If you want to understand how climate change threatens national security, look no further than Alaska, where the Arctic is warming three to four times faster than the rest of the world. As it warms, permafrost is thawing, ice is melting and the coast is eroding, threatening critical military infrastructure.
And that’s just the beginning. Climate change is transforming topography. As ice melts, new shipping routes are opening up, fish stocks are moving north, critical minerals and fossil fuels will be exposed, and global powers like Russia and China want a piece of the pie.
In this episode, host Kai Ryssdal heads to the top of the world to traverse the frozen terrain that could be the center stage for global conflict. We hitch a ride with the Coast Guard, drop in on training exercises in the frigid Alaskan mountain range and uncover vital military infrastructure that’s falling into the ocean. How are climate change and national security converging in the Arctic? And is our military ready for it?
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Kai Ryssdal: Holy cow. Holy cow. I legit don’t know if I can do 24 hours up here.
I’ve just gotten to Utqiagvik, Alaska, known until 2016 as Barrow. It’s April. Spring in most places. Here it is seven degrees, 15 knots of wind. Not to state the obvious, but it is freezing.
Gotta let the producer in the door.
Hayley Hershman: Thanks.
Kai Ryssdal: Oh, my God, it’s something. It’s actually, you know, I’ve been checking the weather forecast, and I was like, Oh yeah, I could do like, three degrees, whatever. No, you can’t. Cannot do it.
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Utqiagvik is the very, very, very top of Alaska. It’s the northernmost city in the United States, sitting on the extreme northern edge of the North American continent. But even saying that doesn’t really capture how far away you feel. It is otherworldly out here, snow for miles, and the sky and the snow are the same color, so you basically can’t see the horizon. And if you’ve been following any climate news at all, the past couple of years, hearing that climate change is warming the Arctic three to four times faster than the rest of the planet may not be surprising. What is surprising, and why we’re here, is that Alaska is where climate change and national security are running headlong into each other.
Albert Mose: So believe it or not, this is a great Alaskan day.
Kai Ryssdal: That’s Lieutenant Colonel Albert Mose.
Well, look, as long as the wind isn’t around, I’m good, but I definitely should have brought my sunglasses.
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And we came all this way to see him, because he helps run the Point Barrow long range radar. It’s a key piece of our national security infrastructure. It was built in the late 1950s, at the height of the Cold War, back in the days when the threat of Russian bombers coming over the North Pole was very real.
Archival clip: If modern bombers carrying modern bombs over the polar ice cap were to cross the Arctic Circle at midnight, they could destroy virtually any Canadian or American city before dawn.
Kai Ryssdal: Which means the Air Force had to find a way to detect those bombers and maybe missiles entering our airspace. The solution?
Archival clip: The radar network above the Arctic Circle.
Kai Ryssdal: Radars, lots of them.
Archival clip: A distant early warning line, which would span the north polar region and which no hostile aircraft could cross undetected. DEW Line, they called it.
Kai Ryssdal: The Point Barrow radar is one of what used to be roughly 60 in the DEW Line that runs along the coast of Alaska and Canada. This one is still operational today, meaning it’s still there to detect bombs and missiles and aircraft entering U.S. airspace, but it hasn’t been updated or modernized since the 1980s, and now climate change is posing a new and very different threat.
Albert Mose: Climate change, I think, from my perspective, from this radar site, it’s another challenge that we have to build into the calculus. It’s right in our doorstep, and there’s no more time to think about it.
Kai Ryssdal: Colonel Mose is dressed head to toe in cold weather camo, boots and gloves, a tan beanie pulled down low over his ears. We’re looking up at the radar. It’s got a covering over it called a ray dome to protect it from the elements. It’s on girders about 15 feet up in the air, and honestly, it looks like nothing so much as the world’s biggest golf ball.
Albert Mose: These radar sites could use an upgrade. We are upgrading them as much as we can, but we need upgrades. We need resources. We need manpower and systems to track the increasing activities.
Kai Ryssdal: Mose points out that as the Arctic has warmed, there have been cascading effects on this radar. The permafrost is thawing, which weakens the 65-year-old foundation the radar was built on. Flooding means the one road in and out can become impassable, and the Arctic Ocean is creeping closer as the coastline erodes. The Air Force is trying to find solutions: seawalls, new elevated roadways.
Albert Mose: Maybe moving the whole system back away from the danger zone.
Kai Ryssdal: Sorry, say that again, picking up this whole system and moving it, I don’t know, three miles that way?
Albert Mose: Correct. So find some way to relocate that somehow.
Kai Ryssdal: Do you think climate change is affecting American national security?
Albert Mose: The climate is changing, and so the way that we prepared for has to change in order to mitigate the changing climate environment that we find ourselves in all around the world.
Kai Ryssdal: So I hear you saying yes without saying yes.
Albert Mose: I am saying yes without saying yes.
Kai Ryssdal: I’m Kai Ryssdal. Welcome to How We Survive. This season, we’re exploring how the institution that shaped me, the American military, is shaping our climate future. This episode, we’re taking you north, way north to Alaska and the Arctic, where the climate is changing more quickly than almost anywhere else on the planet. Where the national security threat is changing fast too, and we’re going to find out whether the military is ready for it. This is episode two, The Last Frontier. Given the thawing permafrost and the melting ice, the deteriorating road, it’s tempting to look at the Point Barrow radar and think we ought to just chuck the whole thing, that it can’t possibly be worth saving or updating again. I mean, sure it’s here to detect missiles and other hostile intrusions, but that’s just a fear from the Cold War. The U.S. isn’t really worried about danger from over the polar ice cap, right? Right?
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Who do you think is coming? And I recognize that that’s above your pay grade, but —
Albert Mose: Correct. So anyone that wants to utilize the Northern Corridor to to affect our airspace down back in the lower 48. So pick any country that wants to utilize that northern space that’s becoming more more available as the climate changes.
Kai Ryssdal: Anyone could be coming. It’s that simple, and it’s that complicated, and it’s definitely not just airspace, either. As the Arctic warms and the ice melts, we’re going to have what defense experts call a whole new ocean. Countries that might have been deterred by all the ice, all of a sudden are going to be able to get to all the resources that have been locked away in this part of the world.
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Is it getting busier?
Albert Mose: It is getting busier. So as the ice shifts, resources are becoming more available that people want. So think minerals, think fish, think oil. And so now that area is becoming getting a lot more attention from folks that that want to capitalize on that available resource.
Kai Ryssdal: This right here, this is kind of the Oh shit moment, because it’s not just that climate change is affecting the radar and our military infrastructure at large, which is bad enough, by the way. The planet getting hotter is changing the topography and the accessibility of the resources in this remote and still mostly untouched part of the world. Mose mentioned fish and oil and minerals. New shipping lanes are going to open up. A typical sea route from Asia to Europe right now takes about 48 days, but as the ice melts and a northern route opens, you could cut that down to 35 days, a huge economic boost for a country like, oh, I don’t know, Russia? Or China, which has declared itself a near Arctic state trying to legitimize its presence up here.
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All right, so here we are in Utqiagvik. We’re out for the day, also out for the day without cell phone coverage, which is going to be interesting, because none of us know our way around here.
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A couple of things that are good to know about Utqiagvik, should you ever go. First of all, like I said, this place is remote and it’s far, far away. Supplies, like food, have to be brought in by air, which explains why the cost of living is so high. A gallon of milk will run you 16 bucks, $34 if it’s organic. Utqiagvik is a pretty small place, 21 miles square, about 4500 people, and yet we — my producer, Hayley Hershman and I — we got a little lost.
Hayley Hershman: I’ve never seen this much white before in my life.
Kai Ryssdal: Hayley’s driving as we pass 10-foot-tall piles of snow plowed up against the side of the road. The Arctic Ocean, just on the other side of those piles, is completely frozen over. And, like I said, you can’t really make out the horizon, so your sense of distance is just shot.
Hayley Hershman: Also, the road is about to get, like, less visible.
Kai Ryssdal: Yeah, the road, the road is, like, getting less roadie. Oh yeah, we’re off roading now.
Hayley Hershman: Don’t say that on tape. We’re legally not allowed to in this car.
Kai Ryssdal: To be clear, we were actually on the road. We do eventually find our way around. And we pull up to the North Slope Borough Port Authority Department. We park, but we leave the car running. Everybody does it so the engine doesn’t freeze.
Hayley Hershman: It feels so weird to do that. I cannot get over it.
