Is Missile Defense Making the World Safer or More Dangerous?

What is the Golden Dome, and could it redefine the future of nuclear deterrence?

In this episode of the “At the Boundary” podcast, GNSI’s Dr. Tad Schnaufer sit down with GNSI Non resident Senior Fellow and CEO of Intelligence and National Security Directions, Manolis Priniotakis to break down one of the most ambitious, and controversial, defense concepts in decades: The Golden Dome, a multi-layered missile defense system designed to counter nuclear threats, hypersonic weapons, and emerging technologies.

Recorded during  the GNSI Tampa Summit 6 on nuclear technology, this conversation explores how the defense system fits into a rapidly evolving global security landscape shaped by rising nuclear powers, the collapse of arms control agreements, and accelerating military innovation.

Links from the Episode:

• GNSI International Security Experience

• Three Body Trap D-Brief
 

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At the Boundary  from the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida,  features global and national security issues we’ve found to be insightful, intriguing, fascinating, maybe controversial, but overall just worth talking about.

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The mission of GNSI is to provide actionable solutions to 21st-century security challenges for decision-makers at the local, state, national and global levels. We hope you enjoy At the Boundary.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Speaker 1, Tad Schnaufer, Jim Cardoso, Manolis Priniotakis

Jim Cardoso  00:00

Jim, hello everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of at the boundary, the podcast from the global and national security Institute at the University of South Florida. I'm Jim Cardoso, Senior Director for GNSI, and your host for at the boundary. Today on the podcast, we're following up on the discussion that began at last week's GNSI Tampa summit six at the University of South Florida. That topic is the golden dome and its role, not just in nuclear defense, but in nuclear deterrence. Our guest today led much of that discussion on this much talked about space based missile defense. Manioli priniatakis, CEO of Intelligence and National Security directions, will be here in just a moment. First though, a final recap on Tampa Summit, six themed cracks in the lamp, freeing the nuclear Genie. It featured one of the best speaker and panel lineups we've ever put together. Our keynote speakers included retired Air Force General John Highton, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and commander of US Strategic Command, the Honorable Frank Miller, former Special Assistant to the President who was also a former assistant secretary of state, the Honorable Christopher Hill, a five time US Ambassador appointed by four different presidents and former assistant secretary of state, as well as Gina Tsai, Executive Director and former commander of US Central Command retired Marine Corps General Frank McKenzie, in addition to these veteran leaders and experts, we had the opportunity to see the next generation of national security as four students from the future strategist program presented nuclear related research to the audience. Here's a big shout out to Santiago, Zambrano, Malia Altero, Michael de Leonardo and Joshua Felix, great job standing up there and presenting to some of the most knowledgeable experts in the world on this topic. We'd like to thank our partners who helped make the summit such an outstanding success. That includes the USF College of Arts and Sciences, as well as the Institute for Russian, European and Eurasian Studies and the project on nuclear issues, team at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Without their support and partnership, the summit would not have been as successful and compelling as it was. All videos from Tampa summit six will be available on our YouTube channel in the near future. If you want to know right away when they drop, be sure to subscribe and sign up for alerts. One final note, our latest decision brief also focuses on discussion featured at the summit last week, the three body trap, the new geometry of nuclear deterrence, is authored by Dr sung Hyun Lee, who is also the moderator for the panel discussion on the same it's a compelling article that you can find on our website. Okay, time for our guest this week. Manioli priniatakis is the CEO of Intelligence and National Security directions, an advisory firm delivering consulting, publishing events and education in the intelligence and national security domains. He's also a retired member of the senior National Intelligence Service. He moderated a panel discussion last week focused on nuclear deterrence and the Golden Dome. Will they keep the peace? And he sat down with GNSI strategy and research manager, Dr Tad schnaufer For a deeper dive on that topic.

Tad Schnaufer  03:42

At welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Todd. I appreciate being a part of it. Well, I'm looking forward this conversation as we wrapped up our conference on nuclear deterrence last week, or in the past preceding weeks. You know, one of the topics that wasn't covered too heavily during that conference was the issues of non state actors getting their hands on nuclear material. Could we talk about that a little bit? Thank you

Manolis Priniotakis  04:05

for having me be part of this conversation, but also part of the event on nuclear deterrence that you hosted. It was a great couple of days, and covered a lot of territory in one of the issues that didn't get a lot of treatment, because most of it was really about state issues, which was not surprising given the environment we're in right now, with a couple active conflicts involving nuclear powers, but also end of effective End of arms control and expansion of other the Chinese arsenal. For instance, there wasn't a lot of discussion about nuclear security, the threat of terrorist organizations. There was a little bit, you had a student who did a great job discussing nuclear smuggling issues. And again. Maybe it's a testament of the times that we don't think it's not as much of a front and center issue as it would have been, say, 10 years ago, if we'd had this discussion, maybe not 10 years ago, 15 years ago, if we'd had this discussion 15 years ago, it probably would have been one of the primary things we would be talking about, security of facilities, the risk of terrorists getting their hands on nuclear weapons or nuclear materials. And partly that's probably, you know, the success, broadly speaking, of the terrorism fight in more broadly, against some of the players that were pursuing those technologies, but also, you know, enhanced security measures, this has been a primary focus of the Department of Energy and NSA and other parts of the government for years. And, you know, I guess to some extent, there's maybe an outcropping of that, is that you are not seeing as much attention paid at the same time we were also had the great honor and great pleasure of listening to Frank Miller, literally legendary Frank Miller, John Highton, who is the commander of STRATCOM. They really, for the most of their careers, were dealing with nation state actors, so that may have also been a contributing factor, but it's still, it's still a risk. I know a lot of the cases of nuclear smuggling do tend to be people, you know, scam artists. I remember somebody used to work with saying, there's a lot of red mercury out on the market, but how much of it is actually real nuclear materials is a question mark, but it is something that's still worthy of consideration, and there's still people in the government who are focused on it as they should be. But I did think it was striking that most of the conversation, almost 98% of the conversation, was really focused on the

Tad Schnaufer  06:58

state threat. Well, in kind of bridging that gap. I remember when the war in Ukraine began with Russia's invasion February 22 there was concerns of, if you know, and obviously this did not come to fruition. But if the Russians lost too hard, they started having an internal collapse. Now again, you have the Russian nuclear arsenal, just like with the collapse of Soviet Union, kind of falling out of command. So what do you do with all these different materials of facilities when the government is literally collapsing and you're having independent states proclaimed, yeah.

Manolis Priniotakis  07:27

Well, in part of the the discussion during the event that I thought was really interesting was, I think the title was military applications of nuclear energy, yeah? And there was the discussion about, you know, deployment of SMRs, like, one megawatt, five megawatt container sized SMRs being used in Forward Operating locations. But then what happens if you have to abandon them? Do they become a target on the battlefield that with the kinds of things that we're seeing today on in really energy intensive systems, whether it's, you know, AI on the at the edge, and all the kinds of systems, even directed energy weapons down the line, you know, things that are really energy intensive. How do you provide that energy supply in a way that doesn't you know, that maybe alleviate some of your concerns about your diesel supply line and so forth, but also then makes them a target. And had one expert talk about how, you know, say you are having SMR on site to support some sort of forward deployed asset, and then it becomes targeted. Not only have you lost your power source, you have a problem on the battlefield as well, but that it makes sense in other you know, whether it's islanding bases to be able to continue to operate. I know the one that was raised was Guam that makes a lot of sense. Maybe Alaska a little bit less so. But, yeah, it's interesting aspect that, how do you actually bring some of this technology to bear in ways that potentially creates vulnerabilities

Tad Schnaufer  09:01

as well, right? Because it's not just the weapon piece. It's also the energy piece that comes out of the discussion on nuclear topics, and that's expanding rapidly. You know, it's that. But those small module in nuclear reactors aren't necessarily something new. The Army had one in Antarctica for a number of years at its research station, seeing how that worked in a remote environment and possibly having on the battlefield, even though we don't have them deployed now, the Russians have some floating barges up in the Arctic. And obviously we're seeing ground what if you have a ground facility like zaporizhzh power plant in Ukraine, or, obviously Chernobyl?

Manolis Priniotakis  09:33

Yeah. And on top of that, the, you know, I guess we don't call proliferation, but you know, the like aukus agreement that will expand the nuclear submarine capabilities of the Australians. It brings smaller reactors to a broader set of users. Obviously, the Australians are great allies of the United States, and there's not a concern there. But you. Even some of the panels that we heard, you had representatives from Korea, for instance, talking about an aukus for East Asia and more sharing, and you know that, and then brings in additional allies, but it does broaden the exposure of miniaturized reactors to a new set of potential users, right?

