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Direct communication system between Russia and the United States

The Moscow–Washington hotline (formally known in the United States as the Washington–Moscow Direct Communications Link; ) is a system that allows direct communication between the leaders of the United States and the Russian Federation (formerly the Soviet Union). This hotline was established in 1963 and links the Pentagon with the Kremlin (historically, with Soviet Communist Party leadership across the square from the Kremlin itself). Although in popular culture it is known as the "red telephone", the hotline was never a telephone line, and no red phones were used. The first implementation used Teletype equipment, and shifted to fax machines in 1986. Since 2008, the Moscow–Washington hotline has been a secure computer link over which messages are exchanged by a secure form of email.

Several people came up with the idea for a hotline, including Harvard professor Thomas Schelling, who had worked on nuclear war policy for the Defense Department previously. Schelling credited the pop fiction novel Red Alert (the basis of the film Dr. Strangelove) with making governments more aware of the benefit of direct communication between the superpowers. In addition, Parade editor Jess Gorkin personally badgered 1960 presidential candidates John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, and buttonholed the Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev during a U. S. visit to adopt the idea. During the crisis, the United States took nearly twelve hours to receive and decode Nikita Khrushchev's 3,000 word initial settlement message – a dangerously long time. By the time Washington had drafted a reply, a tougher message from Moscow had been received, demanding that U. S. missiles be removed from Turkey. White House advisers thought faster communications could have averted the crisis, and resolved it quickly. The two countries signed the Hot Line Agreement on June 20, 1963 – the first time they formally took action to cut the risk of starting a nuclear war unintentionally. It was used for the first time by U. S. President John F. Kennedy on August 30, 1963.

The "hotline", as it would come to be known, was established after the signing of a "Memorandum of Understanding Regarding the Establishment of a Direct Communications Line" on June 20, 1963, in Geneva, Switzerland, by representatives of the Soviet Union and the United States.

The Moscow–Washington hotline was intended for text only; speech might be misinterpreted. Leaders wrote in their native language and messages were translated at the receiving end.

The first generation of the hotline used two full time duplex telegraph circuits. The primary circuit was routed from Washington, D. C. via London, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Helsinki to Moscow. TAT 1, the first submarine transatlantic telephone cable carried messages from Washington to London. A secondary radio line for back up and service messages linked Washington and Moscow via Tangier. This network was originally built by Harris Corporation. In July 1963 the United States sent four sets of teleprinters with the Latin alphabet to Moscow for the terminal there. A month later the Soviet equipment, four sets of East German teleprinters with the Cyrillic alphabet made by Siemens, arrived in Washington. The hotline started operations on August 30, 1963.

A Japanese built device called Electronic Teleprinter Cryptographic Regenerative Repeater Mixer II (ETCRRM II) encrypted the teletype messages using a shared one time pad. Each country delivered keying tapes used to encode its messages via its embassy abroad. An advantage of the one time pad was that neither country had to reveal more sensitive encryption methods to the other.

In September 1971, Moscow and Washington decided to upgrade the system. The countries also agreed for the first time when the line should be used. Specifically, they agreed to notify each other immediately in the event of an accidental, unauthorized or unexplained incident involving a nuclear weapon that could increase the risk of nuclear war. Two new satellite communication lines supplemented the terrestrial circuits using two U. S. Intelsat satellites, and two Soviet Molniya II satellites. This arrangement lasted from 1971 to 1978; it made the radio link via Tangier redundant.

Another hotline for record communications between Washington and Moscow is part of the American Nuclear Risk Reduction Center and the Russian National Nuclear Risk Reduction Center, which was initiated by Ronald Reagan in 1988. This was done in the aftermath of the Chernobyl Disaster. In 2012, it was announced that a proposal was being negotiated with Moscow to add cyber warfare to the topics to be discussed on the hotline. At the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States and Russia created a deconfliction line to prevent miscalculations or escalation. In November 2022, an anonymous U. S. official told Reuters that the line had only been used once in the war. The official said that the line was used to communicate concerns about Russian military operations near Ukrainian infrastructure, but did not elaborate. The official said it was not used when a missile hit Poland.

The "red phone" was the centerpiece of television commercials used in the 1984 Democratic primary and 1984 presidential election and the 2008 Democratic primary elections. In 1984, an advertisement made by Bob Beckel and Roy Spence on behalf of candidate Walter Mondale suggested that "The most awesome, powerful responsibility in the world lies in the hand that picks up this phone." The advertisement was intended to raise questions about candidate Gary Hart's readiness for the presidency. The red phone was also featured prominently in an advertisement from that year targeting President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. In the second ad, the ringing phone goes unanswered while the narrator says, "there will be no time to wake a president – computers will take control." Roy Spence revived the "red phone" idea in 2008 in an advertisement for candidate Hillary Clinton.