A. I saw Kathryn Bigelow’s new film A Throne of Dynamite yesterday. It is a nuclear escalation thriller with nods to hit-to-kill missile defence; launch-on-warning protocols; SecDef and President negotiations; and White House Situation Room based crisis decision-making. The New Yorker’s Justin Chang however was not convinced. The movie is in theatres now and is out on Netflix on 24th October. Here is a trailer:
B. Nuclear war themed films are now in resurgence - reflecting similar geopolitical and war anxieties as the 1983-85 scares that occurred in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union of Socialist Republics, and Australia. This possibly indicates the first stage of a psychological operations campaign to prepare audiences for potential future conflicts: Russia invading NATO Europe; the India-Pakistan dyad; the Israel-Iran dyad; United States-China-Russia tripolarity in the Indo-Pacific; or North Korea-South Korea-Japan as possible nuclear escalation ladder scenarios. Part of this trend (at least in popular films and in trade press publishing) are recent books such as Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario (2024) and Carlo Masala’s If Russia Wins: A Scenario (2025). Here is the trailer for a British micro-film trilogy of stories called The Days Ahead:
C. White House Situation Room films are becoming a genre akin to halogencore corporate thrillers. 2024’s entrants included War Game on the possibility of a January 6th type political insurrection with deepfakes:
D. PBS American Experience has released the trailer (below) for a new documentary about the Nixon administration negotiator Henry Kissinger. The film features Kissinger biographer Professor Jeremi Suri (Henry Kissinger and the American Century) who kindly had a coffee with me when I visited SXSW in 2012 in Austin, TX.
E. Iran has terminated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with the United States. Here is an Arms Control Association summary of JCPOA.