Tad Schnaufer  10:27

Because it brings that expertise in that you're able to maintain that within your country. You build that institutional knowledge, and then then that could be turned into a weapon over time, if necessary, not if necessary, if the state decides to

Manolis Priniotakis  10:39

do that, yeah, and this is where some of the discussions about the latent capabilities, the threshold states, in the absence now of any sort of arms control measures really being in place. Obviously, New Start is gone. There's no treaty arrangement with the Chinese other than, as somebody pointed out during the course of the day, it might have been, actually, I was just saying it's Frank Miller. I don't think it was Frank Miller. There is actually one treaty obligation that the Chinese have on nuclear weapons, is the Outer Space Treaty not to deploy nuclear weapons in China. I thought that was actually a very good point, that there actually is a multilateral arms control agreement that the Chinese are party to. But how we, you know, how we think about allies potentially considering their own weapons programs, or at least creating some sort of threshold capability in the absence, or not in the absence, maybe, but the question of the US extended, extended deterrence. That was a, you know, the panel you had of Korean scholars explicitly raised that as an issue, that there is doubt. It was as far as their argue, they were arguing that there is doubt in Korea over the extended deterrent. I've been able to spend some time in Japan recently. And you know, the Japanese scholars not talking to government officials, but Japanese academics, you know, they use language like explicitly that in the Cold War, this is different than Korea. But in the Cold War, Japan was effectively a peripheral state in the US China competition, it's a frontline state, okay, Korea was a frontline state during the Cold War, so it's maybe not completely comparable, but they're highly concerned about, you know, a conflict over Taiwan, and almost see as inevitable that there would be strikes on US assets in Japan if the United States were to intervene in that situation. And what they've, I've heard from them that is borne out has been we, they've seen that now with the US conflict with Iran, that Iran did strike at region, and we saw it last year in the 12 day war, and we've now seen it this time as well, that there have there is now implicit, or there is now empirical evidence that an adversary can strike out at US assets in the region and the Japanese, and what I heard from your scholars from Korea, the same way, similar

Tad Schnaufer  13:14

concern, and you hear that conversation among US allies too, about, should they get their own nuclear weapons? Because it seems like that's the only true deterrent that's left. That really brings home the fact that a major power is not going to mess with you. If you have that capability, you have a delivery system, and you have a nuclear weapon. So the polls have talked about in Scandinavia, as a few other panels have discussed it, the South Koreans and Japanese are looking at, relooking at how they see that weapon. So how does that affect? You know that obviously, all we mentioned the treaties that are gone, we still have the treaty on non proliferation of nuclear weapons regime within the UN what. How's that holding up? As you know, as we look at this possible proliferation, or at least proliferation, of nuclear

Manolis Priniotakis  13:55

institutional knowledge. I mean, it's been some time since I look specifically at the NPT and the IEA, you know, the IEA has said things. They've intimated that they, you know, know where the you know, they potentially know where the energy uranium in Iran is, you know, still functional, still does its job. You know, I don't think its role really changes in the absence of the bilateral arms control agreements. You know, this is big issue when the US Iran negotiations were taking place, that there were, you know, verification measures that were being created. But then part of that was still reliant on the IEA, IAEA inspection regimes to be able to do, you know, look at things that are in the light. It's the question of, like, what happens outside of the light? Here's the old metaphor of the guy looking for his keys in a in a you. Uh, in the parking lot, under the street light. You know the light is best there, but you know, who knows where the key is actually right?

Tad Schnaufer  15:08

Because, I mean those, but those are super national organizations, you know, trying to provide monitoring. So you have the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IEA, doing some of that. You have also some un, you know, modern monitors doing it as well as we saw, maybe in Iraq and oh three or before the invasion of oh three. So what are we looking at today? What's the climate look like as or the geopolitical nuclear regime look like as China's increasing its arsenal and capabilities? The North Koreans are likely doing the same. We also are seeing Pakistan's now. You know, in a conflict with Afghanistan. We're seeing nuclear powered states are in conflict around the world, obviously, Russia, Ukraine, yeah.

