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The ‘weird’ catch to Labour’s ‘national security threat’ attack on the Scottish National Party.

LABOUR’S “national security threat” attacks on the SNP reveal how deeply embedded support for nuclear weapons has become in UK politics, a leading security academic has said.

Nick Ritchie, a professor of international security at the University of York, said that by branding opposition to Trident as a danger to the nation, ministers risk “shutting down” democratic debate on defence.

Ritchie, who last year led research
on international nuclear security for the New Zealand government, spoke to
the Sunday National after Labour ministers ramped up their rhetoric against the Scottish Government, suggesting it poses a bigger danger to UK
interests than China.

In the past week, Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy,
Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander, and Defence Secretary John Healey
have all described the SNP administration as a “threat” to UK national
security. The Labour ministers’ arguments hinge on the SNP’s opposition to
nuclear weaponry, which Ritchie said “really reduces how you can talk and
think about national security”.

He suggested that national security was
being “conflated with unequivocal support for nuclear weapons”. RITCHIE
said the “weird thing” is that the UK Government is technically legally
bound “under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to work towards the goal of
nuclear disarmament”. He went on: “Of course, the caveat is that the
time is not right now, it’ll be far too difficult and so on and so forth.


But the premise – that nuclear disarmament is where we need to end up – is a premise that is accepted, or has been accepted, by governments of all
stripes. “So there’s a tension there between accepting that on the one
hand and then chastising the SNP for a pretty legitimate position that
nuclear weapons are a security liability. This is the position that the
majority of countries in the world have taken.”

The National 9th Nov 2025, https://www.thenational.scot/news/25606016.weird-catch-labours-national-security-threat-attack-snp/

November 11, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The US Empire Keeps Getting Creepier

Caitlin Johnstone, Nov 09, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-us-empire-keeps-getting-creepier?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=178388003&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Secretary of War™ Pete Hegseth said during a speech on Friday that the US is at “a 1939 moment” of “mounting urgency” in which “enemies gather, threats grow,” adding, “We are not building for peacetime. We are pivoting the Pentagon and our industrial base to a wartime footing.”

Everything’s getting darker and creepier in the shadow of the empire.

Nate Bear has a report out on his newsletter titled “The AI Drones Used In Gaza Now Surveilling American Cities” about a new company called Skydio which “in the last few years has gone from relative obscurity to quietly become a multi-billion dollar company and the largest drone manufacturer in the US.” Bear reports that Skydio now has contracts with police departments in almost every large US city to use these Gaza-tested drones for surveillance of American civilians.

Haaretz reports that Israel’s efforts to manipulate American minds back into supporting the Zionist entity include pouring millions into influence operations targeting Christian churchgoers and efforts to change responses to Palestine-related queries on popular AI services like ChatGPT. It’s crazy how you can literally just be minding your own business in your own church on a Sunday morning and then suddenly find yourself getting throat fucked by propaganda paid for by the state of Israel.

The Intercept reports that YouTube, which is owned by Google, quietly deleted more than 700 videos documenting Israel’s atrocities in Gaza in a purge of pro-Palestine human rights groups from the platform. Mass Silicon Valley deletions like this combined with the sudden influx of fake AI-generated video content polluting the information ecosystem could serve to erase and obfuscate the evidence of the Gaza holocaust for future generations.

A new report from Reuters says that last year the US had intelligence showing Israel’s own lawyers warning that the IDF’s mass atrocities in the Gaza Strip could result in war crimes charges. This is yet more evidence that the Biden administration knew it was backing a genocide the entire time, including during election season when left-leaning Americans were being told they needed to vote for then-Vice President Kamala Harris if they wanted to save Gaza.

In Italy a journalist was fired from the news agency Nova for asking an EU official if she thought Israel should be responsible for the reconstruction of Gaza in the same way she’s said Russia should have to fund the reconstruction of Ukraine. A Nova spokesperson confirmed to The Intercept that the journalist was indeed fired for asking the inconvenient question on the basis that “Russia had invaded a sovereign country unprovoked, whereas Israel was responding to an attack.”

Reuters reports that the US is preparing to establish a military base in Damascus. For years the empire waged a complex regime change operation in Syria to oust Assad, first by backing proxy forces to destroy the country and then via sanctions and US military occupation to prevent reconstruction. And it worked. The empire’s dirty war in Syria will be cited by warmongering swamp monsters for years to come as evidence that regime change interventionism can succeed if you just stick at it and do whatever evil things need to be done.

These are just a few of the disturbing stories from the last few days that I hadn’t had a chance to write about yet. This is the kind of world we are being offered by the US empire. There is nothing on the menu for us but more war, more genocide, more surveillance, more censorship, more tyranny, and more abuse.

Things are going to keep getting more and more dystopian for everyone who lives under the thumb of the imperial power structure until enough of us decide that the empire needs to end.

November 10, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

British Nuclear Jets Programme Costs ‘Unrealistic’ – CND

“Just as we’ve seen the ‘blank cheque’ approach to the spiralling costs of replacing Britain’s nuclear submarines, so we see it again here with Britain’s new nuclear-capable jets.”

, by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), https://labouroutlook.org/2025/11/08/british-nuclear-jets-programme-costs-unrealistic-cnd/


The chair of the Government’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, has described the MoD’s cost forecast for the F-35 fighter jet programme as “unrealistic”.

The report also shines a spotlight on the repeated and systematic failure of the MoD to demonstrate financial responsibility or accountability. Just as we’ve seen the ‘blank cheque’ approach to the spiralling costs of replacing Britain’s nuclear submarines, so we see it again here with Britain’s new nuclear-capable jets.  

The Public Accounts Committee report states that the MoD ‘acknowledged that becoming certified for the NATO nuclear mission will add new requirements to training, personnel and possibly infrastructure.’ Yet, PAC reports that it was only once the Committee requested evidence about the F-35 programme that the MoD started discussions with ‘other partner nations’  to understand these requirements.  Therefore ‘the Department [MoD] did not provide any indication of forecast costs.’

The MoD had argued that buying the F-35A nuclear-capable fighter jets would be 20% to 25% cheaper than the F-35B non-nuclear fighter jets.  However, PAC’s report reveals that because the MoD had not familiarised itself with the technical implications of NATO integration before the decision was made to buy the F-35As, it had not allowed for additional costs associated with this. The report concludes ‘We believe it is a reasonable assumption that this may end up proving more expensive’.


This is the latest in a series of failures to forecast costs for the programme, resulting in substantially underestimating the scale of the spending needed. Back in 2013, when the decision was made to buy 138 F-35 fighter jets, the MoD set out the initial cost of £18.4 billion, which was only for the first 48 fighter jets. It was then discovered that the MoD had failed to update this figure following the extension of the programme from 2048 to 2069 – more than a 20 year extension. The MoD then revised this figure to £57 billion but did not include any of the far more costly sustainment expenditure such as personnel, infrastructure or fuel.

The National Audit Office calculates the full programme is likely to be £71 billion. However, this does not take into consideration the additional costs associated with the certification of the F-35A jets for NATO nuclear missions, so this figure will certainly increase. And there are still further questions about the purchases of an additional 63 F-35A jets, as whether these will also be part of NATO’s nuclear mission.


The committee also reveals the level of chaos, mis-manageable and lack of planning of the programme. For instance, the MoD underestimated the number of engineers it would need for the programme, failing to consider annual leave and staff working in other roles. Consequently staffing costs have had to be increased by 20%. 

