Michael Dobbs' 'The Six Minute War'

By Kevin Seabrooke

New York Times bestselling author and former Washington Post Moscow bureau chief Michael Dobbs reconstructs the harrowing inside story of Able Archer 83—a NATO military exercise in Germany that simulated nuclear war so realistically Soviet leaders feared a real preemptive strike and began counter-escalating. Dobbs examines that climactic nuclear scare where ever-shrinking warning times and flawed command-and-control systems nearly automated World War III.

Framing the narrative around Ronald Reagan’s haunting realization that leaders had “six minutes to decide how to respond to a blip on a radar scope,” Dobbs explores the dangerous tension between fallible human decision-makers and automated algorithms. The result is a gripping, cautionary account detailing how close the superpower standoff came to total destruction, offering vital lessons on the perils of high-tech defense automation.