I hadn’t considered the idea of the tape recording as a threat. I like that interpretation. Even in the movie, where it’s not spelt out, you can easily read the President’s intended announcement as an implicit threat to China and the Soviets. That fits a lot better with what we see of this President and government.
As for the ending, Snake is ultimately just doing what he warned he was going to do the whole time, which is not to cooperate except under compulsion. It was their dumb mistake to assume they had more leverage over him than they did. He’s also not irrevocably dooming the world (nor irrevocably thwarting the U.S.’s plans for world domination, if you prefer that interpretation). They can probably create another copy of this nuclear fusion information, I assume? Maybe they couldn’t do it within 23 hours, for some reason? In any case, I figured the reason it was so important to get the President and tape in front of the cameras by that time is just that this is what the U.S. had announced (threatened) previously, and they need to project strength and competence. Snake’s basically just allowing them to screw themselves, and leaving it to them to clean up the mess.
― jmm, Tuesday, 26 March 2024 16:40 (one month ago) link