A delay in upgrading the accommodation at RAF Marham, which has been the main operating base for the F-35s since 2013, means not all the accommodation will be ready in time for the 2029 delivery of the new F-35A fighter jets, likely causing delays and further costs in the programme.

This mismanagement, lack of financial accountability resulting in spiralling costs is typical of Britain’s nuclear weapons industry. The replacement of Britain’s nuclear submarines has been repeatedly rated ‘unachievable’ by the government’s Infrastructure and Projects Authority, due to cost overruns and delays.

Instead of pouring hundreds of billions more into this black hole of deadly weaponry – tying Britain even closer to NATO and Trump’s reckless nuclear war drive – the British government should redirect these funds to kick-start the British economy investing in transport, housing and healthcare, improving living standards and tackling the real threats we face from climate breakdown

The Committee – which scrutinises the financial accounts and holds the government to account for the delivery of public services’ – produced a report into the MoD’s management of its F-35 fighter jet programme, which will see Britain buy a total of 138 jets – likely to be 63 F-35B ‘stealth’ jets and 75 of the nuclear-capable F-35A fighter jets.  

Despite Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s announcement in June at the NATO summit that Britain, for the first time since the end of the Cold War, would be expanding its nuclear capability through the purchase of 12 F-35A jets, the Committee’s report reveals the Ministry of Defence had little understanding of the implications – both technical or financial – of NATO integration of its nuclear-capable fighter jets when this announcement was made.

November 10, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

Trump and the Deep State: The Tomahawk deadlock and the illusion of presidential autonomy

This oscillation reflects, more than personal indecision, the tension between two competing power projects within the United States. On one hand, Trump seeks to maintain a more restrained foreign policy, focused on avoiding the strain of a direct confrontation with Russia. On the other hand, the military-industrial complex and its allies in Congress, the media, and the intelligence services continue to push for the escalation of the war in Ukraine.

The supply of weapons to Kiev is, above all, a multibillion-dollar business that guarantees extraordinary profits for corporations such as Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.

Lucas Leiroz, November 5, 2025, https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/11/05/trump-and-deep-state-tomahawk-deadlock-and-illusion-of-presidential-autonomy/

The Tomahawk issue is vital in determining Donald Trump’s political future.

The current controversy over the possible delivery of Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine reignites a crucial debate in American politics: to what extent does the president of the United States truly control his country’s strategic decisions? The episode suggests that Donald Trump, despite his rhetoric of independence and his supposed desire for a “pragmatic rapprochement” with Moscow, remains bound by the constraints of the so-called Deep State — the bureaucratic-corporate-military structure that has dictated the course of Washington’s foreign policy for decades.

According to Western media sources, the Pentagon had given the White House the green light to release the Tomahawks, arguing that the transfer would not harm U.S. stockpiles. The final decision, however, would rest with Trump. Initially, the president indicated that he did not intend to send the missiles, stating that “we cannot give away what we need to protect our own country.” A few days later, however, he reversed his stance — and then reversed it again, after a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

This oscillation reflects, more than personal indecision, the tension between two competing power projects within the United States. On one hand, Trump seeks to maintain a more restrained foreign policy, focused on rebuilding the domestic economy and avoiding the strain of a direct confrontation with Russia. On the other hand, the military-industrial complex and its allies in Congress, the media, and the intelligence services continue to push for the escalation of the war in Ukraine.

The Deep State does not act solely out of abstract strategic interests. The supply of weapons to Kiev is, above all, a multibillion-dollar business that guarantees extraordinary profits for corporations such as Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. The Tomahawks, in particular, symbolize this economic power. Mass-produced and widely used in previous wars, they represent both a military tool and a currency of political influence. Allowing Ukraine to use them against strategic targets deep inside Russia would, however, be a dangerous act of escalation — something that Trump, in a rare moment of prudence, seems to understand.

Putin’s phone call to Trump, as reported by the press, was likely a direct reminder that the use of missiles with a thousand-mile range against cities such as Moscow or St. Petersburg would have incalculable consequences. Contrary to the Western narrative, which tries to portray Russia as isolated and vulnerable, Moscow maintains full retaliatory capability, including nuclear. By avoiding authorization for the Tomahawks’ transfer, Trump did not yield to “Russian blackmail” — as the Atlanticist media would claim — but rather to the elementary logic of global security.

Even so, the fact that the Pentagon and European allies pressured the White House to approve the delivery shows how the structure of real power in the U.S. transcends the president himself. The Deep State shapes not only foreign-policy decisions but also the perceptions of what is “possible” or “acceptable” for an American leader. When Trump seeks dialogue with Moscow, he is immediately accused of “weakness” or “complicity.” When he imposes sanctions, even tactical ones, he is praised for his “toughness.” Thus, a political siege is created in which any attempt at rationality is seen as betrayal of American hegemony.

Analyzing this episode, it becomes clear that presidential autonomy in the United States is largely an illusion. Trump, who came to power promising to break with globalism and restore national sovereignty, now finds himself in a dilemma: either he resists establishment pressure and risks political isolation, or he yields and becomes just another administrator of Washington’s perpetual wars.

The hesitation over the Tomahawks is, therefore, a symptom of the deeper struggle that defines contemporary American politics. Russia, for its part, watches cautiously, aware that the true interlocutor in Washington is not the president but the system surrounding him — a system that profits from war and fears, above all, peace.

November 9, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

The rise of the US ‘digital-military-industrial complex’

Xinhuanet, Editor Huang Panyue2 025-10-20 http://eng.chinamil.com.cn/2025xb/W/N/16416523.html

On Oct 13, Anduril Industries, an American defense technology company, unveiled its “Eagle Eye” headset at the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) annual meeting as part of the Army’s Soldier Borne Mission Command program. The system — offered in four variants — integrates multiple augmented-reality devices designed to provide timely, accurate battlefield information, enhance soldiers’ situational cognition, and improve both offensive and defensive decision-making. This unveiling highlights the growing trend of digital technology firms entering the US defense market, with Anduril emerging as one of the most typical representatives of this shift.

Over the past decade, the familiar concept of the “military-industrial complex” — coined by President Dwight D Eisenhower in 1961 — has evolved into a new hybrid: the “digital-military-industrial complex”. This variant revolves around firms that specialize in data, artificial intelligence and digital platforms, as well as startups deliberately positioned as defense-oriented technology providers. These entities are collaborating closely with the US military and traditional defense contractors to accelerate the digitization and intelligent transformation of military capabilities. Some analysts warn that this digital variant could drive large-scale US intervention abroad — potentially becoming a “new war machine”.

Traditional defense giants such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics, now face intense competition from two kinds of digital players. The first category comprises big tech corporations — Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Oracle, HP, Dell, Motorola, IBM and others — many of which have secured sizable Pentagon contracts to supply advanced systems software and cloud, data and AI services. The second category consists of venture-backed startups, often funded by Silicon Valley investors that focus on AI, autonomy, sensing and networked command-and-control systems tailored to military and intelligence needs. These startups market “national security” as a core product attribute in pursuit of a share of US defense procurement.

Examples are plentiful. Anduril, founded in 2017 by investors including Palmer Luckey and Peter Thiel, now supplies autonomous systems that combine AI and robotics — from unmanned aerial systems (UAS) and counter-UAS solutions to semi-portable autonomous surveillance systems and networked command and control (C2) software. Palantir, founded in 2003, has long partnered with government agencies and has significantly expanded military collaboration in recent years. Its market capitalization soared in 2024, exceeding the combined valuations of several legacy defense giants. Other comparable companies include Rebellion Defense (AI military applications), Shield AI (autonomous flight and navigation), Skydio (drones for military and law enforcement), HawkEye 360 (satellite-enabled radio-frequency monitoring), Epirus (directed-energy and electromagnetic defense), and various private ventures targeting dual-use space capabilities.

