The Pershing II, a mobile intermediate-range ballistic missile, is transported into Hanger C on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, Oct. 29, 2020. (U.S. Space Force Photo By Airman Thomas Sjoberg)
LLAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD NEWS TODAY with the RISKS and CONSEQUENCES of TOMORROW
In My Opinion:
The following article from the “Brookings Institute” and author Michael E. O’Hanlon (see his brief resume at the end of the article), tells us why we should never implicitly trust AI to do the right thing. No matter how smart it eventually becomes, it will only be as good as human intelligence makes it to be, but it will always lack the kind of innate common sense, abstract thinking, and emotional compassion that the three potential AI failures, had it existed during those incidents, highlighted in the story.
I also believe that no one individual should ever be the sole judge of whether to use nuclear weapons of mass destruction, and that wherever AI could fail, so might the individual who might well have little more common sense than AI might have. I already have at least one highly placed individual in mind, and his intelligence is, to my own common sense, also “artificial” in its way, and extremely questionable. ~llaw
The Pershing II, a mobile intermediate-range ballistic missile, is transported into Hanger C on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, Oct. 29, 2020. (U.S. Space Force Photo By Airman Thomas Sjoberg)
8 min read
Michael E. O’Hanlon
Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden agreed late in 2024 that artificial intelligence (AI) should never be empowered to decide to launch a nuclear war. The groundwork for this excellent policy decision was laid over five years of discussions at the Track II U.S.-China Dialogue on Artificial Intelligence and National Security convened by the Brookings Institution and Tsinghua University’s Center for International Security and Strategy. By examining several cases from the U.S.-Soviet rivalry during the Cold War, one can see what might have happened if AI had existed back in that period and been trusted with the job of deciding to launch nuclear weapons or to preempt an anticipated nuclear attack—and had been wrong in its decisionmaking. Given the prevailing ideas, doctrines, and procedures of the day, an AI system “trained” on that information (perhaps through the use of many imaginary scenarios that reflected the current conventional wisdom) might have decided to launch nuclear weapons, with catastrophic results.
Thankfully, in the examples I will consider—the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the September 1983 false-alarm crisis, and the October 1983 Able Archer exercise—a human being showed greater awareness of the stakes and better common sense than the received wisdom and doctrine of the day. It would be imprudent to assume that humans will always show restraint in such situations, and that well-trained AI systems may provide useful inputs to human decisions. Nevertheless, it is sobering that when facing the real possibility of nuclear Armageddon, human beings exhibited a level of thoughtfulness and compassion that machines, trained in cold-blooded “rational” ways, might not have possessed at the time and might not possess in the future.
Three close calls with nuclear Armageddon
The Cuban missile crisis began when U.S. intelligence learned that the Soviet Union was shipping nuclear-capable missiles and tactical nuclear weapons to Cuba over the course of 1962, in an attempt to improve the nuclear balance with the United States. Even though they did not know the extent to which the Soviets already had nuclear weapons on Cuban soil, almost all of President John F. Kennedy’s advisors, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recommended conventional air strikes against the Soviet positions. Such strikes could easily have led to Soviet escalation, perhaps by nearby Soviet submarine commanders (armed with nuclear-tipped torpedoes) against U.S. warships, or by Soviet ground troops in Cuba (perhaps against the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay). Kennedy opted for a combination of a naval quarantine of Cuba (to prevent any more weaponry from reaching the island by sea) and quiet backdoor diplomacy with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev that included offers to remove American missiles from Turkey and to never invade Cuba. The Soviets were persuaded to take this deal, withdraw their missiles and nuclear weapons from Cuba, and halt any further military buildup on the island, then run by Fidel Castro and his government.
In the September 1983 false-alarm crisis, a single Soviet watch officer, Stanislav Petrov, saw indications from sensor systems that the United States was attacking the Soviet Union with five intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that would detonate within perhaps 20 minutes. In fact, what the sensors had picked up were reflections of sunlight from unusual cloud formations; the sensors were not “smart” enough to recognize the reflections for what they really were. Realizing that any American attack on the Soviet Union would almost certainly be much larger—since a small attack would only provoke a Soviet retaliation and have little chance of causing meaningful damage to Soviet nuclear forces—Petrov single-handedly chose not to escalate the situation by recommending “retaliation” against the perceived American strike. Whether an AI system would have reached that same prudent conclusion, when prevailing doctrine said that any incoming attack likely required immediate retaliation, is anyone’s guess. In this case, the actual human being improvised, using instinct more than formal protocol, to arrive at the correct decision when faced with the unthinkable possibility of an actual nuclear war. Petrov’s basic human essence and character seem to have saved the day, at least in this case.
Just a couple of months later in November 1983, NATO undertook a major military exercise known as Able Archer during a very tense year in U.S.-Soviet relations. President Ronald Reagan had given his “Star Wars” speech the past March, soon after declaring the Soviet Union an evil empire; then, in September, Soviet pilots shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007 when it mistakenly strayed over Soviet territory, killing everyone on board. The United States was also in the process of preparing to station nuclear-capable Pershing II missiles in Europe, with a very short flight time to Moscow if ever launched.
So, when NATO conducted Able Archer, Soviet leaders worried that it might be used as cover to prepare a very real attack, perhaps with the aim of decapitating the Soviet leadership. At one point in the exercise, NATO forces simulated preparing for a nuclear attack by placing dummy warheads on nuclear-capable aircraft. Soviet intelligence witnessed the preparations but could not tell, of course, that the warheads were fake. Soviet leaders thus “responded” by readying nuclear-capable systems with very real warheads of their own. American intelligence in turn witnessed those preparations—but a savvy U.S. Air Force general, Leonard Perroots, realized what was occurring and recommended to superiors that the United States should not respond by placing real warheads on its own systems. Whether doing so would have provoked one side or the other to launch a preemptive strike is anyone’s guess; however, the proximity of the weapons to each other, and mutual fears of a decapitating surprise attack, would have made any such situation extremely fraught.
Would AI have done better?
In all three cases, AI might have elected to start a nuclear war. During the Cuban missile crisis, American officials considered the Western Hemisphere to be a sanctuary from hostile powers, and the consensus view was strongly in favor of preventing any Soviet, or communist, encroachment. The year before, the United States through the CIA had attempted to work with Cuban exiles to overthrow Castro. Certainly, the positioning of Soviet nuclear weapons less than 100 miles from U.S. shores triggered prevalent American thinking about what was and was not acceptable. Since no sensors could determine the absence of Soviet nuclear warheads, a “cautious” approach based on the doctrine of the day would indeed have been to eliminate those Soviet capabilities before they could be made operational. Only a very real American president—one who had heightened cautionary instincts after witnessing combat in World War II and watching the U.S. bureaucracy make a mess out of the Bay of Pigs attack on Cuba the year before—thought otherwise. This example shows that the ban on AI starting a nuclear war should include cases in which conventional weapons might be used to strike nuclear-capable weapons or weapons systems.
With the false-warning crisis in September 1983, it took an astute individual to realize the unlikelihood that the United States was attacking with just a few warheads. Indeed, a different officer, or an AI-directed control center, would likely have assessed that the five ICBMs were attempting a decapitation strike against leadership or could otherwise have drawn the wrong conclusion about what was going on. The result might well have been a “retaliatory” strike that was in fact a first strike, and that would have likely produced a very real American nuclear response.
With Able Archer, since American officials knew that they were only conducting an exercise, and knew that the Soviets knew as much, many would have been stunned to see the Soviets put real warheads into firing position. Most might have concluded that the Soviets were using the NATO exercise as a way to dupe NATO officials into lowering their guard as the Soviet Union prepared a very real attack. AI systems trained on the prevailing doctrines and standard procedures of the day would have likely recommended at the very least an American nuclear alert. And since both superpowers had plans for massive first strikes in those days, designed to minimize the other side’s potential for a strong second strike, a situation in which both sides had nuclear weapons on the highest wartime alerts could have been very dangerous.
Yes, it is possible that very good AI might have determined restraint was warranted in these cases—and might do so in a future situation—perhaps even better than some humans would have. AI can be used as a check on human thinking and behavior. But these examples underscore how dangerous it could be to trust a machine to make the most momentous decision in human history. Xi and Biden made the right decision, and future leaders should stand by it.
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO LLAW’s ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Nuclear War
Yellowstone Caldera & Other Volcanoes (Note: There are threeYellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
Lightning Round: Very, very skeptical of nuclear power trades, says Jim Cramer … Stock Market Fall | 5 Things To Keep In Mind Amid The Market Falling …
… Caldera, an ancient supervolcano straddling the Nevada-Oregon border. … Yellowstone’s Supervolcano Magma Movement Fuels Fears of Catastrophic Eruption …
In 2024, 147 incidents of illegal or unauthorized activities involving nuclear and other radioactive material were reported to the Incident and Trafficking Database, a number aligned with the historical average. Read more →
Two weeks after it was hit by a drone, Ukrainian firefighters are still trying to extinguish smouldering fires within the large structure built over the reactor destroyed in the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear accident, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said today. Read more →
Radiopharmaceuticals are used in nuclear medicine worldwide. Their applications range from imaging of many different organs, such as brain, heart, kidney and bone, to the treatment of cancer and hyperthyroidism. Read more →
Dibuleng Mohlakwana and her team are introducing innovative tools and techniques to improve how the IAEA shares, organizes and makes its collection of nuclear information accessible. Read more →
The IAEA is helping countries address climate change adaptation by applying nuclear techniques for plant breeding, animal production, food safety, health and insect pest control. Read more →
(See the article below for image description and photo credits. ~llaw)
LLAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD NEWS TODAY with the RISKS and CONSEQUENCES of TOMORROW
In My Opinion:
In today’s succinct and well-described article, a MUST READ posted below, from the “Center for American Progress” has put together the frightening highlights of Trump’s incredibly poor judgement over the first month of his unwelcome presidency that may eventually add to the destruction, not only of America, but the entire world as we know it. Sadly, he appears to be far from finished ripping our country apart unless he is restrained, impeached, removed from office, and sent to prison where he belongs.
Trump is not only unravelling our government, he is blindly putting us at risk with other nuclear armed countries— as well as terrorist organizations — possibly making us defenseless to protect ourselves long before the “iron dome” useless multi-trillion dollar missile defense system can be built and perhaps, even worse, having access to the nuclear football codes and button in case he takes a notion to start WWIII, creating the worst catastrophe of all.
But regardless of the future, he is already rapidly turning our federal government into a shambles of potential incompetence that will take years to restore to the efficiency it had functioned at right up until the day he was sworn in. And then all hell broke loose. He is a serious threat to his own country, and he must be stopped . . . ~llaw
Article Feb 27, 2025
Trump’s War on America Risks a Wave of Catastrophes
President Trump’s reckless dismantling of government agencies and safeguards exposes America to a wave of preventable disasters.
President Donald Trump addresses a meeting, February 2025. (Getty/Win McNamee)
Not every disaster movie ends badly. We blew up the asteroid in “Armageddon” before it hit; the deadly diseases threatened in “Outbreak,” “Contagion,” and “The Andromeda Strain” were contained; and, in “Independence Day,” the world’s militaries beat back the alien invasion.
A common thread ran through these successes: Scientific expertise, well-funded federal agencies, and synchronized emergency responses—exactly the safeguards President Donald Trump is recklessly attempting to dismantle. Some examples of this recklessness were on quick display: firing the people who oversee our nuclear arsenal, protect us from bird flu, and directly support air traffic controllers and critical safety technologies. Some of the other mistakes will only be exposed or felt when a critical function of government fails to protect us from a terrorist attack or bank collapse.
Trump and his partner Elon Musk are indiscriminately bringing a wrecking ball to the government, following the Silicon Valley ethos of “move fast and break things.” But even Musk acknowledges his strategy means “some of the things that I say will be incorrect and should be corrected … Nobody’s going to bat a thousand.”
Most Americans agree that government can work better and can be more efficient. But Trump and Musk’s moves are doing the opposite—and will, in time, make us far less safe.
Movies usually feature just one catastrophe apiece, but Trump’s actions are hurtling America toward all of these simultaneously. When these disasters next strike, it likely won’t be in a theater, and we’ll know whose actions to blame:
Nuclear materials get stolen when critical nuclear staff are fired and oversight of weapons labs is gutted. The Trump administration’s random layoffs at the National Nuclear Security Administration have left America’s nuclear arsenal dangerously exposed, risking theft, sabotage, and accidental detonation.
Terrorists attack the United States when our intelligence and law enforcement agencies are hobbled. The Trump administration’s mass firings and program shutdowns at the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and other national security agencies weaken their ability to see threats, leaving the nation vulnerable to coordinated and deadly terrorist strikes.
The electric grid fails when not enough people are on hand to keep it running. The Trump administration is firing the linemen, engineers, and dispatchers who maintain America’s power systems.
Identities get stolen and bank accounts empty when unvetted amateurs are allowed to rummage through sensitive databases. Trump and Elon Musk have sent a small army of unqualified amateurs—some in their teens—to illegally access America’s most sensitive financial, health, and personal data, including highly restricted payment and Social Security
Roads and bridges collapse when funding for maintenance and new construction is slashed and there’s no one on hand to keep everyone honest. The Trump administration has gutted a host of infrastructure projects and fired the government watchdogs who make sure large-scale building projects are done right.
The world falls apart when companies aren’t held responsible or accountable for complying with environmental laws—think pipeline ruptures, chemical and natural gas explosions, and oil spills. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency has demoted career staff with the expertise required to enforce pollution laws and oversee safe hazardous waste cleanup and has fired hundreds of workers who respond to environmental disasters and ensure a healthy and safe environment for all Americans.
People lose their life’s savings in bank failures caused by risky practices, poor management, and fraud. And lots of banks fail when the mechanisms set up to keep bank failures from spreading are dismantled. The Trump administration is looking to cut the banking regulations that keep Americans’ savings safe and firing the people who work to stop bank failures from spreading like wildfire. These policy changes from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook “would foster financial market risk-taking while kneecapping regulators’ ability to quell instability,” CAP warned last year.
One of America’s great strengths—on-screen and in real life—has been the reliability of its institutions, grounded in expertise, robust oversight, and the rule of law. President Trump and Elon Musk’s lawless and erratic actions are weakening, not strengthening, these pillars of strength, so much so that they risk pulling catastrophic Hollywood nightmares off the screen and into real life.
The positions of American Progress, and our policy experts, are independent, and the findings and conclusions presented are those of American Progress alone. A full list of supporters is available here. American Progress would like to acknowledge the many generous supporters who make our work possible.
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO LLAW’s ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Nuclear War
Yellowstone Caldera & Other Volcanoes (Note: There are two Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the attack as a “terrorist threat … This is not the first time Russia has weaponized nuclear threats …
NATO’s strategic doctrine was Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), which stated that America’s nuclear weapons would be used if there was an attack by …
Nuclear power plant image copied from the article below. No description or photo credits available. ~llaw
LAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD NEWS TODAY with the RISKS and CONSEQUENCES of TOMORROW
I have posted the following story as a potentially controversial threat to misunderstandings of the dangers of nuclear weapons of mass destruction, nuclear power plants, and nuclear waste, as well as uranium (or thorium) nuclear fuels.
Though what the author, Marco Visscher, has to say is a potentially credible optimist’s look at the future of nuclear power, the detailed facts of possible disaster (at least in the article) are essentially ignored.
For instance Chernobyl is still a huge mass ‘ghost area’ where no one lives within many miles of the failed Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The plant’s remains are still in the ‘clean-up’ stage of dismantling and have been since the plant exploded from a power surge, caused by human engineering error in the plant’s design, releasing radiation on April 26, 1986, leaving about 1,000 square miles that still remain uninhabitable today.
Also, even though no one died directly from the Fukushima disaster, more than 2,000 people have died as a result of the tsunami-caused destruction. And it is also estimated that more than a quarter of a million Japanese citizens died from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — many from radiation exposure.
There are other issues about the dangers of nuclear power and their fuel and facilities, as I have often mentioned in my “LLAW’s All Things Nuclear” daily posts, one in recent post #880 on Friday, February 21st where I recently wrote:
“Why can’t we the people, all of us everywhere, especially including those of us who reside in the USA, figure out that nuclear power plants are dangerously 2nd only to nuclear warheads and nuclear bombs in this contentious world of threatening nuclear war. The Russia/Ukraine war has proven over and over again that not only are nuclear power plants and their required facilities and utilities dangerous all by themselves but they are also rapidly becoming a huge part of even what we still, erroneously, call “conventional” war because we never stop hiding our collective heads in the sand, ignoring the reality of the problems that exist with every kind of use of ‘all things nuclear beyond a few medical procedures.
Forgetting for a moment about their potentially increasingly foreboding uses in times of war, they are also subject to terrorist attacks, earthquakes, tsunamis, construction failures, operational and functional mistakes, human errors — and the list goes on. Not only are nuclear power plants extremely dangerous, but we have nuclear waste spread all around the world with half-lives almost forever that we have no idea what to do with that are subject to massive radiation leaks as well as contamination of the ground and water they are stockpiled in or on nearby that will never be used for any useful purpose in the future.
Yet we are head over heals in love with the concept of more and more and more of nuclear power plants of all kinds, sizes, and shapes, some of which will actually use military-grade uranium fuel, which can only add to all the dangerous situations mentioned above. All this is in the face of the facts that nuclear energy is not safe, not cheap, subject to geographical financial and production greed, and its merits are built on lies and misunderstandings mostly promulgated by the nuclear industry itself along with all kinds of politicized biases and questionable governmental support.
There is also a huge chance that uranium fuel (or low-grade substitutes like thorium), mined much like coal, does not sufficiently exist on planet Earth to sustain the existing nuclear power plants much less building hordes of new ones. We need to spend our hard earned money on renewable power resources, e.g. wind, solar, hydro, geothermal produced energy, which is plentiful, safe, and far less costly.” ~llaw
I will add that the more nuclear reactors that are built around the world, the more disasters there will be. That is simply the mathematics of progression. ~llaw
Magazine / The Incredibly Misunderstood Story of Nuclear Power
The Incredibly Misunderstood Story of Nuclear Power
Marco Visscher is an award-winning journalist from the Netherlands. He was formerly a magazine editor at a bilingual alternative news magazine called The Intelligent Optimist. He has written extensively about climate policy and clean technology. His work includes interviews with prominent intellectuals such as Peter Singer, Lionel Shriver, and Francis Fukuyama. Until recently, he hosted the Dutch podcast Welcome to the Anthropocene.
What’s the big idea?
Nuclear power is an unusual technology that has been misunderstood from its beginning. The story of harnessing this energy is a tale of life and death, hope and fear. Within this narrative, myths have been perpetuated that now hold us back from a potential solution to some of the greatest threats of our time.
Below, Marco shares five key insights from his new book, The Power of Nuclear.
1. Enthusiasm about nuclear power was always exaggerated.
It was a time of warnings about depleting fossil reserves, leaders in the Middle East limiting oil exports, and the first news articles on rising carbon emissions and the possibility of a warming planet. Then came nuclear power: Clean! Modern! Cheap! In the 1950s, the first nuclear plants opened with grand promises that this was the future.
Throughout human history, we had known scarcity. Now, an abundant energy source loomed. Only one gram of uranium could produce as much energy as three tons of coal. In countries facing drought, nuclear plants could provide energy for desalination, eliminating conflicts over scarce water. They could power large-scale fertilizer production, ensuring fertile fields. Nuclear energy could fuel trains, ships, and planes. The possibilities seemed endless. A cigar lighter with an atomic pocket battery, anyone?
Not so fast. Some things proved more difficult to realize, but most importantly, believing a new energy source would be adopted without resistance was naive. In the 1950s, the fossil fuel industry was already so powerful it was hard to eat away a substantial portion of its business. Western societies were experiencing rising living conditions, allowing some to criticize or even ridicule the notion of progress and turn their backs on science and technology—without facing consequences. But most of all, it was foolish to think people would remain excited about an energy source that was introduced to the world in a bomb that scared the hell out of everyone.
2. Fear of nuclear power was always exaggerated.
Long before Chernobyl, there were fears that a nuclear reactor could not be contained: a simple malfunction or mistake could release invisible radiation, causing a spike in cancer and deformities. Storage containers with highly radioactive waste could burst. A reactor could explode like a bomb.
