Is It Just About AIPAC’s Money, or Does the US-Israel Rot Run Far Deeper?
The truth is that the US government has simply lost control of the very creature it has nurtured and shielded for decades. Blaming this dependency solely on campaign contributions no longer suffices; the rot is far deeper. It is driven by a deep-seated fear and trepidation among American politicians who have spent their entire careers learning that political survival requires absolute obedience to Tel Aviv.
By Ramzy BaroudJuly 24, 2026, https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/is-it-just-about-aipacs-money-or-does-the-us-israel-rot-run-far-deeper/
Two major stories regarding the United States and Israel in recent days represent profound watershed moments in the history of the relationship between both countries.
The first incident occurred on July 8 when US Congressman Ro Khanna (D-CA) and his delegation were detained by armed, illegal Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.
“These hoodlums come in with machine guns—an M4, an American-made machine gun—and they detain us,” Khanna in a stunning statement. “They block off the road. And then they call the IDF, and the IDF is on their side, not on the side of the Americans.”
Equally shocking to the congressman’s direct encounter with the raw, lawless reality of the occupation was the response of US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee. Rather than defending an elected American lawmaker, Huckabee dismissed Khanna’s harrowing experience as a mere “stunt.”
This defiance of old taboos, however, is not confined to progressive factions. In an even more unprecedented development on July 15, US Vice President JD Vance used an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience to deliver some of the sharpest criticism of Israel ever uttered by a sitting, top-tier US official.
Addressing a reported Israeli government-funded online influence campaign aimed at sabotaging the administration’s diplomatic efforts, a furious Vance “certain elements within the Israeli government” of actively trying to derail peace negotiations and manipulate American public opinion. He went so far as to target the operators behind the foreign-backed campaign, telling them directly to “go to hell.”
Yet, even as fierce criticism of Israel reaches the very apex of American politics, a profound, schizophrenic rupture divides Washington. While the American public, influential media personalities, and top-tier politicians are openly turning against Israel’s unbridled violence, the traditional power structures continue to toe the line.
This is explicitly evident in Congress, where establishment politicians remain busy acting as defense contractors for Tel Aviv. Lawmakers are quietly pushing forward with Section 219 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2027. Far from distancing the US from the ongoing regional bloodbath, this legislation aims to permanently integrate and synchronize the US and Israeli militaries under a joint “Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative.”
This institutional blind spot is why the entire alliance is beginning to look utterly ridiculous.
Traditional foreign policy theory views Israel as an American ‘vessel’ or ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ in the Middle East, policing the region on behalf of Western hegemony. Whether that was ever true is highly debatable. Today, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the relentless war on Iran, and the escalating aggressions against Lebanon and Syria have yielded zero strategic value to the American people. Instead, the United States has paid a massive financial and moral largesse to fund bloody regional wars that disrupt the global economy and make Washington a direct, complicit partner in the destruction of the Palestinian people.
Yet, the American administration continues to offer unquestioning support, with the exception of occasionally leaked, manufactured of ‘tense’ phone calls between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. No matter the physical, economic, or reputational damage inflicted on the US, Washington continues to march blindly toward the precipice.
To believe this subservience is a recent phenomenon is to misunderstand history. For many, the physical detention of Congressman Khanna by Israeli forces evokes the memory of Rachel Corrie—the 23-year-old American peace activist who was brutally crushed to death by an Israeli military bulldozer in Rafah on March 16, 2003, while peacefully shielding a Palestinian family home from demolition. In both cases, the message from Tel Aviv was clear: American status offers no protection.
Yet, this dependency runs deeper, rooted in the 1967 USS Liberty incident. During the Six-Day War, Israeli forces launched a relentless two-hour attack on an unarmed US intelligence ship, killing 34 American sailors and wounding 171. Instead of demanding accountability, the Johnson administration accepted Israel’s excuse of a “mistake” and covered up the truth to protect its ally. This established a decades-long precedent: Washington would act as a political and military shield for Israeli actions, even at the cost of American lives.