At first glance, Silicon Valley’s deepening ties to the Pentagon may appear anomalous. For years, Silicon Valley projected liberal, antiwar values, resisting the militarization of its technologies. Yet the region’s militarized trajectory represents a return to its historical roots rather than a novel development. Since the 1950s, US federal agencies — particularly the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) — decisively shaped the development of transformative technologies like the Internet and GPS.

Traditional defense firms also played formative roles in Silicon Valley’s rise. Although these ties waned after the Cold War, in recent years, major tech figures have publicly embraced national-security collaboration. In 2019, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos publicly urged big tech to show greater patriotism and actively participate in defense cooperation with the Department of Defense. In June 2025, the Army formalized the fusion of tech expertise and military innovation by appointing four tech leaders as reserve lieutenant colonels to its newly established “Detachment 201”, also known as the “Executive Innovation Corps” — a symbolic merger of commercial tech leadership and military roles.

Three drivers underpin the rise of the digital-military-industrial complex. First, the advent of AI has made integration of commercial data and algorithms essential to military modernization. The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), established by the Pentagon in Silicon Valley in 2015, channels venture-style procurements to accelerate conversion of commercial technologies for defense.

By September 2022, DIU had awarded roughly $1.2 billion in contracts to over 320 startups, and it was elevated in 2021 to report directly to the Secretary of Defense. Second, escalating global tensions such as the Russia-Ukraine conflict and turmoil in the Middle East have heightened US urgency to field technologies proven effective on modern battlefields. Third, China’s rapid advances in AI have fueled US concerns, prompting American policymakers to increasingly frame the competition as, in essence, an AI arms race.

Operationally, the digital-military-industrial complex differs from the traditional procurement model. Legacy contractors depend on large, long-term, bureaucratic contracts focused on platform performance. Tech firms, by contrast, move with commercial speed and market leverage, adapting civilian technologies for defense use — a model that strengthens their bargaining power and reduces regulatory constraints. To engage these new actors, the Department of Defense has adopted more agile acquisition mechanisms — notably “Other Transaction Agreements” (OTAs) — and established accelerators and programs to welcome nontraditional vendors.

n short, the US defense ecosystem is undergoing structural change: from a Washington-centered “contractor + Pentagon” system to a Silicon Valley-centric network combining venture capital, tech firms, legacy defense primes and the military. This emerging “Silicon Valley-Pentagon axis” is reshaping the tools, logic and ethical contours of warfare. The trend may intensify great-power rivalry and arms races, lower the threshold for war, obscure responsibility, and accelerate the militarization of technology — posing new threats to global peace and security.

Whether Silicon Valley will ultimately evolve into a cradle for militarism, and whether the digital-military-industrial complex will operate as a fully activated “war machine”, are questions that deserve the vigilance, concern, and reflection of people worldwide.

Shi Bowei is a lecturer from the Department of Political Science at the Party School of Zhejiang Provincial CPC Committee.

November 9, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Governments’ Financial Support for New Nuclear Developments in Canada

Frank Greening , 7 Nov 25

From a website run by the Canadian law firm Fasken:

Canada’s Ongoing Commitment to Nuclear Energy:

Governments in Canada, at the federal, provincial and territorial levels, continue to dedicate significant financial and other resources to the further development of nuclear energy in Canada, both for large-scale nuclear and SMRs. At the federal level, some recent examples include:

From a website run by the Canadian law firm Fasken:

November 9, 2025 Posted by | politics | Leave a comment

Scottish National Party reject UK Government’s ‘nonsense’ national security threat smear

 THE SNP have rejected the UK Government’s “nonsense” accusations
that they are a threat to national security. Three Cabinet ministers have
levelled the accusation against the party three times since the beginning
of the week.

Speaking in the Commons on Monday, Defence Secretary John
Healey said: “The continuation of the Scottish nationalist Government in
Scotland is a threat to our security and to future prosperity and jobs in
that country.”

Asked about those claims at a meeting of the Scottish
Affairs Committee on Wednesday, Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander
replied: “I find myself, as usual, in agreement with the Defence
Secretary.” He pointed to the SNP’s opposition to nuclear weapons and
to its historic ban on public money being spent on weapons manufacture.

North East Green MSP Maggie Chapman said: “Trident is a moral abomination that swallows huge sums of money that we could spend instead on improving people’s lives, on tackling poverty, on funding our public services.

The Scottish Government should not be offering even more funding for
multibillion pound weapons giants who have armed and supported Israel’s
genocide against Gaza. These are not extreme statements. They are views
held by large numbers of people, including me. The military industrial
complex does not ensure our security: it lays the foundations for future
conflict and misery.”

 The National 5th Nov 2025, https://www.thenational.scot/news/25599877.snp-reject-uk-governments-nonsense-national-security-threat-smear/

November 8, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

UK Government rapped as billions unaccounted for in nuclear spending

THE UK spending watchdog has raised serious concerns about the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD) finances after auditors found it was “unable” to
explain billions of pounds of expenditure listed as going towards nuclear
weapons programmes.

As a result, the National Audit Office (NAO) has issued
qualified opinions on the MoD’s 2024–25 financial statements, meaning
the accounts do not meet normal standards of accuracy and transparency.

Crucially, the NAO found that the UK Government has “not provided
accounting records for ongoing capital projects” carried out on its
behalf by the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE), a non-departmental public body that helps deliver the UK’s nuclear weaponry. Auditors found that AWE projects on behalf of the MoD “constituted £6.13 billion of the
value of the department’s assets under construction”.

Of this total, £1.5bn was said to relate to “legacy projects” – but the MoD was found to be “unable to provide supporting evidence” that this figure
was appropriate. The NAO also said it had found “several other
balances” within the £6.13bn figure that did not meet the standard
required to be signed off by auditors, without going into specifics.

 The National 4th Nov 2025,
https://www.thenational.scot/news/25595083.uk-government-rapped-billions-unaccounted-nuclear-spending/

November 7, 2025 Posted by | politics, UK | Leave a comment

The Nastiest Warmongers Are Trump’s Biggest Fans Now.

Caitlin Johnstone, Nov 03, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/the-nastiest-warmongers-are-trumps?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=177879309&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Massacre fetishist Lindsey Graham said “Trump is my favorite president” because “we’re killing all the right people and we’re cutting your taxes” during a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Summit on Friday.

“We’ve run out of bombs; we didn’t run out of bombs in World War II,” the senator said.

If Lindsey Graham ever gushed about me this effusively for any reason I think I would have to shave my head and join a convent or something, because it would be a clear and undeniable sign that I had been living my whole entire life completely wrong.

It says a lot about how much of a warmonger Trump has become that he himself actually slammed Lindsey Graham repeatedly during his first crack at the presidency for being such a firebreathing war slut.

In 2016 Trump said of Graham, “I hear his theory for the [Iraq] war; you’ll be in there forever. You’ll end up starting World War III with a guy like that.”

In 2017 Trump slammed Graham and his war porn circle jerk partner John McCain, saying “The two senators should focus their energies on ISIS, illegal immigration and border security instead of always looking to start World War III.”

