RK - Who benefits from nuclear weapons?
WW - Well defense contractors, there's a large nuclear weapons industry, weapon labs, facilities that work on the plutonium and the uranium and put the warheads together and so on. But the problem really is people - there is a cadre of people who are believers. They are fervent believers. They think nuclear weapons keep up safe and make us a super power and give us status. You know, for them, nuclear weapons are the magic talisman that makes us who we are. And of course we would still be Americans without nuclear weapons. We would still have -
RK - Who are these crazy people who are the nuclear weapons believers? Is there demographics for them? What do you know about them?
WW - Their academics, there guys like Nobel Economics Prize winner Thomas Schelling, who believes that nuclear deterrence is an essential component of US security. They're former defense department officials, civilians mostly. They tend not to be military guys, although there are some military men who believe fervently in nuclear weapons. Talking to military guys I find most tend not to like nuclear weapons. They can't--during their active military careers--say they don't like nuclear weapons because then they lose--at least if you're in the Air Force you lose your job because you've got to be ready to go and bomb whenever the President says, "Go and bomb wherever." But a lot of guys come out of the service and say, "These are terrible weapons." And I think there's some people in think tanks. It's surprising how many civilians really support nuclear weapons. And there are a large cross section of conservative politicians who appeal to the fear and pride in voters and say, "We're great because we have nukes and we have to be afraid if other people get them."
RK - A couple things, one you told me it cost over 50 billion dollars a year to maintain the nuclear weapons in the United States. Is that number still about right?
WW - Yeah, we're spending about 52 billion a year.
RK - I'm assuming that part of that is military expenses but a lot of it is private contractors probably General Electric and - who? What are the big companies that benefit that are going to be spending money on lobbying members of Congress?
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