It is often argued that Israel’s stranglehold on American policy stems entirely from the financial power of its lobby in Washington, particularly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Conventional wisdom holds that AIPAC’s true dominance as the ultimate kingmaker began in 1981, when it waged a historic, ferocious battle to block President Ronald Reagan’s proposed sale of AWACS early-warning surveillance aircraft to Saudi Arabia.
But the USS Liberty incident occurred long before the lobby wielded such immense power. The truth is that the US government has simply lost control of the very creature it has nurtured and shielded for decades. Blaming this dependency solely on campaign contributions no longer suffices; the rot is far deeper. It is driven by a deep-seated fear and trepidation among American politicians who have spent their entire careers learning that political survival requires absolute obedience to Tel Aviv.
This is precisely why JD Vance’s recent remarks are so critical. It proves that the armor of absolute impunity is cracking, and the language of genuine, systemic criticism of Israel has officially been normalized in mainstream political discourse.
Zelensky’s Dangerous Gambit To Merge The Iran And Ukraine Wars
Of course this would also appeal to Israel, prolonging the Middle East war and potentially drawing European governments into the theater, too.
Trita Parsi Responsible Statecraft, https://scheerpost.com/2026/07/29/zelenskys-dangerous-gambit-to-merge-the-iran-and-ukraine-wars/
As Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky arrives in Washington, much indicates that he is no longer merely trying to draw greater American support into its war against Russia. Increasingly, it appears to be pursuing something far more consequential: merging the Ukraine war with the U.S.-Iran conflict into a single strategic theater.
The distinction matters. If the two wars become one, Ukraine ceases to be merely a recipient of American military assistance and instead becomes a direct participant in Washington’s war with Tehran. By the same token, the United States would no longer simply be Ukraine’s principal arms supplier. It would become an active belligerent against Russia through a conflict that stretches from the Black Sea to the Caspian.
For Kyiv, this would represent the strategic breakthrough it has sought since Russia’s invasion in 2022.
From the outset of the war, Ukrainian leaders consistently urged NATO to move beyond supplying weapons and intelligence. Zelensky repeatedly appealed for a NATO-enforced no-fly zone, warning that anything less amounted to allowing Russia to bomb Ukrainian cities with impunity. He pressed Western governments to provide increasingly sophisticated weapons systems long before they were politically acceptable in Washington. And he argued that victory required the West to abandon what he viewed as self-imposed escalation timidity.
The Biden administration sympathized with Ukraine’s predicament but consistently refused to cross several red lines. President Joe Biden rejected sending American ground troops, arguing that direct combat between U.S. and Russian forces risked a wider war between nuclear powers. He repeatedly ruled out establishing a no-fly zone because enforcing one would require U.S. pilots to shoot down Russian aircraft. His administration initially declined to provide F-16 fighter jets, long-range ATACMS missiles, and other advanced systems for fear of uncontrolled escalation, only relaxing some of those restrictions gradually after lengthy internal debate.
Throughout those decisions, Washington’s guiding principle remained consistent: help Ukraine defend itself without allowing the United States to become a direct combatant against Russia, while also eschewing diplomacy that could have brought the fighting to an end.
Today, however, the strategic landscape has changed. The Trump administration’s war with Iran has produced exactly the dilemma many critics predicted. Washington possesses overwhelming military superiority, yet it has suffered a strategic defeat at the hand of Tehran. Iran has demonstrated an ability to widen the battlefield horizontally, impose costs across multiple theaters, and force the United States to defend allies and assets far from the original front lines. Iran has escalation dominance; Trump has no good military option and he lacks the patience to pursue the diplomatic ones with discipline.
Trump’s vulnerability creates a historic opening for Kyiv. Instead of appearing as a country dependent on American assistance, Ukraine can now present itself as a strategic asset capable of helping Washington turn a military debacle into a splendid victory. Ukrainian drone warfare has evolved faster than almost any military innovation during the past three years. Its experience integrating inexpensive autonomous systems into conventional warfare has few equals.