In 2018 Trump attacked Graham for opposing the withdrawal of US troops from Syria, tweeting “So hard to believe that Lindsey Graham would be against saving soldier lives & billions of $$$. Why are we fighting for our enemy, Syria, by staying & killing ISIS for them, Russia, Iran & other locals? Time to focus on our Country & bring our youth back home where they belong!”

In 2019 Trump said during a press conference, “Lindsey Graham would like to stay in the Middle East for the next thousand years with thousands of soldiers and fighting other people’s wars. I want to get out of the Middle East.”

Trump used to at least posture as an anti-interventionist who didn’t get along with the warmongers of the DC swamp. Now he’s best butt buddies with the most bloodthirsty swamp creatures alive.

They love him, and why wouldn’t they? He bombed Iran. He bombed Yemen. He poured genocide weapons into Israel to incinerate Gaza and to bomb Lebanon, and has been aggressively stomping out free speech that is critical of Israel’s war crimes. He’s been bombing Somalia at an unprecedented rate. He’s giving every sign that he’s getting ready to do something truly horrible in Venezuela. He’s even threatening to invade Nigeria now.

Back in March, Trump’s intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard embarrassingly tweeted that “President Trump IS the President of Peace. He is ending bloodshed across the world and will deliver lasting peace in the Middle East.” Now she’s spending her whole career helping Trump commit mass military violence around the globe.

Trump duped his base into believing he’ll make peace, and he turned out to be Lindsey Graham’s gooiest wet dream incarnate.

Hopefully some lessons are being learned here.

November 6, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Resuming U.S. Nuclear Tests Is Reckless and Dangerous, One Expert Says

“The only countries that will really learn more if [U.S. nuclear] testing resumes are Russia and, to a much greater extent, China,” says Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on the geopolitics of nuclear weaponry

By Dan Vergano edited by Lee Billings, October 29, 2025, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trumps-baffling-call-for-resuming-u-s-nuclear-tests/

Editor’s Note (11/3/2025): Energy secretary Chris Wright stated on Sunday that any new nuclear testing pursued following Trump’s remarks would be of the “noncritical” variety, entailing already standard routine tests of weapons components and other parts of the U.S. arsenal. Scientific American will continue reporting any new developments on nuclear testing.

Ahead of a meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping on Thursday, President Donald Trump said the U.S. will resume nuclear testing, ending a 33-year moratorium.

“Because of other countries [sic] testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,” Trump announced on his social media platform Truth Social.

The U.S. last tested a nuclear weapon in an underground experiment in the Nevada Test Site in 1992, a marker of the end of the cold war. That last test concluded a decades-long testing program that included more than 1,000 detonations conducted by the civilian Department of Energy, which oversees the U.S. nuclear stockpile.

The Project 2025 report, now acknowledged by Trump as an indicator of his administration’s policies, had called for resuming U.S. nuclear testing to ensure the performance of the nuclear stockpile. Trump’s announcement follows recent Russian tests of a nuclear-powered cruise missile and a nuclear-capable underwater drone, but there have not been any known nuclear detonations recently made by either Russia or China. Both of those nations are signatories to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), which the U.S. has signed yet never ratified. (China also hasn’t ratified the treaty, and Russia revoked its ratification in 2023, however.) China last tested a bomb in 1996, and the Soviet Union last tested one in 1990. Both countries have expressed concern about Trump’s announcement, and Russia has threatened to start its own tests.

To ask what is at stake in Trump’s call to resume U.S. nuclear tests, Scientific American spoke with Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on the geopolitics of nuclear weaponry at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]

We haven’t done a nuclear test since 1992. So what is the argument for doing this? Are there any technical benefits to resuming testing?

The question is: What sort of testing are we talking about? The U.S can presently test nuclear weapons in every way, shape or form—except for doing explosive tests that create yield. The U.S. now does so-called subcritical tests about 1,000 feet under the Nevada desert. And so it’s very unclear what the president means.

Are we talking about a full-yield test out in the desert? Or are we talking about small lab experiments that produce much less yield? It’s very unclear. And all of those [tests] have different yields [that have] different purposes.

But if I were to back up to issue one sweeping statement, it would be: No, [there aren’t any benefits to resuming testing] because the U.S. already conducted more than 1,000 nuclear tests. It has a vast trove of data that underlies the most sophisticated computer models imaginable. The U.S. knows more about its nuclear weapons today than it did in the period when it was testing them. The only countries that will really learn more if testing resumes are Russia and, to a much greater extent, China.

Project 2025 called for resuming underground nuclear tests, though. Would Trump’s announcement seem to point in that direction—basically, to the U.S. once again blowing up such weapons underground?

During the last [Trump] administration, [officials] spoke of being ready to resume nuclear testing. And they discovered that it would be a couple of years before they could do it. Then they started talking about doing uninstrumented tests—which are literally pointless.

You get no data from an uninstrumented test. It’s just a demonstration. All you do is demonstrate that we have functional nukes. It’s really unclear why you would do that.

What would this do to the nonproliferation movement, with the whole idea of a testing moratorium going out the window?

It’s possible the test ban collapses. But it is also possible that the nonproliferation treaty [the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which entered into force in 1970] collapses because that requires the U.S., Russia and other nuclear-weapon states to make good-faith efforts to work toward the elimination of nuclear weapons.

But non-nuclear-weapon states have made it clear that this test ban is literally the bare minimum. And most of those countries aren’t very happy that the U.S hasn’t ratified the [CTBT]. But the fact that there has at least been an end to nuclear testing has been really important to sustaining a sense around the world that nonproliferation is a common good rather than just an effort at a nuclear monopoly by a few countries.

Normally I am not one of those people who believes in that kind of symbolic stuff. But so much of [the Trump administration’s] foreign policy seems to be about being transgressive. Whatever effect a resumption in testing would have on our domestic politics, it also affects how people abroad see us. It becomes difficult to persuade people to do the things we want them to do when we seem reckless and selfish.

There’s also this matter of modernizing the U.S nuclear program, a long-running effort that’s over budget and delayed. How would new nuclear testing play into that?

If there were a technical reason to resume testing, you could imagine that would reduce the need for modernization—because successful testing would suggest that the existing systems are in excellent shape.

That said, I don’t think this is a sincere effort to get additional data to be more informed about the state of the U.S. arsenal. I think this is intended as a transgressive act that’s supposed to bully the Russians and the Chinese and aggravate the president’s domestic enemies.

So why do it?

Well, the real fundamental question here is: What the hell does [Trump] mean in that Truth Social post? Because Russia hasn’t conducted a nuclear test; it’s tested nuclear-capable or nuclear-powered assets.

And the Russians and Chinese aren’t accused of doing clandestine things at their test sites—or, at least, they haven’t been accused of that on an unclassified basis. And the Department of Defense doesn’t have any role in this, really, because nuclear testing is handled by the Department of Energy. So you just kind of stare at Trump’s statement, and you’re like, “What?”

I just don’t know what any of this means. I thought I was an expert, and I can’t parse the words he’s using.

It’s also confusing because, in some ways, Trump has seemed worried about nuclear war. He makes statements along the lines of saying that we all have too many weapons and should work together to disarm, and then he comes out with something like this.

I think what’s happened is that he’s been told that the Russians or the Chinese are doing bad things and that we’re at a disadvantage because we can’t do the same bad things. And he’s feels we ought to be able to do the same things. I doubt it’s any deeper than that.

