#330 - The Doomsday Machine

Share this episode: https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/330-the-doomsday-machine Sam Harris speaks with Carl Robichaud about the ongoing threat of nuclear war. They discuss the film "Oppenheimer," the ethics of dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the false lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the history and future of nuclear proliferation, the logic of deterrence, cyber vulnerabilities, the history of de-escalation, the war in Ukraine, war games, the nuclear taboo, growing tensions between the U.S. and China, artificial intelligence, getting to nuclear zero, the role for private citizens in mitigating nuclear risk, the Longview Nuclear Risk Policy Fund (https://www.longview.org/fund/nuclear-weapons-policy-fund/), and other topics. Carl Robichaud co-leads Longview’s program on nuclear weapons policy. For more than a decade, Carl led grantmaking in nuclear security at the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a philanthropic fund which grants over $30 million annually to strengthen international peace and security. Previously, Carl worked with The Century Foundation and the Global Security Institute, where his research spanned arms control, international security policy, and nonproliferation. Robichaud holds an MPA in public policy and international affairs from Princeton University and a BA from Wesleyan University. He is a 1999 Thomas J. Watson fellow and a 2003 Harold W. Rosenthal fellow for international affairs and security at the Stimson Center and the Council on Foreign Relations. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Elsie Kagan, a painter. Website: https://www.longview.org/fund/nuclear-weapons-policy-fund/ Twitter: @carlrobichaud   Learning how to train your mind is the single greatest investment you can make in life. That’s why Sam Harris created the Waking Up app. From rational mindfulness practice to lessons on some of life’s most important topics, join Sam as he demystifies the practice of meditation and explores the theory behind it.    

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Join neuroscientist, philosopher, and best-selling author Sam Harris as he explores important and controversial questions about the human mind, society, and current events. Sam Harris is the author of five New York Times bestsellers. His books include The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, Free Will, Lying, Waking Up, and Islam and the Future of Tolerance (with Maajid Nawaz). The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction. His writing and public lectures cover a wide range of topics—neuroscience, moral philosophy, religion, meditation practice, human violence, rationality—but generally focus on how a growing understanding of ourselves and the world is changing our sense of how we should live. Harris's work has been published in more than 20 languages and has been discussed in The New York Times, Time, Scientific American, Nature, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. He has written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Economist, The Times (London), The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The Annals of Neurology, and elsewhere. Sam Harris received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA.