Bob Woodward discusses ‘War,’ his new book breaking down world conflicts and U.S. politics

Bob Woodward:

What the strain in all of this is U.S. intelligence has gotten better and better. And they actually, at some points, know what’s going on in the Kremlin.

At one point, they have a human source that’s really telling them, so they have got that picture. And they realize that Putin’s the autocrat, he’s desperate. Any catastrophic — under their doctrine, any catastrophic battlefield loss would mean, ah, we’re going to use tactical nuclear weapons. And he does it in private.

But, in public, it goes from 5 percent as you say, up to 50 percent. And in the White House, they realize 50 percent is a coin flip. And the deputy national security adviser, Jon Finer, realizes what a momentous moment this is and reflects on how this is what it must have been like in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis.