The author of THE SIX MINUTE WAR on a radar blip, a night in the Soviet Union and what a machine cannot do.
Michael Dobbs is the author of THE SIX MINUTE WAR. He joins Sean Dillon on Beyond the Mic to talk about a line from Reagan’s memoirs, the decisions presidents make under stress, and the question of what a computer cannot do.
Dobbs explains where the title comes from. In the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy and Khrushchev had thirteen days. Shorter early warning times and better computers shrank that window to a few minutes.
He talks about Stanislav Petrov, the officer on duty the night Soviet computers and satellites announced an American missile attack. He also asks whether AI systems will have something in their soul when they face a call like that.
Then the Fast Five: his first Russian word, whether he would swim in the ocean again after the tsunami in Sri Lanka, a book he would love to write, a radar blip or a blank page, and who fact-checks him. He says he invented the fact-check column at the Washington Post.
What does he consider a presidential crisis now?
When it ends he tells me he was not expecting my questions.
I was amazed by the book and the story. Frightened that the technology has shrunk the reaction time to what could almost be seconds now. And that should frighten everyone. Where is the humanity?
THE SIX MINUTE WAR, by Michael Dobbs. A fascinating book you should order after hearing this Beyond the Mic Mini.
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