Kai Ryssdal: But clearly that’s just the way it happens here, right. That’s just what people do.
When you hear Port Authority, you might think of something like the big transit hubs in New York or Los Angeles. Utqiagvik is different. It’s tiny. We’re talking a small office space in town with four employees. They don’t even have a dock.
Hina Kilioni: Nice to meet you.
Kai Ryssdal: I’m Kai. Nice to see you. How are you doing?
Hina Kilioni: Nice to meet you.
Kai Ryssdal: Hina Kilioni is the acting director of the Port Authority for the North Slope Borough.
What was it like when you moved up here?
Hina Kilioni: Cold. It was actually January. So the 24 hours of darkness, you know, I, everything looked like a snow globe at night.
Kai Ryssdal: Hina’s got jet black hair that hits just above his shoulders. He’s wearing small black hoop earrings, and he’s got a black and red plaid jacket that I don’t think seems warm enough.
Hina Kilioni: I’m originally from Lahaina, Maui, born and raised, and yes.
Kai Ryssdal: You are far from home.
Hina Kilioni: Yes, I’m far from home. But actually I’m not, because this feels, this is home.
Kai Ryssdal: The people who call this place home are right on the leading edge of the changes that a warming planet is bringing to the Arctic and of the shifting landscape of national security, and they’re dealing with it long before it gets to the rest of us in the lower 48.
Hina Kilioni: We are what makes this country Arctic. Alaska is the reason why.
Kai Ryssdal: Alaska isn’t often in the national discussion, right? It’s far away. It’s only got 750,000 people. Less, actually. Out of sight, out of mind, kinda. But it is the place that gives the United States a claim to this increasingly important and rapidly changing part of the world.
All right, can you drive with one hand and talk on the mic on the other hand?
Hina Kilioni: Yep.
Kai Ryssdal: All right.
Hina Kilioni: And yell at kids.
Kai Ryssdal: That’s good.
Hina Kilioni: Just kidding.
Kai Ryssdal: We load up in Hina’s car for a look around town.
All right, so —
Hina Kilioni: I don’t feel comfortable going any further, so —
Kai Ryssdal: No, I was just gonna, I was just gonna say, how do you know you’re still on the road and not on the ice?
Hina Kilioni: Um, because I’ve been here in the summer.
Kai Ryssdal: Yeah, oh yeah. We’re gonna go right by that danger sign.
Hina Kilioni: Yep.
Kai Ryssdal: Not past.
Hina Kilioni: You’ll come around —
Kai Ryssdal: Just up to.
Hina Kilioni: Oh, just come around this side over here.
Kai Ryssdal: Yup. Oh, my God, it’s a little windier out here.
Hina Kilioni: Just a little.
Kai Ryssdal: All right, so here we are literally on the edge of the Arctic Ocean.
It’s always a guessing game when summer comes, Hina says, to see how much of the coast is still there.
Hina Kilioni: Are you cold? Yup.
Kai Ryssdal: Yeah, and the mic’s dying too. All right, let’s get back in the car. But this is crazy. This is actually where it’s happening. This is like climate change, up close and personal.
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The wind is brutal. It is relentless. I can’t feel my face. And in this kind of weather, you’d think most people would be at home under a mountain of blankets, but there is kind of a buzz around town today, and as we’re getting back into Hina’s car, a woman pulls right up to the shoreline with a couple of kids in the backseat, and she starts scanning the frozen Arctic Ocean with a pair of binoculars.
Hina Kilioni: Hi BJ, how’s whaling?
Kai Ryssdal: A group of hunters caught a whale last night and they’re bringing it back to shore.
Hina Kilioni: Hell yeah.
Kai Ryssdal: You got a whale? That’s great. Wow. That’s very cool.
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Their whaling captain, BJ, the woman with the binoculars, is keeping watch for her husband and the rest of the group. We had gotten to Utqiagvik just at the start of whaling season, and that day we were out, the community ended up catching three whales. Subsistence whaling, we should tell you, is legal for Alaska Native communities. Back in the car we go and head down the road.
Hina Kilioni: And these are the homes —
Kai Ryssdal: Oh, look at these houses. These are right on the ocean.
Hina Kilioni: Yep.
Kai Ryssdal: Oh, and they’re not going to be here in five years. I mean, come on, that’s a terrible thing to say, but come on.
