Why the Scariest Nuclear Threat May Be Coming from Inside the White House
As reported by Michael Lewis in Vanity Fair.
The article begins:
Donald Trump’s secretary of energy, Rick Perry, once campaigned to abolish the $30 billion agency that he now runs, which oversees everything from our nuclear arsenal to the electrical grid. The department’s budget is now on the chopping block. But does anyone in the White House really understand what the Department of Energy actually does? And what a horrible risk it would be to ignore its extraordinary, life-or-death responsibilities?
It includes a lengthy discussion of one of the single gravest threats to the United States: nuclear weaponry.
This includes not only nuclear weapons accidents within the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal itself, but also the risks from North Korea's dramatic recent advances in nuclear weaponry -- including the risk that U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un will stumble into a war, thanks to their bellicose rhetoric back and forth.
Another high risk discussed in the article involves issues swirling around Iran's nuclear power program. As the article makes clear, the biggest risk of all is that President Trump and his administration will rip up the successful Iran Nuclear Deal. This could result in Iran developing nuclear weapons. Or it could result in a war between the U.S. and Iran, in a supposed attempt to prevent nuclear proliferation (which the Iran Nuclear Deal is actually accomplishing currently).