Just as important, Ukraine could offer something Washington currently lacks: an opportunity to expand the conflict into an entirely new geographic theater. That is, turn Iran’s horizontal escalation against it.
The Caspian Sea represents such a possibility, in the Ukrainian argument. Opening pressure against Iran from the north would complicate Tehran’s military planning, force it to redistribute scarce resources, and reduce its ability to dictate where the conflict is fought.
From Kyiv’s perspective, offering that capability transforms Ukraine from America’s benefactor to its savior.
But a greater strategic prize for Kyiv would be to fuse the two conflicts into one. Such a merger would fundamentally alter the political logic of both wars. American personnel, intelligence assets, logistics, and operational planning would become increasingly intertwined across the two theaters. Russian and Iranian military cooperation would likewise encourage Washington to treat them as components of a single conflict rather than separate crises.
Once that threshold is crossed, the distinction between supporting Ukraine and fighting Russia becomes progressively harder to sustain.
This dynamic would also appeal to Israel. First, it would give the Iran war another lease on life. Second, it would internationalize the conflict further by drawing European governments into the Iran theater through their deep commitments to Ukraine. And third, perhaps most significantly, it would transform the political narrative. Defeating Iran would no longer be presented as a necessity to defend Israel, but rather, to defend Ukraine.
Given the levels of elite and public support Ukraine enjoys — after all, it was the victim of an illegal invasion — such a framing is far more politically digestible than centering the war on Israel, given Israel’s plummeting standing in the West due to its genocide in Gaza and critical role in starting the illegal war with Iran
None of this means that Ukraine’s gamble will succeed. But Trump may be susceptible to it given his self-inflicted predicament in the Strait of Hormuz. (However, judging by the decision not to hold a press conference today, this may mean Zelensky’s meeting with Trump earlier at the White House was less than successful.)
Though Biden’s Ukraine policy deserves much criticism, he is resisting this type of escalation because the risk of direct confrontation between NATO and Russia could lead to a much larger and more catastrophic war. Those concerns have not disappeared simply because the White House has changed hands or because Trump has trapped himself in a foolish war.
Attempts to solve one strategic problem by broadening the scope of a conflict have often made both problems harder to resolve. The greatest danger today may not be that Trump chooses to fight two wars simultaneously, but that seemingly small escalatory steps pave the way for a disaster both Biden and Trump have sought to avoid.
Trita Parsi is the co-founder and Executive Vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
White House wants to entice ‘willing states’ to take nation’s nuclear waste with promises of economic boost
The plan could spur construction of ‘advanced reactors, data centers, and manufacturing facilities,’ according to the Trump administration
Bruce Golding, Tuesday 28 July 2026, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/white-house-states-nuclear-waste-economy-b3023034.html
The White House reportedly wants Congress to change federal law so “willing states” can store the nation’s nuclear waste — and potentially boost their economies as a result.
A leaked document circulating on Capitol Hill details an administration proposal to replace the abandoned plan to stash radioactive refuse deep inside Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, according to Politico.
It would allow the Energy Department to authorize the construction and operation of so-called nuclear life-cycle innovation campuses where waste could be stored for reprocessing “in willing states,” Politico said.The document reportedly also dangles the notion that creating the campuses would lead private industry to build “advanced reactors, data centers and manufacturing facilities” there.
“Change in legislation is a must,” an unidentified nuclear industry official told Politico. “Current law only allows the federal government to dispose of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain and only allows money to be collected and spent for Yucca Mountain.”
In a Tuesday statement to The Independent, the White House didn’t deny the Politico report, with a spokesperson saying, “The Trump administration continues to prioritize advancing civilian nuclear energy.”
The Energy Department also announced Tuesday that it had selected five states — Idaho, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Utah — as potential hosts of the proposed nuclear campuses.
“These campuses will be massive generators of economic growth, create thousands of high-paying jobs, and be crucial to unleashing America’s nuclear renaissance,” Wright said in a prepared statement.
President Donald Trump last year issued a series of executive orders aimed at boosting U.S. nuclear power production, including one that calls for quadrupling capacity — to 400 gigawatts — by 2050 through “emerging technologies to safely accelerate the modeling, simulation, testing, and approval of new reactor designs.”
On Friday, he announced that four new reactors had met a July 4 deadline to begin operating and said America was “leading the world in pioneering the next generation of nuclear power,” PBS reported.
Congress designated Yucca Mountain, located about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the only potential site for a national nuclear-waste repository in 1987.
But the $8 billion project faced fierce opposition in Nevada, and then-President Barack Obama effectively killed it in 2009 when he made good on a campaign promise and cut funding for it from his budget proposal.
President Donald Trump repeatedly tried to revive the plan during his first term in office, but he gave up in February 2020, saying on social media, “Nevada, I hear you on Yucca Mountain and my Administration will RESPECT you!” Reuters reported at the time.
The U.S produces about 2,000 metric tons of nuclear waste annually, with more than 95,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel and waste from weapons production stockpiled in special pools or dry casks at 79 sites in 39 states, CNBC reported in November.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group, estimated in 2018 that the total amount of spent nuclear fuel rods would cover the area of a football field and reach 36 feet high.
5 states offer to accept nuclear waste in exchange for help developing nuclear energy!
By MATTHEW DALY and JENNIFER McDERMOTTUpdated 7:19 AM GMT+10, July 29, 2026
WASHINGTON (AP) — Five states have agreed to accept nuclear waste from around the country in exchange for federal help developing nuclear energy to create thousands of jobs.
The states — Tennessee, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Utah and Idaho — all have Republican governors who say they welcome the chance to help America reclaim its leadership in civilian nuclear energy.
If built, the storage sites would represent significant progress in a multi-decade effort to store more than 95,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste. Plans for a permanent underground storage facility at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain have long been stalled because of staunch opposition from most residents and officials.
Spent fuel is currently stored at nuclear plants and former nuclear sites nationwide and is piling up. New storage sites would move the radioactive material away from population centers, fault lines and flood plains. Experts say the plan also should help officials gain consent from communities that will host the repositories.
Under the non-binding agreements, the states could host Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses that would include waste sites as well as uranium enrichment, spent-fuel reprocessing and fuel fabrication. The campuses may also host advanced reactor deployment, power generation and data centers, the Energy Department said………………………………………………
Tennessee is home to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which enriched uranium during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project, while Idaho hosts the Idaho National Laboratory, a key research site for nuclear energy and national security. Utah was a source of raw uranium for the Manhattan Project and a training site for crews that dropped atomic bombs on Japan in 1945…..
Solution for storing waste needed to expand nuclear power
The announcement comes as President Donald Trump attempts to quadruple domestic nuclear energy production because of surging electricity demand due to a data center and artificial intelligence boom. Trump also has moved to reshape the independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission to speed up nuclear reactor development. Under Trump’s direction, the commission has proposed eliminating a foundational safety principle that for 50 years minimized the radiation people in the United States are exposed to.
The NRC proposal would abandon a philosophy to keep radiation exposure “as low as reasonably achievable,” instead setting a separate standard on maximum radiation exposure that includes several actions facilities must take depending on the potential dose of radiation to workers…………….
Scott Roecker, a former official at the National Nuclear Security Administration who now advises the Nuclear Scaling Initiative, a pro-nuclear group, said the campuses are a good idea, though he cautions that spent nuclear fuel should not be reprocessed there to be recycled for new fuel because of the cost and security issues……. https://apnews.com/article/civilian-nuclear-energy-waste-states-campus-93d014e414bed86765e26d4572448a15
The Saudi Nuclear Deal Invites Disaster (Wall Street Journal)
July 26, 2026, By: Henry Sokolski, https://npolicy.org/the-saudi-nuclear-deal-invites-disaster/
Critics of the recently announced U.S. nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia let out a sigh of relief when President Trump posted on Truth Social that the deal wouldn’t go ahead until Saudi Arabia recognizes Israel and insisted that the agreement permits “no enrichment of material.” Still, there are serious problems with the agreement, not the least of which is that—despite Mr. Trump’s post—it allows for enrichment. The administration and Congress should correct that.
