Kathryn Bigelow’s House of Dynamite Reminds Us Why America Must Focus On Nuclear Security
Image: The submarine USS Nebraska test launches a nuclear-capable Trident missile off the coast of California, part of the sea-leg of America’s nuclear deterrent. Media From from US Navy Submarine Force Pacific.
A single nuclear missile hurtles across the Pacific Ocean towards the United States. In response, a vast network of military systems and federal agencies rushes to implement plans to ensure the safety of the country and the continuity of government.
Kathryn Bigelow’s new Netflix film, House of Dynamite, explores how the U.S. government might respond to a nuclear attack from an unknown source. Every American should watch House of Dynamite to grasp both the severity of nuclear warfare and the fragility of the systems meant to prevent catastrophe. In a Washington Post interview, Bigelow explained that nuclear weapons are “sort of the elephant in the room. Nobody talks about [them] anymore.” Well, it’s time to talk about them again. Our national security, and even the survival of humanity, depend on it.
Today, the United States finds itself in a renewed global military contest with Russia and China, one that increasingly resembles the Cold War. House of Dynamite makes one thing starkly clear: U.S. policymakers must prioritize the renewal of the New START nuclear arms control treaty and the expansion of missile defense capabilities to protect both our nation’s and the globe’s security.
According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Russia and the United States control the vast majority of atomic weapons. Eight other countries possess nuclear capacities—the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel—and several continue to develop these arms.
In February 2026, the New START treaty will expire. The world’s two largest nuclear powers will no longer have any binding restrictions on their weapons. Signed in 2011, the treaty limits each country to no more than “1,550 nuclear warheads on deployed [land-based nuclear missiles], deployed [submarine-based nuclear missiles], and deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments.”
A modern arms race is brewing. China is dramatically expanding its supply, with the Pentagon estimating that Beijing will have 1,000 warheads by 2030. Meanwhile, the U.S. Air Force is modernizing its aging land-based nuclear missile, the Minuteman III, which has been in service since 1970. Estimated to be worth $141 billion, the new Sentinel missile will provide U.S. land-based nuclear deterrence until 2075, according to its developer, Northrop Grumman.
The good news: both the White House and the Kremlin have signaled they are open to extending New START by one year.
The bad news: neither government has taken any concrete actions toward this agreement. If the treaty expires this coming February, no restrictions on the arsenals of either the United States or Russia will remain in place, initiating a contemporary arms race between the two powers. It is equally crucial that American and Russian diplomats work to bring China and India into New START, or that the U.S. pursues a new treaty with Beijing and New Delhi independently.
Another part of House of Dynamite should be a wake-up call. The plot demonstrates how inadequate U.S. homeland defenses are against nuclear attack. In one scene, the U.S. Army launches a Ground-based Interceptor (GBI) from Fort Greely, Alaska, attempting to destroy an incoming missile before it strikes Chicago. The GBI intercept fails. And in reality, this system only has a 61% success rate, effectively as the Defense Secretary says in the movie, “a coin toss.” Defense contractor Lockheed Martin is developing the Next Generation Interceptor (NGI) to achieve a higher success rate.
According to the Arms Control Association, “[f]or nearly two decades, U.S. ballistic missile defense…has sought to protect the homeland against limited long-range missile strikes from states such as Iran and North Korea, but not major nuclear powers like Russia and China.” Maintaining a missile defense system capable of intercepting Russian and Chinese missiles would be extraordinarily expensive and technically difficult. In 1983, during the Cold War, the Reagan Administration proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative, often dubbed“Star Wars,” which sought to create a space-based shield against Soviet missiles. In the film, Bigelow aptly compares intercepting a nuclear missile to hitting a bullet with another bullet, an impossible feat.
But despite the technical and financial constraints of comprehensive missile defense, the U.S. Congress must appropriate funding for the production of further GBIs, so that there is a higher success rate in the event a rogue state, such as Iran and North Korea, or a terrorist organization launches a missile. Similarly, as the GBI system is nearly twenty years old, the Defense Department must seriously consider newer proposals, such as Lockheed Martin’s NGI, to ensure U.S. national security and potentially facilitate an expanded missile defense that is able to address Russian and Chinese arsenals.
Humanity has possessed the means to destroy itself since a hot summer’s day in the desert near Los Alamos, New Mexico, in 1945, when the United States tested the first atomic bomb. Since then, the world has come perilously close to total nuclear annihilation, most notably during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and the 1983 Able Archer exercises.
As the world marks the 80th anniversary amidst a new Cold War, all nuclear powers must ensure that the world’s most dangerous weapons remain in their silos.
Wilson U. ‘27 is a staff writer for The Grace Gazette.