Assessing Obama’s Nuclear Legacy
Mercy A. Kuo and Angie O. Tang | Diplomat
The Rebalance authors Mercy Kuo and Angie Tang regularly engage subject-matter experts, policy practitioners, and strategic thinkers across the globe for their diverse insights into the U.S. rebalance to Asia. This conversation with Dr. Toby Dalton – co-director of the Nuclear Proliferation Program at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who previously served in high-level positions at the U.S. Department of Energy – is the 39th in “The Rebalance Insight Series.”
U.S. Sources: Signs of North Korea Mobile Ballistic Missile Launch
Barbara Starr | CNN
U.S. intelligence satellites have spotted signs that North Korea may be preparing for an unprecedented launch of a mobile ballistic missile which could potentially hit portions of the U.S., CNN has learned. Two U.S. officials told CNN that if the regime proceeds with a launch, the latest assessments are the most likely scenario is the launch of the so-called Musudan missile, which the U.S. believes could potentially hit Guam and perhaps Shemya Island in the outer reaches of Alaska's Aleutian chain.
Pentagon Developing Pre-Launch Cyber Attacks on Missiles
Bill Gertz | Washington Free Beacon
The Pentagon is developing cyber and other electronic weapons to attack enemy missile systems prior to launch as part of a new high-technology defense initiative, senior Pentagon officials disclosed to Congress on Wednesday. The use of non-kinetic attacks against missile system computers, their sensors, and other networks, along with other high-technology means to knock out missiles on the ground, is called “left-of-launch” defense, a reference to the location on a timeline of the process of shooting down missiles.
The New Era of Great Power
Max Fisher | Vox
When Ashton Carter began his career at the Pentagon, in 1993, geopolitics was changing more rapidly than it had at any point since the Second World War. As the Cold War ended, a new world was taking its place, one dominated by American power. Carter, at the time, expected that America's greatest challenge in that world — and, by extension, the focus of his own career — would be limiting the spread of nuclear weapons, he told me in a recent interview at the Pentagon. And the greatest threat, he thought, would be political instability within nuclear-armed Russia.
Feinstein Takes Aim at Nuclear Cruise Missile Funding
Aaron Mehta | Defense News
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said Wednesday she would seek to block funding for the Air Force’s new nuclear-capable cruise missile program. The ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on energy and water development, which has oversight over Department of Energy nuclear weapons funding, said she believes the long range standoff (LRSO) cruise missile "is unaffordable, and may well be unnecessary."
U.S. Frowns on New Iran Sanctions by Congress After Missile Test
Kambiz Foroohar | Bloomberg
A top Treasury Department official argued against imposing new legislative sanctions on Iran after its ballistic missile tests last month, even as he said the Islamic Republic would remain blocked from the U.S. financial system. “New mandatory non-nuclear sanctions legislation would needlessly risk undermining our unity with international partners,” Adam Szubin, Treasury’s acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, said at a conference Wednesday in Washington. “It is important to make sure our sanctions tools remain effective and are not overused.”