Despite an 80 percent reduction since the Cold War, American and Russian nuclear arsenals still number in the thousands. Advertisement Continue reading the main storyThe book opens with Ellsberg’s reaction to seeing for the first time the casualty graphs in America’s top-secret nuclear war plan. Some, like the lack of safety locks (known as Permissive Action Links) on nuclear weapons, have since been corrected. Others, including the ability to launch nuclear weapons after an adversary’s first strike killed the president, remain a necessary evil. Ellsberg devotes two chapters to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the closest mankind has yet come to nuclear war.

Source: New York Times December 28, 2017 09:56 UTC