In Europe, these fears were popularized by Günther Schwab in his 1958 novel Der Tanz mit dem Teufel (Dance with the Devil). He founded the World Union for Protection of Life, which opposed the construction of nuclear plants as early as the 1960s. Historians have acknowledged Schwab’s significant role in shaping the anti-nuclear movement, and his book is seen as a “standard work on environmental protection.”
But Schwab was wrong. Of all the ways we produce energy, accidents happen in everything from mining resources to managing waste. When we tally deaths in kilowatts per hour, three sources are by far the safest: solar, wind, and nuclear power.
“The waste from nuclear reactors is well-managed and has never made anyone sick.”
A nuclear plant doesn’t emit greenhouse gases or air pollutants. The waste from nuclear reactors is well-managed and has never made anyone sick. The uranium inside the reactor doesn’t have the destructive power of a bomb. Safety measures are extensive, making accidents rare events. There’s nothing mysterious about radiation, which occurs in nature all around us. It’s easily detectable, and scientists understand its effects on our bodies. We now know that in the event of a meltdown in a typical nuclear reactor, the exposure to radiation among the general public is so low that it can’t do damage.
By the way, Günther Schwab was not a left-wing treehugger. He was a Nazi who joined the SA (a paramilitary organization) in the 1930s and became a Sturmführer. After the war, he remained a staunch supporter of eugenics, lamenting the “loss of prestige of the white race.” For his writings, he was regularly accused of racism. Schwab hated nuclear power for the same reasons some anti-nuclear activists do today: the loss of traditional life, our connection with nature, and the onset of a modern age for all.
3. In Fukushima, nobody died from radiation.
Fukushima has become a symbol of nuclear catastrophe, much like Hiroshima. On March 11, 2011—the day Japan was hit by one of the world’s worst earthquakes and a monstrous tsunami that claimed 20,000 lives—one of the nuclear plants experienced difficulties cooling the fuel rods in the reactor. This resulted in the meltdown of three reactors. Many witnessed hydrogen explosions on television, thinking, “This is what a nuclear disaster looks like!”
The big story of Fukushima is not what happened but what didn’t happen. People did not go to hospitals with acute radiation sickness. In two reports, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation showed there has been no increase in cancer, birth defects, or heart attacks. In fact, there has been no discernible increase in any health effects linked to radiation exposure. Nor does the UN expect such an increase because the radiation dose incurred by the population was, in the words of the UN, “low or very low.” The science says that nobody died from radiation released in Fukushima, and nobody will die from it.
However, UN scientists did find public health effects. More people suffer from depression, post-traumatic stress, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, or alcoholism, especially among the tens of thousands who were told to evacuate, losing their homes, jobs, and sense of community. Years later, a study by several universities deemed the evacuation “excessive,” even “a mistake.” The public health crisis is not due to radiation but to the idea that a nuclear disaster must spell doom.
4. Don’t believe the industry hype about nuclear innovation.
You have probably heard that a wave of innovation is changing the face of nuclear power. There is much talk about small modular reactors and molten salt reactors using thorium. One design is perfect for coastal cities, the other for remote areas. Smaller, safer, more flexible—this is “advanced nuclear.” All these new reactors are cheaper and faster to build.
“The problems with nuclear power have nothing to do with technology.”
What message does it send when nuclear enthusiasts want to do things differently? They reinforce the opponents’ main point: today’s nuclear plants are flawed. It is as if there are fundamental problems with reactors currently in use, as if these are not advanced.
The problems with nuclear power have nothing to do with technology. The problems are between our ears. Innovation can be useful, but aren’t we being a bit naive if we believe the fancy PowerPoint presentations by start-ups looking for investors?
5. Now might be the right time for a nuclear revival.
Imagine that nuclear power did not exist: no atomic bomb, no Hiroshima, no nuclear plant, no Chernobyl. What if someone today figured out how to safely produce energy that would not pollute the air or heat up the planet by using a clean source available 24/7? What if that new energy source required few resources, which are available pretty much everywhere? What if it offered the possibility of reliable and affordable energy needed in poor and emerging countries to industrialize and prosper? And what if this source produced only a tiny bit of waste, better shielded from the environment than any other industrial waste, and even recyclable? Surely, we wouldn’t hesitate to develop such a mighty energy source.
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ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO LLAW’s ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Nuclear War
Yellowstone Caldera & Other Volcanoes (Note: There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
But most of all, it was foolish to think people would remain excited about an energy source that was introduced to the world in a bomb that scared the …
The nuclear consequences of Ukraine losing the war. If the West abandons Ukraine, game theory suggests the world should expect a fast proliferation of …
Stock image of a solar energy farm in a desert environment. (Not related to the following post) ~llaw
LLAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD NEWS TODAY with the RISKS and CONSEQUENCES of TOMORROW
This Post is from an interview about 9 months ago, but, needing a breath of fresh air, coming up from the stench of nuclear issues and Trump’s outright attack on Democracy and the free world, I saw that this was on my “TODAY’s NUCLEAR WORLD’s NEWS” articles list, so I decided to give us all a break, offering a fresh agenda for today, with a look at why solar energy production is possibly the best of all other sources for so many reasons.
The interview is long, so I have left the “Podcast” link intact for those of you who are interested in the subject but don’t have time nor the disposition to read the entire text. It is also good reference material for issues and comparisons to other energy sources for more advanced interests in solar energy production . . . ~llaw
This Stratechery Interview is another installment of the Stratechery Founder Series; as a reminder, one of the challenges in covering startups is the lack of available data. My solution is to go in the opposite direction and interview founders directly, letting them give their subjective overview of their companies, while pressing them on their business model, background, and long-term potential.
Today’s interview is with Terraform Industries founder and CEO Casey Handmer. I am primarily familiar with Handmer via his blog, which covers the future: space, technology, energy, etc. Handmer writes very persuasively about solar energy, and has backed up his conviction with his career choices: Terraform Industries is working to build the Terraformer, which produces natural gas from sunlight and air, and can be installed anywhere in the world.
In this interview we do discuss Terraform Industries, but I wanted to spend the most time on understanding solar energy and why Handmer has such conviction about it being the future. This is a topic that is increasingly pertinent to Stratechery specifically and tech broadly as AI becomes a reality: right now the number one way we know how to make AI better is by scaling up, but that requires an ever-increasing amount of energy, and it’s not clear where it will come from. Like many of you, I have been a long-time advocate of nuclear energy; Handmer makes the case, though, that solar is simply better in every way.
To that end, topics covered in this interview include the ongoing revolution in solar, driven by ever-decreasing costs, the importance of batteries, objections to solar, the implications of localized energy, and Terraform Industries. Do note that this interview was conducted before the Biden administration levied tariffs on Chinese solar panels and batteries; Handmer told me that he doesn’t think it changes much in the long run.
We do cover a lot of ground in this interview, and I am by no means an expert; to that end Handmer helpfully wrote a blog post with links to a number of pertinent Articles he and others have written that undergird the arguments in this interview. It is a very compelling case, and I hope he is right.
As a reminder, all Stratechery content, including interviews, is available as a podcast; click the link at the top of this email to add Stratechery to your podcast player.
On to the Interview:
An Interview with Casey Handmer About the Solar Energy Revolution
So when it comes to Stratechery guests, I think there is definitely a bimodal distribution in terms of knowing who you are. I know for a fact that you have some ardent readers and followers who have been campaigning me to have you on for a long time, but I also think probably the vast majority of my subscribers don’t know who you are at all. So give me the Casey Handmer networking event introduction, who are you and what do you do? And I know there’s a lot there, so you can have a little more time than your typical roundtable, tell me who you are.
CH: Thank you so much. I’m a recovering physicist. I’m an Australian by birth, I moved to the United States about 15 years ago. I did stints in academia, startups, NASA, and now I’m running a deep tech, climate-tech startup.
Wow, that was fast, you really got through it quickly. You have an incredibly wide array of interests. A lot of this is based on writing of your blog, which I followed for a while, from the Vesuvius Scrolls, which I definitely want to ask you about, and Stratechery subscribers do know about because we’ve talked about with Nat and Daniel, to space, to energy, which I think we’ll spend most of the interview on. But what is your background? You mentioned you grew up on Australia, you were a physicist. I could only imagine what a handful you were for your teachers as a kid.
CH: Well, I’m still in touch with a few of them today, and I don’t think there’s any hard feelings. But now I’m a manager and a teacher myself in some ways, and I have young children, I can certainly see how I must’ve presented the odd challenge, but hopefully not too onerous of one.
So were you interested — was it physics from the get-go, or what were your interests growing up?
CH: Well, I was always quite strong at math, or maths as we say in Australia, and so physics and the hard sciences reward that skill and interest in a way that maybe the others don’t as much. But I was actually pretty much even across the board and to this day, retain a deep interest in chemistry, biology, geology, and a bunch of other areas. But physics is certainly where I spent most of my time, probably starting in my late teens.
And so you started out in academia then, after university?
CH: Yeah, I took the academic route to immigrate to the United States. In retrospect, that’s certainly the story. At the time, I was intending to become a professor of theoretical physics, focused in on gravitational theory, as a step towards building a warp drive. But once I landed in LA, I realized that there was SpaceX and JPL, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory was there, and I actually didn’t have to wait for warp drive, I could go and work on spacecraft right away. Of course, I had to get a green card straightened out, which took about eight years, but once that was done, nothing could stop me.
So then you went to NASA after getting your green card then?
CH: Yeah. Well, some of your listeners will know about ITAR [International Traffic in Arms Regulations] and so on. It’s extremely difficult for foreigners to work on technologies that are considered advanced weapons technologies by the United States.
But you managed it. Were you working there, you’re like, “This is slow, bureaucratic, I need to do a startup”? What’s the transition there?
CH: Yeah, so I went into JPL after two and a half years at Hyperloop, where I did mostly mathematical modeling in magnetic machines, a bunch of other stuff. I was really incredible experience, but I certainly had some startup PTSD. So I went into to NASA and then suddenly the many, many layers of bureaucracy made a lot of sense to me, at the time, and they still do now. They exist for a reason.
What’s the reason?
CH: Well, if you’re trying to run a very large organization, basically these large Mars rovers that JPL is famous for flying to other planets and then driving around, rely on maybe 250 or 300 distinct teams, each of which have their own subject matter experts to successfully build and integrate one of these things. It’s a miracle they can do it in only six or seven years and only a billion dollars at a time. But many of these team members have never met each other, they don’t live in the same country even, some of them are not even alive at the same time and so obviously you need quite a lumbering bureaucracy in a way to make that all fit together.
So it’s understandably a very large bureaucracy to run the entire situation. But the downside of course is that early career, people like myself, people with a lot of ambition, tend to get steamrolled and after four years, I think I’d basically seen it, and done it, and had a pretty good idea what the next 10, or 20, or 30 years of my career there was likely to be like, and decided to strike out into the wilderness and start a company.
CH: Yeah, exactly. So these ideas developed during COVID and then I did probably almost a year of experimentation in my garage before I finally reached conviction to quit my very comfortable government job essentially, and start a crazy hard tech startup.
What’s the combination of factors that made that hard? Because I feel like you have three challenges. Number one, coming from Australia, one of my very good friends, longtime podcast partner, was Australian and he talked a lot about the tall poppy syndrome thing, coming from there.
CH: Yeah.
You have the going to academia, which is you work on theoretical problems and have a relatively nice life, but it doesn’t necessarily reward massive ambition. Then you have NASA, you’re in this huge bureaucracy. Was there a bit where you really needed someone to — you have got a triple layer to overcome, to strike out and do your own thing?
CH: So it’s certainly true that it probably took me a few years to deprogram from an Australian mentality around entrepreneurship and actually my good friend, Ash Fontana, who was a VC in the Bay Area for many years, was the first to, I think, to tell me that in Australia, if you have an idea, probably someone will buy you a beer to tell you, “No mate, it can’t be done” — but the United States, someone will probably buy you dinner to try and write you a $1 million seed check. That’s obviously another simplification, but it really underscores the ambitious, positive mentality that you find, particularly here in the west coast of California, or the west coast United States in California, which is, yeah, there’s no place like it. It’s absolutely incredible. I knew once I arrived here that this is a place that could serve as a vehicle for the changes that I wanted to see in the world.
So those changes you want to see in the world. I think you mentioned it’s a climate tech startup, but it is, Terraform — I guess we’ll get into the specifics more, but it’s definitely about solar and I think that that solar energy is a big thing that you’ve written a lot about.
I have to admit, I usually come to these interviews with a massive list of questions because I often have very strong opinions about everything that we’re going to cover. Today is a little different. The importance of energy is becoming a really big deal in tech, thanks to AI. Right now, chips are the constraint, but it is very clear that chips need energy and that will be the constraint going forward, and it’s not clear how to solve it.
So I want to talk to you to get your perspective, articulate this point of view, but I want to ground the conversation with that admission of where I’m coming from and I think I stand in for the Stratechery audience generally about this. So this is definitely a learning expedition and not necessarily a cross-examination. So walk us through your journey about latching onto solar, believing this is a big deal. This will, I think, lead into the Terraform Industry’s story generally, but let’s go back to first principles. When did you first start paying attention to solar and why did you gain so much conviction about that as an energy source?
CH: Yeah, so I can’t take too much credit for this. I read Ramez Naam’s blogs in probably about 2011, and he was one of the first people I think to really raise the flag and say, “Something funny is going on here. Yeah, solar technology is improving at a predictably enormous rate, and at this rate in 10 years time, it should be extremely interesting.” And here we are, I guess 13 years later now, and it’s been extremely interesting for a few years.
But, yeah, fundamentally, it just comes down to the question of energy. Our civilization in the United States, we consume about 99% of our energy in the form of electricity or oil and gas, and about 1% in the form of food, which is one of the reasons why we have such amazing lives. The productivity of our entire economy is no longer limited by our collective digestive capacity and our ability to convert — often pretty poor — food that we could grow in a pre-industrial agricultural setting into mechanical labor with our hands or maybe with some animals. And it’s a huge unlock, right? It means that essentially all of us can enjoy the mechanical output of a hundred people, embodied in a single person, and without the chattel slavery that drove every economy prior to the invention of steam engines.
So it’s a really transformative thing, and then of course, really cheap, new forms of energy don’t come along very often and I think solar is probably the cheapest by far, the most transformative by far, it’ll probably be the last major one that humans really get to depend on. Yeah, and it’s happening, right as predicted. I’d said in about 2012 that this will take about 30 years, and here we are.
Walk me through that prediction. What was the prediction that hooked you in 2011?
CH: Okay, so you look at a graph in 2011 or 2012, and you say, “Well, you can calculate induced demand as cost falls, and you can calculate cost falling as deployment increases and manufacturing production increases and you can make some assumptions about what will happen in the future”. Then you basically just extrapolate the line for however long it takes until it clears the line where all 8 billion humans have a decent quality of life, and that’s about 30 years. It could be 25 or 35, but it is in that ballpark, it’s smaller than a human lifetime. That’s amazing, right?
I think we’ve made enormous strides just in the last few decades, in terms of pushing down extreme poverty to the point where you could probably say with some certainty that the number of human years, person years, to be left throughout the history of the universe, where humans will endure extreme poverty is finite. It’s probably around about a billion human years. Which is still an extremely large number if you consider the quality of life these people must endure, but it’s a lot better than the default guess 30 or 50 years ago, which would’ve been 90 to 95% of the world, of the entire human population, forever.
So what do you think drove that initial decrease in this energy-based view of the world?
CH: In terms of poverty reduction or in terms of solar cost improvement?
No, the poverty reduction. So from your view, is there stage one, where we drastically reduce poverty generally?
CH: Yeah.
That’s talked about in terms of things like globalization, industrialization, what’s the energy frame on that?
CH: Well, I think poverty reduction is mostly a side effect. As Nat Friedman likes to say, “A lot of technology improvements are driven by demand at the very top, and then that demand trickles down”, and so all of us get to benefit from cell phones, for example, which the early adopters of that technology, were definitely military, government type stuff, it took a few decades and here we are. That’s certainly, I think, the case more generally with extreme poverty, although of course valuable work is being done by NGOs every day, but when we think about what would it take to transform the lives of 8 billion people on earth to be as good as yours and mine, no manner of wealth redistribution or social programs can achieve that, only a radical increase in productivity, and the productivity of our economies and supply of basic goods, and energy in particular, which really underlies that whole thing.
Actually one of the major weaknesses, cutting against this in probably the last 50 years, is a slowdown in global growth caused by energy supply uncertainty, since peak oil and the oil crises in the early 1970s, and it’s really exciting that we’ve got to the point right now where solar deployment worldwide last year was about 460 gigawatts, which is roughly equivalent to the global entire nuclear fleet. Within, probably by 2030, we’ll be deploying more solar than everything else combined which means that once again, we’ll be breaking free of the fundamental limitations of geological sources of energy to essentially solar panels, which are for the purposes of our civilization, completely unlimited and it’ll drive another factor of 10x increase in per capita productivity, and per capita energy consumption, and GDP and so on, probably over the next generation or so.
So you have the oil age as it were. You mentioned the ’70s when you have the oil crisis, that was supposed to be the nuclear age. What happened? Is it the standard story, just people got scared and regulators made it too expensive? Or is there something more profound than that?
CH: Yeah, well, I think at the end of the day, obviously many more people know much more about nuclear than I do, I’m actually a physicist by training. I used to teach nuclear physics, so I’m not bigoted against nuclear power. I think it’s an incredible technology, but at the end of the day, a nuclear reactor does the same thing that any other kind of power plant does. It’s a steam engine, right? It makes water hot, boils water, uses that water to drive a piston or a turbine and there’s a fundamentally irreducible cost of doing that because turbines are metallurgically complex and for people who like hard numbers, it’s about $35 per megawatt hour.
That’s mostly in capital costs or that’s also marginal costs?
CH: Well, for a coal plant, obviously, you’re consuming coal and for a gas plant you’re consuming gas. But also, there’s a lot of CapEx involved there. But actually for the $35, that’s just the CapEx of the turbine and the steam handling system. So even a fission reactor that was free, one way or another, you just cracked open a rock in the ground and there’s a fission reactor ready to go, the cost of actually delivering that power to the end consumer is well over $35 per megawatt hour.
Whereas the marginal cost of solar, like rooftop solar in Australia, for example, which has really somehow managed to get the cost down really quite low, it’s an unusual success for an Australian energy policy, is well under $20 per megawatt hour, which is just, it’s incredible. That’s a factor of two better and it’s going in one direction.
For nuclear to compete on cost with solar in 2024, it has to stop getting more expensive and then it has to start getting cheaper, faster than solar is getting cheaper. But solar’s getting cheaper about 15% per year, and that’s a trend that’s been in place for, well, the trend has been in place for about 40 years, but it really took off about 15 years ago and it’s going to be very, very hard to keep up with that, I think for any other energy source.
I think your arguments about why solar will beat nuclear today in ’24, is very interesting. I just want to make sure I understand this. In the 1970s, is there an alternate history where we actually do keep building, we do move down the cost curve, we have tremendous more energy today? Or is there, because I think the common refrain among nuclear advocates is blaming government, blaming regulators, all this sort of thing.
CH: Yeah, it’s someone else’s fault.
Or is it just a fundamental constraint because people are concerned for a reason. You have to have super high-end metallurgy to your note. To build a reactor is not easy. Is it just fundamentally limited?
CH: Well, as I said, other people know more about this than I do. In particular, I think Austin Vernon, who you should have on your show, was on Dwarkesh’s show about two years ago and had a couple of good comments there. His relatives actually work at the NRC, and so they have their own perspective on it, and I think it’s certainly true that regulation in the United States tends to make some things more expensive, but also the United States is significantly richer than other parts of the world.
So you can point at nuclear reactors built by almost any other country, like South Korea is a typical success story, but those reactors aren’t super cheap. They might be a factor of two, or three, or five times cheaper than US reactors, and that’s nothing to sneeze at, but there’d have to be another factor of 10 times cheaper on top of that to even be able to compete with solar today, under the most generous financing assumptions. That’s really tricky.
Now, as for your hypothetical, I do love historical counterfactuals, and I think that if it was the case that Earth, for example, did not have significant resources of oil, and gas, and coal, in its crust and it was also a lot further from the sun — so say Earth was out near Neptune or something like that, so you couldn’t really rely on solar power, then yes, we’d certainly develop nuclear power as a source of energy and heat for our civilization then.