But let me say a positive thing: [Trump] has political power here, in that he could force Senate Republicans to ratify the … CTBT if he thinks this is so important. He could absolutely get a verification protocol to the CTBT just like the Reagan administration did with the Threshold Test Ban Treaty [the Treaty on the Limitation of Underground Nuclear Weapon Tests, which entered into force in 1990], which would address some of these concerns about what the Russians and the Chinese are doing—if Republicans would accept it and ratify the treaty.

And then, you know what, he really would get a Nobel Peace Prize. If Trump got a verification protocol to the CTBT and then brought that treaty into effect, I would write in support of him getting a Nobel Peace Prize.

All right, let’s hope that, somehow, that idea gets whispered in his ear. Thanks for your thoughts.

November 5, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

How could the US restart nuclear weapons testing?

President Trump wants to revive a military programme mothballed at the end of the Cold War so America can stand ‘on an equal basis’ with global rivals

Trump implied
that rival nuclear powers were carrying out tests and that it was crucial
for the United States to start “testing our nuclear weapons on an equal
basis”. Neither Russia nor China, America’s “big power rivals”, have
conducted nuclear tests since a moratorium was agreed.

The last American test was in 1992, Russia stopped in 1990 and China in 1996, the same year the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was signed. The only countries that have carried out nuclear tests since then have been North Korea, most recently in 2017, and India and Pakistan, which both conducted underground testing
in May 1998.

Times 30th Oct 2025, https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/us-nuclear-weapons-testing-trump-s08xq9hgm

November 5, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Risky Movement to Make America Nuclear Again

As the licensing team dug in, Oklo couldn’t provide the supporting analysis for many of its basic safety assumptions

As the licensing team dug in, Oklo couldn’t provide the supporting analysis for many of its basic safety assumptions

A Silicon Valley startup called Oklo is leading the charge to bring nuclear power back to the US with small reactors. Its backers have wealth and political connections that could undermine nuclear safety.

Bloomberg, By Michael Riley,

When Oklo Inc., a nuclear power startup, applied in 2020 to operate its first reactor, the company rested largely on outsize ambition. Its MIT-educated co-founders, a married couple named Jacob and Caroline DeWitte, lived in a mobile home park in Mountain View, California, in space 38. Oklo, which had only 20 full-time employees, wanted to build small reactors across the country, transforming the way towns and industries are powered. To realize that dream, it needed the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to say the company’s design was safe.

Two years later, Oklo had failed to pass even the first step of the approval process. In 2022, after months of frustrating back and forth, the NRC concluded that the company didn’t provide verifiable answers to the most basic safety questions. The regulator denied the application. A former senior agency official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, says Oklo “is probably the worst applicant the NRC has ever had.”

For Jake DeWitte, the denial was maddening. He still grows visibly agitated when recounting the moment. “They completely screwed up,” he says. By the end, Caroline says, the agency “became kind of malicious, frankly.”

In 2025, Oklo’s reactor design is still unlicensed. But, in a sign of how radically the safety landscape has changed for nuclear power, the company’s business promise seems bright. Oklo went public last year and now has a market value hovering around $20 billion. In May, Jake was in the White House when President Donald Trump signed four executive orders designed to herald a nuclear renaissance. “It’s a brilliant industry,” Trump said, DeWitte at his side.

The startup’s backers long had a Plan B: If Oklo couldn’t win approval from the agency charged with protecting the public from nuclear accidents, they would, essentially, go after the regulator, in much the way Uber Technologies Inc. and other Silicon Valley startups have obliterated regulatory roadblocks. One of the architects of Oklo’s attack-the-regulator strategy is a law professor-turned-venture capitalist with ties to the Koch empire. He says the public shouldn’t be worried.

The revival of nuclear power in the US has been predicted countless times since President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program rose from the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This version, though, is something never before seen. Rather than huge power stations built by engineering companies for giant utilities, a new breed of nuclear startup wants to commercialize reactors, some so small they could be carried on semitrucks, so mighty they could power the hungriest of artificial intelligence data centers. Not one of these so-called advanced reactors has yet to be built in the US, but their promise has touched off a dealmaking frenzy, with backing from tech giants including Amazon.com, Google, Meta Platforms and Microsoft. The US Department of Energy has announced a goal of having at least three of these reactors switched on by July 4 of next year.

Oklo’s power and influence in the MAGA era have let it seize the political moment

Oklo isn’t the most obvious company of the two dozen or so newcomers to have broken through as a front-runner. Bill Gates’ TerraPower LLC has been trying to develop an advanced reactor for almost two decades. Kairos Power LLC, backed by Google, has made quick progress through the government’s licensing process.

But Oklo’s power and influence in the MAGA era have let it seize the political moment. The company is backed by some of Silicon Valley’s most important leaders, including Sam Altman, co-founder of OpenAI. A former board member is now Trump’s secretary of energy. Critically, Oklo has capitalized on the deregulatory fever gripping Washington. The NRC, which became a target of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has lost at least 195 staff since January, and efforts to strip the agency of key powers are underway.

For a half-century, the NRC has been the watchdog of an industry built on some of the most dangerous technologies ever known. Yet Oklo and its backers say that its reactors will be so small and safe, little NRC oversight is needed.

Even a year ago, this proposition would have been absurd. Experts say advanced reactors are indeed safer in some respects: Because they’re a third or less the size of traditional reactors and aren’t cooled by water circulating under immense pressure, a serious accident is less likely to spread radioactive debris across a major populace. But for anyone nearby—workers operating the plant, say, or soldiers on a military base powered by one—the dangers could be substantial.

“All these nuke bros who know nothing about operating a reactor, they just want a free pass,” says Allison Macfarlane, former chairman of the NRC. “They can have their free pass, but then they will have an accident.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Transatomic’s collapse left venture capital’s tech titans looking for a new standard bearer in their drive to disrupt nuclear power.

In January 2018, some of the country’s richest and most powerful descended on the desert resort town of Indian Wells, California, for three days of hobnobbing over canapés and golf. They had come for the annual donor retreat established by the chemicals-and-refining billionaires Charles and David Koch; before the weekend was out, they had pledged to spend more than $400 million to support the Kochs’ political influence operation, which counted governors, senators and state legislative leaders as foot soldiers.

Among those attending was a law professor-turned-venture capitalist named Salen Churi. Co-founder of a new Koch-backed VC firm called Trust Ventures, Churi explained the firm’s novel strategy as he worked the target-rich room for potential investors: identify startups facing steep regulatory challenges; solve them through litigation, advocacy and political influence; and then watch the profits roll in.

“Imagine a startup able to tap into the know-how of Koch from Day 1,” Churi said, according to news coverage of his presentation. The company’s first big investment, in mid-2018, was in Oklo. (Another investor in 2018 was Rothrock; he invested in Oklo around the same time that Transatomic folded.)……………………………………………..

…………………………………………………….. Eighty feet high and fashioned from 1-inch-thick steel plating, the shiny silver dome of the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II rises from the eastern Idaho sagebrush like a lost artifact of the Atomic Age. At one point, 52 test reactors of various types operated on this stretch of high desert. It’s the home of the Idaho National Laboratory, formerly known as Argonne-West, where nuclear power was born.

Nowadays, scientists, government officials, tourists and others have turned this site into a pilgrimage. (The filmmaker Oliver Stone paid a visit not long ago.) Some of them come to see or learn from the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II, or EBR-II, a sodium fast reactor that is considered by many to be the lab’s most successful attempt to revolutionize the way nuclear energy is created.

