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Okay guys, introducing Kelly Bocar-Vlejos.
She is the managing editor of the American Conservative magazine at theamericanconservative.com.
Welcome back to the show.
Oh, thanks for having me, Scott.
Very happy to have you here.
So yeah, you're writing about the nuclear weapons industry here in the American Conservative.
I'm glad you still have time to write stuff.
Dr. Strangelove and the Los Alamos nuclear fiasco.
Oh, come on, there couldn't be a fiasco at anything nuclear because that's where we take the most intelligent and responsible adults in our society and have them run things.
So to make sure that it's all good because after all, we're talking about nukes here, right?
Yeah, I mean, this is where the privatization debate really takes a sort of bizarre turn and ironic turn.
I mean, you know, many conservatives and free marketeers, you know, have for years have presented a case in which, you know, privatizing certain areas that the government will save money and create efficiencies that, you know, didn't exist before in the federal bureaucracy.
But in, you know, in multiple cases of war, national security, and in this case, in the nuclear arsenal, privatization hasn't worked out so well.
And part of that is government oversight.
So there's still an issue with the government's role in this but also, you know, when you're putting private companies in control of things that have to do with the apocalyptic power of nuclear weapons or people's lives overseas in war, things get to be a little dicey.
And when greed or corporate profits get in the way, other things are lost.
And in the case of Los Alamos and other labs under the government's purview that have been farmed out to major contractors like Bechtel in this case, the records have been pretty dismal in terms of, you know, accidents happening at the lab, radiation leakage, workers exposed to hazardous material, to hazardous material, the workforce morale.
I mean, you name it, it's not looking too good.
And what happened in the case of Los Alamos and Bechtel, it took about 10 years of these issues year after year before they lost their contract.
You know, at what detriment?
It lost billions and lost productivity.
Like I said, morale and other issues, you know, that all come back to the taxpayers putting the bill, unfortunately.
All right, now I'm going from kind of mostly ignorance and memory here, but I think I thought that all the labs, Livermore, Sandia, and Los Alamos, that they were all run, that they kind of always had been run by American corporations.
And I'm trying to say, I think AT&T was one that ran them for a long time, but that basically they ran them as nonprofits and that it was sort of like Uncle Sam had leaned on them and said, you know, we'd really like for you to do this for us and that kind of thing.
So is that what's changed is that now it's just straight up cost plus government contract like they're making tanks?
Yeah, it's gotten more, like you said, a bit more privatized for lack of better word.
Within the case of Los Alamos up until 10 years ago had been run by the University of California, which yet had formed out a lot of the work to private corporations, including Bechtel.
So they did such a dismal job of it.
They had been in charge of it for decades that it went pure corporate.
Of course, when Bechtel took off over within its own consortium, with its own consortium, University of California was also part of that partnership.
So they just sort of like switch decks around or deck chairs on the Titanic, so to speak.
But yeah, it has been farmed out.
I think what's happened here is that you have, it's gotten to the point where you have this rotating list or a roster of corporations in this field of nuclear management or the nuclear construction of these laboratories.
And so you have a minimal amount of competition.
And when you, as you know, when that happens, like in the war, you have very few players.
They tend to get greedy.
They tend to get fat and lazy.
And speaking of Bechtel.
Yeah, and they take advantage of the government dole or the government hand that's feeding them.
So you lose that edge.
And so I write in my story, even though Bechtel is losing this $2 billion a year, contract, there isn't much confidence that the contract is gonna go to any better partnership or consortium after 2018, when the contract is finished, because there's so few people or companies in this lane that they've all worked in these labs in some configuration and all suffer from the same symptoms of this contracting problem.
So, I don't know, better oversight would be first, holding companies accountable.
I mean, it's kind of a dry subject, but as you and I know, watching how these war contracts have evolved, when there's a lack of accountability and you keep giving the same companies, these huge corporations, contract after contract after contract, and they still engage in misconduct and fraud and abuse and cost overruns, there's no incentive for them to get any better.
And sure, if they're delivering food to the troops, that's one thing.
And yeah, if they're overcharging the government for that, that's one thing.
But when you're dealing with a nuclear material is when you really need to start stepping up to the plate and holding some of these companies accountable and taking away this contract from Bechtel.
Yeah, it's $2 billion a year for Bechtel, but Bechtel is bringing in like $32 billion a year as of 2015 for all of its contracts across the globe.
So it's kind of almost a drop in the bucket and maybe it's slightly embarrassing, but after 10 years, what the heck, they'll move on and most likely one of their subsidiaries will be involved in the next contract.
All right, hang on one second, I gotta do this.
Hey everybody, Read The War State by Mike Swanson.