Uranium enrichment can make fuel for both nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. That’s why for the past half-century Washington has never included nuclear fuel-making as a part of any of its civilian nuclear agreements with states that lack nuclear weapons. In recent decades, other major nuclear supplier states including France, Russia, China, Japan and South Korea have followed America’s example.
Washington should continue this policy. The Pentagon recently bombed Iran’s nuclear fuel-making plants. Providing Saudi Arabia a pathway to build the capacity the U.S. Air Force is razing in Iran gives hypocrisy a bad name. It not only would make it more difficult to get Iran to restrict its own program, but also set a poor example and encourage other nuclear suppliers to misbehave.
More important, it’s sure to spook Riyadh’s neighbors. U.S. negotiators agreed that Iran may, after a moratorium, resume enriching uranium. The U.S.-Saudi deal allows a similar privilege to Riyadh. The U.S. got the United Arab Emirates to agree to forgo making nuclear fuel with the caveat that if Washington afforded any neighbor more-generous terms, the U.A.E. could renegotiate.
Then there are Egypt and Turkey, both building large nuclear plants. U.S. diplomats asked both to forswear making nuclear fuel. Both refused. The Saudi deal, in short, could pour proliferation kerosene on these states’ smoldering nuclear ambitions.
Energy Secretary Christopher Wright insists the opposite. He says this deal will “uphold the highest standards of nuclear safety and nonproliferation.” In fact, it represents a new low. The agreement doesn’t require Riyadh to adopt the International Atomic Energy Agency’s model inspections under what’s known as the Additional Protocol. These inspections allow short-notice visits at any time, anywhere. One hundred forty-four states have already adopted the Additional Protocol; Saudi Arabia has refused. The fear is that it might want to hide something.
The Energy Department is quick to insist that it will “black box” any nuclear fuel-making plant in Saudi Arabia to prevent military diversions. That is magical thinking. No such box has ever been developed, nor has it been explained publicly. That’s because it doesn’t exist.
Saudi nationals couldn’t be kept clear of a large nuclear fuel-making plant in Saudi territory. At a minimum, construction and operation of such a “black box” plant would make it far more difficult to detect Saudi efforts to build a covert facility (possibly with the assistance of its nuclear-armed ally Pakistan). And black boxing can never protect against sovereign Saudi seizure of what’s in the box.
Fortunately, the reported deal contains an escape clause. It doesn’t promise the immediate transfer of uranium-enrichment technology. Rather, it pledges a two-year study into the concept. But it doesn’t take two years to figure out that this is a bad idea.
Washington shouldn’t be in the business of transferring nuclear bomb-making capability to Saudi Arabia or any other country. To make sure it doesn’t, Mr. Trump—who relishes getting the best bargain—should renegotiate the deal. Alternatively, Mr. Trump could simply decline to send this bad deal to Congress. If he sends it anyway, lawmakers need to hold hearings and legislate to condition its implementation on making it right.
To read the full piece, click here.
US‑Saudi nuclear deal invites proliferation risks … unless safeguards are written in
A key question remains over the landmark U.S.-Saudi nuclear deal announced
with much fanfare on July 22, 2026: Will it allow a nation long suspected
of having nuclear weapons ambitions to enrich uranium? U.S. President
Donald Trump has already shifted the sands of the agreement, adding a major
caveat requiring Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel first. He
also posted that there would be “no enrichment.” But it is unclear
whether either condition is included in the signed deal, something that has
nonproliferation experts like me worried.