There’s a renewed belief that this long-forgotten technology—EBR-II was built six decades ago and decommissioned in the mid-1990s—holds the keys to a safer, more efficient nuclear industry. Adherents argue that the technology, unlike other reactors, is “passively safe”—so safe that in even some of the worst accident scenarios, a sodium fast reactor would shut down without human intervention.

Not far from the massive silver dome is a patch of government land where the DeWittes have staked their future. Little more than a sign and a couple of porta potties stashed amid the juniper bushes, this is where the two are planning to build Oklo’s reactor, Aurora, which they’ve described as a more modern version of the EBR-II. They have vowed that their reactor will share the same inherent safety characteristics.

Edwin Lyman, a physicist and director of nuclear power safety with the Union of Concerned Scientists, says the assumption that reactors like EBR-II are “passively safe” is misguided. “It’s gaslighting,” he says. Sodium fast reactors are notoriously difficult to operate, which accounts for the technology’s long history of accidents and meltdowns. Sodium leaks can create fires that spray a toxic sodium-oxide aerosol into the air. If the coolant comes into contact with water, hydrogen explosions can result in both the reactor itself and the power generation plant. And compared with light-water reactors, fast reactors leak neutrons that need extensive shielding to make them safe. “If something goes wrong, the potential for a Chernobyl-like escalating event is actually much higher than it is with light-water reactors,” Lyman says.

When Oklo submitted its first application to the NRC in 2020, the agency was under pressure from Congress and the industry to show it could license new reactors more efficiently. The agency’s licensing team was eager to begin what it called a Phase 1 review—essentially checking that the application is complete enough to move to a more rigorous scientific and safety evaluation. With an experienced company, Phase 1 usually takes about two months. “We thought we could get Oklo to that point in about six months,” says a former agency official familiar with the company’s application, who asked for anonymity to talk openly about the company’s application.

Major sticking points soon emerged. The company declared that, based on its extensive calculations, Aurora was one of the safest nuclear reactors in the world and there was no plausible accident that would result in a release of radiation into the environment. Yet the NRC staff identified important scenarios that Oklo didn’t appear to consider: What if undulating pipes from a sudden leak wrecked key systems? What if the seals of the reactor capsule failed, creating a pathway for radiation to reach the outside? The regulators also asked about the risk of flooding inside the reactor capsule, which the NRC said “may represent a potential criticality issue.” Nuclear experts say that’s a technical way of saying that the agency was worried about the possibility of an uncontrolled fission  uncontrolled fission event, which could result in a dangerous steam explosion inside the reactor vessel.

As the licensing team dug in, Oklo couldn’t provide the supporting analysis for many of its basic safety assumptions, according to four officials who spoke to Businessweek about the application, as well as public NRC documents. In some cases, supporting files the company claimed to have were not available when the NRC tried to examine them, one official says.

“We needed the evidence that this reactor could be built and operated safely, and it just wasn’t forthcoming,” says one of the four officials.

Finally, in January 2022, the NRC denied Oklo’s application. By that point, the company had raised more than $25 million, and its dream of mass producing small nuclear reactors had seemed in reach. But at the NRC, the company never made it beyond Phase 1.

In a flashy video posted on YouTube last year, the DeWittes, clad in jeans, stroll across the high prairie near the Idaho National Laboratory. They’re introduced by a narrator whose tone mixes soothing and serious. “Meet the husband-and-wife engineering duo that discovered a game-changing technology buried in a government lab in Idaho,” the narrator says.

The six-and-a-half-minute video was published on the YouTube channel of a Utah-based organization called the Abundance Institute, identified on its website as “a mission-driven nonprofit focused on creating a space for emerging technologies.” In contrast to other pro-nuclear outfits including Third Way and the Breakthrough Institute, the Abundance Institute has been ferocious in its criticism of the NRC. In January its CEO penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that labeled the regulator “lawless,” then followed up with social media posts declaring that it was time to abolish the agency.

What the videos and op-eds don’t disclose is that the Abundance Institute is Churi’s brainchild. He’s a co-founder and is listed as the institute’s treasurer in papers filed with the Utah secretary of state’s office. The same papers list, as an institute director, Derek Johnson. He’s a central player on the Kochs’ national political team and executive vice president at the Kochs’ umbrella group, Stand Together, which also published the Oklo video……………….

“The people who get one-cent electricity from nuclear don’t exist yet because we can’t give it to them yet,” Churi says. “We wanted to be the lobbyist for companies that don’t exist yet and for consumers who haven’t gotten the benefit of those technologies yet.”

The institute is so intertwined with the Koch family’s famed influence network that it’s hard to distinguish between the two. Many of its key employees, including the CEO, come from the Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University, sometimes called “Koch U of the West,” a reference to a similar Koch-funded outfit at George Mason University in Virginia. Churi listed CGO’s offices as his address in papers that the Abundance Institute filed with the state. (Christopher Koopman, the institute’s CEO, called that a “clerical error.”)

Emails and other documents obtained through public records requests show that the Abundance Institute effectively serves as a front for Churi’s attack-the-regulator mission. As his team dissected federal regulations, Churi spotted language that might offer an opening. In 1956 the Atomic Energy Commission determined that because any apparatus designed to carry out a nuclear fission chain reaction can affect the health and safety of the public, it needs a federal license. Nuclear startups could argue that their reactors are so small and safe that they don’t present any risk to the public—and therefore fall outside federal jurisdiction. It was a long-shot position on the science, but the right court might just buy it. Churi and the team went to work.

They began looking for a nuclear startup willing to be the public face of the challenge. And, because a major goal of the lawsuit was to shift oversight of small nuclear reactors from the NRC to the states, they recruited state attorneys general as lead plaintiffs.

For the first, they linked up with Bret Kugelmass, founder and CEO of Last Energy Inc., which boasts a reactor design using off-the-shelf components. Kugelmass has little to no experience in nuclear engineering—his last company used drones to map farmland—but he has a popular energy podcast and is close to the MAGA movement. One Oklo investor called him “like Elon in his take-no-prisoners approach to getting stuff done.”

For the second, Churi and the Abundance Institute targeted officials in Texas and Utah, two states where Churi spends much of his time and knows, he says, “a lot of folks who work in both politics and the AG offices.” In Utah, the Abundance Institute served as a conduit to those officials, leveraging the Koch family’s political clout as well.

According to emails obtained by Businessweek through a public records request, Utah Senate President J. Stuart Adams and an aide met with Abundance Institute staff in the fall of 2024. Afterward, the aide wrote Utah Chief Deputy Attorney General Dan Burton, saying the institute was “gathering clients for a nationwide lawsuit against the NRC.” Then he added, “We think it would be worth you/the AG’s time to explore their proposal and determine whether it makes sense for Utah to join.”…………………………………………………..

As the team prepared to file its federal lawsuit, a second and potentially more direct path to gutting the NRC opened up. The country had just voted to send Donald Trump back to the White House.

In February 2023, Jake DeWitte flew spur of the moment to Denver in hopes of buying a Kia Telluride he’d found online. His trip changed the future of the company.

Denver happened to be the home base for Chris Wright, founder and CEO of the second-largest fracking company in North America, Liberty Energy Inc. …………………………….

The timing was propitious, and not only for Oklo. The buy-in—structured as a $10 million strategic investment by Liberty—was finalized just weeks before an announcement in June that one of Altman’s companies, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), would take Oklo public. Jake says Oklo extended its last VC round to allow Liberty to get in under the wire, making Liberty one of the last early investors before Oklo began trading on the New York Stock Exchange the following year, with an initial valuation of $850 million……………………………………………..

