Thread by @derekjGZ

🚨THREAD🚨

With the President of the United States threatening actual war crimes and "disproportionate" attacks on Iran, now feels like a good time to remind everyone that, yes, we really did hand a volatile reality TV star the absolute power to use thousands of nuclear weapons.

Folks always insist this can't be how it works. They need to believe that someone — the Defense Secretary, the Joint Chiefs, or a general, somewhere, surely — has to sign off on it. Because the facts sound too obviously crazy to be real.

Allow me to burst that precious bubble.

Everywhere Trump goes, a locked briefcase follows. Inside it are the means to launch weapons that can destroy entire nations. At any moment he can open it up, flip through a black book of targets, pick up the phone, and tell the Pentagon which genocide on the menu he likes best.

The officer in charge of the National Military Commander Center (the “War Room”), who may not be any more senior than a colonel, will be on the other end of the line. A small group of senior advisors/commanders may or may not be patched in, depending on their availability.

This is where folks assume top brass has to agree. Nope, sorry! This is a "consultation" only to the extent that the President wants advice. He can end all discussion immediately. Sure, folks can refuse/resign, but a disobedient officer in the War Room will be instantly replaced.

Once given, the order must be verified. This is the ONLY “check” in the process. The War Room officer reads a challenge code, and the President reads the matching response on a little card he carries w/ him. Then, like magic, the order is imbued w/ full power of the presidency.

A verified order has presumption of legality; pressure to obey will be extraordinary. Executing officers in chain of command have no legal/procedural grounds to defy it no matter how inappropriate it seems. If the President's identity is confirmed, the order is considered legit.

The order then speeds through the system, encrypted in a message half the length of a tweet. This happens FAST. By the time it reaches its destination — launch officers in underground silos — only a few minutes will have passed since the President first opened the briefcase.

Five launch crews w/ 2 officers each, spread miles apart underground and overseeing 50-missile squadrons, receive these orders. The 20-something-year-old officers open their safes and make sure the War Room's codes match. If they do, they unlock the missiles and target them.

A launch key is inserted and then 3 cooperative launch switches are flipped by 2 officers. (The “2-man rule” is at the bottom of the chain, not the top.) Each crew flipping their switches generates a “vote” to launch. 5 crews = 5 votes. It takes 2 votes to launch the missiles.

To block the launch, 4 of the 5 crews would need refuse to obey what seems like a legitimate order from their Commander-in-Chief, without the benefit of any outside info.

If that mutiny is where you pin your hopes for all of human civilization, good fucking luck with that.

When the switches are flipped, the nuclear weapons will launch instantly.

The whole process, from the President opening the briefcase to city-killing missiles climbing into the sky, can take less than 5 mins. There are no take-backs. No way to stop or cancel a launched missile.

Bear in mind these weapons are 10-20x more destructive than the bombs dropped on Japan and travel at 22x the speed of sound. They'll obliterate target cities in 30 mins or less. Millions will be dead faster than the President can get his tiny hands on a Big Mac and Diet Coke.

I don’t blame you for refusing to believe. I wouldn't believe it myself had I not learned this directly from nuclear command-and-control experts, veteran launch officers, and the 4-star general who commanded all US nuclear forces.

But this is real. This is how it works.

This is the vast, terrible power we bestowed on Donald Trump. At the heart of our democracy is an undemocratic nuclear monarchy that holds the whole world hostage to one man's decision-making. Everything rests on the President's sound mind, good judgment, and emotional stability.

The system is bonkers — but it doesn't have to be. There's a bill in Congress *right now* that would prevent any president from starting a nuclear war on their own.

#NoFirstUse would make this scenario illegal and impossible. Hard to imagine anything more urgent or obvious.

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