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Okay, well, you know, it's a funny thing, the economics of privatization as they call it, and it really should be two different words or it's just really it's contracting is what it is, where privatization would mean that the market takes over, say like you just abolished all the government schools in Texas and then you just had a free market and education and people made their own companies of all different sizes and descriptions and just educated each other for prices and that kind of thing.
That would be privatization, where this is just the government hiring private companies to carry out government functions.
And we've seen, so I guess I'll agree with you and criticize some libertarians for actually promoting this kind of thing, although I don't know about in the nuclear industry or what exactly, but might as well have.
But libertarianism itself does not recommend, you know, as a philosophy doesn't, I don't think prefer private contracts to private companies to carry out state functions we might be the first to warn against, because you could see the economics of how it works right there.
As you take already state functions that we disapprove of, like say rounding people up and locking them in prison or making hydrogen bombs or something like that, and now you just give a whole new extra incentive for people playing that game, which is taking home giant profits, billions of dollars after all.
Making a H-bomb or an H-bomb factory, well, that's not cheap.
And as we saw with the START II, Obama basically had to compromise with the Senate and say, okay, we'll do a trillion dollars worth of revamping the entire nuclear weapons industry and arsenal if you guys will sign on to these minuscule limits of the number of deployed weapons.
Because as you quote an expert in here saying, it's a make work program at this point.
And it's funny because of all I've learned about government and all of corruption and whatever in all kinds of industries, right?
In medicine and certainly in war and in banking and in all these things, I just sort of didn't really ever learn about the nuclear weapons lobby.
I always just sort of still had almost like a childlike naivete in my mind.
They're like, well, somehow you don't have the worst sort of blatant conflicts of interest in lobbying and nuclear weapons production in that industry as you do in everything else, right?
But yeah, of course you do.
You have people who it's their only job is lobbying Congress to have more hawkish policies against other nuclear weapons states to justify the production of more nuclear weapons.
Just the same way the alcohol industry lobbies for keeping pot illegal or whatever.
Just the same conflicts of interest that you have in any kind of government work.
Only we're talking about H-bombs here.
Right, we're talking about H-bombs in war.
Yeah, you're thinking that it's like some bald old think tank guy who's like concentrating really hard about what should be the very best nuclear weapons policy, but based on some intellectual game theory or some brilliant thing.
But no, it's just money.
It's just the same old conflicts of interest as everything else.
Yeah, and it's a lot of money.
And you're entirely right about the whole issue of real privatization versus what, basically what we're talking about here is crony capitalism.
Because we have these major corporations and favored defense contractors like Bechtel who have an army of lobbyists on the Hill.
And they get these contracts and then the rules are different because they're government rules.
They're more protected.
When they screw up, they get a slap on the wrist.
They're not fired right away.
They don't lose the contract right away.
So they're operating under different circumstances than on the open and free market.
And what happens is when they all go up for these new contracts, they have their members of Congress that they've been funneling money into their campaigns who are basically lobbying themselves for them to get these contracts or to get other people on board like when University of California lost its contract, members of Congress in New Mexico made sure that University of California was on the new partnership.
I mean, it's a hand in glove relationship that Bernie Sanders had talked about during the last election, that Trump to a certain extent had talked about in the last election, but still goes on every day in Washington.
And it's not the free market by any means.
It's just a real bastardization of privatization, I think.
Yeah, absolutely.
And it's always, yeah, I totally think so too, that it's important to always make that distinction.
I don't really see anybody making H-bombs in the free market.
What good is that?
But anyway, so yeah, now let's talk about some of these incidents.
You kind of gave a brief overview there of some bad things happening, but I think you say in here, if I read it right, that there was at least some accountability finally where was it Congress or the Energy Department actually stripped the Los Alamos of the right or the contract to continue producing plutonium pits?
Yeah, so they shut that particular part of the facility down called the PF4 facility.
It's a plutonium handling plant or laboratory within Los Alamos.
And there's been a big debate about whether we need more of these pits.
And that's a whole other story that I've written about because that's part of the whole make work theory that these labs are just an operation to sort of like sustain themselves and justify themselves.
And one of the things that they've been doing or want to do is make more of these nuclear cores, otherwise known as pits.
They're not making any of those right now because of some of these accidents that have happened.
So the DOE shut down the lab or shut down that PF4 facility.
And that was several years ago, 2013.
And it's still not open for business.
Can you talk about some of those incidents there, about what had happened, what kind of accidents had happened there?
I think, from what I understand, that it was a culmination of events, but I know one of the more highly cited incidents was where these workers were trying to demonstrate something that they had reached this level of getting these plutonium rods assembled.