In his first departmental directive, issued in early February, Wright declared that “the long-awaited American nuclear renaissance must launch during President Trump’s administration.” The directive said that the Energy Department would work to enable the “rapid deployment” of next-generation nuclear technology.

Meanwhile, Trump began a slash-and-burn campaign to hollow out federal regulators, including nominally independent agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the National Labor Relations Board. By April, drafts of four executive orders targeting the regulation of nuclear energy began circulating…………………………………………………………………..

One person who did get input on the orders, by her own account, was Isabelle Boemeke, a Brazilian model and self-described nuclear energy influencer who goes by the moniker Isodope. Author of a book on nuclear power titled Rad Future, Boemeke is famous for mobilizing her social media followers in a successful drive to keep the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant north of Los Angeles operating beyond its scheduled retirement. She’s also the spouse of Joe Gebbia, one of the founders of Airbnb and a prominent DOGE figure………………………………………….

……………………………………….. The federal lawsuit against the NRC was filed in December, with Texas and Utah as lead plaintiffs. By March the NRC had responded with a strongly worded motion asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit.

Behind the scenes, something very different was happening. At the end of April, the plaintiffs’ lead lawyer, a partner at the boutique firm Boyden Gray named Michael Buschbacher, emailed his colleagues with good news. The NRC was ready to discuss a settlement and potentially agree to the plaintiffs’ biggest demand: the initiation of a rule-making process with the goal of exempting some small nuclear reactors from traditional NRC oversight and handing it to state agencies instead.

Meanwhile, the startups have another pathway to get their reactors to market quickly. In August, the Department of Energy announced a pilot program with the goal of deploying at least three untested reactors by next July 4, to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Oklo plans to license its first Aurora reactor through this program, the company says, although its reactor won’t be ready by then.

The company says it still plans to license future reactors via the NRC, but it will benefit from a radically changed agency. The executive orders signed in May push the agency to approve new reactor licenses within 18 months and to further expedite approval for any power plants already OK’d by the Defense Department or the Energy Department, two entities that have never licensed a commercial reactor. The NRC’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, a panel of experts who weigh in on safety issues posed by new designs, had its remit pared back to the “minimum necessary” required by law.

………………………..both the NRC’s general counsel and its executive director of operations were pushed out, two people familiar with those moves said. Trump fired one commissioner in mid-June, and a second resigned a few weeks later.

………………………………………… At a recent meeting with NRC employees, DOGE representatives handed out black ballcaps emblazoned with “Make Nuclear Great Again” alongside the logo for another nuclear startup, Valar Atomics, according to a former agency official familiar with the meeting……………………………………………………………………………

By this summer, it was clear that Churi and his team had won, and not only for Oklo. Their efforts have created an opening that other nuclear startups—and their Silicon Valley backers—can now draft behind. One of those companies, Deep Fission, plans to operate small nuclear reactors a mile underground, a concept that’s never been tried anywhere. Valar Atomics, which joined the lawsuit against the NRC in April, claims on its website that you can safely hold spent nuclear fuel from its reactor for five minutes in the palm of your hand—something that nuclear experts say would quickly kill anyone who tries it. Both companies were also recently chosen for the Energy Department’s new accelerated licensing program………………….. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-10-30/silicon-valley-s-risky-plan-to-revive-nuclear-power-in-america?embedded-checkout=true

November 4, 2025 Posted by | politics, Small Modular Nuclear Reactors | 2 Comments

Stealing $140 billion in Russian assets won’t change the outcome of the war in Ukraine.

while the determination of Ukraine to fight is unquestionable, the emotional belief in the west that this will overcome the enormous social and economic challenges the country faces in an extended attritional war with Russia is wildly misplaced.

A full 180 degree change in diplomatic course by Europe would require an acceptance that the war against Russia was unwinnable, and that Russia’s underlying concerns – namely Ukrainian neutrality – would finally have to be accepted as a political reality.

Better for EU leaders to accept this now although, of course, they won’t.

Ian Proud. Nov 01, 2025, https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/stealing-140-billion-in-russian-assets?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=177688104&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Caught between a rock and a hard place, European leaders continue to deny the obvious realities of the dire situation in Ukraine, which will only worsen over time. Yet I see no evidence of any willingness to change course, despite the obvious political hazard they face and the increasingly grim forecast for Europe and for Ukraine should they continue to push an unwinnable war.

The war in Ukraine is now entirely dependent on the ability of European states to pay for it at a cost of at least $50bn per year, on the basis of Ukraine’s latest budget estimate for the 2026 fiscal year. Ukraine itself is bankrupt and has no access to other sources of external capital, beyond that provided by the governments sponsoring the ongoing war.

That then brings the conversation back to the expropriation of $140bn in assets currently frozen in Belgium which the Commission would like to use for a reconstruction loan. The term ‘reconstruction loan’ is itself disingenuous, on the basis that any expropriated Russian assets would not be used for reconstruction, but rather to fund the Ukrainian war effort. Indeed. Chancellor Merz of Germany recently suggested that the fund could allow Ukraine to keep fighting for another three years.

The most likely scenario, in the terrible eventuality that war in Ukraine did continue for another three years is that the Russian armed forces would almost certainly swallow up the whole of the Donbass region – comprising Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. This – Ukraine’s departure from the Donbas – appears to be the basis of President Putin’s conditions for ending the war now, together with a Ukrainian declaration of neutrality and giving up any NATO aspirations. More likely, the Russian Armed forces might also capture additional swathes of land in Zaporizhia and Kherson oblasts, and also in Dnipropetrovsk, where they have made recent incursions.

So, there is a strong likelihood, at the currently slow pace of the war effort in which Russia claims small pieces of land on a weekly basis, that three years from now Ukraine would have to settle for a peace that was even more disadvantageous to it than that which is available now, having lost more land, together with potentially hundreds of thousands of troops killed or injured.

Logically, European policymakers would be able to look into the future to see this grim predicament with clear eyes and encourage Zelensky to settle for peace now.

But European policy is driven by two key considerations. Firstly, an emotional belief that an extended war might so weaken Russia that President Putin was forced to settle on unfavourable terms. The idea of a strategic defeat of Russia – which is often spoken by European politicians – however, doesn’t bear serious scrutiny.

Russia doesn’t face the same considerable social and financial challenges that Ukraine faces. Its population is much larger and a wider conscription of men into the Armed forces has not been needed – Russia can recruit sufficient new soldiers to fight and, indeed, has increased the size of its army since 2022. Ukraine continues to resort to forced mobilisation of men over the age of 25, often using extreme tactics that involve busifying young men against their will from the streets.

Critically, Russia could likely continue to prosecute the war on the current slow tempo for an extended period of time without the need for a wider mobilisation of young men, which may prove politically unpopular for President Putin domestically. Yet, the longer the war continues, Ukraine will come under increasing pressure, including from western allies, to deepen its mobilisation to capture young men below the age of 25 to shore up its heavily depleted armed forces on the front line.

There has been considerable resistance to this so far within Ukraine. Mobilising young men above the age of 22 would prove unpopular for President Zelensky but it would also worsen Ukraine’s already catastrophic demographic challenge: 40% of the working age population has already been lost, either through migration or through death on the front line and that number will continue to go south, the longer the war carries on.

Russia’s financial position is considerably stronger than Ukraine’s. It has very low levels of debt at around 15% of GDP and maintains a healthy current account surplus, despite a narrowing of the balance in the second quarter of 2025. Even if Europe expropriates its frozen assets, Russia still has a generous and growing stock of foreign exchange reserves to draw upon, which recently topped $700bn for the first time.