But at the end of the day, the amount of uranium and thorium that’s available in the crust to produce nuclear power is so staggeringly limited, compared to the amount of solar power that rains down on us for free every day without any complex metallurgy, or mining, or anything like that, that if you wanted to build a Kardashev level one civilization, you can’t do it with uranium you can find in the crust. Maybe if you had a fusion reactor and you converted the entire surface of some outer planet moon into fusion reactors, converting the hydrogen there into energy or something, you get close. But just the sheer amount of effort required is insane.
Compare this to a solar panel, which is essentially an inert piece of glass. In fact, solar panels are about as expensive as glass right now, and you don’t need any advanced technology, or labor, or understanding, or certifications or anything to deploy, you literally put it in the sun. It’s easier than planting a veggie patch with your kids and it creates power, and actually not only does it create power, it creates significantly more power, roughly a thousand times more power than the veggie patch does. Modern industrial agriculture, for all its advances, and fertilizers, and crop dusters, and all the rest, plants are wonderful, but plants are not nearly as efficient as solar arrays at converting sunlight into usable energy for us and for our civilization.
And that’s actually the other really cool thing about solar, which is that, I mentioned earlier, we consume about a hundred times more energy outside of our guts than inside our guts, and so you might wonder how much solar do we need to match the amount of land that we already devote to agriculture just to feed us? But because solar is so much more productive per unit area, you actually don’t need very much solar on that scale at all, yeah, which is super useful. Otherwise, we run out of Earths to pave with solar.
I’ll link to a post you wrote, talking about the nuclear cost point, and I found it very persuasive. I was always a, “Yeah, we should’ve done nuclear, we can do nuclear now”, sort of guy. But the cost argument I think was very compelling, and to your point, it’s not just a regulatory thing, there’s inherent cost involved.
CH: Yeah.
But let’s dig into this solar thing. What is driving the cost curve decrease that was forecasted in 2011 that attracted you? And that has absolutely manifested over the last 10 years, famously exceeding every official projections for future costs. It always ends up being cheaper, faster than people realize. What is the driver of that?
CH: Well, so actually even Ramez Naam’s predictions were too conservative. No one, back then, predicted that solar would get as cheap as it has now. If you look at the DOE’s predictions in 2012 for how long it would take for us to get to current solar costs, their best guesses were 2150, and I don’t know if I’ll live that long.
So of course their entire roadmap for decarbonization didn’t include this, but now we have it. Can we use it? Yes, we sure as hell can and we sure as hell should, because it’s a massive gift that enables us to — we don’t have to de-growth in order to stop emitting pollution into the atmosphere. We can build our way out of the climate crisis by just increasing energy consumption and making energy cheaper for everyone.
In terms of how it gets cheaper, well, essentially, as I say, once the technology is inside the tent of capitalism, it’s generating value for people. It tends to attract wealth, it tends to attract capital, and that capital can be used to do things like hire manufacturing process engineers, and they’re very, very clever and they work very hard, particularly probably hundreds of thousands of engineers working at various solar factories in China right now. And sooner or later, they will find every possible configuration of matter necessary to force the price down. So same as with Moore’s law, essentially, we’ve just seen steady improvements.
Yeah, I was going to ask, is this an analogy to Moore’s law or is it actually the same sort of thing? Moore’s law is not a physical law, it is a choice by companies and individuals to keep pushing down that curve. Number one, what I get from you is that’s the same sort of concept here, but number two, are the actual discoveries actually similar to what’s going on?
CH: Yeah, actually to a large extent because it’s a silicon-based technology.
Right, exactly.
CH: There’s a lot of commonality there, but I think Moore’s law is not a law of nature, it’s what we call a phenomenological law, an emergent law. But basically all it says is there’s a positive feedback loop between cost reductions, increases in demand, increase in production, and cost reductions. So provided that the increase in demand, the induced demand as a result of the cost reduction, exceeds the cost reduction for the next generation of technology, you have a positive feedback loop. Otherwise, it’ll converge at some point, right? You’ll achieve maybe a 10x cost reduction and then it’ll stop, and we start to hit diminishing returns on all these technologies. But if you look at Moore’s law, it’s actually a series of maybe 20 or 30 different overlapping technology curves that kind of form this boundary of technology throughout time, and you see the same thing in solar technology if you really look under the hood and see what’s going on.
But yeah, the fundamental thing is there’s just enormous demand for solar at lower and lower prices and so manufacturers are justified in investing the capital they need in order to hit those prices and then the feedback mechanism keeps going. Solar manufacturing itself is a brutally competitive business which is both good and bad, it means like if you decide that you want to compete in solar, you don’t have to be at it for 50 years in order to compete. If you can capitalize, you can build a solar factory and if you’re smart enough and you work hard enough, in five years you can be in the top 20 manufacturers globally which is huge. Talking about billions of dollars of revenue every year just because everyone’s existing capital stock gets depreciated really quickly.
Right. But to your point, it’s also commodity then, right? So how do you actually build a sustainable business?
CH: Well, picks and shovels essentially. So actually one of the things that we like to say at Terraform, and I’m jumping the gun slightly here, but Terraform’s product essentially is a machine that converts solar power into oil and gas, so it bridges these two technology spans. It allows you to arbitrage essentially economically unproductive land that would otherwise just be getting hot in the sun. You throw some solar panels on there, that’s your computing hardware, but that’s not very useful, right? I could hand you an H100 but doesn’t do anything for you until you’ve got software to run on it and the software allows the raw computing power of that H100 to become useful for an end consumer.
In a very concrete form, it’s converting sunlight to intelligence — that’s what we’re going for here.
CH: Yeah. Well, I mean the Terraformer doesn’t necessarily make intelligence-
The H100, I should say, but yes.
CH: Yeah, the H100, but it’s the same basic idea. So like software is a relatively cheap, well you say that, but have you ever tried to develop software?
CH: The sort of money required to develop proof of concept for software is certainly much, much cheaper than the all new chip fab or something like that, but it drastically increases the utility of the underlying hardware, and the Terraformer is a little bit like that because it takes the solar array, which by itself is a commodity product, but struggles maybe to transport that energy from where it’s produced in the middle of nowhere, to an end market that has someone with a credit card who can pay for it.
What the Terraformer does is it allows a solar developer to convert that power out the middle of nowhere into oil and gas, which is an extremely fungible high demand commodity. It’s also a commodity product, but it’s a different kind of commodity, the amount of money rolling around in that industry is absolutely enormous.
All right. You covered like 47 things, all of which I want to get to so let me touch on a couple of them sort of real quick.
Batteries
Actually let’s run through some of the objections to solar power and then I think that will inherently get to some of these things. So we talked about the nuclear bit, what happens when the sun doesn’t shine?
CH: Yeah, so we’re actually seeing this in California right now. It creates a time arbitrage, right? If you have the ability to store power during the day and then release it during the night, you can make an incredible amount of money and that’s why we’ve seen battery deployments in California, for example, increased by I think a factor of 10x in the last four years, and the effect of that is it’s basically allowing people to transport power, or transport energy, through time in much the same way that power lines, transmission lines, allow people to transport electricity through space.
So what is happening with the battery cost curve? Because if that’s sort of an essential component to make this happen-
CH: Same thing, same story.
For the same reasons?
CH: Exactly the same reasons, same story. Battery manufacturing is probably a little bit more complex and not quite as well-developed as silicon solar panel manufacturing, but we’re seeing year-on-year growth of battery manufacturing. It’s like well over 100%, so it’s actually growing faster than solar, and then the cost improvement’s not quite as steep, but it’s easily like 5% or 10% per year depending on which technology you’re looking at.
In 2021, for example, it was extremely confidently predicted that lithium ion batteries would never get under $100 per kilowatt hour at the cell level and the pack level, and of course Tesla was widely mocked for claiming that they would be able to get ultimately below $100 bucks per kilowatt hour at the pack level. But then again, I think January this year or December last year, a Chinese manufacturer came out with a sodium ion battery cell, which is at $56 per kilowatt hour, so it’s like a 2x reduction in cost on top of what is already considered cutting edge, and we just go down from there.
Now, sodium ion batteries might not be perfectly suited for all kinds of applications, but they’re probably cheaper to produce than the lithium ion batteries. We know they’re cheaper to produce in lithium batteries and they’re more than capable of doing the sort of load shifting required to essentially store power during the day and then use it in the evening.
Are we in a situation already, or do we still have a bit to go, where the sort of combined weighted cost of solar, which is much cheaper than nuclear as you talked about, plus batteries, which sounds like it’s still more expensive now, but when you combine the two is it already lower?
CH: Yeah, so again just look at the data, right — the market reveals its preference. CleanTechnica ran an article almost five years ago now showing that in Texas they were developing battery plants 10:1 compared to gas peaker plants. Texas runs its own its own grid under slightly different rules where you can basically just build and connect and then the grid can force you to curtail if they’ve got overproduction, but that typically means it’s a more liquid market. And even in Texas, which is certainly not ideologically committed to solar, and actually incidentally this year deployed more solar than California did.
Yeah, I was going to say.
CH: Also Texas has the cheapest natural gas in the history of the universe, but they’re deploying more battery packs than they are gas peaker plants 10:1.
Is that because of the arbitrage opportunities?
CH: Yeah, batteries are actually significantly more versatile than a gas peaker plant. So even a gas peaker plant will take five to ten minutes to turn on, whereas a battery plant can switch between taking power off the grid and putting it back on the grid 100 times a second if it really wants to. Obviously in typical operation it doesn’t do that, but also because of that, the versatility, essentially batteries are first in line to make money when there’s a fluctuation in the grid.
Battery operators, this is one of Tesla’s major side businesses in Megapack, battery operators have been making an absolute killing offering what’s called frequency control auxiliary services to the grid. This is incredibly a crusty, finer detail, but essentially the broad brushstrokes are you put solar on the grid, it increases the supply of power, it’s able to push more expensive legacy producers off the grid, which creates instability that creates demand for batteries, put batteries on the grid. Those two things balance each other out and together they kind of form this kind of tag team that collectively, and I kind of wrote a blog about this in 2019, push all the traditional spinning generation out of the market entirely. A little bit like Uber’s do with taxi drivers — it’s a very compelling kind of economic model that becomes the new stable attractor for how grids have to operate.
The issue though is why do we have grids, right? The reason we have grids going previously is we have these huge baseline power generation, that’s the model people have for this, and the entire grid has to be balanced. You have the input of power, you have the consumption of power, it’s massive amounts of complexity. The idea of solar and batteries would seem like the actual optimal application of them and this gets to Terraform Industries, what you were talking about, is they’re completely isolated. They don’t need a grid, it’s sort of a self-contained package.
CH: Yup.
Is this a sustainable long run where you have batteries and solar taking advantage of the grid’s weaknesses to arbitrage and make money? Or is there a path dependency here where because we started with grids, we’re going to always have grids and we’re going to figure out how to make it work?
CH: It will probably depend from place to place and certainly one of the things about solar is that it works better in sunnier places. So you can look at sunnier places and see what the future will be in less sunny places, which I think is kind of neat. But in terms of arbitrage, I don’t want to give the impression that batteries are just sucking value out of the grid, arbitrage creates liquidity that allows prices to work.
Yeah, don’t worry. I think this is largely a pro-arbitrage audience.
CH: But I just want to say there’s a conception that, oh, solar and batteries only are on the grid because they’re massively subsidized and they’re actually screwing everything up. That’s actually, that’s not true. Solar and batteries is what’s keeping the grid working right now, it’s the only thing that’s providing expanded capacity.
The major challenge with additional solar development, particularly here in the States, is we now have this ten-year backlog or kind of development queue before you can connect your solar array to the grid, and the reason for that is the grid is old and it’s kind of overwhelmed, and it’s not able to transport all that power effectively to market.
Of course, one solution to this is just to build more grid. Another solution is to put some batteries on the grid. And, you know, the third solution is basically just build batteries and solar wherever you can, it’s actually working really well.
Then obviously what Terraform is doing is taking this otherwise un-utilized capacity for solar development and then pouring it into another aspect of our civilization’s absolutely unquenchable thirst for energy. Just to give you some hard numbers here, roughly a third of U.S. energy is consumed in the form of electricity and about two-thirds in the form of oil and gas. So even if we successfully electrified huge amounts of ground transportation and also moved all of the electricity grid to say wind, solar and a bit of nuclear and some batteries and maybe some geothermal or something like that, so completely decarbonize the grid, that would only deal with about a third of the economy. Two-thirds of the economy still runs on oil and gas and so that’s what Terraform is here to try and deal with.
One more question on the batteries.
CH: Yeah.
There’s always been, or the common refrain has been, we need a battery breakthrough, we need something completely new. Is the take, and you mentioned the sort of sodium ion, but even with terms of lithium ion, is the actual expectation or is the actual realization in your expectation going forward that actually the technology we have — sure, it’d be great to get a breakthrough, but there’s actually way more improvements and in what we have that will carry us a long way?
CH: Lithium ion batteries are already amazing. I mean, they’ve been around for about 35 years now, I think they were first commercialized for Panasonic camcorders or something and even then they were extremely compelling. They pushed NiCAD [nickel-cadmium] out of the market almost instantaneously, which is the previous battery chemistry and numerous applications. They’re more than good enough.
You say, “Well, I’d like a battery breakthrough”. Why? “Because I want to run my supersonic electric jet off batteries.” Well, good luck with that. But for all ground transportation purposes, for static backups, for all these kinds of applications, not only is the technology already great, it’s got a 30 year history of manufacturing at scale. We know how to make it safe, we know how to make it cheap, it’s extremely compelling and the numbers speak for themselves.
Battery manufacturing capacity expansion is not just happening for no reason, there’s enormous untapped demand for batteries. The way I like to think of it is what’s your per capita lithium ion allocation? Maybe in 1995, you might have a Nokia 3210 with — actually that would be after 1995 — but with a small lithium ion battery in it. So you’ve got 10 grams per person of lithium ion battery and nowadays my family has two electric cars, and that’s probably most of our batteries.
Yeah, now we have laptops, we have computers.
CH: But in terms of the bulk mass, like 400 kilograms per person or something for people to have electric cars and then if you have a static backup battery in your house and then maybe a share of your per capita part of the grid scale batteries and so on. I think it could easily scale to a couple of tons per lithium ion battery per person, particularly in like the more energy intensive parts of the United States.
Is that a large number? No, not really. I easily have a couple of tons per person in terms of steel just in my cars. I easily have probably 50 tons of concrete per person in terms of my built environment. I don’t actually think this is a particularly large number, I just think it’s unusual to see in such a short span of time some product go from the size of your thumb to the size of a large swimming pool, a large hot tub or something like that, in terms of your per capita allocation.
Where are we at as far as availability of say lithium or of all the various rare minerals or rare earths, whether that go into both solar and batteries?
CH: Yeah, I mean, again, I’m not a super expert on batteries, but the cure for high prices is high prices. Lithium is the third most common element in the universe, there’s no shortage of it. You could argue there’s a shortage of lithium refining capacity in the United States, particularly if you’re concerned about strategic vulnerability.
It’s like the rare earth thing, right? Rare earths are not actually rare. It’s just the actual ability to refine them.
CH: They’re super common, and actually solar solves that. It turns out that you can electrically catalytically separate rare earth elements using cheap solar power, more significantly lower environmental impact and much lower cost than traditional refining, and I have some friends working on that.
It is certainly true that batteries, people are concerned about cobalt. Actually, I have some cobalt here, here’s a cube of cobalt on my desk. Cobalt is a fabulous metal, but there’s not a huge amount of it necessarily. It’s not scarce like gold, but the mining situation is not quite sorted out. But at the same time, like almost all the major battery manufacturers use almost no cobalt right now because they’re able to adapt their processes to basically optimize their costs towards the cheaper materials.
Capitalism solves this, we don’t have to worry too much about it, there’s literally hundreds of thousands of chemists out there right now who are solving this problem right now, you don’t have to lose sleep over it, it is a completely commoditized production system.
Solar Objections
What is the China risk for this vision of the future given that a lot of this, particularly solar panels, is made in China? Is there a geopolitical obstacle to achieving this or is the relative simplicity, you mentioned anyone can set up a solar panel plant. Does that make you less concerned about that?
CH: Well, in the United States, particularly since the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure law and the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, we’ve seen absolutely incredible investments. Well over $1 trillion dollars in U.S onshoring and also friend-shoring like Canada and Mexico, production of batteries and solar panels and a million other things, which I think kind of underscores the United States is currently industrializing, or re-industrializing, at a faster pace than any point in its history, including the buildup to World War II.
Obviously, China retains for the moment at least a strong lead in terms of solar panel manufacturing, but they also have really significant domestic load growth and demand, so that’s fine. Now, if China decided tomorrow to ban exports of solar panels to foreign countries, for example, it would probably slow down the deployment of solar in the West by a couple of years. But at the end of the day, the technology was developed in the West. The tooling is built in Germany, in the United States, the factories themselves are built in China for reasons that are really not current anymore. China no longer has particularly cheap labor compared to Mexico, and so I think it’s only maybe 5 or 10 years before we see major changes in the geological or geographical locations of solar plant and solar manufacturing.
But, you know, at the end of the day energy is a race that all humans want to win, want to run and want to win and I think that there’s no need for zero sum partisanship or politics when it comes to solar deployment. Every gigawatt of solar panels deployed saves something like 250 lives per year in terms of averted coal pollution.
Yeah, so one more objection, and then I want to get into some of the more specifics of what you’re building on yourself.
CH: You’re really grilling me here. I like it.
Well, no, I mean, honestly, I find your blog really compelling. I want the, “Why Casey might be wrong”, blog on the other side just because yeah, I buy it.
CH: Sure, I like it.
I’m with you so this is my chance. What happens with old solar panels and old batteries? Obviously this is an objection to nuclear which is nuclear waste, and the good thing with nuclear waste is it’s really not that much. We’re talking about this deployment of massive amounts of solar panels, all these batteries. Where are we at in 10, 20 years if this build out happens? Is that a potential issue?
CH: I’m not too worried about it. And again, you need to look at your waste stream on a per capita basis. If we deployed as many solar panels as I want to, how many solar panels will you end up disposing of? I think if you ground them up it’d be one garbage bag per year. For a suburban family, we probably have 1,000 garbage bags of trash every year that gets landfilled.
But to talk about specifics, batteries I think are prime targets for recycling because the materials in them are essentially, as Elon Musk once said, super concentrated for the raw materials you need to make batteries. There’s multiple companies out there, including Redwood Materials, that are doing exclusively battery recycling, or battery component recycling, which is super obvious. That said, as battery production increases, even if you recycle all the old batteries, it will only be 1% of the input stream or something, but I just don’t see a future where we have giant piles of batteries lying around.
Then as far as solar panels go, they’re like a layer of silicon dioxide, which is glass, a layer of silicon, which used to be glass, and then a layer of silicon dioxide and maybe some aluminum around the edges. Well, you can strip off the aluminum and recycle that trivially, we’ve been recycling aluminum for 100 years, and the glass is glass. You can grind it up and landfill it, it’s basically sand.
People will say, “Oh, what about cadmium or something?” — well first, solar uses a cadmium telluride process to make their solar panels. But again, the amounts involved are trivial, they’re inert, they’re solid, they can’t run or leach or anything like that, I’m not too worried about it. As far as the sort of trash that humans routinely landfill, solar panels would actually significantly increase the purity of our dumps because they’re so inert compared to everything else.
The same goes for old wind turbines, it’s like, “Oh no, it’s a bunch of fiberglass”. It’s basically inert, you can put it in a hole in the ground and it’s not going to destroy the water table or anything. That is quite different to nuclear waste, which is quite a small volume of it but it does need careful handling.
(laughing) Yeah, you can’t throw that in the landfill.
CH: No, you really shouldn’t.
What I think is interesting is you’ve made a couple different allusions — you mentioned the 400 people that would die from pollution or smog or related sort of issues.
CH: Yeah. It’s about 5,000 people in the United States are dying every year directly from the effects of air pollution caused by legacy power plant.
The freak out over nuclear power in the late 70s made no sense because even if you had multiple Chernobyls, it would still actually on net save lives. But that obviously is an argument that failed, right?
CH: It’s not a particularly compelling argument in the court of public opinion, no.
That’s right, it’s arguably a similar thing here. People in societies tend to not properly value the ongoing cost that they’re already incurring. You see this with self-driving cars. It’s like, well, one self-driving car accident, everyone freaks out. They don’t think about the 50,000, 70,000, whatever people that die in auto accidents every year.
CH: Or pedestrians crushed by people texting every day. Shocking.
Right, exactly. It’s just like it’s accepted.
CH: Yeah, it’s like hundreds of people per day in the United States.
But what I find so compelling about your arguments, is do you need to win that argument?
CH: No.
Or basically is it just it doesn’t matter because the economics are so compelling, the right thing’s going to happen regardless?
CH: There are cases, for example, where extremely compelling business models have been crushed by regulation, possibly for the greater good. But in this case, the cat’s out of the bag, it’s going to happen whether we like it or not. To an extent the Inflation Reduction Act could speed it up a bit and something else could slow it down a bit. Actually, the major break right now is the Environmental Protection Agency regulations. Ironically, the single thing that is slowing down deployment of clean energy in the United States, by far the most. It’s absolutely insane.
And this is because of all the permitting process to build out these fields?
CH: Nixon wrote this into law — Nixon, of all people — wrote this into law about 50 years ago. At the time, I think it made a lot of sense that we wanted to safeguard what remained of our environment and make sure that it was a healthy environment for people and so on. But over time interpretations and regulations surrounding it have grown in many ways beyond the intention of the original statutes and the consequence of this right now is that if you want to deploy solar arrays essentially in the middle of nowhere, anyone can sue your project for any reason and will almost certainly slow it down by years and years and years.
As I said before, every gigawatt scale solar plant, that it’s typically delayed by about four years due to litigation in the United States. Any of these projects that’s delayed by about four years, will cost about a thousand lives per gigawatt. To put that into context, last year globally we deployed about 460 gigawatts of solar power, so those 460 gigawatts are saving 460,000 lives from the effects of mostly coal-powered coal plants, pollution that they’re displacing all over the world. But if we could double that deployment rate, we would save another half a million lives next year. These are big numbers, right? This is comparable to the number of Americans that died from the effects of COVID. In many cases, people with already compromised respiratory systems as a result of lifelong exposure to industrial pollution and air pollution and smoke from coal plants were the people who were taken off by COVID.
So it drives me nuts, the situation you’re in. Basically, their hands are bound by statute, but the Environmental Protection Agency and NEPA, the environmental protection laws, should absolutely be saying like, “Oh, you want to deploy a solar plant? Yes, of course. Off you go, we’ll give you some money, please, as fast as you can”. Instead of, “You have to go through exactly the same impact process or environmental impact statement process that every other plant or project has to go through, it takes 15,000 pages and four years”. It’s absolutely insane!
Basically on an economic perspective, you don’t need to make the case. The economics are super compelling. But we are back at the regulatory issue.
CH: Yeah. Well, the regulation just slows it down. It cannot stop it, it will not stop it, it only slows it down.
There is a traditional environmentalist view, or maybe not traditional is the right word — like old school, like you go back to John Muir — it’s sort of this preserving the natural environment, not necessarily about climate change or global warming. I guess I had one more objection for you to answer to solar. Isn’t that a fair question given the fact that the function is area and there’s that one picture from China that everyone always posts of a bunch of solar panels on top of a bunch of mountains.
CH: Yes, pretty sick.
Whereas take nuclear as an example, is very compact? What’s your response to that one?
CH: Yeah. I have a lot of respect for John Muir and the conservation movement in general, I named my first born Yosemite for that reason, so I think I have strong credentials on that front.
It’s important to remember that in the United States there are currently a huge number of states, maybe 5 or 10 states, mostly devoted to corn and soy production or other forms of agriculture, extremely intensive monocultures with basically no vestiges of the pre-industrial landscape there whatsoever.
Yeah, I’m from the Midwest so I am well aware.
CH: Exactly. Like there’s enormous plains bison used to roam on and the amount of area in the Midwest that hasn’t been converted at one point or another for industrial agriculture is vanishingly small. The number of prairies that have never been plowed is vanishingly small. So in the United States right now about 50 million acres — that’s a very, very large amount of area — is devoted to production of corn for biofuels, corn and soy for biofuels now.
Which is just a terrible technology.
CH: I’m not a huge fan myself, but it’s important to note that if we deployed 50 million acres of solar arrays in say a less economically and less ecologically productive part of the United States, like out here in the West where it’s dry and there’s a few plants but not much else going on, we could produce enough oil and gas to meet more than half of current U.S. demand.
Then, 50 million acres of biofuel corn could be rewilded and allowed to go fallow and we could reuse plants there and then at the same time increase production by a factor of between 20 and 100 with a solar synthetic approach to making the same chemicals. Only our chemicals are like 97, 98% pure right out of our machine whereas biofuels necessarily have these side product waste products and so on.
At the end of the day, I love corn, I ate corn chips just before this interview because that’s my nootropic of choice. But at the end of the day, corn can try hard, but it can’t compete with solar panels.
So this is very compelling, I love that analogy. You take the exact same amount of land devoted to biofuels, you devote it to solar, you put it in a place where no one goes anyway, like the deserts in the West, and there’s lots of sun there and I think this gets to Terraform Industries, if that happened, let’s fast-forward and the forest and the woods come back to the Midwest, the Great Plains, well the Great Plains we could probably put solar there too. There’s not much going on, I can promise you that.
CH: Well, a little bit. You put solar here and there so you can have a mix of traditional agriculture and then some solar which has a hundred times higher economic productivity. So suddenly money is flowing into these communities for the first time in a century, and then you can also rewild vast stretches and have continuous areas where migratory animals can move through and so on. I think this is a much more aesthetic model for how we can fix some of the excesses of the past by going to future.
At the end of the day, it’s not my choice, I think it’s right obviously, I can advocate for it, but I think in terms of our impact on the environment, the best thing we can do is switch to synthetic fuels as quickly as possibly can. By the time we’re done, we’ll be synthesizing animal feed and stuff as well so we can reduce the other 150 million acres that are used just to grow feed for animals.
Localized Energy
But to that point and you putting it in different places, in this future, this gets back to my grid question where, what is the challenge of say building a solar plant in the middle of the desert? You have to move that energy to a different place. There’s lots of challenges there. There’s huge regulatory challenges, there’s just efficiency challenges, the amount of energy that gets lost in transmission, all these, you end up with these major sort of dependencies on what, 30 major transformers in the US, and they’re all unique and if they got taken out by an EMP pulse or something, we’re all screwed. There’s a sort of fragility and brittleness to that versus, and you can tell us more, I think about Terraform in this answer, this idea of you have self-contained power and production that becomes something else. So this is the gigawatt data center in the desert that’s doing AI training, or it’s making oil and gas or desalinization, which I think is another interesting aspect. Where do you see the balance of that in the long run?
CH: So you can wave your hands and prognosticate a little bit about where we think the economy is going to go, and I’m in particular extremely bullish about future economic growth driven by cheap energy, so I think we’ll see a lot of increase of energy production, but mostly ideally local to its consumption. So people’s rooftop solar and people putting solar around new chemical plants, new data centers, solar desalinization, whatever the case may be, you’re only the fifth person today to ask me about AI training data centers, solar-powered in the desert. So it’s clearly something in the water.
CH: Yeah, I bring it on myself, that’s how I think about it.
Sort of your life story.
CH: It’s my life story, exactly.
Then obviously over time there’s a compelling economic reason to continue to electrify heating and cooking in houses, there’s a bunch of startups we all know about that are working on this. Obviously electric cars are extremely compelling, electric trucks not far behind, maybe ultimately electric ships for moving stuff around. Electric trains is a no-brainer, aviation obviously will almost certainly continue to be fuel-based.
The energy density of kerosene is unmatched.
CH: Yeah, exactly, and then the high temperature chemical and materials processes, industrial process in certain factories like production of plastics and other chemicals, which really depends on molecules — it’s based on oil and gas.
One of the things I like to say is that oil and gas is so common in our civilization, it’s invisible because every single thing that you see with your eyes is a surface that’s reflecting light, it’s usually pigmented or made of plastic, and that pigment or plastic is made of oil or it’s made of natural gas. So unless you go outside and look at a tree, which is ultimately made of a kind of plastic also derived from sunlight and air, it’s extremely difficult to lay your eyes on anything that’s not made of hydrocarbons and obviously, so we’re extremely bullish about growth.
Now it could be the case that there’s zero growth. It could be the case that the oil and gas industry just motors along at about $8 trillion of revenue per year, which is about $1 billion per hour. So just in the time we’ve been talking, it’s $1 billion, which is just insane. But I actually think that once we unlock these cheaper forms of hydrocarbons that it will promote substantial growth, particularly in the energy-intensive industries.
So just to underscore the vision here, I get really, really fired up about this, because when I think of aviation and how amazing it is, and how we’ve only had it as a species for about a hundred years, and it’s only really been something that we can enjoy in jet transport for maybe 50 years. But actually the people who routinely fly on aircraft, and I know that you’re one of them because you’re an expert obviously, and myself, it’s probably only 50 million people on earth who’ve ever had that experience of flying in a jet, I don’t know more than 10 times in their life. Wouldn’t it be incredible if that number was 500 million or 5 billion, but to get there from here in terms of fossil fuel consumption, emits a lot of CO₂, but it also requires a huge amount of fuel. Aviation currently consumes about 2% of the world’s oil and gas just to fly less than 1% of the world’s population around, and so obviously we need to bring on a new source of fuel.
So when you think, well, what is a nice climate-positive version of aviation? Is it like the European model where we force airlines to make customers pay for carbon sequestration or carbon credits or something like that, which is either extremely expensive or extremely fraudulent or both, but in any case makes aviation more expensive and less accessible to people, just makes it more exclusive? Or do we say, “Why don’t we solve both these problems at once, and just bring online enormous new supply of high quality, cheap gas and natural gas for the future liquefied natural gas powered supersonic aircraft?”
At the same time it just happens to be carbon-neutral, so you don’t have to worry about CO₂ emissions, it’s not polluting the atmosphere with new CO₂ from the crust, and at the same time, instead of Boeing producing 500 aircraft a year, Boeing and maybe a few more startups can be producing 10,000 aircraft per year to service this kind of massive explosion in demand driven by economic expansion. That is a sick vision, that is so cool, we should absolutely do this as quickly as we can.
I think whether or not Terraform plays a huge role in this process or not, and I’m certainly intending for it to be — currently we’re leading this process — the economics is inevitable that we’re going to switch over to synthetic fuel sooner or later, and when we do, it’s going to get really, really cheap because we’re running it off solar power and when it gets really, really cheap, we’re going to do amazing aviation and other energy applications, and increase manufacturing and maybe some little bit of geo-engineering on the side to keep things in check, increase water supply in dry areas and so on. Why wait until 2060? We could have this done in 2040 if we just apply ourselves the right way and find the right business model.
What’s the balance here? One thing you mentioned with Terraform Industries is that gas and oil is fungible and it’s fungible in multiple ways. It’s like you can buy any oil, gas, it’s all the same, but also it’s transportable, it’s movable in both time and space, those sorts of things.
To what extent is your opportunity a function of, “We have this huge opportunity in solar, we need to make something and there isn’t sufficient grid capacity to actually take over all the grid right now” versus regulatory challenges? I’m just trying to understand the drivers in the ecosystem broadly, because this idea, again, maybe I’m anchoring on the AI data center sort of thing, it’s a lot easier to build a fiber optic line that moves data than it is to build a power line that moves it for lots of reasons. So this idea that you have a self-contained powered data center, obviously it has to be way overbuilt on batteries, because you need to be utilizing your H100s or H900s or whatever we get to, all the time.
I’m not sure what I’m driving at here, but it seems there’s this balance between the grid path dependency we have today versus this completely federated, isolated pockets of energy production. I’m very intrigued by this because it seems like this could completely reorganize so much of society. You go back to the formation of cities, they’re all around rivers because that was lower cost, transportation of goods.
CH: And local agricultural land. Yeah, because you have to carry stuff around all by cart, you didn’t have refrigeration, you didn’t have trucking.
Yeah, exactly. If all of energy becomes localized and self-contained, how does this play out?
CH: I think it’s a huge positive, and I think one of the challenges we face conceptually is that when people think of oil and gas, they think it’s all in Saudi Arabia and maybe parts of Texas or something, but it’s certainly not evenly distributed around the world, whereas solar power is pretty much evenly distributed everywhere that people live. There are some of the world that are exceptionally sunny in some parts that are exceptionally cloudy, but very, very few people live there.
But I think there’s this opportunity for a different energy future where we shorten the energy supply chain very drastically, and that has all kinds of unbounded upsides for people all over the world who are at the wrong end of a very long supply chain, or they have local security problems that they’re unable to fix for themselves. Not every country has the US Navy to ensure that the supply chain stays open — the US Navy keeps everyone who imports oil by sea keeps their supply chains open. So like China imports about 12 million barrels of oil a day from the Middle East on shipping lanes that are policed by the US Navy, which is insane, but I think certain countries are extremely geopolitically vulnerable to oil supply chain interruption by adversaries, and I think that in the efficiently, distant future, that will no longer be the case.
I also think that maybe making H100s will be quite difficult even in a hundred years, but certainly if you wanted to build the solar array and the batteries and so on to power local industry doing any number of things, whether it’s metals or desalination or whatever, that’s certainly something that could be localized in probably dozens of countries, I think, would be able to stand up that sort of supply chain.
I think it’s a huge positive and also the amount of capital that we would have fork over to build and maintain this extremely long-distance energy transmission infrastructure that we have would diminish, and so I think over time we’ll probably see the grid, and this is actually probably my most controversial take, kind of prune and decrease in size much in the same way that the US rail network has halved in size over the last a hundred years just as the unprofitable lines or unprofitable routes are not used anymore. I think it’s super cool.
That is your same point about oil and gas, it just makes all kinds of sense to use kerosene for jet fuel. The energy density is that’s the one area where that’s what matters more than anything, and you need oil and gas for plastics. Plastics are pretty important that need’s not going to go away, it feels like one of your arguments is that solar is sort of anti-fragile in a certain sense.
CH: Oh yes, for sure. Already the batteries we put on the grid have significantly reduced the fragility of the grid, made it much more robust, much more resilient. We see that every time a major storm rolls through Texas.
That’s the point, the more variability there is in the grid, which should usually take it down, and this the anti-fragile bit, it’s not just that it reduces fragility, it actually benefits from upheaval, and that’s that arbitrage story. When the grid is the most fragile, that’s when the batteries are the most profitable.
CH: Yeah, I mean in this transitionary period, the battery operators are making an absolute killing, but I think in 20 or 30 years, everyone has a 50 kilowatt-hour battery pack in their house. We no longer have to invest this sort of money that is bankrupting PG&E, ensuring that we have 99.9% uptime on every corner of the grid. It’s supplying power lines that run through hundreds of miles of densely forested mountains to get to remote communities, I think it’s absolutely insane that we spend so much energy and time doing that, and so I think that’s also to the good. That’s a significant improvement in the human condition, if we can take that capital and invest it in other things that are more productive.
Terraform Industries
I need you to do my job better than me. What is the limitation or what will stop this from happening? Or is it just so clearly inevitable to you that it’s hard to articulate a counter case?
CH: As a physicist or a mathematician, I like to think about existence proofs, and the existence proof is that all the underlying technology required to do this has been understood for a hundred years, and until maybe five years ago, solar was nowhere cheap enough to make this worthwhile. So you could do it just lose a lot of money, but as solar gets cheap enough, it doesn’t really matter which process you choose, there’s probably 300 different approaches that Terraform could have taken. We think we picked the right one, but there’s plenty of other companies out there trying different ones and it’ll become pretty clear.
And the approach being that you’re going to be making oil and gas or what is specific about your approach that you think is the right one?
CH: Just the specific chemistry of how we go about turning electricity into oil and gas. But there’s many, many, many ways of skinning that cat, which is great. We’re spoiled for choice.
How does it work? Give the non-physicist overview of how Terraform works.
CH: Yeah, sure. So from a customer’s perspective on the outside, essentially what a Terraformer does is it allows you to build your own oil and gas well in your backyard, regardless of the fact that you don’t own a drill rig, and in fact you don’t live anywhere near where oil and gas occurs naturally, which is again pretty cool. But how does it work under the hood? Well, it consumes electricity and most of that electricity gets used locally.
Actually I should state the Terraformer itself sits in the solar array, and that’s to reduce the cost of transmission of electricity, which would be absolutely prohibitive in this case, and the electricity gets used to capture CO₂ from the air and to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. We throw the oxygen away like trees do, we take the hydrogen and we react that in a classical old school chemical reactor with the CO₂ to produce methane and water. Then we can separate the water out because it condenses at a much higher temperature from the methane and we’re just left over with methane plus a little bit of leftover CO₂ and hydrogen and a tiny bit of water vapor. That’s natural gas, right?
Actually, when you get natural gas out of the ground, if you did have a drill rig and you did live in a place where natural gas occurs and you drill a hole in the ground, gas comes out. Well now you’ve got to build a well top and a bunch of other stuff that’s actually really complicated, and you might have a blowout and then what comes out of the ground is like between 10 and 80% natural gas and a bunch of other contaminants on top of that which have to be removed before you can sell it.
We don’t have that problem. What we produce is the pure product. It’s really compellingly elegant the way we do this. There’s no geology risk, plug-and-play once you plug it in it just generates a predictable amount of gas every day for however long the system lasts, which is most likely measured in decades.
In this case, you don’t have a battery capital cost, I presume it only runs when then suns out, right?
CH: Yeah, that’s absolutely correct. And I’ll say for anyone who’s considering doing a hardware tech startup, well, there is basically a recipe that we’ve stumbled upon for taking any existing industry and then applying it to solar power and getting the benefit of that extremely cheap power.
The first is you have to get the CapEx way, way down because your utilization is low, you’re only using your plant maybe 25% of the time, so you have to get the cost down by at least a factor of four. Then on top of that, you also have to make it compatible with the sun coming up and going down. So time variability, which is difficult, but not impossible. We have many processes that we can routinely throttle up and down in our everyday lives so you understand this intuitively, but if you can do that, and it sounds impossible, of course, “I just want a chemical reactor that’s 1/10 the size and 1/4 the cost and I can ramp it up and down”.
Well, the way you make this work is you just use more power. So you say, “Well, I don’t care about efficiency quite as much because my power is so cheap”, and that’s what makes it easy. But if you can do this, then you have —
You have to change that core assumption. Whereas almost every invention today is all about increasing the efficient use of power, and the whole point of solar is, “What if we assume power is basically infinite, but it’s bounded by time, then what would we do?”.
CH: It’s like cycles in your computer are basically free or on your cell phone or something.
I just want to double down on this because this was the key thing about Moore’s Law and the way it played out is, and this is I think the gating factor for AI in some respects today, which is the moment you cross over to assuming that compute is free, then everything changes. Right now with AI, it’s not there because everyone is very cognizant of the cost of inference, it’s whenever we cross over to the point that inference is free, that changes things in a substantial way. You’re making the same point just like with the core unit, which is energy.
CH: That’s exactly right. So the key is take an existing process, let’s say aluminum refining, adapt the Hall-Héroult process, which is what we use to produce it to be able to operate intermittently, find some way of making CapEx a bit cheaper but consume twice as much electricity as you otherwise would while still making more money. You can essentially turn that entire industry on its head.
In particular because of the relative cost reductions of solar, I saw a prediction a while ago that said that aluminum is quite a bit more expensive than steel, but it’s also quite a bit stronger per unit mass. But that ratio is going to swing drastically in the favor of aluminum in the next 5 or 10 years because of our ability to use cheap solar to produce it, which means we could even see aluminum rebar, which kind of screws my brain a bit, but there’s probably 15 or 20 different industries that are extremely power-intensive that make particular materials, whether it’s different kinds of metals or refining metals or different kind of processing or making fresh water from salt or cement. I’ve kind of got a laundry list of these industries that I would be working on if I wasn’t working on fuel.
Desalination seems like a potentially massive win here and very pertinent to the American West for example. But this idea that if you assume energy is infinite, we’re not short of water on earth, we’re sort of water without salt.