Manolis Priniotakis  15:47

And what's not getting better, I guess, is the is the short answer, that at the same time, you know, we have still seen these regional conflicts that have where nuclear dynamics are below the surface or underpinning them, but have not yet, thankfully, escalated into something greater. It was interesting during the event, the discussion about sort of traditional Herman Kahn escalation ladder came up multiple times to include General Hyten holding the book up and and, you know, asking students if they'd if they'd read it, and then proceed to say he wasn't a huge fan of it, but, but I think, you know, multiple people made references to it, how there is still The risk that that a regional conflagration, or regional conflict could expand into a larger exchange. And I think the line, the classic line, is that nuclear war is not going to start over the poles, that it will start at a regional, regional level. But, you know, we had India and China have a border, you know, renewed border skirmishes. There's the regular threats from in South Asia. You know, the it's holding, but it's fragile. And, you know, they talk about the doomsday clock, you know, moving even closer. And if I'm not mistaken, last time it really moved was round about the time of the executive order on Golden Dome. I think that was one of the like I have to look to see if there's actually a correlation, if it was that indeed date. But, you know, a renewed look at strategic defenses, you know, has always been a question about, or anytime there's a discussion of strategic defenses, it's a question of whether or not that supports strategic deterrence or if it makes it more fragile.

Tad Schnaufer  17:50

Well, then why don't we touch base on the golden dome while it's in the conversation here, and we're talking about, is that talking about the regime, and how do we deter this as we again, we're noting that the number of states with nuclear capabilities with roughly nine. Now, what's the golden dome do for deterrence against them and also supporting some sort of stability within the system?

Manolis Priniotakis  18:15

Well, it was interesting. I was very pleased to moderate the panel where we had discussion of golden dome, and then later oversaw a breakout session on Golden Dome as well, where I was really looking to get students and practitioners engaged with each other, to come up with some ideas about, you know, frankly, it was like a research, you know, developing a research plan to understand things a bit better, because one of the things you do here, and I don't think it's as fair as people are sometimes saying, you know, we often say, Well, we don't know anything about it. We don't know what it is. They don't know what it is. And that's not entirely fair, was it? You know, some of it's extracting or extrapolating from the it. Some of it's extrapolate. Extrapolating from the contracts that have been put forward so far, but there have been some statements the general, who's in charge of it now, has been a bit more explicit about what it is, but there's still, I think, questions about what it means for deterrence, what it means for technology development, what it means for ally perceptions, what it means for adversary perceptions. All of these things can be theorized, and some of it can be drawn from historical anti ballistic missile work, or missile defense, or even the SDI, the strategic defense initiative from the Reagan administration. But there still are a lot of questions about what it is and what it aspires to be. You know, as somebody say to me today, like, you know, a system that envisions. The possibility of a very large constellation of space based interceptors armed with directed energy weapons able to strike hypersonic glide vehicles in the boost phase. I don't know if we're going to be able to do it, but it'd be pretty sick if we could. So, you know, this is where it there are a lot of questions the technology, the pathways that need to occur, that need to be followed. For in the US government context, obviously, you know, with the Department of War, Department of Defense, leading it, it's a massive acquisition issue on the backdrop of real changes they're trying to put in place on how the government does acquisitions of defense systems. So, you know, it is starting to come clear, become a little bit clearer, that you're going to have this it's a multi layered system. So you have multi layered contracting approach. Inevitably, there's a handful of primes that are going to be the key players on the major reference architecture. But this administration and sort of the way defense Tech has been going, there's much more room for newer entrants to try to make some have some impact, including university researchers. So right now, you know, there's $185,000,000,000.10 year IDIQ contract. And you know, IDIQ contracts, there's an overarching amount, and then the companies that are qualified to be part of it have to compete for the work within that contract. So there's 2400 companies, roughly, that have been qualified to bid on work under the contract. So you're going to have a handful what it's looking like, a handful of primes, a number of the space specialists. So there was a contract in November of last year to do prototypes of the space based interceptors, but, and I think there were six or seven of them, but it was $120,000 contract. So it's very small, you know, it's not a lot you're gonna, you know, you and I could probably spend $120,000 in an afternoon, if we really put our minds to it. It's not a tremendous amount of money to build a space based intercept, which is fine. This is fine. This is a prototype. But these players were like Saronic, I believe anderil is one of them. Lee Palantir was, you know, there's these, a handful of SpaceX, handful of companies that are space and then there's this group at the bottom, I shouldn't say at the bottom, there's this additional group that are really focused on the battle, battle management, sensor development, you know, just there's a number of ancillary technologies that are going to come out of it. So, and I'm going on about this, but it's, it's all part of the broader, you know, capability development. How this plays out in a strategic sense, some of it is a conversation we had with the students in the afternoon was, you know, if it's really looking like it's going to be successful, say we're several years down the line. But a quick aside, there is a question about the timeline of this, right? Of course, yeah, there's an electoral timeline. There's a congressional electoral timeline. Will this have it sustaining sustained support across time? But you know, you literally have the same sort of questions that came up with SDI and other anti ballistic missile systems. Any missile defense, does it become destabilizing? Right? Is it a environment where it encourages adversaries to pursue novel systems that you know, there's some evidence that Chinese were pursuing a fractional orbital bombardment system, which you basically bring a weapon into orbit and then de orbit it to strike. So it's technically not on orbit. That's a fractional orbit. You know, the Soviets pursued this technology in the 70s because of concerns about early detection. So all of these things play in Do? Do? Literally gets into, like, classic strategic security dilemma stuff, Thucydides, right? This Thucydides trap, if, if it looks like it's going to be successful, does the you know, do the adversaries you know, decide to take either some sort of action to, you know, pursue their own capabilities, or do they take some sort of preemptive action to deal with it? Well, we saw