The Conversation 27th July 2026,
https://theconversation.com/us-saudi-nuclear-deal-invites-proliferation-risks-unless-safeguards-are-written-in-288291
Ontario touts small nuclear reactors with $500,000 for Haldimand County.
Ontario Takes Next Step Toward New Energy Generation in Haldimand County
July 29, 2026
Ministry of Energy and Mines
HALDIMAND COUNTY — As part of its plan to protect Ontario and build a stronger, self-reliant economy, the government is announcing that Haldimand County will receive $500,000 from Ontario Power Generation (OPG) in growth readiness funding to explore opportunities for new energy generation, including small modular reactors, at OPG’s Nanticoke site……. “Our government has a vision to generate power and jobs across Haldimand County by planning for new energy generation that fully unlocks the region’s full potential. To meet electricity demand that is forecast to increase by as much as 90 per cent by 2050, we are planning ahead and building for future generations. We are taking another step forward to advance this project, in true partnership, including seriously considering small modular reactor deployment, to revitalize the economy and workforce.” |
‘Earth’s Greatest Enemy’ Delivers A Penetrating Insight Into The Heart Of Our Dystopia
Caitlin Johnstone, Jul 28, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/earths-greatest-enemy-delivers-a?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=208773412&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
There’s a powerful new documentary out called Earth’s Greatest Enemy by Abby Martin about the ecocidal abuses of the US war machine, and it addresses the most pressing existential hurdles we face as a species like nothing I’ve seen before.
The film breaks down how the US military has become the single most environmentally destructive institution on our planet by an extremely massive margin, walking the audience through the many ways the Pentagon and its global metastases have been churning out carbon emissions, pouring toxins into the air and water, wiping out precious ecosystems for gratuitous military bases, and pummeling our sea life with sonar and noise pollution, all while gleefully salivating at the prospect of plundering the resources which lay hidden beneath our planet’s rapidly thawing polar ice caps.
Martin skillfully ties the planet-devouring behavior of the US military to the global systems of capitalism and imperialism it was built to uphold. The viewer is left with a crystal clear picture of the ways ecocide, militarism and capitalism are inseparably intertwined, and an understanding that meaningfully opposing any of these malignancies necessarily entails opposing them all. The liberal fiction that one can be pro-environment while also supporting the US military is forcefully exposed for the absurdity that it is.
It’s a jarring film with extremely dark subject matter, but it also manages to be a work of transcendent beauty and optimism. A deep love of humans and all of earth’s creatures shines through in shot after shot, while slick editing and an inspired soundtrack allow the movie to zip along at a lively and entertaining pace. Martin concludes with a galvanizing call to use our outrage to loosen the empire’s already weakening grip on humanity’s collective consciousness, because our entire world depends on it.
Perhaps the most touching aspect of the documentary is the personal element Martin chose to bring in to her overarching narrative. She discusses how she and her husband (antiwar activist Mike Prysner, who co-directed the film) had their lives forever altered when they had kids and experienced a new level of urgency to help give rise to a brighter future. Their family of four becomes a microcosm of humanity’s struggle to liberate itself from the tyranny of the machine to create a better world for our children, and we see Martin’s love for her son and daughter reflected in a great tenderness for the world as a whole.
Anyway, I’ve never felt inclined to write a film review before so I don’t know if I’ve done a good job of encouraging people to watch this thing, but for my own audience I truly cannot recommend Earth’s Greatest Enemy enough. It’s available streaming on Apple TV, Prime Video, and Watermelon Pictures. Screening tour dates and further information can be found on the Earth’s Greatest Enemy website. Be sure to leave a review on Letterboxed or IMDB if you can.
Leaked document reveals White House nuclear waste plan
By Hannah Northey, Francisco “A.J.” Camacho E & E News,| 07/27/2026
The Trump administration is seeking to move past Yucca Mountain as the nation’s sole repository and store waste in willing states.
