The Six Minute War: Michael Dobbs on Reagan, Russia, and the Race to Automate Armageddon

Andrew Keen (0:00)

Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen On America, the daily interview show about the United States.

Hello, everybody. It is Friday, the 16th of October, 2026

Sixty-four years ago, exactly 64 years ago, the world's biggest crisis, perhaps the most existential crisis ever to face, the globe began, the Cuban Missile Crisis began on the 16th of October, 1962 Of course, we're still around, we got out of it. It's covered by my guest today, the distinguished presidential crisis historian, Michael Dobbs. His book One Minute to Midnight, Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War, did rather well, came out in 2009 But when we think of crisis years, we often, of course, think of the Missile Crisis. We think less of 1983, but in 1983, there was a Soviet nuclear alarm incident, as well as the downing of the Korean Airlines Flight 007, both in September of 1983 And according to our guest, the president, as I said, the presidential crisis historian, Michael Dobbs, it resulted in something called the Six Minute War, Reagan, Russia, and the Race to Automate Armageddon. And it was in some ways as dangerous a year as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Fortunately, we're all still around, Michael. You're joining us from Bethesda in Washington, DC. Can we really compare 1983 to the Missile Crisis of 1962?

Michael Dobbs (2:20)

Well, I think it was different. It was a crisis in a different way. And in its own way, it was perhaps not the most dangerous moment in the Cold War. But after the 1962 crisis, I think it runs as certainly a close second. The main difference between 1962 and 1983 was 20 years of technology. And in 1962, John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev had 13 days to resolve their differences over Khrushchev's deployment of missiles in Cuba and to find a way out of the crisis. So it all happened in a very, or what seems like a very leisurely manner compared to the way crises are likely to develop today.

By 1983, the whole speed at which crises can accelerate had changed completely. Instead of the main threat to the United States being bombers, the threat has become nuclear missiles. Of course, there's been a huge advances in computer technology.

I don't think that a modern day president would have 13 days to resolve a crisis like the Cuban Missile Crisis. And certainly Ronald Reagan, who was the president at the time, he didn't think so. He said that in his memoirs, in a little noticed portion of his memoirs, he says, I might have only had six minutes to figure out whether a blip on a radar screen meant that the United States was really under attack. And how can any human being make a decision in that amount of time? So although we weren't as close to using nuclear weapons in 1983 as we were in 1962, the 83 crisis is dangerous because of this compression of time and the way in which a president had to make decisions very quickly in the event of a crisis blowing up.

Andrew Keen (4:48)

OK, so let's get into the details, Michael, of the crisis. The Six Minute War, fortunately didn't happen, of course. Reagan, Russia, and the Race to Automate Armageddon.

You're a Washington Post reporter, you were a Washington Post reporter. Where were you in when this crisis began?

Michael Dobbs (5:10)

Actually, I'd been based in Paris, but I was slated to become the Moscow correspondent for the Washington Post.

At the time, the then Moscow correspondent, a man called Dushka Doda, was on vacation. So I had a visa in my passport to go to Moscow, and I went to Moscow a few days after the downing of the South Korean airliner by Soviet air defenses. This airliner was flying from Alaska to South Korea, to Seoul, and because of a computer snafu, it ended up over the Soviet Union, and the Soviets shot it down. So this was actually one of the most tense moments of the Cold War, and I arrived in Moscow in the middle of it.

Andrew Keen (6:03)

And I know you were at the movies. You went to see Three Days of the Condor, which was written by my friend James Grady. He's been on the show a couple of times. How were the Russians dealing with this crisis? Did they all think we were on the brink of Armageddon?

Michael Dobbs (6:21)

Well, Russia is, of course, a completely different kind of society to the United States. In the West, we have a surfeit of information. In Russia, you have a dearth of information. And so, ordinary Russians depended very much on what they were told by their leaders through state-controlled media and state-controlled TV.