Tad Schnaufer  24:34

some discussion on that on Okay, we have evolving technologies as well. So even though this might be a 10 year process, how do you keep up with the evolutions that have happened? Because with AI and hypersonic missiles, all these different technologies are coming online and are evolving rapidly. If we've seen anything in the war in Ukraine, the evolution of drones have not only evolved, but then been adapted to counter, you know, counter drone technology, and then. New drones come in. Going back to your point, it kind of creates a security dilemma up. In this case, it's a technical, technological dilemma that's moving very quickly. So how do you evolve in time with the in government contracting, as you know, is typically, is kind of slow. So how do you keep pace with the technology, keep the development moving forward, and then also outpace our adversaries? Yeah, and

Manolis Priniotakis  25:19

that's where, as you, I think you were, were putting it, you know, this is not happening in a vacuum. The adversaries have a vote here as well, right? They're constantly evolving. And, you know, there's, it's, we're talking on, on a Wednesday at four o'clock. I almost guarantee in somewhere in DC, there's a conversation going on right now about lessons learned from Ukraine. And obviously now there's, you know, there's other lessons to be learned by others, by the war in Iran, but there's, you know, a lot of discussion about, you know, implications for, you know, surveillance, counter surveillance, you know, if you know, I remember hearing somebody early on, say, one of the big lessons from Ukraine was, if it moves, it can be killed. Maybe that's not strictly true. And then there's some areas where it maybe doesn't apply. You know, given the terrain in Ukraine, doesn't apply to all the conflicts that are likely to be pursued. But what it really has done is, you know, the change the thinking on, you know, what is an appropriate innovation timeline for new systems? You know, like with the drone technology, it's, you know, matters of weeks for the Ukrainians to innovate. You know, from, I guess, in our context, from TRL zero to deployment in like, a matter of weeks. And it's pretty, pretty difficult for that to happen in the US context, except in some very, very narrow places where they do have more flexibility. But even then, a matter of weeks is

Tad Schnaufer  26:56

pretty hard, right? Well, and what we're talking about here, obviously, with nuclear technology, you're talking about very exquisite, I think we'd say delivery systems, and then obviously warheads capable, you know, megaton explosion. So these are, these are not simple, in a sense, simple drones. So they, yeah, you know, yeah.