Hina Kilioni: The road used to go that way, and that was just last summer.
Kai Ryssdal: It’s just not there.
Hina Kilioni: Yeah.
Kai Ryssdal: Sorry. Last summer the road was here?
Hina Kilioni: Yeah.
Kai Ryssdal: Oh, man.
Hina Kilioni: It fell off.
Kai Ryssdal: Yeah, we should. We’re like, 20 yards from the Arctic Ocean.
Hina Kilioni: You can see all of our, all of our infrastructure along the coastline. And another one that we’re gonna approach is the gas station, our only gas station.
Kai Ryssdal: Yeah, it’s up here, right?
Hina Kilioni: Yep, right along the coastline.
Kai Ryssdal: There is a solution that’s bringing Utqiagvik some hope. It’s a five-mile-long seawall that the Army Corps of Engineers is building to protect the village. It’s not going to be done, though, until 2032. And driving around with Hina and getting just a taste of how remote Utqiagvik is, it also becomes clear how vulnerable this community is. From the physical effects of climate change, yes, but also things are just getting busier. More maritime traffic on the Arctic Ocean that’s passable more months of the year, friendly maritime traffic, and others.
Hina Kilioni: A couple weeks ago, there was some, some questionable activity going on off our shores that, but they weren’t on the tracker. The vessel wasn’t listed. The vessel wasn’t identified. It wasn’t a U.S. vessel.
Kai Ryssdal: It caused a stir.
Hina Kilioni: When we found out that there was unknown vessel, we were just like, we’re like living a real life, like, this is, this is what we see on TV, you know, a crime show or international espionage, like you see on TV. This is what’s happening in our front door. This is the kind of stuff that we worry about.
Kai Ryssdal: That Oh shit moment I was talking about, where the Northwest Passage becomes so much busier, where foreign activity, friendly or not, increases up here. Hina’s worried about that.
Hina Kilioni: You know, we get it, national security, we get it. But thing is, trying to secure our border. We live at the border. We’re over here, so just a little bit of information would help, especially if this, the Northwest Passage becomes what it’s looking like it’s going to become, right. That means this entire environment could change that much more.
Kai Ryssdal: And he says there’s more military in the area, too.
Hina Kilioni: I’m noticing more and more people with high and tights on the plane. And our towns are not that big. We know everybody’s face, so we can tell that they’re coming. We know that they’re coming.
Kai Ryssdal: A word here about the militarization of the Arctic, a very short word. It already happened, decades ago. What’s happening now is just the latest version of it. That said though, Hina and the community here are on the literal frontlines of a changing landscape and a changing strategic dynamic, and it’s fair to wonder, should the shit hit the fan, what part of the military is going to be here to protect the Alaskan border, and whether they’re ready for it.
Jake Peterson: Russia and China, they’re on the playing field right now in the Arctic. And we’re still in the locker room.
Kai Ryssdal: That’s after the break.
BREAK
Last episode you heard me get put through the ringer in the warfighter lab in San Diego. It was not to be too dramatic, a completely miserable experience. The worst part was sitting in a tank of 50-degree water for 10 minutes, a very small taste of the research the Navy’s doing into how extreme cold affects your ability to think and act and how to train soldiers and Marines for it. It went a little bit like this.
Doug Jones: Two more minutes, think warm thoughts.
Kai Ryssdal: Holy shit, I don’t understand doing this for 90 minutes. I bet you get deep inside yourself.
Good times. Am I right? But what scientists are testing in the lab is meant to be used in the real world.
Doug Jones: So think about the application of this, right? So, right, you’re in a —
Kai Ryssdal: You’re being very clinical right now but go ahead.
Doug Jones: Arctic cold weather environment, you break through the ice, but you still have to operate. So that’s going to be the next phase of this.
Kai Ryssdal: All that research is eventually going to help troops on the ground, survive and fight in arctic conditions. But what about now? How’s the military preparing for today? Caitlin Esch and Hayley Hershman, who are producing this podcast, went to the northern warfare training center in Black Rapids, Alaska, about 600 miles southeast of Utqiagvik, to find out.
Voice 1: We’re about to take ski lessons. I’ve never, never skied in my life before, so it’s gonna be very interesting.
