All the King’s Weapons: Nuclear Launch Authority in the United States
The president of the United States is the only person in the country who can order the use of nuclear weapons, a power commonly known as “sole authority.” This power is granted to the president largely through policy tradition, but the president’s Constitutional role as Commander-in-Chief is often cited as the legal basis. Sole authority was first codified in 1948 when the National Security Council (NSC) adopted the conclusions of NSC-30, which read: “The decision as to the employment of atomic weapons in the event of war is to be made by the Chief Executive when he considers such decision to be required.” The policy has since been reaffirmed in numerous official documents, including, most recently, the Department of Defense’s 2024 Report to Congress on the Nuclear Employment Strategy of the United States, which states, “the Guidance reaffirms that the President remains the sole authority to direct U.S. nuclear employment.”
Despite its foundational place in U.S. nuclear policy, sole authority has for years come under heavy scrutiny by experts, journalists, and American citizens. Experts publish pieces warning of the dangers of such a system, people take to social media to remind their networks that “this is the guy with the nuclear codes” whenever the president acts in a concerning manner, and lawmakers even introduce legislation to try to constrain the president’s authority. Recent polling by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and Carnegie Corporation of New York found that 61% of Americans are either somewhat or very uncomfortable with the president having sole authority over nuclear launch decisions.
Sole authority appears like a dangerous toy in the hands of unstable, unreliable, or erratic presidents. President Bill Clinton reportedly lost his nuclear authorization codes for months during his presidency. Jimmy Carter rumoredly sent his codes to the dry cleaners in the pocket of his suit jacket. Following the assassination attempt against Ronald Reagan in 1981, Reagan was separated from his military aide, and all of his clothes, including the pants in which the card carrying his nuclear codes sat, were stripped in the hospital and thrown away. His codes were later recovered by the FBI from a hospital trash can. Further, the mental and intellectual reliability of presidents has been questioned, with Reagan’s formal Alzheimer’s diagnosis coming just five years after he left office, John F. Kennedy’s known use of strong pain medications, Richard Nixon’s heavy drinking and erratic behavior leading up to his resignation, and Donald Trump’s history of making flippant remarks and threats of nuclear use, to name a few.
Other concerns with presidential sole authority include the immense time and psychological pressure placed on presidents in crisis scenarios that hinders rational thinking, the challenge to democratic values posed by a system that places ultimate power in one individual’s hands, the ethical and legal burden placed on lower level military officials, and more. But before we can attempt to solve the broad “problem” of sole authority, a more thorough understanding of it is needed.
This report investigates how we arrived at this system of launch authority in the United States today. It traces the origins of sole authority to the earliest days of the nuclear age and follows the history of trial and error — with new procedures and systems added or abandoned as vulnerabilities were detected and new technology emerged — culminating in an assumption that we have arrived today at the optimal system for nuclear launch authority. This report interrogates that assumption first by providing an in-depth understanding of how the policy of sole authority works today and how the nuclear enterprise in the United States is set up to enable it, then by evaluating the risks and vulnerabilities that remain. Finally, the report analyzes the merits and drawbacks of policy proposals that have been put forward by experts and lawmakers to answer a crucial question: is sole authority solvable, or is it truly the best system possible for nuclear launch authority? If the latter, should we accept that reality?
Is sole authority solvable, or is it truly the best system possible for nuclear launch authority? If the latter, should we accept that reality?
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