CH: That’s right, yeah. I mean there are some places where it’d be relatively difficult to transport even fresh water from the ocean, but in California that’s not the case. California is at the end of the Colorado River, which is declining, and California of course has senior water rights, we take about 5 million acre feet of water per year.
So unlike Terraform, which is definitely developing new proprietary technology in-house, it’s quite exciting, but with solar desalination, you don’t need any new technology. You just go and build a plant essentially with stuff you can buy off the shelf. How much would it cost to build a plant that is able to substitute 100% of California’s water extraction from the Colorado River, essentially doubling Southern California’s water supply, and at the same time allowing you to fix the Salton Sea and also set up a massive light metals industry and a bunch of other things? And you need about $50 billion over 10 years, which sounds like a large amount of money, but as you said—
No, it doesn’t. I work in tech, it doesn’t sound like a lot of money.
CH: Well, what’s the marginal value of basically making that area around the Salton Sea, which is south of Palm Springs, habitable, just like the real estate lift there, would be measured in tens of trillions of dollars. So this is something that should obviously be done and we couldn’t do it five years ago with solar, but now we can and in five years it’ll be extremely obvious that we should have done it five years ago and it’s just almost a human welfare story.
The Salton Sea is a mistake, right? It was a result of an irrigation disaster accident 120 years ago, and we can now fix that, we can now stabilize that huge lake, stabilize its level, stabilize its salinity, allow fish to live in it again. It’s too saline right now for fish to live in and allow the communities around it to prosper and at the same time develop this massive industry here in the United States. We should definitely do this and if I can help in any way, I’d like to, again, if I wasn’t working on Terraform, I’d probably go and set that up to the best of my ability.
So again, what is stopping this? Is it just a matter of it’s going to happen, it’s just when? It’s basically these environmental regulations that just prevents you from building as many as you want? You talked about, “Solar panels are going to pave the planet”, I think is the phrase that you used on a recent post, is there a bit where it’s good to go slow so we don’t pave where we shouldn’t? Or are the payoffs just so large that we’re just being absolute idiots by not moving faster?
CH: I think we could definitely move faster. When it comes to the solar desal project in Southern California at the full scope of the blog post that I outlined, that would require an act of Congress because it would require negotiation with Mexico over water rights and things like that, which ironically allows you to get around all these aspects of the environmental protection regulations because once it’s authorized by Congress, they can basically put in a stipulation there that that’s okay, which is cool, but that would be the major obstacle to deploying something of that scale. Whereas with solar deployment for power or solar deployment for natural gas or oil production, that’s just kind of an inevitability that capitalism is taken care of as we speak.
Now as far as paving the world with solar, if in 50 years we come out with fusion power, that’s much, much better than solar, great, wonderful. I want fusion. I could have been working on fusion right now, but I think fusion is obviously what we need to fly to Pluto and back in a lifetime, for example. But then what do you say? Well, we take the solar panels that are currently, say, covering half of Nevada, and we just take them off the racks and pile them up somewhere in case we need them again, and then those areas go back to being the same desert that they were before. Except there is one ironic environmental impact of solar panels in these desert areas, which is they increase shade on the ground, they decrease surface temperatures, they increase moisture retention.
It reverses desertification.
CH: Yeah, they increase plant growth, which is absolutely insane. So it turns out that one of the major obstacles to solar plants deployed conventionally in say Nevada or parts of California in 50 years or 20 years is that maybe trees are growing. Trees have not grown here for thousands of years, the whole area was very lush 10,000 years ago, but it’s dried up since then, where trees could be growing between these panels and I think that would just be so hilarious. It’d be so amazing to see that, but it’s easy to get ahead of ourselves in that regard.
But certainly I think that California’s very forward leaning development of water distribution infrastructure, which was really very, very cutting edge with Hoover Dam and so on about a hundred years ago, one of my heroes, Henry Kaiser, was involved in developing all that irrigation stuff was the best they could do at the time with recently invented concrete, and hydroelectric power plants and stuff like that had only just been invented. But we can do a lot better now and we can kind of lift our boot from the neck of some of these environments that are really damaged. In particular the Imperial Valley and the Owens Valley and parts of the Central Valley as a result of basically us doing the best we could with what we had a hundred years ago, but we can do a lot better now.
Well, we didn’t even get to space, I didn’t ask you about the Vesuvius Scrolls, where you cracked the code.
CH: Yeah, I’m sorry that we’re running out of time. I think the more people who can work on this the better. There’s a huge talent pool kind of scratching their heads, wondering what’s next in tech and maybe not everyone wants to work on AI, and you should definitely work on hardware if you can, and Scrolls in your spare time.
The nice thing about hardware is that it’s a challenge that can reward you for decades. I like to say the best time to start working on hardware was 10 years ago and the second-best time is today. But all these projects, it’s fallen to our generation to do these things and we better damn well do them as quickly and as cleverly as you possibly can. But there’s almost infinite demand for talented smart people to go and apply themselves and learn new skills in these areas.
Casey Handmer, that was super interesting. There’s plenty of scope I think, for follow up, so we should definitely talk again sometime. But yeah, I mean it’s exciting, it’s good news, the idea that this potential is out there and I appreciate taking the time to walk through it.
CH: Oh, it’s been an absolute pleasure and thanks so much for all the great questions. It’s like a month’s supply of really tough, interesting, hard, fun questions in a single conversation.
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ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO LLAW’s ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Nuclear War
Yellowstone Caldera & Other Volcanoes (Note: There are three Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
And any country with nuclear weapons can offer guarantees of peace to others. This is what happened in 1994 when Russia, the UK and the US signed the …
Such a statement by Trump — or his White House — is no doubt bound to raise the hackles on the back of Kim Jong Un’s neck. If I were anyone living or militarily stationed in South Korea right now, I would be scared stiff, and those of us here in the USA and other countries around the world should at least be shaking in their boots.
Kim Jong Un and North Korea are not about to give up any part of their nuclear arsenal and Trump ought to clearly know that. Trump also ought to be well aware that Kim Jong Un is looking to expand his country’s nuclear arms capabilities, not reduce them.
This is the kind of “shooting from the hip lack of diplomacy” or forethought that Trump has always had, just as he has done this past week to rile up Ukraine, including his flagrant lie that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy started the Russia/Ukraine war, which, of course, has forced Trump to eat crow.
Trump is an embarrassment to the entire free world. We simply cannot have this kind of international “brow beating” in the dim light of this angry world of nuclear weapons of mass destruction coincident with threats that could almost instantly bring life on planet earth to an end. ~llaw
North Korea has issued a threat to the U.S., saying it will “counter the enemies’ strategic threat with our strategic means.”
The threat was made in a press statement issued by the chief of the Information Office at the DPRK Ministry of National Defense on Friday.
Newsweek has contacted the U.S. Department of Defense, via email, for comment.
Why It Matters
Pyongyang has long cited defense cooperation between the U.S. and South Korea, including joint exercises, as a destabilizing force that justifies its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Washington and Seoul have formed an alliance under a mutual defense treaty and 28,500 U.S. military personnel are stationed in South Korea to deter aggression from North Korea. The allies have frequently conducted combined military exercises.
What To Know
North Korea said “the U.S. and its vassal forces are getting evermore pronounced in their military provocations,” citing the presence of a B-1B strategic bomber over the Korean Peninsula on Thursday and the test-firing of a Minuteman 3 ICBM at the Vandenberg Space Force Base the day before.
“Such military muscle-flexing of the U.S. clearly show the invariable supremacy ambition of the present U.S. administration to gain an overwhelming edge of strength through the maintenance and updating of military capabilities capable of mounting a nuclear attack on any country and region of the world without prior warning,” Pyongyang said.
In this undated photo provided on January 29, 2025, by the North Korean government, its leader Kim Jong Un, front, second right, inspects a facility that produces nuclear material at an undisclosed location. AP
It went on: “The typical Yankee-style arrogance and shameless and gangster-like double-standards logic of the U.S., which brands the DPRK’s nuclear deterrence for self-defence as an injustice means and places ‘legality’ and ‘regularity’ on former’s moves for bolstering up nuclear force for hegemony, can never work on the DPRK.
“The DPRK’s nuclear force is a means for legitimate defence to safeguard the national sovereignty and the security of the region.”
Pyongyang ended with: “The DPRK’s solution to the military threat and challenge to the security being posed by the U.S. is clear and consistent.
“The DPRK will counter the strategic threat of the U.S. and other enemies with strategic means and continue its responsible military activities to control and manage the unstable security environment on the Korean peninsula with powerful deterrence.”
What People Are Saying
The South Korean Defense Ministry said of the U.S.-South Korea joint aerial drill on Thursday: “The training was conducted to display the U.S. extended deterrence capabilities against North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats and bolster interoperability of South Korea-U.S. combined forces.”
Pyongyang said that North Korea’s “accelerated bolstering up” is a “realistic requirement for coping with the military threat of the U.S. and its satellite countries, and that America’s behavior “proves why the DPRK armed forces’ building up of the capability to fight a war with nuclear deterrence as a pivot is a just and inevitable option.”
What Happens Next
The U.S. military will continue to conduct exercises with its South Korean and Japanese counterparts as tensions persist on the Korean Peninsula. The White House said Trump is committed to achieving his denuclearization goal by a “mix of toughness and diplomacy.”
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO LLAW’s ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Nuclear War
Yellowstone Caldera & Other Volcanoes (Note: There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
… reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. ; Liquidized & nbsp; whether the ignition of the arch of the fourth power unit of the Chernobyl nuclear …
After formation, Yellowstone’s calderas tend to fill with viscous rhyolite lava flows and domes that from broad plateaus or steep dome-like structures …
In order to keep abreast of the weekend nuclear news, I will post Saturday and Sunday’s news, but without editorial comment. If a weekend story warrants a critical review, it will show up on Monday’s posts . . .
If you are not familiar with the weekday daily blog post, this is how the nuclear news post works . . . llaw
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA”:
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available on this weekend’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
Bill Browder: Putin can’t afford to end the war in Ukraine | Superpowers … How Putin’s nuclear threats failed to stop Storm Shadow strikes in Russia | …
In order to keep abreast of the weekend nuclear news, I will post Saturday and Sunday’s news, but without editorial comment. If a weekend story warrants a critical review, it will show up on Monday’s posts . . .
If you are not familiar with the weekday daily blog post, this is how the nuclear news post works . . . llaw
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA”:
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There two Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available on this weekend’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
President Donald Trump endorsed the House GOP budget, but has sent mixed signals about Medicaid. HuffPost · Business. ‘Delusional’ Trump Openly Mocked …
LLAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD NEWS TODAY with the RISKS and CONSEQUENCES of TOMORROW
The following umpteenth update about the three year war on one Ukrainian frequently targeted power plant by Russia reported by the “International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)” continues to tell us the much ignored nuclear war tool referred to as Nuclear Power Plants.
Why can’t we the people, all of us everywhere, especially including those of us who reside in the USA, figure out that nuclear power plants are dangerously 2nd only to nuclear warheads and nuclear bombs in this contentious world of threatening nuclear war. The Russia/Ukraine war has proven over and over again that not only are nuclear power plants and their required facilities and utilities dangerous all by themselves but they are also rapidly becoming a huge part of even what we still, erroneously, call “conventional” war because we never stop hiding our collective heads in the sand, ignoring the reality of the problems that exist with every kind of use of ‘all things nuclear beyond a few medical procedures.
Forgetting for a moment about their potentially increasingly foreboding uses in times of war, they are also subject to terrorist attacks, earthquakes, tsunamis, construction failures, operational and functional mistakes, human errors — and the list goes on. Not only are nuclear power plants extremely dangerous, but we have nuclear waste spread all around the world with half-lives almost forever that we have no idea what to do with that are subject to massive radiation leaks as well as contamination of the ground and water they are stockpiled in or on nearby that will never be used for any useful purpose in the future.
Yet we are head over heals in love with the concept of more and more and more of nuclear power plants of all kinds, sizes, and shapes, some of which will actually use military-grade uranium fuel, which can only add to all the dangerous situations mentioned above. All this is in the face of the facts that nuclear energy is not safe, not cheap, subject to geographical financial and production greed, and its merits are built on lies and misunderstandings mostly promulgated by the nuclear industry itself along with all kinds of politicized biases and questionable governmental support.
There is also a huge chance that uranium fuel (or low-grade substitutes like thorium), mined much like coal, does not sufficiently exist on planet Earth to sustain the existing nuclear power plants much less building hordes of new ones. We need to spend our hard earned money on renewable power resources, e.g. wind, solar, hydro, geothermal produced energy, which is plentiful, safe, and far less costly. ~llaw
Update 277 – IAEA Director General Statement on Situation in Ukraine
20 Feb 2025
15/2025
Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) has been relying on a single off-site power line for more than a week now after its only remaining back-up line was lost, once again highlighting an extremely fragile nuclear safety situation during the military conflict, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said today.
Nuclear power plants (NPPs) need a secure supply of external electricity to cool their reactors and for other essential nuclear safety and security functions. However, this has been a major challenge over the past three years, with the ZNPP temporarily losing all off-site power eight times.
In the latest incident affecting the reliability of the supply of power from the grid, its sole 330 kilovolt (kV) back-up power line was disconnected on 11 February and has not yet been fully restored. This leaves Europe’s largest NPP entirely dependent on its only remaining 750 kV line. Before the conflict, it had a total of 10 power lines – six 750 kV and four 330 kV – available.
“The Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant still needs reliable supplies of off-site power for cooling purposes, even though its six reactors have been shut down for more than two years now,” Director General Grossi said. “The vulnerability of the external power situation remains a deep source of concern for nuclear safety.”
The ZNPP said the 330 kV line was disconnected last week due to the activation of the electrical protection system. The Ukrainian regulatory body informed the IAEA that it was the result of unspecified military activity and that the power line had been damaged. The IAEA team at the ZNPP currently continues to gather further information regarding the status of the back-up power supply to the site.
Further underlining the constant risks to nuclear safety, the IAEA team based at the site heard an explosion close to the ZNPP on 12 February, coinciding with unconfirmed reports of a drone attack approximately 300 meters from the site. The team has over the past week continued to hear other daily explosions at varying distances from the ZNPP. No damage to the site has been reported.
The IAEA team continues to carry out walkdowns across the ZNPP as part of the work to monitor and assess nuclear safety and security.
The IAEA remains in contact with both sides regarding the next rotation of IAEA personnel at the ZNPP, after it was delayed last week due to intense military activity in the area.
At the Chornobyl NPP site, firefighters are continuing to put out small fires that keep smouldering and spreading on the roof of the New Safe Confinement (NSC), after it was struck on 14 February by a drone that pierced a hole in the large structure built to cover the reactor destroyed in the 1986 accident.
The IAEA team based at the site, which was granted unrestricted access to examine the impact of the explosion, conducts regular walkdowns and radiation measurements to independently monitor the situation. The team’s measurements continue to show normal gamma radiation dose rate values near the NSC compared to those recorded by the IAEA since it established a continuous presence at the site just over two years ago.
The IAEA teams based at Ukraine’s other NPPs – Khmelnytskyy, Rivne and South Ukraine – have continued to report frequent air raid alarms over the past week and were also informed of the presence of drones within the areas surrounding the respective sites.
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ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO LLAW’s ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Nuclear War
Yellowstone Caldera & Other Volcanoes (Note: There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
The study states that SMRs, which are smaller than existing nuclear power plants and could be faster and less expensive to build, are a viable option …
A robust conventional and nuclear posture that deters Russian military aggression is far less costly than an active war. Deterrence must also be more …
South Korea finalised on Friday a new energy mix plan that envisages the construction of two new large-scale nuclear … Israel and Hamas at War · Japan …
IAEA Weekly News
21 February 2025
Read the top news and updates published on IAEA.org this week.
The IAEA Director General has been in Japan this week, supporting local efforts to enhance nuclear safety and environmental remediation, as the country prepares to restart its nuclear power plants closed since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. Read more →
Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) has been relying on a single off-site power line for more than a week now after its only remaining back-up line was lost, once again highlighting an extremely fragile nuclear safety situation during the military conflict, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said today. Read more →
IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi joined scientists from the People’s Republic of China, the Republic of Korea, and Switzerland, along with IAEA experts, as they collected seawater samples near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station today. Read more →
The IAEA will host the first ever International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Nuclear Energy at its headquarters in Vienna from 3 to 4 December 2025. Read more →
An IAEA expert mission was deployed to Suva, Fiji, to support the recovery and transportation of radium-226 to the USA, where the sources will be used as a feedstock to produce actinium-225, an alpha-emitting isotope which is increasingly used in targeted cancer treatments. IAEA supports countries in managing legacy radium-226 sources under the IAEA’s Global Radium Management Initiative. Read more →
President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev signing the INF Treaty in the East Room of the White House on December 8, 1987, which was voided in 2019, proving that treaties and other agreements between or among nations mean very little in the grand scheme of international politics and potential war. (Note: See the article for description and photo credits)
LLAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD NEWS TODAY with the RISKS and CONSEQUENCES of TOMORROW
The following report from the think tank “Stimson” — a nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization that focuses on international security issues, analyzing policy evaluations and recommendations on nuclear proliferation, arms control, and conflicts in global security — is an excellent and thorough look at “how” and perhaps “why” the United States is responsible for much of the existing threat of nuclear war. Today we and the rest of the world is left with nothing but something called “deterrence”, a form of avoiding nuclear war through creating and maintaining a more powerful nuclear armed capability than our nuclear armed neighbors, which cannot last, primarily because of the constantly spiraling cost that could bankrupt the very concept of “money”, which we all worship.
It is wrong for the U.S. to place all of the nuclear threats on Russia, China, or even North Korea because when it comes to policy and practice disagreements including war, even nuclear war, we fail to practice what we preach — or as other countries might consider our political and military posture — hypocritical.
And, I will add, with considerable concern, that with the obvious treachery of our new president (#47) that the hypocritical moniker becomes all the more visibly apparent and critical to the future well-being if not the the annihilation of mankind and most other life on planet Earth. ~llaw
Gambling on Armageddon
How US Nuclear Policies Are Undercutting Deterrence and Lowering the Threshold for Nuclear War
Questioning the logic of U.S. nuclear weapons policy in the 21st Century
Stabilizing Nuclear Policies in a Destabilized WorldChina, Russia, and the United States have each embarked on a drastic overhaul of their nuclear weapons arsenals. Arms control and non-proliferation efforts have faltered while the few remaining agreements between the great powers slowly drift toward expiration. However, a new nuclear arms race is not inevitable and should not be treated as such. This report identifies and critiques the logic and trends underpinning the United States’ nuclear modernization agenda and charts a path toward a more responsible strategy of nuclear deterrence.
The authors wish to thank our Henry L. Stimson Center colleagues, Dan Grazier, Julia Gledhill, Hunter Slingbaum, Will Smith, and Nicole Gilbert for their advice, input, and collaboration in initiating this project; Justine Sullivan, Caitlin Goodman, and Joaquin Matamis for their hard work and flexibility in its production and promotion; and Stimson Center President Brian Finlay and Senior Vice President of Research Programs Rachel Stohl for their continued support and leadership in all of our work.
Special thanks to Congressman John Tierney for his early input on the report and willingness to write such a timely and compelling foreword for it; and to Ben Loehrke of the Stanley Foundation, who provided us with a thoughtful, constructive, and thorough peer review.
We also want to thank our peers and colleagues in the field: James Acton, Matthew Fay, Eric Gomez, Adam Mount, Gabe Murphy, and Scott Strgacich, for their help in highlighting the critical issues in the field of nuclear weapons policy and for crystalizing the need for writing this report.
Finally, we would like to thank the Colombe Foundation, Stand Together, the New-Land Foundation, the Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellowship, and Ploughshares Fund, without whose generous support this report would not have been possible.
Responsibility for the content of this report rests with the authors alone and does not necessarily reflect the views of our colleagues or Stimson.
Foreword
Confronting the New Nuclear Sword of Damocles
By Rep. John Tierney
The risks posed by the new global nuclear arms race are stark.
Driven by domestic politics, regional conflicts, international distrust, and parochial interests, the world’s nuclear powers are rearming — and the threat of nuclear coercion has once again cast its shadow over our politics and international discourse. Regrettably, today the nightmare scenario of a nuclear war in our lifetimes — launched either through accident, miscalculation, or madness — is no longer unthinkable, and everyday Americans must confront the reality that they can no longer take their safety and security for granted.