Manolis Priniotakis  27:15

And that's a big issue that sometimes, you know, I having spent a lot of time in the Department of Energy, it's an issue that sometimes is not front and center, but kind of think it should be, is the modernization of our own capabilities, whether it's the modernization of the actual warheads, the nuclear systems, but also a lot of discussion at your event over the modernization and the timelines, the capabilities of the ground based strategic deterrence. So the Sentinel is a replacement for Minuteman three, but also the Columbia class sub, which I like to point out as a resident of the District of Columbia. It is the Columbia class is named for the District of Columbia. It's not Ohio. It's not Ohio, it's not Columbus, it's not Columbia, Maryland, it's the District of Columbia, which I guess was, you know, our turn in the sequence. And then also, you know when the next generation of bombers are going to come also, but the, you know, there's a massive modernization of facilities across the DOE complex, and it's fundamentally important to the security of the country. You know, places like Kansas City and Oak Ridge, Tennessee and Amarillo, Texas. There's parts of the nuclear weapons complex that I think most people don't think that much about, or even know that much about, which, in all fairness, a lot of these facilities, when they were established in the 40s, were secret cities. So nobody, nobody knew about them. As I once had a conversation with a very senior doe person that you know there, who's complaining about how hard it is to get to facilities across the complex. I was like, well, for what it's worth, you know, it may be hard to fly to Richland, Washington, or to Pasco, Tri Cities Washington, go to Hanford, but you know, 7080, years ago, you had to have a security clearance to know it even existed. You know, it's all relative. But there's, you know, a lot of work that's going on to upgrade the facilities and and build new facilities. And the, you know, there's a tremendous amount of work that's needed to be done to modernize them. And, you know, actually get some people out of Manhattan Project era facilities. And this is, it's, it's, it's vitally important, and it's, unfortunately, quite expensive, because it's not cheap to build, to build nuclear facilities safely and appropriately. But you know, as I think it was, Frank Miller quoted General Mattis, you know that the amount of money is not too much to spend on, sir. Bible, right? And if it's that, was the point that was made repeatedly through the event, was just how fundamentally important nuclear weapons still are underpinning our security posture.

Tad Schnaufer  30:10

Yeah, I think there's two big points that came out of a lot of the discussions. And what we're talking about here is, you know, many people forget that. You know, the Cold War ended, but nuclear weapons remain. So that deterrence theory still remains. You still have major powers that can, you know, eliminate the human race with a nuclear exchange. So that the threat so the Cold War ended, but the threat remains,

Manolis Priniotakis  30:31

and has gotten more complicated with the with the entrance of the Chinese, obviously this much smaller nuclear powers. But the other piece is not just the, you know, multi polar, but also multi domain. You have real concerns about hypersonic collide vehicles and other hypersonics. You have drones, there's cyber and, you know, concerns about left of launch threats, and on top of that, something that didn't come up now I think about it during the event, not explicitly, at least, is concerns about quantum computing and the future of cryptography and information security to be able to ensure The stability of the national command and control systems as well. So that's all, all of a piece so that, yes, the Cold War ended, nuclear weapons continued, but have actually gotten more complicated than they were at that time. But in many ways, we're paying them

Tad Schnaufer  31:35

less attention. You know, I think one thing was brought up was you had this workforce development, development idea. You don't have students really hearing about it. You don't have kids hiding under desks, you know, where they have that kind of exposure, like, Oh, this is actually something we need to worry about from even, you know, an early age. And need to grow up at least, and have a generation of people ready to take the helm and speak about it, you know, from an educated standpoint,

Manolis Priniotakis  31:56

which is why I think it was great that you partnered with the CSIS pony program, and us also exposing your students to it, to the issues through the event, to raise that profile, you know, again, to cite Frank Miller excessively, but you know he, he talked about how we there were decisions that were made, and a couple decisions specifically he pointed to, to literally pay less attention and less funding, to provide less funding to the weapons program, but also, as a result, you know, effectively, a loss of generation of nuclear technicians, nuclear scholars. It just became, you know, much less of a in demand, in demand field, right?

Tad Schnaufer  32:47

Well, just like, you know, sovietologists or Russian scholars at 1991 were probably like, dang, you know, I forefront, but now you're there right back at it, you know, with the current issue, yeah, yeah.

Manolis Priniotakis  32:59

And I've talked to some people even about, like, attitudes towards Golden Dome, you know, I get the sense that most people in the public not paying attention, whereas the SDI system was a national debate. And, you know, you think about why that was okay, because, well, it had one. It had this, you know, people tagged it with Star Wars, right? I had this evocative name. Star Wars was popular. Also on top of that, you did have generations of people who had grown up, or a couple generations who had grown up hiding under their desks, in in drills, hyper aware of the hyper aware of the nuclear weapons threat. I remember when I started the Department of Energy, not long after I started in the policy office, before I moved into the intelligence office, I went to a retirement party, and this guy, who had been there for a long time, told this story that when he he joined the Department of Energy, like a couple days after Reagan was elected in 1980 and, you know, Reagan was elected on platform of cutting taxes, confronting the Soviet Union, and, to his mind, eliminating the Department of Energy. And his first thought was that maybe this wasn't the best move to, like, leave the IEA in Paris to go work for department. But, you know, here we are, 46 years later, the department's still around and has a vitally important role in dealing with the modernization of the of the stockpile well. And speaking of

