Annie Jacobsen: evaluation

Transcript context

…Israel has done a great job. They don’t stop literally everything, but it’s quite impressive. I know it’s a smaller country, but it can be done along some margins, right? No, absolutely not. Wrong science. The Iron Dome you’re referring to shoots down short-range and some medium-range, including ballistic missiles. They come from either land-based systems, like the THAAD system, or they come from sea ships, the Aegis system, but they cannot shoot down ICBMs — intercontinental ballistic missiles — traveling, as I just mentioned, 500 miles above the earth’s surface. That is an extraordinary distinction, and people incorrectly mix them, because it sounds great and it’s quite fantasy hopeful to think, “Wow, I can just build a system, an Iron Dome or a golden dome over the United States, over my head, and I will be free from nuclear attack. ” Now, because I have brought the golden dome up. I also must say, having interviewed Charles Townes, for example, who was the Nobel Laureate who invented the laser, and spoke to him a decade ago about whether or not an Iron Dome–type system could work. He said unequivocally no. Now we are in a different field of technology that is above my access, because I don’t have a top-secret clearance. When you’re talking about cube sets, and you’re talking about space-based interception, none of us that are not inside that golden dome rubric that’s happening right now know what’s happening. We don’t know about the future, but the past tells us that the Iron Dome is a different situation. Surely, if we spent 5 percent of GDP, we could come up with something. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it could protect Washington and New York, right? If nuclear war is so unthinkable, so crazy, so destructive, so possible, then we ought to spend that 5 percent of GDP.…

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