Caitlin Esch: You say avalanche training, but what does that entail? Surviving an avalanche?
Voice 2: How to avoid an avalanche, what signs to look for when you’re walking, listening to for sounds in the snow.
Kai Ryssdal: It’s a little bit survival training, a little bit practical skills training and a little bit how to fight here, if they have to.
Caitlin Esch: What is this training for?
Jack Foster: This training is just to make us more proficient as Arctic warriors, to make us more proficient in Arctic environments. Should, I mean, for lack of a better term, if anything pops off in the world.
Kai Ryssdal: That’s second lieutenant Jack Foster. There are Arctic basics being taught. Setting up a tent in the snow, for instance, making camp in negative 50-degree weather, which makes that plus 50 degree water I was in seem almost balmy. They’re learning Arctic warfare specifics, too.
Jack Foster: We learned about how much fresh snowpack, snow, ice, and ice crete it takes to stop a bullet, so that when we’re building those positions, we could take that into consideration.
Kai Ryssdal: About 12 feet of loose snow can stop a bullet, by the way. You’re welcome for that. Lieutenant Foster is from Texas originally.
Caitlin Esch: You look like you’ve been out in the cold for a while. What was your first impression of the cold?
Jack Foster: Just kind of to embrace the suck.
Caitlin Esch: Did you say embrace the suck?
Jack Foster: I did, yeah, that’s, that’s probably the, you know, the Army has many mottos, but that’s the true, unofficial motto of the army.
Kai Ryssdal: The army has always trained soldiers to fight in different climates. And, you know, we used to have an Arctic focus in the 1950s and 60s, when we built the DEW Line, but several decades and several different wars later, climate change is forcing us to pivot back.
John Pennell: The Army recently opened up Alaska as a an option for soldiers to enlist to come to Alaska.
Kai Ryssdal: That’s John Pennell, he’s the chief of media relations for the 11th Airborne Division.
Caitlin Esch: Do you think climate change is bringing more more soldiers up here to train?
John Pennell: I think so. I think there’s no doubt that climate change has impacted the way folks in the lower 48 see Alaska and the Arctic, because before it was it was just an ice box. Who’s going to attack us over the pole, you know. There was a famous Canadian general who said any attack that comes over the pole is going to automatically turn into the world’s largest rescue mission, because it’s just impossible. But with that ice becoming so thin and going away, and so much more focus from our sometimes not so friendly neighbors. It’s obvious that we have to regain our Arctic focus, and we have to really put our military focus back into protecting the northern border.
Kai Ryssdal: Who’s going to attack us over the pole? You remember Colonel Mose and the Barrow radar? Anyone and any country he said, could come over the pole. There’s a phrase that military people in Alaska throw around a lot, the tyranny of distance. Alaska is enormous. It’s bigger than Texas, California, and Montana combined. And there’s a patchwork of different military branches that operate here. There is the Air Force, which, if you remember, runs the radars up the coast. They’ve got F-22 fighters as well. The Navy and Marine Corps also have a presence, although not in force. And there is the army, as we just heard with Caitlin and Hayley. Thing is, though, the branch of the military that right now is most likely to be sent to respond to Hina’s worries about an unidentified ship entering U.S. waters, or a civilian cruise ship, maybe with as many people on board as live in Utqiagvik, a ship like that that runs into trouble, the U.S. Coast Guard is going to get the call.
Lexi Chavarria-Aguilar: All right. Controls.
Ted Borny: Controls.
Lexi Chavarria-Aguilar: Starting.
Kai Ryssdal: We’re in a Coast Guard MH-60 helicopter.
Lexi Chavarria-Aguilar: Takeoff checklist crew. We’re ready for take-off.
Kai Ryssdal: Lieutenant Lexi Chavarria-Aguilar and Lieutenant Commander Ted Borny at the controls. We’re all in matching flight suits. Think Ghostbusters, but bright orange and helmets. Weather’s not great, low clouds. It’s been raining on and off since we got here. The ride is a little bumpy, par for the course in a helicopter, you should know. We’re about 300 feet above the water, just below the cloud layer.
Lexi Chavarria-Aguilar: We are actually headed toward Narrow Strait, which is between Spruce Island and the top of Kodiak Island. And it’s kind of a shortcut. We have the good weather and visibility right now.
