Annie Jacobsen: commitment

Transcript context

…What do you know of the way Putin thinks about nuclear weapons and nuclear war? Is it just something to allude to in a speech? Or do you think he contemplates the possibilities of nuclear war? I don’t know, but if I had to guess it would go like this. I would look at his background, and he comes from the intelligence world. My experience in interviewing old timers who’ve spent decades working for the CIA or even NRO or NSA, I know the way they think from having spent hundreds of hours interviewing them. And then I know the way that military men think, and it’s very different. Putin’s not a military person per se; he’s an intelligence officer. So what would concern me there if I had to guess about his mindset has to do with paranoia. Most intelligence officers must have a degree of healthy paranoia, or they’re going to wind up dead. And so that’s not a great quality to have. You would be more trigger-happy perhaps. So you would be more prone to respond to erroneous signals.…

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