And they had placed them on a table side by side by side, which apparently is a huge no-no because of the fission that they could create and the nuclear could create an explosion like of cataclysmic proportions.
But by having them so close in proximity to one another, it's almost like you or I might not even think twice about it, but anybody with any experience in nuclear physics would know.
And there was a big emergency reaction from the manager of the lab and then the other protocols weren't taken even after that.
So that was the one that's been cited a lot in the Center for Public Integrity put together report about the various lapses that occurred at the lab.
But that one seems to be the one that's one of the more popular terms of like, just looking at the idiocy of what we're talking about here.
And there's been a few cases of transferring nuclear waste and not using the proper protocols because they wanted to cut corners or wanted to do it more quickly.
Employees being exposed to different materials.
So because of protocols not being followed and this is like a combination of cutting corners, laziness, not having the right people in there, just no oversight.
And I think- You know what though, it's so funny because part of me, I'm just objecting, I'm thinking, but everyone involved in this, these have gotta be the highest level professionals, right?
These are nuclear physicists.
These are people who are so smart and so jealous of their own intelligence and their position and everything like that.
How do they tolerate this kind of thing?
Even if, forget the money and the accountability, they don't hold each other to account at all here.
I mean, damn.
I expect my family doctor to act on a very professional level even if the insurance company isn't really treating him right or whatever the problem is, right?
I think, and then I think there's probably a major difference between the managers and the scientists.
And from what I understand, and a great guest for you at some point would be the guy that I quoted in my story, Greg Mello, who is like very, I mean, extremely well-versed in the culture of Los Alamos.
He's like the head of the Los Alamos study group and he and his wife are like total gumshoe watchdogs over Los Alamos.
And she used to work there.
I believe he used to work there.
And so they know what the culture's like.
And apparently it's a dismal culture that's been sort of like beat down over a number of years.
We're talking decades of just the management changes, the morale, just the management ethos, this push and pull between corporate profits and science.
And all of this takes its toll over time.
So when you don't have the right people in place and you don't have the right oversight, the government people who are supposed to be there watching, or the bureaucracy is so burdensome that the real issues are falling through the cracks.
I don't think it's all just one thing, but it's just, this is what happens when everything's done wrong.
And I think the government takes just as much blame.
Because I mean, on one hand, it's easy to blame Bechtel and make them out to be the bad guy, which I don't mind doing, but on the other hand, I mean, there are layers in place of DOE and NSA.
They've fallen on the job and Congress.
Yeah, they're the demand for all these nuclear bombs anyway.
You know, I think I read a thing that, I don't know when the poll was or something, but there was some kind of survey where most people thought that we didn't even have nukes anymore, that that was all over with the Soviet Union.
I mean, why would we keep nukes after the Soviet Union was gone, right?
So regular schmucks just sort of imagined that that's probably what happened was they got rid of at least almost all of them or something.
Right, exactly.
But then there's not only a lobby to modernize or maintain, but to modernize and increase.
And like you said, a lot of that is profit-driven and like the bureaucracy seeking to sustain itself by justifying why it needs to be there and in constant operation.
So it's just, it's really, this is all going on under the surface.
Like you said, most people aren't paying attention to nuclear weapons anymore, but Obama wasn't, I mean, he wasn't fooling around last year when he announced this huge modernization program which would cost trillion dollars when all said and told.
I mean, and the industry was plotting and quaking because it's just, I mean, this is exactly what they wanted.
Some people will look around going, what is he talking about?
We thought he was the peace guy.
I thought he was about de-escalation and disarmament.
And no, I mean, there is an active industry and it includes like parts of the Air Force, very influential areas of Washington in the military and national security.
And they wanna keep this machine humming.
Yeah, it's amazing.
When we're talking about H-bombs, we're just one will kill your whole city and everybody in it and make it a permanent exile, wasteland forever, never to be rebuilt.
You know, I mean, it's just, okay, yeah.
A few thousand of these are enough to get rid of all of Russian civilization and all of American civilization in a day or two.
But anyway, as long as you're taking home a nice paycheck, lobbying for just a little bit more.
And you know, here's the other thing that hardly anyone mentions, but since we're both good capitalists here, we ought to.
The opportunity costs, just think of all those geniuses and all the goods and services that they could have helped to distribute.
I mean, it's just incredible to think about what to, even daydream for a moment about what might have been without all of this genius being wasted on fusing hydrogen atoms together and not cold fusion free energy, but the mean kind.
Yeah.
It's just, it's funny.
It's almost funny.
Yeah, it's almost funny until you start thinking, you know, it all goes back to, you know, how much we spend on our neediest and our meekest in society, whether it be children or the elderly or disabled.
And we're constantly debating about whether to keep them on Medicaid or have the states pay for it or how, you know, how are we gonna pay for grandma being in a nursing home?
