BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) - During the Cold War, nestled among the prairie grasses, 150 missile silo sites made their homes in North Dakota.
The Bismarck Tribune reported (https://bit.ly/2d3UrhL ) that despite the rural pleasantness, some facilities are more than 50 years old and often leak or have maintenance problems, according to Eric Schlosser, a journalist whose latest book, “Command & Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident and the Illusion of Safety,” was a 2014 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
“Now, you’ve got to invest in them or get rid of them. It’s the middle ground that’s the most dangerous,” said Schlosser, who was recently in Bismarck to participate in a GameChanger Series held at Legacy High School last month.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who visited Minot Air Force Base on Monday, said his attention has been focused on the problem. Carter said the Pentagon is committed to correcting what he calls decades of shortchanging its nuclear forces. He said $108 billion is earmarked for sustaining and improving the forces over the next five years, according to a report by the Associated Press.
At the height of the Cold War, silos were built on a regular basis and equipped with cutting-edge technology. What was once pushing the frontier has not been updated as frequently as expected.
“I’ve gone into a Titan silo twice,” said Murray Sagsveen, retired brigadier general and judge advocate for the North Dakota Army National Guard. “It’s a totally different thing to visit one - it’s helpful for me to understand the magnitude. I wanted to get a perspective, to go down into the steps, to see how deep that silo is, to be walking down that corridor to get into the working space. And it’s all analog devices, no computers, and I thought, things have changed so much.”
To Ralph Romans, who has worked in the oil fields and on an air base, the documentary based on “Command & Control” was a unique but concerning perspective.
“The film makes me wonder: Have we updated any of our facilities?” Romans said. “But again, I have more questions than answers. It certainly doesn’t increase my confidence in the state of our nuclear arsenal.”
A key part of changing perspectives is raising awareness, which Schlosser aims to do with the book and subsequent documentary. This is accomplished easier now than in the past, according to Sagsveen.
“When Damascus happened in 1980, I don’t remember much controversy,” Sagsveen said. “The event seems to have been downplayed. When you see this movie, read the book, you realize how close it was to a real disaster.”
Fear of the Soviet Union was a driving factor for making ever-larger missiles, such as the Titan II. As Schlosser explored in his book, each step seemed logical: It was only when the effects compounded that they posed such a large risk to even the national security of the United States itself.
“It’s easy with the sophistication of technology to hide behind a machine,” said Joseph Stuart, head of the history department at the University of Mary. “But despite the central intelligence of the project, all human things are fallible. This is not a book that is pacifist or anti-nuclear but about ordinary people doing great things and about humility.”
There was a driving philosophy behind the technology: Humans make mistakes, so instead, machines should be trusted.
“In America, we often want to create a technological utopia,” Stuart said. “This automation, to a certain degree, worked - the transfer of judgment from humans to machines. But there are some things they can’t do. Machines solve problems, but how do you know what the problem is? This is the human element. Machines don’t have the ability to self-reflect like we do. The human element will never go away. What checklist is relevant to this problem? That’s what a machine is going to be considering…. The system can make choices but only within the choices of the system it’s given.”
This led to one of the main flaws in the Damascus accident: Airmen on the ground were not allowed to make decisions based on their situational awareness, according to Romans.
Marie Hoff, who participated in discussions surrounding Schlosser’s presentation at the GameChanger Series, was surprised by how close the country has come to a catastrophe, and yet, a large-scale accident has never occurred.
“We had all this fear and fright in the Cold War, which I understood then,” Hoff said. “I mean, I had nightmares about the Communists chasing me. But now it’s like, we don’t talk about nuclear weapons even though we have them less than 100 miles away. Nobody worries about them anymore, but maybe they should.”
Informed people taking action can make an impact, according to Schlosser.
“In Central Park in 1982 were these demonstrations against nuclear weapons,” Schlosser said. “And they had a huge impact on Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan - both these leaders realized the danger was extraordinary,” said Schlosser, adding that his book is not meant to be depressing or scary.
“I never intended it to be that. Although the issues are dangerous, it can also feel empowering to know. And we can do things to reduce that danger. After all, the Cold War ended peacefully because people demanded that it end peacefully,” he said.
About 200 nuclear weapons remain in the hands of NATO, as a symbol of the U.S. commitment to defending other countries.
“The problem is they’re also a potential target for terrorists, for Islamic terrorism,” Schlosser said.
Anti-nuclear activists have broken into various nuclear sites throughout Europe, suggesting that terrorists also could do this.
“The most concerning of the nuclear weapons we have in NATO are the weapons - maybe 40, maybe 50 - that are being stored at a Turkish air base,” Schlosser said. “And that Turkish air base is quite close to the border with Syria, where ISIS is very prevalent.”
Fear that these weapons could fall into enemy hands has only increased as the stability of the region remains shaky.
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Information from: Bismarck Tribune, https://www.bismarcktribune.com
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