What Russia’s Embrace of North Korea Means for America
Jamie Kwong and Ankit Panda | Foreign Affairs
North Korea’s exploitation of growing rifts between Russia and the West, paired with its seemingly insatiable ambitions for advanced nuclear capabilities, should prompt a substantial reevaluation in Washington of the problems posed by North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and, by extension, how the United States approaches the Korean Peninsula. The theory that pressure could change Pyongyang’s strategic calculus and force Kim to disarm has proved futile. The changing geostrategic environment in Northeast Asia today only further limits the viability of any American strategy that prioritizes denuclearization above all other ends on the Korean Peninsula.
Biden Launches AI ‘Risk and Safety’ Talks with China. Is Nuclear C2 a Likely Focus?
SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR | Breaking Defense
China has signaled interest in joining discussions on setting rules and norms for AI, and we should welcome that,” said Bonnie Glaser, head of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund. And that interest is reciprocated, she told Breaking Defense before the summit: “The White House is interested in engaging China on limiting the role of AI in command and control of nuclear weapons.”...“The two sides may not be there yet in terms of reaching a formal agreement on AI,” said Tong Zhao, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment, in an email to Breaking Defense ahead of Biden’s press conference.
Iran Maintains Steady Expansion of Nuclear Program
Laurence Norman | The Wall Street Journal
Iran continued to expand its nuclear program, including its stockpile of near-weapons-grade enriched uranium in recent months, although it hasn’t accelerated the pace of its production of nuclear fuel amid the current turmoil in the Middle East…Wednesday’s International Atomic Energy Agency report showed that while Iran has slowed its accumulation of 60%-enriched uranium since the start of summer, it continues to build up large amounts of material that could be used to fuel nuclear weapons.
North Korea Says it Tested New Solid-fuel Engines for Intermediate-range Ballistic Missiles
KIM TONG-HYUNG | Associated Press
North Korea said Wednesday it successfully tested new solid-fuel engines designed for intermediate-range ballistic missiles as it works on enhancing its nuclear-capable arsenal with more powerful, harder-to-detect weapons that can potentially target U.S. military bases in Guam and Japan. North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said the country’s military scientists tested the first-stage and second-stage missile engines on Saturday and Tuesday. The report did not say when the new missile system was expected to be completed.
Nuclear Project Failure Is a Blow to Industry’s Future
Avi Salzman | Barron’s
Nuclear power company NuScale announced it is scrapping plans to build a first-of-its-kind nuclear plant in Idaho, dealing a blow to an industry that seemed like it could take on a larger role in the energy transition.Portland-based NuScale (ticker: SMR) makes small modular nuclear reactors. Its Idaho project was an early test of the plants, and could have shown how smaller reactors have a future in the U.S.
Who Would Take the Brunt of an Attack on U.S. Nuclear Missile Silos?
SÉBASTIEN PHILIPPE | Scientific American
All these past studies relied on relatively simple fallout models and average seasonal winds. Current computational capability, along with higher resolutions in archived weather data, allows scientists to map the radiological risk from a preemptive nuclear attack on the missile silos in unprecedented detail. The results of my simulations, presented here for the first time, paint a harrowing picture of the potential consequences of living with these weapons for the foreseeable future.