Kai Ryssdal: In their logbooks, this is going to go down as a standard proficiency hop for Lexi and Ted. Regular training, just with a couple of journalists in the back. But the very nature of what the Coast Guard does, search and rescue, maritime interdiction, means that every flight could turn operational on a moment’s notice. Kodiak Island is kind of stunning, actually. Mountains right up against the water, thick clouds sitting on top of them, deep blue-green water and wildlife.
Ted Borny: Oh, there’s a couple bears down there.
Lexi Chavarria-Aguilar: Oh, that looks like a cow dude.
Ted Borny: Oh it’s a cow. Oh man.
Lexi Chavarria-Aguilar: You got me excited.
Ted Borny: I got excited. Is that not a bear?
Lexi Chavarria-Aguilar: Nah dude that’s a cow.
Ted Borny: That’s a cow?
Kai Ryssdal: Kodiak Island is nearly 1000 miles straight south of Utqiagvik.
Lexi Chavarria-Aguilar: Alaska is an interesting place to be as the global climate is shifting. I think that the physical like tangible changes are more poignant here than maybe elsewhere.
Kai Ryssdal: And those changes are going to make the Coast Guard’s job more difficult.
Ted Borny: You were talking about you went up to Barrow. There’s less ice up there. There’s going to be more opportunities for traffic to go through there. They’ll need a greater Coast Guard presence to make sure that the maritime traffic going through there is able to do that safely, and then in an event of an emergency, that we’re there to respond. So you’ll see commercial traffic as well as you know, things like cruise ships, things like that, where you have the potential for now for a mass casualty event, somewhere remote and north.
Kai Ryssdal: As maritime and aviation traffic increases up here, more traffic means more people. More people means more chances for things to go wrong, a stranded cruise ship, unidentified vessels, things the Coast Guard deals with all the time, but —
Ted Borny: We don’t have a permanent presence up there now, so we’re not in a great position to respond. We’d be responding off of Kodiak. It just takes a lot of time to get there.
Kai Ryssdal: That tyranny of distance thing is real. 1000 miles up here is a very, very long 1000 miles. And there’s kind of an infrastructure challenge too. Maybe equipment challenge is a better way to put that, as Ted Borny explained once we got back on the ground.
Ted Borny: Right now we have, the Coast Guard has the only icebreakers out of any military service. We only have two of them, which is not super adequate for the space that we’re operating in.
Kai Ryssdal: If you want to operate in the Arctic, you kind of got to have ice breakers. And as maritime traffic and strategic competition here increases, the Coast Guard is going to need more than two.
Ted Borny: Compared to comparable countries, you know, think about Russia, and then if you even think about China, which is not an Arctic nation, has ice breaking capability. So we’re behind in that right now, and the Coast Guard is working to catch up.
Kai Ryssdal: The way things stand right now, there’s vital infrastructure, like the Barrow radar, that’s not more than a couple of years away from figuratively anyway, falling into the ocean, and essential equipment like icebreakers that’s desperately needed as more competitors and allies start to operate in the Arctic. So you can’t help but wonder whether the American military is actually ready.
Jake Peterson: And this is my opinion, is that our competitors, Russia and China, they’re on the playing field right now in the Arctic.
Kai Ryssdal: That’s Colonel Jake Peterson. He’s the chief of staff at Alaska command, which is responsible for keeping Alaska, its airspace, its land and its coastline secure.
Jake Peterson: They’re exploring. They’re sending research vessels out there. They’re doing exploratory mining. You see the northern sea route there. That’s a sea route that cuts off a lot of time for transit of goods from Asia to Europe, and they claim that as their territorial waters. So if someone wants to use it, they’ll charge.
Kai Ryssdal: The United States Peterson says is behind.
Jake Peterson: Again, our competitors are already playing on the playing field, and we’re still in the locker room right now.
Kai Ryssdal: Back in 2022 the Department of Defense released an inspector general’s report looking at whether the Pentagon’s six Arctic and subarctic bases are ready for the effects of climate change. The relevant quote here? These installation leaders did not conduct installation resilience assessments and planning required by DOD directive and public law.
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Are we making the investments necessary to maintain national security as the Arctic changes?
David Nahom: I would say we’re certainly investing.