In this inclusive composition, “Gambling on Armageddon,” Geoff Wilson, Christopher Preble, and Lucas Ruiz describe the severe state of play concerning nuclear weapons policy in the United States, provide an informative sketch of how the current situation developed, and demonstrate why U.S. nuclear policy should not have to continue on this path going forward.
This extensive work gives those who have not had the time or inclination to follow this often-opaque policy issue a compelling snapshot of the U.S. arsenal’s origin, development, and often questionable policy justification; it also provides seasoned analysts and policymakers with a single reference that invites a critical and fresh take on how the United States might proceed amidst such uncertain times.
In sum, the authors have done a service to the policymaking community in presenting crucial facts and a persuasive counterargument to the same, tired “spend-more” security argument. This is more important now than ever as the need for a saner approach to U.S. nuclear posture reaches a critical juncture in the international drive toward an arms race that is at once unwise, immoral, financially debilitating, and potentially ruinous.
Rep. John Tierney is executive director at the Center for Arms Control & Non-Proliferation and the Council for a Livable World. A former nine-term Congressman from Massachusetts (1997-2015), he served on the House Intelligence Committee and chaired the National Security and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee of the Government Oversight and Reform Committee.
Executive Summary
The United States has embarked on a path to modernize and expand its nuclear arsenal, at an estimated cost of $1.7 trillion over 30 years. This astronomical spending is unlikely to enhance Americans’ security—and may well undermine it by accelerating a looming nuclear arms race.
Policies that sound tough, but undermine strategic stability, do not enhance national security. The decision to continue the current course is being driven by serious misconceptions about the importance of nuclear superiority. At best, current plans commit U.S. taxpayers to costly weapons programs, including the development of new tactical nuclear weapons that do little to further real deterrence. At worst, the drive for an “all-of-the-above” supremacy approach to U.S. nuclear strategy, with an increased focus on weapons meant to fight and “win” a nuclear war, will only stoke the fires of the global nuclear arms race while lowering the threshold for nuclear use. Ultimately, such policies would cast aside President Ronald Reagan’s wise conclusion that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Thus, reversing these trends is essential to maintaining U.S. deterrence and global strategic stability while preventing a further slide toward nuclear misadventure, miscalculation, or madness.
This report focuses attention on the discrete capabilities required to sustain a credible nuclear deterrent. It considers the origins of the nuclear triad during the Cold War and explains why a similar posture is not fit for purpose in the contemporary era. Amidst severe fiscal constraints, including a massive and growing public debt, spending on nuclear weapons draws resources away from conventional forces and missions. The intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) leg of the nuclear triad is particularly ripe for scrutiny, especially because the Sentinel missile program is grossly over budget and behind schedule.
Policymakers contemplating the various rationales offered in support of nuclear modernization should:
First, commit to a legitimate sole-purpose, “deterrence-first” nuclear approach, focused on a secure second-strike submarine capability during the next ten years;
Second, challenge the assumption that new tactical nuclear systems and platforms are needed because the advocates for these programs have failed to show how they enhance U.S. security and have ignored the discrimination and escalation risks; and
Finally, reaffirm the U.S. commitment to forego future explosive nuclear testing. A decision to break the current moratorium on explosive nuclear testing would give a green light to other nuclear weapons states to do the same, ceding a significant strategic advantage to U.S. rivals.
The United States—indeed, any country—has nothing to gain from a world where the risk of nuclear war has risen. Therefore, U.S. lawmakers should reject policies that might make that outcome more likely, especially if such policies are based on claims about the declining efficacy of nuclear deterrence in favor of a belief in the value of nuclear supremacy, a concept that has never been tested—and never should be.
The United States and the world came close to the brink of nuclear disaster on more than one occasion during the Cold War. Learning from that experience, U.S. policymakers should commit to preventing an unconstrained nuclear arms race that would do little to make Americans, U.S. allies, or the world, any safer.
Introduction
The world is caught in the throes of a new global nuclear arms race.
Every nuclear-armed nation is in the process of rapidly modernizing, expanding, and diversifying its nuclear arsenal.1 In capitals across the globe, serious public debates are taking place regarding the role nuclear weapons might play in regional and global conflicts of the future. Meanwhile, several non-nuclear powers are publicly weighing whether they should consider abrogating their Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) commitments in favor of building their own deterrent in the face of rising great power tensions, outright nuclear coercion, regional conflict, and the erosion of global nuclear norms that have persisted since the end of the Second World War.
For its part, the United States is leading the charge in this effort. What in 2011 was initially pitched as a comparatively modest $214-billion, 10-year plan to modernize and refurbish U.S. nuclear delivery systems, warheads, and critical nuclear infrastructure has grown into at least a $1.7-trillion effort over 30 years to replace every single leg of the U.S. nuclear triad — that is, the strategic bombers, land-based ICBMs, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) aboard nuclear-powered ballistic submarines (SSBNs) that comprise the “strategic” part of the U.S. nuclear arsenal — and to pave the way for a whole new generation of nuclear weapons through the development of new industrial capability.2
The projected cost of this effort is staggering. Yet the dollar amount, as well as the decision to proceed with the replacement of every leg of the triad simultaneously, which is driving these costs— has escaped close scrutiny. This lapse is doubly surprising given that triad modernization has resulted in significant, and thus far unresolved, issues of prioritization and oversight and risks destabilizing an already tense strategic environment.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the total U.S. nuclear modernization enterprise is estimated to cost American taxpayers $75 billion annually between 2023 and 2032.3 To put that figure into context, that is the equivalent of two Manhattan Projects, the four-year American program to build the world’s first atomic bombs during World War II, every year during this nine-year period.4 By contrast, adjusting for inflation to 2024 dollars, the Reagan administration spent just $70.5 billion on nuclear weapons during its entire eight years in office.5
Unfortunately, this massive influx in spending is coming at a time when many of the norms that once governed the actions of the world’s nuclear-armed states have broken down.6 Nuclear saber-rattling has become common, treaties have lapsed or been suspended, and regional wars between nuclear-armed and nonnuclear-armed states have erupted across the globe. Experts and political leaders have begun to publicly reconsider the utility and purpose of nuclear weapons, and many of our foundational beliefs concerning nuclear weapons, deterrence, and the commitment of nuclear-armed nations to their promises to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons from the globe.
This breakdown in norms, as well as global instability and expanding regional wars involving nuclear powers, has even caused some prominent leaders and experts to propose the adoption of certain Cold War-era nuclear warfighting strategies—ignoring President Reagan’s famous dictum that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”7
Seemingly oblivious to these warnings, experts and leaders on both sides of the U.S. political aisle have proposed that the United States adopt what they claim is a Reaganesque “peace-through-strength” strategy and increase yearly Pentagon spending on both conventional and nuclear weapons above already historic levels.8 With “peace through strength” as a prevailing talking point, many in Washington focus primarily on whether the United States is spending enough on nuclear weapons, rather than whether the current record-setting nuclear budget will actually enhance U.S. national security.
Unfortunately, unlike in previous nuclear arms races, the drive for expanded systems and new nuclear weapons has not accompanied a commensurate diplomatic effort to curb new and destabilizing nuclear developments and deployments. Instead, global hostilities and domestic politics have led to the toppling or suspension of most of the world’s remaining nuclear arms control treaties; now, for the first time in recent memory, the world faces an immediate future in which few arms control agreements remain.9
In the absence of arms control agreements, or even just a sustained effort to negotiate new ones, the world is now at a dangerous crossroads. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, nuclear powers and their leaders have approached nuclear weapons issues, ostensibly, from a standpoint of deterrence. The purpose of nuclear arsenals was to safeguard countries’ sovereignty and ensure that any attempt by another nuclear nation to coerce or defeat a particular country through violence could be made too costly to be worth any potential gains.
U.S. nuclear modernization is estimated to cost American taxpayers $75 billion annually between 2023 and 2032—the equivalent of two Manhattan Projects per year.
But this new arms race, abetted by the breakdown in international norms, parochial and political domestic interests, and the abandonment of the diplomatic processes that limited the deployment of destabilizing types of weapons, has driven the world back to a place where calls for new tactical, less-than-deterrent, or battlefield nuclear weapons are given serious consideration. A return to this warfighting paradigm should be seen as incredibly dangerous, however. Proponents of new systems with smaller warheads argue that they are more “usable” because they supposedly stay below the threshold that might trigger a full-scale nuclear retaliation, often characterized through the concept of mutually assured destruction. In a world where such “usable” systems are deployed by states that are increasingly at odds with one another, leaders might view nuclear weapons not as the final and unthinkable last resort in a conflict that has run out of control, but instead as practical, or even advantageous, tools in times of crisis.
Proposals for nuclear-warfighting weapons are not hypothetical. At least three new nonstrategic nuclear weapons—the sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N), the W76-2 low-yield Trident Submarine warhead, and the Long-Range Stand-Off Weapon (LRSO)—are currently working their way through the U.S. nuclear development and production pipeline, or have already been deployed alongside U.S. forces. Meanwhile, nuclear spending proponents and “peace-through-strength” advocates are calling for other escalatory steps, such as the development of new road-mobile U.S. ballistic missiles, the deployment of new tactical nuclear forces into the Indo-Pacific and European theaters, and even the full resumption of explosive U.S. nuclear testing.10
With the world already perched on the precipice of a dangerous global conflict and a new nuclear arms race, this paper addresses the following critical questions. First, do current and proposed U.S. policies actually reinforce U.S. nuclear deterrence? And second, is there a logical and realistic strategy behind the new nuclear arsenal that the United States is building at such great cost?
This report examines these questions by offering a brief examination of deterrence theory with a corresponding survey of how the U.S. nuclear arsenal evolved into its current form. It then evaluates current U.S. nuclear weapons proposals in terms of their overall deterrent effect and offers several rational alternatives that might be taken to mitigate nuclear risk, reduce budgetary waste, and increase fiscal accountability—while building a stronger national security policy and a more reliable deterrent. Ultimately, a failure to correct the course of current U.S. nuclear weapons plans might lead to the adoption of costly and destabilizing systems that could undermine U.S. deterrence, weaken U.S. national security, and even increase the likelihood of nuclear war.
IMAGE 1. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev signing the INF Treaty in the East Room of the White House. December 8, 1987.
It is paramount to distinguish between formal models of deterrence and the political catchphrase that the term has become. The term “deterrence” has been bandied about so much in modern political and ideological discourse that it has become diluted into a concept largely synonymous with “power projection,” or a generalized idea of military strength. This has made deterrence both useful to those who want to sound tough on national security issues, as well as distasteful to those who are seeking a less militarized approach to foreign policy. However, deterrence is an essential term to use in the modern nuclear context, especially in a period when seemingly provocative and destabilizing nuclear weapons proposals are framed as “necessary” for ensuring deterrence capacity and credibility.
The authors of this report are principally concerned with the original, core concept of deterrence as a strategy designed to avoid or discourage open conflict through the outward projection of capability, preparedness, and resoluteness. Properly conceived, an effective deterrent raises the potential costs of a war to such a point that no rational actor would choose to initiate one.
Although deterrence and nuclear superiority are sometimes used interchangeably in contemporary political debate, the concept of deterrence stands in stark contrast to that of superiority, strategies concerned with the ability to fight, overpower, or coerce an opponent—often regardless of cost—due to significant advantage or power disparity. The former is aimed at discouraging an adversary from taking an action that threatens the deterring state’s core interests—first and foremost attack on sovereign territory; the latter is aimed at forcing an adversary to take an action favored by the coercing state. Such demands, by their nature, encompass a much wider set of objectives than those of deterrence, many of which are not vital interests.
The nuclear weapons states have, perhaps partly as a matter of luck, so far managed to avoid what their predecessors in the pre-nuclear age could not—direct confrontations leading to full-scale war.11 Deterrence strategies should be directed toward maintaining and extending this strategic stability and ensuring that all parties realize that any nuclear exchange, regardless of magnitude, is a critical error that no one will walk away from unscathed.
To be clear, this is not as simple as it sounds. Nuclear deterrence is, essentially, an unproven theory conceptualized by a group of game theorists during the early days of the Cold War that has been adapted and extended ever since. Nuclear weapons have not been used as retribution since 1945; thus the theory’s effectiveness is a matter of speculation and supposition. Yet the logic of these theories—grounded in all parties’ likely annihilation—seems to explain why. Deterrence hinges upon a fragile balance of terror. If the United States, or any other nuclear state for that matter, ever abandons the taboo of nuclear use—even in favor of a so-called “limited nuclear strike”—the stabilizing power of nuclear deterrence will most likely be abandoned as well. Once Pandora’s Box has been opened, there is no putting the horror of nuclear weapons use away again.
By contrast, nuclear weapons and strategies designed for superiority—in other words, those that prioritize the capability to overwhelm, disrupt, or disable an opponent’s nuclear arsenal or defenses (a.k.a. “disarming” first strikes)—are often couched in the language of defense. Such weapons and doctrine, their advocates say, are needed to maintain parity in a multi-peer environment.12 Proponents of nuclear superiority envision a world in which fighting and winning a nuclear war is not only possible, but perhaps even likely, and should thus be prepared for. They argue that achieving both technical and numerical nuclear superiority would ensure a favorable advantage that is presumed to reduce a state’s expected costs in a nuclear war, increase its resolve, and provide it with coercive bargaining leverage.13 The search for “parity,” then, offers these advocates a useful euphemism to advance their goal of superiority. Under this rubric, they call for more, and new, nuclear weapons, fueling the arms race currently underway.14
The Deterrence Paradox
Fundamentally, however, rapid new nuclear weapons development is strategically destabilizing. Competitive decisions to innovate do not occur in a vacuum and nuclear rivals will respond to each other’s actions. It is therefore unrealistic to think that any nuclear power would be willing to allow an opponent to develop new nuclear weapons and capabilities, thereby eroding confidence in their own deterrent, without responding in kind. As political scientist Arthur Lee Burns stated in 1957, “[new weapons] may cause the major contending powers to adopt new or radically extended strategies, calling in their turn for a complete reassessment of national interests, and of the value of resources, alliances, and conventional armaments.”15
Suppose one nation learns that a rival is rapidly developing systems that could dominate, overwhelm, or defeat its defenses and immobilize or destroy the weapons that comprise its deterrent, those that are held in reserve to be used only in the direst circumstances. In that case, a competitive response dictates that the nation must do the same to offset any strategic advantage its rival might gain to maintain deterrent parity. At best, this is how arms races are sustained. At worst, it can drive nations into conflict.16
Deterrence theorists recognized this dichotomy between deterrence and superiority even at the beginning of the first nuclear age. As Bernard Brodie, one of the founding thinkers of modern deterrence theory, cautioned in 1959, “the capacity to deter is usually confused with the capacity to win a war,” but “deterrence has always suggested something relative, not absolute.” He ultimately concluded that deterrence “does not depend on superiority.” Indeed, deterrence might even foster restraint and a willingness to negotiate, whereas a fixation on winning is likely to produce the opposite effect. “For the sake of deterrence,” Brodie explained, “we want always to choose the less provocative of two policies, even if it may mean some sacrifice of efficiency. But if we were in fact interested primarily in winning and only secondarily in deterrence, we should be extremely loath to make any such sacrifices.”17
Brodie’s early appraisal of deterrence dynamics and the lure of trying to achieve superiority eerily foreshadowed the recurring debates surrounding U.S. nuclear strategy since the end of World War II—and which are prevalent again today. But much has transpired since Brodie first contemplated such things. In order to understand where we are now, we need to revisit how we got here.
A Brief History of the US Nuclear Triad
At the dawn of the first nuclear age, the United States had exclusive control over the greatest paradigm-shifting weapons ever developed. However, the development of that emerging arsenal into its current form today was not an intentional process guided by a clearheaded strategy. Indeed, it often had more to do with the competing interests of the uniformed service branches and political constituencies.
After the Soviet Union conducted its first successful nuclear test in August 1949, the United States lost its monopoly on nuclear weaponry, requiring a reconceptualization of the bomb’s place in defense strategy. The U.S. Army and Navy were locked in an intellectual battle for their continued relevancy with a rising and newly independent U.S. Air Force (USAF), which had the only real-world experience deploying nuclear weapons in battle. Each of the services developed theories of nuclear use based on their strengths, doctrines, and parochial interests.
This fierce interservice rivalry eventually resulted in a triad of delivery vehicles. Debates ebbed and flowed between those advocating for a larger arsenal to bolster warfighting capacity and those who realized that even a single nuclear strike could initiate an irretrievable spiral toward a nuclear holocaust.18 Under President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “New Look,” the U.S. Air Force’s share of the military budget rose to about 45% while the Navy and Army’s collective share fell from 65% to 51%.19 The resulting policy focus enshrined an approach of overwhelming nuclear response, “massive retaliation,” to Russian aggression in Asia or Europe as the first nuclear doctrine.20
As the theoretical precursor of later nuclear deterrence theories, the “New Look” conceptualized nuclear weapons as both a deterrent, by threatening to use them in response to aggression, while also preserving a belief in the utility of nuclear weapons for warfighting.21
In the late 1950s, the Navy leveraged the emergence of ballistic missile technology to argue for a survivable nuclear force. Recognizing the futility of fighting a nuclear war, the sea service, under the guidance of Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Arleigh Burke, developed “finite deterrence”—a policy that emphasized the minimal number of nuclear weapons needed to ensure a credible second-strike capability, while not depending on land-based delivery systems that were vulnerable to a disarming first strike.22 Finite deterrence hinged on the theory that both the United States and the Soviet Union were afraid of nuclear war and were thus hesitant to initiate one, what Thomas Schelling called the “reciprocal fear of surprise attack.”23 The finite deterrence doctrine argued that SSBNs, with their inherent stealth and survivability, disincentivized a first strike that would most likely fail to eliminate all retaliatory forces, creating strategic stability at a lower cost. When the Navy’s Polaris SLBM program was first deployed in 1960, it established the service’s strategic position by creating the sea-based leg of the triad and enshrining a survivable second-strike capability as the crux of deterrence strategy.
IMAGE 2. In session at the Pentagon, 10 February 1960. They are (from left to right): General Lyman Lemnitzer, Chief of Staff, U.S. Army; Admiral Arleigh A. Burke, Chief of Naval Operations; General Nathan Twining, USAF, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; General Thomas D. White, Chief of Staff, U.S. Air Force; and General David M. Shoup, Commandant, U.S. Marine Corps. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives.
Meanwhile, to regain lost ground in the defense budget, the Army devised its “flexible response” doctrine. Based on the concern that a ground war with the Soviet Union in Europe was still possible, the flexible response doctrine emphasized a need to give the president a range of military options, both conventional and nuclear, that could be adapted for any situation.24 Therefore, U.S. troops were deployed in Europe as a tripwire against a general Soviet invasion of any NATO territory. In that scenario, where Soviet conventional forces were seen as having a numerical advantage over NATO formations, a flexible response envisioned that tactical nuclear weapons would level the playing field. This led to the development of a bewildering array of nuclear weapons that mirrored conventional archetypes, such as nuclear bazookas, anti-air missile batteries, artillery shells, and landmines. But the notion that most U.S. nuclear weapons earmarked for the defense of Europe would have been detonated on Western European soil was not an attractive prospect for U.S. allies.
Finally, Air Force officials unveiled their “counterforce” doctrine, which prioritized targeting the Soviet Union’s nuclear and conventional forces while reserving a portion of the U.S. arsenal to threaten countervalue (city-targeting) strikes. This strategy allowed the USAF to develop a wide range of nuclear arms for use at any level of conflict, while still maintaining the primacy of its increasingly complex and costly strategic bomber programs, despite major advancements in ballistic missile technology.25 Ultimately, though, these two strategies proved to be unwieldy. The countervalue strategy put the USAF in the uncomfortable role of justifying targeting millions of innocent civilians while still paying lip service to the Geneva Convention. Counterforce appeared out of step with the continued development of early warning capabilities. Counterforce also necessitated the implementation of launch-on-warning doctrines for land-based forces. These changes were driven by a “use-it-or-lose-it” mindset in which vulnerable silo-based missiles are launched after receiving a warning of an incoming missile strike. As a practical matter, USAF missiles targeted against rival nuclear forces would most likely pass their rival missiles in midair (opponents having registered the launch) and ultimately land on missile fields or mobile launchers that had already fired their weapons.
