‘No Interest’: North Korea Dismisses Reduced U.S. Drills With South Korea

Zane Irwin and Choe Sang-Hun | New York Times

Kim Yo-jong, a powerful adviser and sister of North Korea’s leader, on Wednesday dismissed President Trump’s abrupt decision to scale back major military exercises with South Korea, saying the attempted overture “holds no interest for us.” “If the U.S. calculates that it can propagate its recent measure as one of so-called good faith, they will not get the desired answer,” … She also said she was “unaware” of any communication between the governments in Pyongyang and Washington, contradicting Mr. Trump’s claim on Tuesday that Mr. Kim had responded to his outreach.

South Korea estimates North Korea has up to 120 nuclear warheads, far above Trump's figure

Kyu-Seok Shim and Jack Kim | Reuters

South Korea estimates North Korea possesses between 80 and 120 nuclear warheads, its defence minister said on Thursday, citing a range significantly higher than U.S. President Donald Trump's recent assertion that Pyongyang has ​57 nuclear weapons. Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back told lawmakers that North Korea was generally believed to have around 80 ​to 120 warheads, although he cautioned it was difficult to determine an exact figure. … Trump made the remark at the White House on Wednesday while discussing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his plans to meet him later ​this year.

The growing cost to the UK of the nuclear deterrent

Charles Clover | FT

Senior military figures warn budget squeeze comes as the military is also under pressure to re-arm for conventional war. …  Successive governments have postponed costly decisions about Britain’s nuclear capabilities, leaving several enormous programmes which desperately need to be modernised at exactly the same time. The result is an unprecedented squeeze on the rest of Britain’s armed forces. “The UK’s nuclear budget is eating its conventional budget from the inside,” [General Sir Richard] Barrons [said].

Inside the Race to Build America’s First Nuclear Reactor in a Generation

Jennifer Hiller | Wall Street Journal

One of the most hyped projects in the energy market is an excavation pit scattering dust in the high desert of the Snake River Plain, where nuclear startup Oklo is building one of America’s first new reactors in a generation.  Renewed interest in nuclear power is colliding with mania over artificial intelligence here at the Idaho National Laboratory’s desert campus, a remote site that spans an area nearly twice the size of Los Angeles. Oklo and rival developers hope to drive an AI revolution and nuclear renaissance that powers the American economy for decades to come—but they have much to prove.

The Risks of Getting Russian and Chinese Nuclear Strategy Wrong

Fiona Cunningham and Kristin Ven Bruusgaard | Lawfare

Russia, China, and the United States struggle to understand whether and when each other might use nuclear weapons first. In addition to fears about Russia, China’s nuclear build-up in recent years has increased uncertainty about its threshold for nuclear use, despite its long-standing No First-Use (NFU) policy.  Nuclear-armed great powers’ peacetime nuclear strategies reveal information about whether and why they believe they might need a first-use option in a future war, as well as the first-use options they have developed. But great powers often mirror-image their own nuclear threshold when interpreting their adversary’s plans about nuclear first use.

Coercive nuclear threats under domestic dissonance: How public opinion shapes the nuclear credibility of autocracies and democracies

Samuel Seitz and Lauren Sukin | Contemporary Security Policy

How does public opinion influence the credibility of coercive nuclear threats, and how does it enable and constrain strategies of nuclear coercion? Drawing on original survey data, we investigate whether public sentiments regarding nuclear use mediate the perceived credibility of nuclear threats issued by states. We find that nuclear threats issued by democratic states in which the public is opposed to nuclear use are assessed as significantly less credible than threats issued by democratic states with publics ambivalent about or supportive of nuclear use.