Kai Ryssdal: Lieutenant General David Nahom was, until he retired in August, the commander of Alaska command. That made him Colonel Peterson’s boss. Nahom is the guy to call when you want to talk military operations in the Arctic.
David Nahom: I’ve got to be able to see further out and see threats sooner. The current threats and threats in the future, and we are studying that, what that looks like, and the investment, the investment absolutely needs to go into the tools to ensure that we can see out further and sooner.
Kai Ryssdal: What’s the what if here, sir, what if we don’t get it right?
David Nahom: I think if we don’t get this right, and things don’t go our way, I think that does, that does turn into an area of competition, and it could easily turn into an area of crisis.
Kai Ryssdal: Spitball this one for me, sir, let’s say you could get Secretary Austin on the phone. Maybe you can, maybe you can’t, I don’t know.
David Nahom: Probably not.
Kai Ryssdal: Well, you know, let’s say you’re having —
David Nahom: My boss can, but —
Kai Ryssdal: Well, yeah, let’s say you’re having a good day, and you can get him on the phone. What do you tell him you need the Department of Defense to do to make you more mission capable up there?
David Nahom: I would just say what my boss says out loud, and I continue to say out loud too. We’ve got to be attuned to the domain awareness up in the high north. We’ve got to have the ability to see out further and see out sooner. And these technologies, you know, you looked at, you said it right there. When you were up at Utqiagvik, we have Point Barrow, our long-range radar site up there. That was technology from the Cold War. Well, we’re not dealing with threats from the cold war anymore. The threats have developed, and we’ve got to develop the tools to be able to have that, have that ability to see, the sensors to see, and then the ability to manage the data and put it in our senior leaders’ hands so that so they can react accordingly if there is, if there is a need up here in the high north.
Kai Ryssdal: What I hear you saying, sir, without really saying it, is, maybe you don’t have what you need.
David Nahom: I would just say we have to stay very focused on it as we move forward. You know, the the threat is evolving quickly. We have got to evolve too in how we see and how and how we defend. We’ve got to be able to see out further and sooner in the emerging threats that we see, that we see Russia and China developing.
Kai Ryssdal: The Department of Defense released a new Arctic strategy this summer, July 22 to be really precise, a strategy that calls for more spending on high tech sensors and radar systems up in the Arctic, as well as investments in more cutters for the Coast Guard. Investments that, based on our reporting, are well needed if the United States plans to stay a force in this region. Not really much in terms of timeline or implementation, but two days later, two days, American and Canadian fighters from Alaska command intercepted Russian and Chinese strategic bombers flying together in Alaskan airspace. The first time U.S. officials said they have seen those two countries operating together in that way. At a press conference, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said, and this is a quote, they’re always testing us, and that’s no surprise to any of us. They are always testing us, and we’re always testing them. That’s the way it works, a strategic game of cat and mouse, to oversimplify it just a little bit. In a way, this takes us back to where we started the first episode of this season. Me, 40 years ago, following Soviet bombers coming around the North Cape of Norway. Different times, different airspace, different threats. Threats, though, that have been multiplied thanks to climate change. Next time on How We Survive, climate change is changing and complicating the national security environment that the Pentagon has to operate in, but the American military is contributing to making the planet hotter too. So what are they going to do about that?
Voice 3: We did relieve the grid of our burden at their request.
Kai Ryssdal: Right, and that’s only going to start happening more.
Voice 3: Absolutely correct.
Kai Ryssdal: Microgrids, sustainable jet fuel —
What’d you do in New York, Kai? Well, I had vodka out of paper cups in Brooklyn at 10:40 in the morning.
Voice 4: In a jet fuel refinery.
Kai Ryssdal: And the future of military operations. Next time on How We Survive. I’m Kai Ryssdal. Hayley Hershman produced this episode. The How We Survive team includes Sophia Paliza-Carre and Katie Reuther. We had additional production support from Lina Fansa. Caitlin Esch is the Supervising Senior Producer. Nancy Farghalli is our editor, sound design and original scoring by Chris Julin, mixing by Brian Allison. Our field engineer up in the Arctic was Jayk Cherry. Bridget Bodnar is the Director of Podcasts. Francesca Levy is the Executive Director of Digital. Neal Scarbrough is the Vice President and General Manager of Marketplace. Our theme music is by Wonderly.