The Triad Takes Shape
Ultimately, the U.S. government amalgamated the three parochial Cold War deterrence strategies, at least rhetorically, to establish the U.S. nuclear triad. Rather than reining in the U.S. nuclear enterprise, the Kennedy and Johnson administrations justified the force structure ex post facto, largely ensuring that parts of each doctrine survived despite changing tactics, technologies, budgets, and enemies. This helped to spur the development of redundant systems across services, even as the United States never fully committed to either a pure deterrence or offensive strategy.26 Of greatest concern, the existence of a wide range of nuclear assets led to proposals of nuclear use amidst crises—bringing the world uncomfortably close to Armageddon on more than one occasion—when there were still nonnuclear or diplomatic options on the table. This “if-we-have-them, why-can’t-we-use them?” mindset remains a significant challenge today and will be discussed later in this paper.
The triad continued under the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter, despite a series of arms limitation treaties negotiated and signed during their tenures. President Reagan perhaps came closer than any of his predecessors in questioning the utility of nuclear arms. He reported “horror” during his first briefing on the nuclear war plans he might be required to authorize as president. Reagan’s doubts deepened with the lessons learned from major wargames conducted during his administration, leading to a major reversal in his nuclear rhetoric and eventually a joint statement with his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”27
President George H. W. Bush capitalized on this momentum through unilateral executive action with his Presidential Nuclear Initiatives (PNIs) of 1991. Through these unilateral executive actions, Bush Sr. ended the Army’s and Marine Corps’ nuclear missions, withdrew many tactical nuclear weapons from Europe, and removed all nuclear weapons from the surface navy and attack submarine fleets. By taking a bold course of action and challenging the Russians to follow suit, President Bush seemed to be on course to dismantle the U.S. nuclear arsenal’s warfighting elements, but this effort was cut short when Bush lost his bid for reelection.28
President Bill Clinton initiated the first Nuclear Posture Review in 1994. As chair of the review, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy Ashton Carter focused on the secure second-strike capability as the fundamental guarantor of U.S. nuclear deterrence and sought to move the United States toward a sea-based monad.29 Carter’s plan was foiled, however, when triad proponents, led by Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC), rallied to save it.30 Since that debate, the triad has been persistently touted as the optimal form of U.S. nuclear deterrence with few willing to scrutinize the assumptions underpinning it. Notably, when Ashton Carter became secretary of defense in the final two years of President Barack Obama’s second term, he never publicly questioned the triad’s strategic rationale.
The Current Program of Record
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 and the end of the Cold War, U.S. nuclear strategy and posture seemed to proceed on autopilot. The adversary the triad was formulated to deter no longer existed, leaving it without a clearly defined raison d’être. Strategic bombers were moved off alert, plutonium pit production (the creation of nuclear bomb cores) stopped, and global nuclear weapons testing ended—with a few notable exceptions from states that are not signatories to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)—and the United States and Russia ratified a series of strategic arms reduction treaties that limited the number of warheads and bombs that each country could deploy.31
U.S. nuclear forces had little role to play in the post-9/11 wars and the Global War on Terror. This led to a critical state of laxity within parts of the force. Reports of flagging morale and discipline rose,32 shocking errors and mistakes were made,33 and significant questions began to arise regarding the role of nuclear arms in U.S. national security. Were they unusable—or even a vulnerability—in deterring or defeating non-state actors and terrorist organizations?
Aside from concerns about the proliferation of nuclear technology within the so-called “axis of evil”—Iran, North Korea, and Iraq—the global security environment during the early 21st century overwhelmingly focused on the threat of terrorism, not nuclear arms racing. Indeed, the United States’ and Russia’s ratification of the landmark New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) in 2010 seemed to continue a decades-long trend toward global nuclear arms reduction.34
But even so, the triad survived.
The Influence of Politics and Parochialism on Nuclear Strategy
Ironically, in an effort to find U.S. Senate support for the ratification of New START, the Obama administration agreed to invest a comparatively modest $214 billion into new nuclear weapons programs, originally billed as a “modernization” plan to update aging elements of the triad.35 But once the doors had opened to modernizing some elements of the arsenal, groups with vested interests began lobbying for more money for additional weapons and new nuclear missions.
The ossification of U.S. nuclear strategy during the Cold War into separate, service-oriented, strategies for nuclear use (i.e., counterforce, finite deterrence, and flexible response), ensured that the wasteful and contradictory “belt-and-suspenders” approach to nuclear posture remained in place. And, more important, this posture was poised to expand when the budgetary floodgates reopened.
IMAGE 3. Air Force Senior Airman Aric Desantiago and Airman 1st Class Glenn McCray perform maintenance on a Minuteman III weapon system at a launch facility in Colorado on February 12, 2024.
Ultimately, lawmakers decided on a simultaneous approach to completely overhaul all three legs of the nuclear triad within the same 30-year period. The Air Force championed the need for both new stealthy radar-penetrating bombers to carry new stealthy radar-penetrating nuclear cruise missiles, as well as new silo-based ICBMs fixed throughout the American Mid- and Mountain West. Meanwhile, the Navy called for a whole new fleet of stealthy, secure second-strike SSBNs to patrol the world’s oceans. Moreover, the national security establishment has now dusted off old nuclear supremacy talking points, opening the modernization effort up to a new host of lower-yield, tactical nuclear weapons that will blur the line between U.S. strategic and conventional forces.
Evidence of domestic politics and parochialism driving at least part of the triad modernization debate can be seen in the fact that there had been some discussion over the years about reducing the nuclear triad down to a dyad by cutting the land-based ballistic missile force.36 Yet, much has changed following Sen. Thurmond’s objections during the Clinton administration. The idea of cutting the ICBM leg of the triad is now perceived as particularly unpopular among key constituencies in Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming—the states that host ICBMs. Congressional resistance to eliminating the ICBM leg of the triad has combined with corporate opportunism; defense contractors are suddenly gleeful about the prospect of developing the first new U.S. ICBMs since 1970. Ironically, then, the signing of a verifiable arms control treaty that would have allowed the United States to significantly reduce its number of deployed ICBMs instead somehow became a reason for U.S. taxpayers to shell out more than $140 billion to build an entirely new generation of land-based missiles.37 New START should have provided real room for lawmakers to make responsible reductions to at least one leg of the triad if not all three; instead, it created an opportunity to spend more money on redundant nuclear capabilities.
More Spending Yields Poor Results
All told, triad modernization entails three major new strategic nuclear weapons programs: the development of the Sentinel ICBM, Columbia-class SSBN, and B-21 bomber, which is designed to carry both conventional and nuclear weapons. All these programs are now significantly behind schedule and straining the national defense budget.
The Sentinel missile alone is 81% over budget and years behind schedule, triggering a “critical” Nunn-McCurdy breach that forced the Pentagon to publicly justify its continued development to Congress.38 Meanwhile, the lead Columbia-class SSBN is anticipated to be finished between 12 and 16 months behind schedule and hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. Ultimately, the prospects for both programs are only expected to worsen as supply chain issues and skilled worker shortages continue to impact production timelines.39
IMAGE 4. The B-21 Raider continues flight testing at Northrop Grumman’s manufacturing facility on Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.
The B-21 bomber program, the specific, per-unit costs of which remain classified, was originally pitched to Congress in 2014 with a total topline price tag of $55 billion.40 At the time, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh said that he had high confidence in the Air Force’s cost estimate because he controlled the requirements for the new aircraft and was comfortable saying “no” to, “all kinds of people wanting to add new things to this bomber.” Despite Welsh’s assurances, however, the estimated cost of the B-21 program has grown from $55 billion to $203 billion.41
But Congress’s determination to spend a generation’s worth of wealth in order to update older “legacy” triad systems and weapons leads to an equally important follow-on question: If the United States is willing to invest many hundreds of billions of dollars into developing new nuclear weapons that will be in the arsenal for at least the next half-century, how will the new weapons be supplied, maintained, and upgraded—especially given ballooning costs, significant industry disruptions, and reliability problems that are likely to be created by introducing so many new systems at once?
A Lack of Accountability Regarding New and Future Weapons
Perhaps the best way to measure the scope and scale of the new nuclear arms race is to consider the industrial preparation to develop and maintain an entirely new generation of U.S. nuclear weapons and warheads.
Within the current program of record, the United States is already updating the factories and laboratories where the peach-sized plutonium bomb cores—or “pits”—are made, in order to meet a legislative mandate to build 80 new plutonium pits a year by 2030.42 This, more than any other indicator, demonstrates the United States’ commitment to a future with nuclear weapons as a central pillar of its foreign policy, and one concerned more with superiority than deterrence.
The United States already maintains thousands of plutonium cores in storage just in case it should suddenly need to build more bombs; yet current plans assume that the United States should be producing new cores, for new weapons, based on new designs, at a rate of almost 100 a year. The addition of as many as 1,000 new nuclear bomb cores during the next ten years would represent a dramatic expansion of the U.S. arsenal.
That effort goes hand in hand with plans to build the first new generation of U.S. nuclear warheads since the 1980s.43 The moves to produce these warheads, including the W93 nuclear warhead meant to be carried aboard U.S. and UK nuclear submarines, as well as recent proposals to modify existing warheads (such as the W76-2 and B61-13) to carry out new missions, has occurred with little strategic discussion or public debate.
Unfortunately, much like the triad modernization program, these new warhead initiatives have encountered many problems. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued repeated warnings about the serious lack of accountability in the U.S. nuclear weapons enterprise, noting that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the office within the Department of Energy in charge of building and maintaining the actual warheads and fissile material that comprise the U.S. nuclear arsenal, has failed to provide a realistic program cost and meet production schedules. According to a 2024 GAO report, the NNSA has failed to even develop “cost estimates that cover the full life cycle of [modernization] program activities.”44 According to a 2023 GAO report focusing on the NNSA’s major industrial efforts, including the National Labs and plutonium production facilities, “NNSA’s major projects collectively exceeded their cost estimates by over $2 billion. They also surpassed their collective schedules by almost 10 years.”45
This incredible lack of program oversight and accountability has not stopped calls to increase NNSA’s nuclear weapons budget, however. NNSA’s total funding increased by $5 billion from 2021 to 2024, most of which can be accounted for by new nuclear weapons activities alone, which grew by $4 billion during the same period.46
At this point, it is not unreasonable to wonder whether the United States will need to conduct new explosive testing in the coming decades because military commanders are unlikely to be comfortable with a deterrent based on entirely new and untested technology.47 Indeed, there have already been congressional attempts to prepare the Nevada Test Site for a resumption of explosive nuclear testing, and several former Trump administration officials have put forward proposals to prepare to resume explosive nuclear testing during the second Trump administration.48
Needless to say, a return of explosive nuclear testing by the world’s major nuclear powers, and the likely negative follow-on effects it would have across many fields, would be incredibly dangerous and destabilizing for Americans, U.S. allies, and the world. But even putting most of these normative concerns aside, from a purely interests-based standpoint, a resumption of U.S. explosive nuclear testing benefits the United States little while giving up a significant strategic advantage. This is because much of the relative strength of the U.S. nuclear arsenal rests in its reliability compared to that of other nuclear powers.
IMAGE 5. The Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site tracks an unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, November 5, 2024, during Air Force Global Strike Command’s Glory Trip-251 operational test.
U.S. nuclear weapons have been tested more than those of any other nation. U.S. commanders know how U.S. nuclear weapons work, and—more important—that they will work, with a high degree of confidence. Breaking the current moratorium on explosive nuclear testing would open the door for other nuclear weapons states to develop new nuclear weapons that would require explosive nuclear tests. This would not only cede a significant strategic advantage to the United States’ nuclear rivals but would simultaneously stoke the nuclear arms race that U.S. taxpayers and the national security establishment are already struggling to account for domestically.49
A return of explosive nuclear testing by the world’s major nuclear powers would be incredibly dangerous and destabilizing for Americans, U.S. allies, and the world.
Any one of these new nuclear weapons programs could be seen as a significant departure from how most contemporary U.S. leaders have, at least publicly, sought to reduce the role that nuclear weapons play in U.S. national security policy. The decision to pursue nuclear weapons programs all at once, alongside a new drive for tactical nuclear weapons, and at staggering cost, should be viewed as nothing less than a total reversal of the U.S. NPT commitments to reduce the relevance of nuclear weapons in global affairs and eventually work toward their elimination. Instead, it represents a major shift away from a deterrence-based nuclear policy, to one hoping to build nuclear superiority at every level of the U.S. nuclear weapons enterprise.
But the debate is still far from over.
The “Necessary-But-Not-Sufficient” Mindset
Although the $1.7 trillion modernization plan is already well underway, it has not ended calls for even more programs and more funding from key sectors of the national security establishment.
Notably, following the Biden administration’s pullout from Afghanistan in 2021, those advocating boosts in defense spending and parochial interests rushed to justify nearly $1 trillion in annual defense spending—a 40% real increase since 2000.50 National security hawks quickly pivoted to focus on China as an emerging global power, or what former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin labeled the “pacing challenge” for U.S. defense policy.51 The rise of Chinese President Xi Jinping coincided with a serious buildup of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA’s) conventional and nuclear arsenals and increasingly assertive behavior in East Asia. The China challenge is the dominant narrative within the U.S. national security discourse.52
Mirroring the logic that gave rise to the Cold War and the first nuclear arms race, American policymakers’ fixation on the perceived threat that China poses to U.S. national interests and the very fabric of American society has facilitated a new militarization of U.S. foreign policy. This situation has only worsened with the Russia-Ukraine War, which some have suggested is a failure of Western deterrence and points to the need to overhaul American commitments and capabilities.53 Factions within the national security establishment have altered the United States’ perception of deterrence as dependent on strategic superiority.54
Moving the Goalposts
Proponents of nuclear superiority have also altered the purpose of U.S. nuclear modernization efforts first initiated under President Obama. Originally offered as a compromise to modestly upgrade nuclear forces while diplomats pursued further strategic reductions, today’s nuclear development program has been refocused on creating a nuclear arsenal meant to directly confront nuclear rivals—and, if necessary, fight and win a nuclear war. For instance, former Trump National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien recently wrote, “The United States has to maintain technical and numerical superiority to the combined Chinese and Russian nuclear stockpiles. To do so, Washington must test new nuclear weapons for reliability and safety in the real world for the first time since 1992—not just by using computer models.”55
IMAGE 6. An unarmed Trident II (D5LE) missile launches from the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine USS Maine (SSBN 741) off the coast of San Diego, California, Feb. 12, 2020.
Despite the United States’ having already committed to spending $1.7 trillion on nuclear modernization during the next 30 years, nuclear weapons advocates claim this is not nearly enough. For example, former Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and former NNSA Deputy Administrator Madelyn Creedon, who together chaired the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, have argued: “The U.S. nuclear modernization programs underway are critical and necessary, but no longer adequate to deter the increased challenges from Beijing, Moscow, and the possibility of engaging both simultaneously.”56 Central to this belief is a strange new claim that the 1,670 strategic nuclear warheads that the United States maintains ready to launch at a moment’s notice are, somehow, not enough to deter the United States’ nuclear peers.57
Testifying several times before Congress between 2021 and 2022 as the head of U.S. Strategic Command, Adm. Charles Richard shocked many when he intimated that the United States may not have enough nuclear forces to deter both China and Russia at the same time.58 This statement seemed directly at odds with the contemporary understanding of U.S. deterrent posture, indirectly criticized the New START Treaty (which limited the United States and Russian strategic nuclear deployments to 1,550 warheads), and provided a rationale for boosting nuclear weapons spending.
If 1,670 deployed strategic warheads, many hundreds of which are constantly forward deployed and in range of their targets around the world, are not enough to ensure a credible and devastating—almost certainly world-ending—nuclear response, then what would be? This line of reasoning has opened the floodgates to profligate nuclear spending: If the current force is not enough to ensure deterrence, then there is no objective marker for what might be.
Policymaking Without Considering the Costs
Nuclear spending proponents have championed the recent Congressional Strategic Posture Commission report that, among other escalatory steps, recommends: uploading more than one nuclear warhead onto U.S. ICBMs;59 increasing the planned purchase of 100 B-21 nuclear bombers (and the tanker aircraft needed to service them); increasing the purchase of planned Columbia-class SSBNs; developing new road-mobile ICBMs; and introducing new tactical nuclear forces to be deployed in the Indo-Pacific and European theaters.60
The plans for this new class of tactical “theatre” weapons are consistent with rhetoric that departs from a secure second-strike posture and instead pushes for a nuclear warfighting strategy. For example, the Strategic Posture Commission explains that “U.S. theater nuclear force posture should be urgently modified in order to provide the President a range of militarily effective nuclear response options to deter or counter [emphasis added] Chinese or Russian limited nuclear use in theater.”61
But although many policymakers and others have called for increasing current nuclear spending, no serious debate has occurred about where that money would come from. When members of the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission were questioned by Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) about how the United States would pay for their proposed expansive changes to U.S. nuclear forces, former Sen. Kyl said that the commissioners had deliberately not speculated on that during the production of the report.62 After being pressed for a response by Sen. Wicker, Sen. Kyl said,
“The number one priority for our national security is our strategic deterrent, and the nuclear [arsenal] underpins that. If it is the number one priority, whatever funds are available, that should have first call on those funds…So that is my guiding principle in backing my fellow commissioners in saying that we wanted to recommend to you what we thought was essential, and that you would find a way to be able to support that financially.”63
But proposing an open-ended commitment to further wide-ranging weapons development, of some indefinite number, on top of the current 30-year modernization plan—without giving any consideration to even the most basic cost/benefit analysis—is folly.
In 2024, payments on the national debt surpassed U.S. defense spending, a potentially ominous portent given calls to increase other spending while continuing to cut taxes.64 Such fiscal considerations should be seriously weighed against any potential marginal deterrence benefits that may result from successfully deploying another category of theatre weapons systems a decade or more from now, especially when the United States already maintains a credible nuclear deterrent capable of ending all human civilization on the planet.
Escalation Control, “Limited” Nuclear Strikes, and Redefining US Nuclear Strategy
The justifications for increased spending on nuclear modernization to pursue strategic superiority, which would supposedly strengthen deterrence, do not hold up.
If Americans should have learned one lesson from the Cold War, where the U.S. arsenal alone reached a peak of some 31,255 nuclear warheads, it should have been that merely possessing more weapons did not equate to greater security.65 Achieving nuclear superiority might sound appealing in congressional testimony, on the campaign trail, or within the bounds of a book, but underneath the surface-level “strong-on-defense” talking points lurks the truth that an overwhelmingly favorable nuclear balance is a chimera. Pursuing such a course risks ruin. If, for example, such buildups stimulate the deep-seated insecurities of the United States’s nuclear peers who could see an incentive to accelerate their own arms-racing behavior, this will only further roil an already deeply unsettled geopolitical environment and ultimately undermine U.S. national security.
This is of particular importance when it comes to the potentially large-scale return of tactical nuclear forces to the U.S. arsenal. Proponents of these types of weapons envision a world in which tailored options for limited nuclear use in theatre-scale conventional conflicts in Europe and Asia are essential to U.S. military operations. These warfighting strategies call for the development of new weapons, as discussed throughout this paper. This would necessitate breaking the nuclear use taboo and yet assumes that that can be done without escalating a conflict with China or Russia to a general nuclear exchange.
And that is an irresponsible assumption to make.
The Myth of Escalation Control
The core concept of nuclear deterrence holds that the threat of unacceptable losses created by a nuclear response will outweigh any potential gains made by deploying a “limited” nuclear strike in the first place. That basic calculus—the threat of general nuclear war—is what has kept the world’s nuclear-armed nations from using even a single nuclear weapon against one another, no matter how small or limited, in all the wars and crises of the last 75 years.
That is why this class of weapons is so incredibly dangerous.66 Since they are often described as being smaller and less destructive than the strategic nuclear arms that comprise the majority of the U.S. arsenal, the new weapons risk appearing to seem more “usable.” Given that they are traditionally meant to be deployed alongside conventional forces, their mere possession can be seen as increasing the likelihood of their use under pressure or in crises.67
The belief that these weapons are somehow more useful or controllable just because they have a smaller explosive yield is deeply misguided. Quite the contrary, deterrence hinges on the belief that nuclear weapons use is unthinkable in all but the most catastrophic of circumstances: when the very survival of the state is at stake. Efforts to lower the bar for nuclear use—or to even envision some scenario in which a crisis with a nuclear rival might be contained by using a limited nuclear strike—is folly.