Tad Schnaufer  34:31

modernization, one thing that came up multiple times at the conference is just how old some of this equipment is when it's launched. You know, some of our submarines and things and our stuff is relatively new when you think of even some of the Russian equipment that, you know, submarines launched in the 50s, that they're still using some of these devices. Because you think, I guess the perception might be that this stuff's relatively modern, but some stuff has been was pushed out in the 70s and 80s, and it's still operational today,

Manolis Priniotakis  34:55

yeah, and that's where there's been the big effort on modernizing. Not just the the weapons and the complex, but also the delivery systems. And, you know, it was interesting. I heard somebody say, actually, in a sidebar conversation, that there's been some concern about how the speed in which some of the systems have moved, in part because of concerns about some parts and specialized parts, and also just, there's a, you know, on a from a construction perspective, I know this is something the DOE complex is facing, is the availability of craft labor and some of the trades. I said this from the stage, and, I was at a deterrence event in Washington a few months ago, and it's pretty surprising to hear the modernization of one of the facilities on the DOE complex in Kansas City. They expressed concern from the stage about potential for increased costs and maybe even program delays due to the Kansas City Chiefs building a new stadium that they're competing with the Chiefs now for welders and HVAC technicians and electricians and plumbers and and now, with the nationwide push on increased shipbuilding as well, there's high demand. There just general construction demands elsewhere, and maybe not always a mobile workforce. These are issues that you know come through and have an impact in unexpected ways on national security. Because you need a national

Tad Schnaufer  36:33

security discussion. I think a lot of people, particularly our students, you know, they think tanks and airplanes and soldiers and that, but actually a lot of the issues are here on the home front, if you will. And we had a major port conference last year, and one of the major threats that they faced was a lack of a workforce with the institutional knowledge, whether you're talking about shipbuilding or other maritime issues. And we've heard a lot of that same reverberate today throughout the

Manolis Priniotakis  36:57

conference well, and there was a an echo of one of the discussions in your port security event that came up today or came up during the event. I wasn't able to attend the event, your port security event in person, but I listened into most of it online. And thank you. The discussion at the end with the port CEOs was fascinating, in particular the one I remember, which port it was, Port Canaveral, talking about concerns about security of loading the big new like icon of the seas, the new big cruise ships, while also Loading LNG at the same time, and started talking about, I always almost feel hesitant to raise this myself. Now, I couldn't believe. I was surprised he was raising it at the time. But, you know, they said, like, what keeps you up? And he started talking about Operation spider web, yeah, Ukrainian drone attack deep in Russia, deep into Russia, bringing the through containerized systems. And, you know, his concern about a lack of any sort of counter UAB system there, it was just fascinating that kind of came up weekly during the deterrence event, just because, in part with, you know, in theory, from what we understand about gold dome, is that it's everything from, yeah, it is layered high CBMs, hypersonic glide vehicles, cruise missiles, and then down to drones coming from wherever they'd be coming from offshore

Tad Schnaufer  38:31

and obviously be difficult to guard every port in the state and every critical infrastructure around the country. So it's going to be a momentous task. And obviously the there's much work to be done there.

Manolis Priniotakis  38:41

And one thing I would add on that is, I sometimes talk to students about, you know, why are strategic weapons called strategic? And it literally gets down to, like, you know, closet. It's, you know, that it's bypassing the tactical and going straight to the strategic objective. And whether or not, you know, there are other capabilities, whether it be, you know, any cyber strategic capabilities that adversaries may have that could have similar effects. And now we have these other systems that we have to be concerned about. It's it's all of a of a piece on how we protect the homeland, whether it's on a more active way, more maybe the more traditional, passive way.