Russia’s military industrial complex continues to outperform western suppliers in the production of military equipment and munitions. In the currently unlikely event that Russia started to fall into the red in terms of its trade – what commentators in the west refer to as destroying Russia’s war economy – it would still have considerable scope to borrow from non-western lenders, given the strength of its links with the developing world, aided by the emergence of BRICS.

Ukraine is functionally bankrupt because it is unable to borrow from western capital markets, on account of its decision to pause all debt payments. With debt expected to reach 110% in 2025, even before consideration of any loan backed by frozen Russian assets, it depends entirely on handouts from the west. Ukraine’s trade balance has continued to worsen throughout the war, reinforcing its dependence on capital injections from the west to keep its foreign exchange reserves in the black.

So while the determination of Ukraine to fight is unquestionable, the emotional belief in the west that this will overcome the enormous social and economic challenges the country faces in an extended attritional war with Russia is wildly misplaced.

So, let’s look at the rational explanation for Europe’s continued willingness to prolong the fight in Ukraine. The uncomfortable truth is that Europe’s political leaders have boxed themselves into this position because of a hard boiled determination not to concede to Russia’s demands in any peace negotiations. Indeed, there is a steadfast and immovable objection to talking to Russia at all, which has been growing since 2014.

However, across much of Europe, the political arithmetic is turning against the pro-war establishment with nationalist, anti-war parties gaining ground in Central Europe, Germany, France, Britain and even in Poland. And despite positive overtures made by President Trump towards negotiation with President Putin, Trumpophobia provides another brake on the European political establishment shifting its position.

So, changing course now and entering into direct negotiations with Russia would have potentially catastrophic consequences, politically, for European leaders, which they must surely be aware of. A full 180 degree change in diplomatic course by Europe would require an acceptance that the war against Russia was unwinnable, and that Russia’s underlying concerns – namely Ukrainian neutrality – would finally have to be accepted as a political reality.

On this basis, European politicians would face the prospect of explaining to their increasingly sceptical voters that their strategy of defeating Russia had failed, having spent four years of war saying at all times that it would eventually succeed. And that would lead potentially to internationalist governments falling across Europe starting in two years when Poland and France will again go to the polls, and in 2029 when the British and German governments will face the voters.

There are deeper issues too. An end of war would accelerate the process of admitting Ukraine into the European Union with potentially disastrous consequences for the whole financial basis of Europe. The European Commission will face the prospect of accepting that a two-tier Europe is inevitable, admitting Ukraine as a member without the financial benefits received by existing member states; for probably understandable reasons, this would cause widespread resentment within Ukraine itself, having sacrificed so much blood to become European, precipitating widespread internal dissent and possibly conflict in a disgruntled country with an army of almost one million. Alternatively, the European Commission would need to redraw its budget and face huge resistance from existing Member States, who would lose billions of Euros each year in subsidies to Ukraine.

Caught between hoping for a strategic defeat of Russia which any rational observe can see is unlikely, and accepting the failure of their policy, causing a widespread loss of power and huge economic and political turmoil, Europe’s leaders are choosing to keep calm and carry on. If they had any sense, the likes of Von der Leyen, Merz, Starmer or Macron would change tack and pin their hopes on explaining away their failure before the political tide in Europe evicts them all from power. But I see no signs of them having the political acumen to do that. So we will continue to sit and wait, while storm clouds grow ever darker over Europe.

November 4, 2025 Posted by | EUROPE, politics | Leave a comment

Pentagon Tells Congress It Doesn’t Know Who It’s Killing in Latin American Boat Strikes

by Dave DeCamp | October 30, 2025 , https://news.antiwar.com/2025/10/30/pentagon-tells-congress-it-doesnt-know-who-its-killing-in-latin-american-boat-strikes/

US War Department officials don’t know the identities of the 61 people who have been extra-judicially executed in US military strikes on boats in the waters near Venezuela and in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, POLITICO reported on Thursday, citing House Democrats who attended a classified briefing on the campaign.

“[The department officials] said that they do not need to positively identify individuals on these vessels to do the strikes, they just need to prove a connection to smuggling,” said Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-CA). “When we tried to get more information, we did not get satisfactory answers.”

While the Trump administration has cited overdose deaths in the US related to fentanyl to justify the bombing campaign, lawmakers were told in the briefing that the boats that have been targeted were allegedly smuggling cocaine, though the Pentagon has not provided evidence to back up its claims about what the vessels were carrying.

“They argued that cocaine is a facilitating drug of fentanyl, but that was not a satisfactory answer for most of us,” Jacobs said.

The briefing on Thursday came after the Pentagon shut out Democrats from another briefing it held with Republicans a day earlier, which left Democratic senators fuming. Democrats who attended Thursday’s briefing said Pentagon lawyers were pulled from the meeting at the last minute.

“Am I leaving satisfied? Absolutely not. And the last word that I gave to the admiral was, ‘I hope you recognize the constitutional peril that you are in and the peril you are putting our troops in,’” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) told reporters after the briefing, according to CNN.

Jacobs said that, based on what she was told, even if Congress authorized the bombing campaign, it would still be illegal. “[T]here’s nothing that we heard in there that changes my assessment that this is completely illegal, that it is unlawful and even if Congress authorized it, it would still be illegal because there are extrajudicial killings where we have no evidence,” she said.

Criticism of the US bombing campaign has also come from Republicans, most prominently from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). “No one said their name, no one said what evidence, no one said whether they’re armed, and we’ve had no evidence presented,” Paul said this week of the people who have been targeted. “They summarily execute people without presenting evidence to the public … so it’s wrong.”

Paul has joined Senate Democrats in introducing a War Powers Resolution aimed at preventing the Trump administration from starting a war with Venezuela amid threats of US strikes on the country aimed at ousting President Nicolas Maduro and a major US military buildup in the region. A vote on the bill is expected to happen next week.

November 3, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Hegseth to Congress: “I have no idea…”

3 November 2025 AIMN Editorial, By Walt Zlotow , https://theaimn.net/hegseth-to-congress-i-have-no-idea/

Hegseth might as well have told Congress that: “I have no idea who I’m murdering on the high seas… and I don’t care.”

Pete Hegseth’s War Dept held a briefing Wednesday for Congress on their criminal, unconstitutional bombings of small, unarmed boats in the Caribbean and Pacific killing 61 unidentified US murder victims.

Pete’s Murder Unincorporated not divulge the names of the dead, saying that was unnecessary since they were obviously drug smugglers bringing in fentanyl to kill thousands of unsuspecting US drug users. And in Hegseth’s newly renamed Department of War, suspected drug smugglers aren’t interdicted, boats searched and actual drug smugglers arrested. They and their boats are simply blown to bits.

Morally centered Democrats arrived at the hearing poised to object to Hegseth’s murderous lawlessness… but they were turned away. Only high seas murder supporting Republicans were allowed in. Democratic Senator Mark Warner blasted this show hearing:

“It’s not optional (to allow in Democrats). It’s a freakin’ duty. When an administration decides it can pick and choose which elected representatives get the understanding of their legal argument of why this is needed for military force and only chooses a particular party, it ignores all the checks and balances.”

Next day Pete pivoted and allowed Dems in… but barred War Department attorneys who would have to offer legal justification for their boss’ ongoing mass murder on the high seas. Likely reason? If they had an iota of moral, ethical and professional decency they’d say… “Absolutely none.”

November 3, 2025 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

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