Read on Twitter
I’m sure @PentagonPresSec would not want me to add to much context to this story, but I think that the public ought to understand as much as possible about nuclear command and control … and I don’t work for him (yet)…. So: https://twitter.com/ramcnn/status/1359999122389008385
It is true that if someone gave me the emergency satchel, I could not launch a nuclear war. But here’s what gnaws at me. I remember that day. I remember people wondering who was in charge. Remember people saying POTUS was unreachable. Idk how much of this was legible to …
Pence’s military aide. Or to the Pentagon, although we have some clues that Trump was just checked out. If I stole the “football” and managed to get Pence’s authentication codes, the system would not recognize me as the NCA. But if there had been… say … a Russian
SLBM attack during the insurrection and Trump was somehow checked out, and the NMCC reached out to Pence…. There would be a lot of confusion. We can pile what it scenarios on top of one another, so I think it’s more helpful to
… understand why the military aide is part of the secure protective bubble in the first place. That military aide plays a number of roles, and the emergency satchel has highly classified information and some nifty crypto. He’s the link between VPOTUS and …
Foreign leaders… the emergency alert system… other cabinet members … the combatant commanders… and military command centers.
The nuclear role is front-sighted but the aides have significant continuity and security responsibilities.
So much so that every-time the VPOTUS rides an elevator today, the military aide and a doctor are manifested to ride with her. (Elevator rides are always advanced. All of them.).
I don’t feel comfortable disclosing the contents of the other stuff inside the briefcase. It’s definitely not stuff you’d want adversaries to get their hands on. The crypto can be changed but … a lot of it is just really, really secret for damn good reasons.
The USSS and the WHMO do practice for contingencies like this, though not too often. And WHMO’s emergency action procedures do anticipate circumstances where the military aide is in danger of losing the football. (It’s not an easy briefcase to get into.)
The nuclear command, control and communication system in the US is as robust or as fragile as the physical security around those who engage with it, among many other factors.
The Biden administration’s resilience and continuity teams are aware of this. Fortification will likely take place outside of public view.