And it's just a drop in the bucket to what we're just throwing away on the war machine, whether it be nuclear weapons, like building these pits or maintaining the arsenal or throwing more money into a black hole in Afghanistan.
It's just, it's amazing to me that we can't seem to have that debate, but we're perfectly fine whether or not, like we can bail some sick children out.
It's just.
Hey, let's talk about Donald Trump for a second.
Yeah.
I know, it's just incredible.
I have to.
He's actually the president of the United States right now, if you can believe it.
And, you know, all the Democrats, it's not even the leftists, the leftists see through it, at least the Twitter leftists do.
It's the liberals, they're taking all the fun out of being against the president with all of their stupid Russia nonsense.
However, I spy an opportunity in it.
I don't know if anybody knows anybody who knows this guy who could maybe put it to him this way, but it seems to me that Donald Trump's, you know, his whole personality and persona and everything is actually perfect for making a really great deal to abolish at least, I don't know, let's say three quarters of America and Russia's nuclear arsenals, which are both pretty equivalent now, right around 7,000 something warheads each deployed, at least something like that.
And so what a great way to stick it to the haters, right?
All they wanna do is accuse him of being a Manchurian candidate all day long and being Putin's slave all day long.
Oh yeah?
Well, I'll tell you what I'm gonna do.
I'm gonna abolish three quarters of the nuclear weapons in the arsenal and I'm gonna get him to do the same thing and let you attack me over that.
And let's see how the Democrat rank and file voters of America like the Democratic Party attacking me for getting rid of nuclear weapons.
And I'll just say one more thing about that, which is that there's an interview of him from like 1986 where he talks all about his brilliant uncle at MIT that he always talks about, who taught him all about nuclear weapons and how he wanted Ronald Reagan to appoint him the special negotiator to go over there and negotiate with the Soviets and get rid of the nukes.
And of course that would have been a disaster, don't get me wrong, but I'm just saying you could see his mindset even back then, you know, 30 years ago, he was saying, this is crazy, why would we have these H-bombs that we could, you know, wipe out everything with just one wrong move?
Let's do something to solve it.
You don't have to have a lot of vision to agree with that.
Apparently it was easily within Donald Trump's range.
And so it seems like, you know, maybe this could be, you know, I don't know, somehow put out there as this would be a great way for him to get revenge against the Democrats for all their stupid Russia conspiracy theorizing is to do some huge, you know, Nixon-esque move to shake hands with Mao or do detente with the Soviets or some kind of thing and just take all the wind out of their sail.
Yeah, I mean, I can sympathize with that, but I don't know if he's even in that mindset anymore.
I mean, he seems to be totally on board with Reagan's peace through strength mantra, but the peace through strength before nuclear disarmament began.
So I could see a Trump today saying, well, we need to have these nuclear weapons as a deterrence because we have to show strength to Russia.
And I can see Putin mirroring that on the other side.
It's almost like it'll never happen, even though I would love to see the Democrats eat it.
But I mean, I just don't think Trump is there anymore.
You know, just like I don't think Trump, I mean, here's the Trump that talked about, you know, scaling back our operations overseas.
He seems to be gone.
I don't know, he's hiding somewhere because I don't see that happening either.
So as much as I'd like to see your scenario unfold, I don't know.
I don't think you can trust that Trump would even pursue something like that, sadly.
Yeah, well, it's really amazing the fact that, I mean, you know, again, you don't have to have much vision to see how Donald Trump ought to be handling this whole Russia thing.
Find a way to stick it back in their face, right?
What's he gonna do?
He's just gonna keep retreating and retreating and tweeting out that it's fake.
You know, go ahead and go to Moscow, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Go to Moscow, sign some giant treaty and stick it to him.
What else can he do at this point?
Right, right.
Hit him with it, right?
That's my thing, anyway.
I know where you're going with that.
And I think maybe he can pursue something like that.
I mean, maybe now with a nuclear weapon.
He's still the president.
What the hell are they gonna do about it, right?
Yeah.
Anyway.
All right, well, listen, thanks for coming back on my show.
I really appreciate it.
Aw, thanks for having me, Scott.
Really appreciate it.
All right, you guys, that's Kelly Bocar-Vlejos.
She's a managing editor of the American Conservative Magazine.
I wish I was the president.
I'm not gonna run, though.
I would make a nuke deal.
Dr. Strangelove and the Los Alamos Nuclear Fiasco.
That's at theamericanconservative.com by Kelly.
I'm Scott Horton.
Check out the archives at scotthorton.org and at libertarianinstitute.org.
Follow me on Twitter, at Scott Horton Show.
Thanks.
