Dual-Use Distinguishability: How 3D-printing Shapes the Security Dilemma for Nuclear Programs
Tristan Volpe | Journal of Strategic Studies
Over the last five years, political leaders and technical experts alike heralded additive manufacturing – more commonly known as digital 3D-printing – as an emerging technology with ‘the potential to revolutionise the way we make almost everything’, including military hardware. These forecasts proved prescient as aerospace and defence firms leveraged additive manufacturing to make sophisticated components for jet engines, missiles and satellites, often at a fraction of the cost and time of traditional production processes. Unfortunately, defence experts still struggle to explain how the looming adoption of additive manufacturing by nuclear programmes will affect strategic stability. Yet additive manufacturing is merely the latest manifestation of an emerging technology with the potential to change the likelihood of competition and conflict over nuclear programmes.
North Korea Says it Test Fired a New Type of Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile
Helen Rogen, Will Ripley, Ryan Browne and Jake Kwon | CNN
North Korea said it test fired a new type of a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) Wednesday, a day after Pyongyang and Washington agreed to resume nuclear talks. The launch marks a departure from the tests of shorter range missiles North Korea has carried out in recent months. State-run Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) reported the new-type of SLBM was a “Pukguksong-3.” The North Koreans “sense an opportunity” right now, perceiving US President Donald Trump as “politically vulnerable” and “starving for a win,” the source said. Pyongyang may think Trump could be more willing to be flexible in negotiations to bring “tangible results,” the source added. Shortly after the launch US and South Korean officials said the missile was assessed to be a submarine-launched ballistic type missile (SLBM), though a US official said it was launched from a barge-like platform designed to test underwater launches and not a submarine which North Korea has never demonstrate the ability to fire from. But a source told CNN that North Korea's latest missile test is not related to the timing of the upcoming talks, but instead a response to South Korea showing off its US-made F-35 fighter jets for the first time Tuesday.
Here’s the Nuclear Proposal the U.S. Plans to Offer North Korea This Weekend
Alex Ward | Vox
The United States and North Korea are about to hold working-level talks for the first time in months this weekend. To end the stalemate, the Trump administration plans to propose a deal to move forward on dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program — and it’s less than the all-or-nothing approach Washington has taken so far. Here’s the offer, according to two sources familiar with the negotiations: The United Nations would suspend sanctions on Pyongyang’s textile and coal exports for 36 months in exchange for the verifiable closure of the Yongbyon nuclear facility and another measure, most likely the end of North Korea’s uranium enrichment. It’s unclear if North Korean negotiators will accept this offer. When President Donald Trump met Kim in Hanoi earlier this year, Kim wanted nearly all sanctions lifted in exchange for Yongbyon’s closure. This proposal sees fewer penalties suspended while Kim would have to give more away.
President Rouhani Says Iran Open to Diplomacy With U.S.
Aresu Eqbali and Sune Engel Rasmussen | Wall Street Journal
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani kept open the door to diplomacy on Wednesday, backing European efforts to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal despite rebuffing French attempts to broker a meeting between him and President Trump at the United Nations last week. Mr. Rouhani said he broadly agreed with a French proposal under which the U.S. would lift sanctions in return for Iran’s full compliance with all terms of the nuclear pact and its guarantee for the security of navigation in the Persian Gulf. “The road has not ended,” Mr. Rouhani said in his weekly cabinet meeting, broadcast on state television. “The Europeans are still making efforts.” French President Emmanuel Macron separately met with Messrs. Trump and Rouhani several times during the U.N. General Assembly in New York, trying to set up what would have been the first meeting between Iranian and American presidents since Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. The effort collapsed as Iran insisted that the U.S. lift sanctions before negotiations start, while Mr. Trump wanted to meet first. Mr. Rouhani said he refused to talk to Mr. Trump in New York because, although the French and the British said the U.S. president was ready to meet on Iran’s terms, Mr. Trump publicly said he would expand the sanctions.
Allies Must Press U.S. To Keep New Start: U.S. Experts
Theresa Hitchens | Breaking Defense
US arms control proponents are pleading with NATO and other US allies to more forcefully raise their concerns about a possible move by the Trump Administration to let the New START Treaty lapse. “The single most important thing that our allies can do is to use every opportunity for communication with President Trump, whether it is face to face or over the phone, to say ‘New START matters to our security, to the security of the alliance, to the cohesion of the alliance,” Tom Countryman, former assistant secretary of State for international security and nonproliferation, told a group of US and allied arms control experts Thursday evening. Allies, particularly in Europe, are seriously concerned about the knock-on effects of the collapse of the only remaining treaty limiting US and Russian nuclear arsenals. Even the United Kingdom, traditionally the staunchest US ally, has made clear its support for a New START extension. In particular, the allies are worried about the effect of the end of New START on the multilateral Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT).
U.S. Supreme Court Scheduled to Consider S.C. Plutonium Appeal
Colin Demarest | Aiken Standard
The U.S. Supreme Court later this month will consider hearing a case tied directly to the death of the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site and the related long-term storage of plutonium in South Carolina. S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson, backed by a Columbia and Charleston law firm, on June 7 petitioned the high court to examine an appellate-level determination that the state lacked grounds to challenge the federal government's decision to mothball the never-completed MOX project. The matter is set for review at the justices' Oct. 11 private conference, according to Supreme Court records. A report should be available the following week. MOX was designed to turn 34 metric tons of deemed-surplus plutonium into fuel for commercial nuclear reactors. The project was over budget, past due and had been scrutinized by both the Obama and Trump administrations by the time the National Nuclear Security Administration – a weapons-and-nonproliferation agency – canceled it late last year. South Carolina's legal team and various officials have repeatedly said ending the nuclear fuel project would be detrimental and would render the state a nuclear dumping ground. The U.S. Department of Energy disagrees.