Gen. Milley took top-secret action to protect nuclear weapons from Trump | Hacker News Reader

Gen. Milley took top-secret action to protect nuclear weapons from Trump

cnn.com

9 pointsfspacef11 comments

This reads like a coup was nearly started because they didn't like what the former president was doing.

Could you expand? I think you might have your logic backwards, but it's unclear.

Maybe I should have said "a coup was nearly started because a coup was nearly started". But then you could go down some really long pedantic roads about what a coup really is.

I mean, far more simply, are you saying that Milley and other military members were planning a coup because the actions they took to deny the president his right to launch missles were not legal?

That's how I read what you said: that Milley, etc, were trying to execute a coup by removing Trump's nuclear powers.

And that's not how I interpret the situation, based on my understanding of the roles and responsibilities of defense officials in the US military and government.

So I asked you to clarify.

Whatever the details are, I am interested if it set a precedent or not.

You mean in terms of the leaders of the military asserting their right to be involved in decisions like when to activate the football?

No precedents were set here, what the general did is just leadership. he explained what the rules were explicitly to his followers, to ensure that trump didn't collar one of his followers and somehow ram a nuclear strike through without proper approval.

See "Operation of the Nuclear Football": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_football#Operation involves informing the SoD and JCS.

naturally, it's far more complicated than that, https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2021-06/features/nuclear-lau... and no precedents were set in this situation.

> and no precedents were set in this situation.

Time will tell.

I might have the timeline wrong but I was under the impression that HS. Pelosi was the one whom initially pressured Milley (or other DoD official?) to remove's Trump's access to the nuclear football as it was being casually carried around in the chamber, during the final hours of the electoral college vote.

It wasn't just that Milley spoke to his staff or even to the Speaker, but he also called his counterpart in China to warn them[1]. This is at minimum coup-like, but arguably more treason-like.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/15/milley-held-secret-calls-wit...

According to cnn.

of course the notion that there's a "shadow government" of long term burrocrats that wouldn't work with an elected president is just a baseless conspiracy theory.

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