. Speed is not conducive to wisdom. Can you speak to the jamming the president? So your sense is the advisors would by default be pushing for aggressive counter attack.…

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