President Reagan’s secretary of state, George Schultz, underscored this when he testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2018:
“The idea of a low-yield nuclear weapon is kind of a mirage. It is a nuclear weapon. It has all kinds of aspects to it. Even a low-yield weapon would have huge damage immediately and radiation and so on. It invites escalation. So, my own opinion is I hate to see people start figuring out how they can use nuclear weapons—that is what it amounts to—because their use is so potentially devastating. You get an escalation going and a nuclear exchange going, and it can be ruinous to the world very easily.”68
Forcing an adversary to critically analyze whether they are under a small nuclear attack or a large nuclear attack and expecting them to choose a discriminate response in the few minutes between the detection of any launch and its impact is illogical. And, regardless of the attacker’s intent, providing any casus belli for nuclear response and escalation allows for an all-too-real road to Armageddon.
A critical study has borne this out. The Reagan administration tested the viability of limited nuclear strikes that were already built into the U.S. war plan with its 1983 Proud Prophet war game. Using actual top-secret plans overseen by real administration officials and military leaders in the chain of command, Proud Prophet probably was one of the most realistic wargames ever conducted by the U.S. government, according to nuclear historian and Reagan administration advisor Paul Bracken.69 In the game, U.S. and NATO nuclear strikes were used to try and “escalate to de-escalate” a looming conventional conflict from turning into a general war between Soviet and NATO forces. U.S. strategy at the time called for the deployment of limited nuclear strikes to halt Soviet forces and signal that the United States was willing to further escalate unless Soviet leaders agreed to pause hostilities and negotiate a cease-fire.70 Much like modern versions of such theories, Bracken explains, “U.S. logic here was that further escalation to attacks on cities would make the Soviet Leaders understand that they couldn’t win.”71
Although such limited warfighting strategies had been intended to limit escalation and prevent a general nuclear war, that is not how the situation played out when there were human beings making the decisions while under pressure and in a competitive environment. According to Bracken:
The Soviet Union team interpreted the nuclear strikes as an attack on their nation, their way of life, and their honor. So they responded with an enormous nuclear salvo at the United States. The United States retaliated in kind. The result was a catastrophe that made all the wars of the past five hundred years pale in comparison. A half billion human beings were killed in the initial exchanges and at least that many more would have died from radiation and starvation. NATO was gone. So was a good part of Europe, the United States, and the Soviet Union.72
Especially important here is the fact that “this game went nuclear,” Bracken observed years later, “not because [Defense] Secretary [Caspar] Weinberger and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs were crazy but because they faithfully implemented the prevailing U.S. strategy.”73 Once the taboo for nuclear use had broken down, it was much easier to escalate from battlefield to strategic nuclear weapons than prevailing theories had assumed. Indeed, despite the “escalate-to-deescalate” logic, escalation control proved impossible once deterrence had broken down and nuclear weapons were suddenly “usable.”
“Usable” Nuclear Weapons vs. Reality
The grave implications of uncontrolled escalation once the nuclear threshold has been crossed is further demonstrated throughout modern U.S. history by the fact that though there have been plans drawn up to use nuclear weapons in every American conflict since World War II—up to and including the first Gulf War—they have thus far never been needed. Whether or not these were offered as tactical opportunities, options for option’s sake, or as a means to keep the United States’ significant tactical nuclear forces relevant in an era defined largely by low-intensity conflict is largely inconsequential. What is important is that no matter how bad a tactical or strategic situation was on the ground, wise strategists always realized that the costs and risks of using even one of these weapons far outweighed their potential tactical benefit.
Nuclear weapons remained holstered even in those moments when U.S. forces were at significant risk of being defeated or even outright destroyed. In the battle for the Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War, for example, UN forces, including the entire U.S. 1st Marine Division, were assaulted by a Chinese force that outnumbered them by as much as four to one. Although that might seem like a prime opportunity for a limited nuclear strike (certainly of the sort that modern proponents would envision), Washington viewed such an action as too extreme—even though the United States maintained near-total nuclear superiority around the globe.74
The Discrimination Problem
If any further reason is needed to doubt the utility of these kinds of nonstrategic nuclear weapons, a final concern is that they also undermine the credibility of conventional U.S. forces. Several current and planned designs pose a significant discrimination problem to enemy leaders, create uncertainty around U.S. missile launches, and force rivals to constantly evaluate whether they are under a conventional or nuclear attack.
This is a significant problem for the LRSO and SLCM-N because both are based on the conventional U.S. cruise missile platform, one of the most ubiquitous weapons in the United States’ conventional arsenal. Therefore, if the United States finds itself in a conflict with Russia or China, the leaders of those countries will have to ascertain whether any U.S. cruise missile launch is carrying a conventional or nuclear payload—and do so while under attack and extreme pressure to act. In such a scenario, the likelihood of a nuclear response, even against a conventional attack, rises sharply.
Systems that blur the line between strategic and tactical nuclear forces are perhaps even more dangerous. For instance, should the United States decide to launch a single low-yield W76-2 warhead from an Ohio or future Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine, an adversary might well assume it was under attack from a 90-455kt nuclear weapon, not an 8kt one, because that is the primary warhead yield of the Trident missile system upon which the W76-2 is fitted.75 When facing an early warning report describing an inbound Trident missile attack, adversaries would not be incentivized to wait and see what kind of warhead detonates at the missile’s terminus if they are instead worried that they are facing a general attack meant to disable their own nuclear forces. Under such “use-it-or-lose-it pressure,” what may have been intended as a limited nuclear strike could quickly escalate into a general nuclear war.
IMAGE 7. The Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine USS Wyoming (SSBN 742) pulls into Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, Virginia, in support of USSTRATCOM Component Commanders Conference, February 2, 2024.
Furthermore, imagining a coercive or “limited” role for these weapons would undercut the United States’ overall deterrent posture. The Ohio (and future Columbia) submarines are meant to serve as the secure second-strike force, the bedrock foundation of America’s most essential deterrent capability. Even if one accepts the notion that there might be a use for a limited U.S. nuclear strike on some hypothetical target, launching a weapon from one of these submarines confuses the matter—and even risks the discovery and destruction of America’s deterrent strike force by using these nuclear weapons for missions unrelated to strategic deterrence.76
Throwing away more precious resources to pursue a strategy of nuclear overmatch, especially at the nonstrategic level, would be inherently destabilizing and potentially put the United States on a path toward some form of uncontrollable nuclear exchange, especially during periods of crisis, instability, or conflict.
Stabilizing Nuclear Policies in a Destabilized World
In a period where even the most optimistic observers admit that many of the old norms and values that once governed international relations and nuclear stability have eroded or fallen away altogether, it is critical to ensure that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is postured in such a way as to promote stability and reduce uncertainty.
The authors of this report suggest the following:
First, U.S. lawmakers should commit the United States to a legitimate sole-purpose, “deterrence-first” nuclear approach, focused on a secure second-strike submarine capability during the next ten years. All new nuclear weapons programs should be judged against President Reagan’s statement that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Current modernization plans that go beyond a strategy of nuclear deterrence—one that aims to avoid or discourage open conflict by raising the potential costs of war to such a point that no rational actor would choose to initiate it—should be canceled or postponed. Clarity of purpose is of critical importance when it comes to prioritizing efforts among competing legs of the strategic nuclear triad. Prioritization is essential to ensuring that programs with soaring costs or built around untested assumptions about their possible uses are subjected to close scrutiny.
The Sentinel ICBM, in particular, is a grotesque acquisition blunder. Its costs have already ballooned over 80% since it was initially pitched to Congress during the Obama administration, and few believe that it will cost less than the new projected costs. Revelations in 2024 from the Pentagon, Air Force, and prime defense contractor Northrop Grumman have shown that initial plans were unrealistic; updating the silo infrastructure might now have to expand to include digging and building entirely new silos in as many as five states. According to Bill LaPlante, the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer, the Air Force is looking for ways to “reduce the Sentinel project’s complexity,” but those decisions are unlikely before 2026.77
Moreover, the Air Force has admitted that it might have to reopen the contract to new subcontractors, “when it has a clearer idea of when the major construction work will begin.”78 This delay probably ensures that the USAF will have to extend the life of the current Minuteman III ICBMs while simultaneously developing the Sentinel, an option that the Air Force repeatedly said was impossible while it was lobbying Congress to build the Sentinel in the first place.
Ultimately, ICBMs are relatively less important for deterrence than other delivery vehicles. Their locations are all known to nuclear rivals, and their ballistic trajectories, mostly over the North Pole, make them only usable against targets in Russia. Given that deterrence relies on credibility—not supremacy—the Navy’s SSBN fleet could maintain deterrence against multiple targets while lowering overall costs and logistical burdens.
In a similar vein, current U.S. plans to expand upon production of new plutonium pits and next-generation warhead development, in anticipation of a future expansion of the global nuclear arms race, should be reevaluated given their ballooning costs and potentially destabilizing nature.79 It will matter little if the Pentagon launches a dozen or a hundred new nuclear weapons programs if most are unlikely to be completed in a timely fashion and do not add to the credibility of the U.S. deterrent.
This concern should be familiar to every American taxpayer, given the fact that the last 20 years of conventional weapon systems development, for programs such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Zumwalt-class destroyer, and the littoral combat ship have been seriously over budget and behind schedule and have all failed to deliver the capabilities that were promised.80 The fact that the national security establishment is focusing so many resources and finite industrial capacity on new nuclear systems that are costly, redundant, and of limited deterrent value suggests that valuable resources are being siphoned off from other vital national security priorities that would do more to make the United States and its allies safer during a time of real uncertainty.81
Therefore, funds currently earmarked for the Sentinel should be reprioritized to systems necessary for real deterrence, that is, critically, the Navy’s SSBN fleet underpinning the United States’ secure second-strike force. If resources must be reallocated from one nuclear program to another, finite deterrence needs to be prioritized.
Second, U.S. lawmakers should eliminate new tactical nuclear systems that pose a discrimination problem to potential nuclear rivals. In a world that is seemingly becoming more dangerous, with trust among the major powers near all-time lows, the United States must draw a line between its nuclear and nonnuclear forces. This is especially true when it comes to arming one of the most ubiquitous weapons in the U.S. conventional arsenal, the cruise missile, with a nuclear warhead. If U.S. adversaries cannot tell the difference between a nuclear-armed cruise missile and a conventionally armed cruise missile on a radar screen, the world risks sleepwalking into a general nuclear war in any conflict involving the launch of a U.S. cruise missile. This is crucial in complex theatres such as the Indo-Pacific, where commanders have already voiced concerns about “eroding conventional deterrence” alongside the need to do “everything possible to deter conflict.”82
By eliminating proposed new dual-use weapons programs such as the SLCM-N and LRSO, the United States could take a major step toward lowering the long-term prospects of both accidental and escalatory nuclear war, save money, and strengthen global strategic stability. Moreover, cutting these still-hypothetical programs would not undermine the U.S. nuclear deterrent; their future development and deployment, however, could make the world a much more dangerous and destabilizing place for American service personnel across the globe.
Furthermore, especially in the case of the SLCM, returning these weapons at scale to the arsenal poses a significant number of problems for U.S. forces around the globe and here at home. Putting nuclear weapons on conventional U.S. Navy ships will require burdensome additional maintenance, training, and security to those ships and their crews while also reducing the SLCMs’ effectiveness in their primary conventional missions; the SLCM-Ns will take up space that would have otherwise been earmarked for conventional cruise missiles.83 Likewise, any incident, accident, or collision at sea—which are not an infrequent occurrence even in the age of advanced sensors—could be greatly inflamed by the presence of U.S. nuclear weapons aboard ship.84 As nuclear weapons expert Hans Kristensen noted in his report on such incidents during the Cold War, “deploying nuclear weapons on ships and submarines…created unique risks of accidents and incidents. Because warships sometimes collide, catch fire, or even sink…dozens of nuclear weapons [have been] lost at sea over the decades.”85
Although nuclear supremacy proponents might claim that these nuclear cruise missiles are “essential” for the future of the U.S. deterrent, they have not made a compelling case for how, where, and why such weapons need to be deployed and what costs those deployments might impose on U.S. forces that are already struggling to accomplish their critical conventional missions despite more than 20 years of growing defense budgets.
The U.S. risks little by keeping nuclear cruise missiles relegated to history books. The United States can build a safer future by ensuring that these weapons go no further than the design phase. The reduction of such “more usable” nuclear weapons might even serve as a starting point for future arms control initiatives with nuclear peers further down the line.86
Finally, the incoming Trump administration should publicly recommit the United States to conducting no future explosive nuclear testing; a resumption of explosive nuclear testing would dramatically undercut U.S. national security objectives. No one benefits from escalating global tensions, and a shortsighted decision to restart U.S. explosive nuclear testing for the first time since 1992 would result in the breaking of one of the last global nuclear taboos and probably lead to the even greater breakdown of international norms.87
Likewise, a resumption of U.S. explosive nuclear testing benefits the United States little—and could even be a strategic liability. The fact that U.S. nuclear weapons have been tested more than those of any other nation gives U.S. forces a serious advantage. American military leaders know that U.S. nuclear weapons work. Moreover, the United States has already spent billions of dollars on its stockpile stewardship program, which aims to maintain readiness and reliability throughout the nuclear force—without the need for explosive nuclear testing.88 As former Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz put it in 2022:
“Advances in the U.S. Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP), which uses science-based assessments of nuclear weapons without the need for explosive testing, ensure that the United States can be more confident than ever in the safety, reliability, and effectiveness of its nuclear stockpile. Every U.S. president since President Clinton has determined through the SSP—rightly—that resuming explosive nuclear testing is scientifically and technically unnecessary.”89
By breaking the current moratorium on explosive nuclear testing, U.S. leaders would give a green light to other nuclear weapons states that might want to develop new nuclear weapons that would require similar types of testing. This would not only cede a significant strategic advantage to the United States’ rivals but would simultaneously stoke a nuclear arms race that the U.S. national security establishment is already struggling to pay for and manage. It should also be noted, that while this paper is primarily concerned with analyzing issues from a hard-security lens, the prospect of renewed explosive nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site, could have a major humanitarian impact on the health and safety of millions of U.S. citizens in the American Southwest, at a time when the United States has still failed to fully deal with the destructive domestic legacy of the last nuclear arms race.
Ultimately though, a unilateral decision to resume U.S. explosive nuclear testing would undoubtedly have far-reaching effects. It would represent a concrete end to any notion of U.S. nuclear restraint or that the United States still holds some sort of moral high ground regarding nuclear issues when compared to its nuclear rivals. An explosive breakdown of one of the last nuclear taboos might even put the final nail in the coffin of the NPT while setting off a cascade of nuclear weapons program breakouts across the globe.
Focusing on shortsighted policies that sound tough but undermine strategic stability does not enhance national security.
This is no time for sloppy thinking or political games. U.S. policymakers need to be laser-focused on measures to enhance national security. Focusing on shortsighted policies that sound tough but undermine strategic stability does not enhance national security. At best, current plans commit U.S. taxpayers to costly weapons that drive defense contractor profits while doing little to further real deterrence. At worst, the drive for an “all-of-the-above” supremacy approach to U.S. nuclear strategy, with an increased focus on weapons meant to fight and “win” a nuclear war, will only stoke the fires of the global nuclear arms race while lowering the threshold for nuclear use worldwide. Reversing these trends is essential to maintaining U.S. deterrence and global strategic stability while preventing a further slide toward nuclear misadventure, miscalculation, or madness.
The United States—indeed, any country—has nothing to gain from a world where the risk of nuclear war is rising. Thus, U.S. lawmakers should reject policies that might make that outcome more likely, especially if they are based on claims about the declining efficacy of nuclear deterrence in favor of a belief in the value of nuclear supremacy, a concept that has never been tested—and never should be.
The United States and the former Soviet Union came close to the brink of nuclear disaster during the Cold War. U.S. policymakers should be in no hurry to return to the same flawed policies of that age while stoking an unconstrained nuclear arms race that is spending generational wealth on new weapons that will do little to make Americans, U.S. allies, or the world any safer.
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Okay, now, back to the lead news of today:
The free world is up in arms! Uh, WHO is the dictator? It’s not Zelenskyy, for sure. Trump is backing Putin and the Kremlin against Ukraine in this Russia/Ukraine war and is outright lying about who started the war, why it began, and is attacking Zelenskyy and Ukraine as the bad guys. This is precisely what I feared but expected and Trump has left the free world out in the cold in order to pacify Putin and give the Ukraine back to Russia.
To put this in perspective, Trump is, perhaps intentionally, creating a potential nuclear World War III by his actions and words, and Britain, France, and other NATO European nations will not stand for such an incredible Trump/United States support of Putin and Russia that now seriously threatens the entire world. ~llaw
I have posted a link to the entire catastrophic mess that Trump has created so that anyone who is concerned can read it all until they can’t stand anymore of it any longer. The Downing Street article posted just below is just one of several leading up t this one. Here is the link to them all:
British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and spoke to Volodymyr Zelensky after Donald Trump’s remarks (Image: AP)
Sir Keir Starmer told Volodymyr Zelensky it was “perfectly reasonable to suspend elections” during Vladimir Putin’s bloodthirsty invasion of Ukraine.
US president Donald Trump sparked fury after branding the Ukrainian leader a “dictator without elections”, claiming Kyiv had started the war.
Mr Trump added that the Ukrainian leader had done a “terrible job”, saying he needed to “move fast or he is not going to have a country left”.
A Downing Street spokesman said: “The Prime Minister spoke to President Zelensky this evening and stressed the need for everyone to work together.
Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump have been locked in a war of words (Image: AFP via Getty Images)
“The Prime Minister expressed his support for President Zelensky as Ukraine’s democratically elected leader and said that it was perfectly reasonable to suspend elections during wartime, as the UK did during World War 2.
“The Prime Minister reiterated his support for the US-led efforts to get a lasting peace in Ukraine that deterred Russia from any future aggression.”
Mr Trump’s comments have provoked a furious backlash, with politicians and military experts warning of “dangerous days” ahead.
A former head of the British Army, Lord Dannatt, warned: “Trump and Putin are trying to bully Zelensky into having an election in order to install a pro-Moscow president.”
John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, said: “Trump’s characterisations of Zelensky and Ukraine are some of the most shameful remarks ever made by a US president.
“Our support of Ukraine has never been about charity – our way of life at home depends on our strength abroad.”
In a post on Truth Social, Mr Trump accused the Ukrainian leader of playing former US president Joe Biden “like a fiddle”.
“He refuses to have elections, is very low in Ukrainian polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden ‘like a fiddle’,” Mr Trump said.
“A dictator without elections, Zelensky better move fast or he is not going to have a country left.
“In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the war with Russia, something all admit only ‘Trump’, and the Trump administration can do.”
Mr Trump also said Europe “has failed to bring peace”.
Mr Zelensky was elected as president of Ukraine in May 2019. Elections were previously scheduled for 2024, but they were not held as a result of martial law being in place.
Former foreign secretary James Cleverly said: “The USA is a friend and ally. But we must be honest and courageous when we disagree.
“President Trump is wrong about President Zelensky and Ukraine and the Foreign Secretary should say so, his silence is deafening.
“The UK and USA must send the message that we don’t let tyrants win.”
Bob Seely, a former member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, said: “What Trump said is untrue, and frankly he is just repeating Russian dictator Putin’s lines.
“Trump seems to be psychologically under Putin’s influence. Why? This is a disaster for the UK, for Europe, for Ukraine and the US. Much more of this and Trump is going to destroy US moral and political leadership in place for the last 70 years.
“Ever since World War 2, the Russians (and now with Chinese support) have tried to break the link between the US and Europe. If this happens the Ukraine war will widen. Putin will attack NATO states in the Baltic. These are dangerous days.”
Tory MP Simon Hoare said: “Let’s say it unambiguously: Trump is an egotistical stranger to the truth and ignorant of history.
“He’s a menace to the world order. Ukraine was attacked. If Russia wants peace: put your guns down Putin and withdraw.
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