Tad Schnaufer  39:23

Well, in a Coincidentally, I was just reading recently that the, I think this, the Belgian port of Antwerp, is actually putting in Norwegian American surface to air missile systems to protect against drones, because they've had so many drone issues around. So they're kind of putting these military type devices around ports in Europe. And again, it's we're seeing that an amplification of national security issues coming, I guess, more local, instead of you guys, you kind of think national security just army somewhere, or an Air Force, you know, somewhere. But what? What about that local defense piece? And the golden dome will probably have to take

Manolis Priniotakis  39:57

a layer of that and those port, you know, I had. Heard about that. That's interesting. The I used to live in Belgium and was bringing, long ago in the internet industry. Was working in the internet industry and working in Belgium, and we were bringing things in from the UK. And actually spent a lot of time looking at the port of ant or Porter Rotterdam, yeah.

Speaker 1  40:17

And Rotterdam is a major Yeah.

Manolis Priniotakis  40:18

And just how fundamentally they are important. They are to the economic security the countries. Yeah, I'm

Tad Schnaufer  40:27

pretty, I'm pretty much the whole economy. Rotterdam and Antwerp are massive. So, you know, as we kind of, we've touched on quite a bit during the podcast. So let's, let's kind of zoom it back in. Let's pretend you're an advisor to the President today. What are the major issues when we look at the Nuclear environment, would you want to discuss with him and give him some advice on how would you approach that? It's an

Manolis Priniotakis  40:49

interesting question. I having just recently retired from the federal government, there are a few things that would be on my mind. But in this context, you know, the thing that I think is so important is that we really do focus on the health and and progress of the modernization of the DOE complex. It's so easy to get lost in in the shuffle. It's, in some ways, it's just another line and another budget in the broader federal government, but it is also fundamentally important to the underpinning of our national security. And there, I'm a huge fan of the DOE facilities, of the labs. I used to take members of Congress and congressional staff to visit them and to just sort of revel in the expertise. But, you know, there are facilities where, you know, they're in really rough shape. They're like 40s and 50s era facilities, and to really, you know, focus on them. Actually, you know what? Somebody told me this the other day that, you know, if you wanted to get President Trump in particular to understand these, you know, having, you know, background in real estate, you should go and look at them. And I don't know if he's been to, I actually don't know if he's been to any of the production sites. I imagine not, but to go down to the Savannah River site and see some of the state of some of the facilities. You know, people do remarkably good work in things that are are in really rough shape. Same at y 12 and and it's acknowledged, and they're working on it, but really, I think, needs to be doubled down, and the other on it, and the other piece is really focusing on the workforce to support it as well. One of the things that's really challenged that nuclear workforce is the reduction in the civil nuclear industry. Now we've seen a rejuvenation. Maybe we'll see a return of that workforce. But really, you know whether it's the people who can manage the construction, who can actually do the welding. I mean, this is cost money. It takes time, but it's so vitally important.

Tad Schnaufer  43:04

And I think that's the piece about the workforce development, is it takes time, and it's not something you can just turn on tomorrow, so you got to have, you have to build that in over years. So thank you so much for your support of the conference in general, obviously, and staying with us today and having this conversation. We appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Manolis Priniotakis  43:21

I'm really pleased to have this affiliation with USF and GNSI and and really did enjoy the event and enjoyed this conversation. Thanks again.

Jim Cardoso  43:34

Special. Thanks to our guest today, manioli priniatakis, for his insight into the golden dome and its role in nuclear deterrence. Thanks also to Dr tatshnanoffer for conducting the interview next week on the podcast, we're going to visit with a group of students from our future strategist program. GNSI helped create and mentors this student organization for USF students interested in careers in national security. We provide a wide variety of out of the classroom educational opportunities for FSP, and one of those is an academic conference they'll be hosting in a couple of weeks at the GNSI international security experience. We're looking forward to having these USF students on the podcast. Again. If you don't want to miss that episode or any other episode, be sure to like and subscribe to at the boundary on your favorite podcast platform, and we really appreciate you sharing some time with us today. You can find GNSI on LinkedIn, YouTube and x be sure to follow like and subscribe. Tell your friends and colleagues as well, and you should definitely check out our monthly newsletter all this on our website at usf.edu/gnsi,

Jim Cardoso  44:50

that's going to wrap up this episode of at the boundary. Each new episode will feature global and national security issues we found to be insightful, intriguing, maybe controversial. Universal, but overall, just worth talking about. I'm Jim Cardoso, and we'll see you at the boundary.