Do Today's Policymakers Understand the Threat of Nuclear War?

Many policymakers today are too young to remember much of the Cold War. Do they fully grasp the realities of the threat of nuclear war? In this interview from the FPA archives, Ambassador Nicholas Burns, now the United States Ambassador to the People's Republic of China, said, "I think that the generation younger than my own fully grasps the importance of nuclear weapons in the world today and the existential nature of nuclear weapons. It's the first time in human history that we can destroy the Earth and destroy hundreds of millions of lives. That's the awesome, terrible power that the atomic and nuclear ages have unleashed. And my generation, of course...was very well aware of this, because we were in the middle of the Cold War. There was the prospect and the terrible fear of an accidental nuclear war or a purposeful war...I think the generation the millennial generation and generation X, certainly understand that this is an issue that we cannot disregard."
This interview from the FPA archives was recorded in 2016.

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Apparently not.