The White House is pushing Congress to break a decades-long impasse around the handling of nuclear waste and entice states to get on board, according to a document obtained by POLITICO.
The Trump administration is seeking changes to federal law to allow the Department of Energy to partner with states willing to store waste generated at the nation’s nuclear reactors, according to the document laying out “legislative principles.” It has been circulating on Capitol Hill and among nuclear industry leaders.
When asked about the document, a White House official said Monday that the administration “is always looking for ways to advance our civil nuclear energy sector.”
The legislative blueprint comes as President Donald Trump pushes to quadruple America’s production of nuclear power over the next 25 years, despite there being no long-term solution for the waste piling up at active and decommissioned reactors across the country………………………………………………………………………………………….(Subscribers only) https://www.eenews.net/articles/leaked-document-reveals-white-house-nuclear-waste-plan/
The Guardian view on a US-Saudi nuclear agreement: an offer that further erodes international safeguards
Even if no reactors are built, Donald Trump’s announcement of a double-standards deal with Riyadh has wrought further damage in a new era of proliferation
Even as he threatened to escalate an unlawful war sold in part as preventing Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon, Donald Trump opened the door to proliferation in the region on Wednesday. The US announced that it had signed a deal with Saudi Arabia which would potentially allow the kingdom to enrich uranium in future and to avoid the fullest inspection rights for the international watchdog.
Experts have long warned that a civilian nuclear programme could create a path towards a nuclear-armed Riyadh. Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi crown prince and de facto leader, has said that if Tehran gets a nuclear weapon, “we will have to get one”. Concerns are magnified by the agreement’s terms. Washington previously argued that the “gold standard” was the United Arab Emirates’ agreement to permanently forgo enrichment and accept full monitoring by the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency. Weakening it sets a precedent that Russia or China could also cite in nuclear deals in future.
The turmoil that Mr Trump has created in the Middle East is encouraging governments both to hedge their bets and to tool up. The US paused attacks on Iran at the weekend, after 13 successive days of strikes, amid reports that it is concerned about declining interceptor stockpiles, but no exit is in sight. As António Guterres, the UN secretary general, said on Thursday, the region “is teetering on the edge of [the] unimaginable … One crisis feeds another. One escalation triggers the next.”
Gulf states premised their security on American-guaranteed order. But Benjamin Netanyahu’s strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar last year showed that the US shield would not protect them from Israel (itself an undeclared nuclear power). The reckless war on Iran has made US military presence an invitation to damage. Washington may be looking to bind Riyadh closer with a reactor deal, though the billions of dollars involved is probably a bigger incentive for Mr Trump. The crumbling of the region’s internal architecture – most visibly with the UAE’s departure from Opec – adds to the dangers of proliferation. Players are acting less predictably.
The US president threw the Saudi deal into doubt within hours by declaring it contingent on Riyadh recognising Israel. That had long been a precondition for an agreement, but Israel’s war of annihilation in Gaza has shored up the Saudi position that recognition cannot happen without a Palestinian state.
Yet even if no reactors are built, the announcement itself acts as legitimation of and encouragement for the pursuit of nuclear capabilities by others. Negotiations produced an Obama-era nuclear deal with which Tehran complied – until Mr Trump trashed the agreement. His war appears to have produced a more aggressive, risk-taking Iranian regime, as foretold; further military action is more likely to spur than end nuclear threat. The prospect of Riyadh acquiring a bomb is further encouragement.
Look further afield. The last US-Russia nuclear arms control treaty expired in February. China is rapidly expanding its arsenal. Asian and European states which counted on the US nuclear umbrella prior to Mr Trump are discussing acquiring or enhancing their own capabilities. Most of them at least understand that diplomacy, multilateralism and global standards are a better choice than a race for the bomb. Mr Trump does not believe in international institutions. But upholding existing nuclear safeguards would be in US interests too as we enter a new age of proliferation.
Is Trump’s Saudi nuclear deal set to trigger a Middle East arms race?
He failed to articulate a persuasive argument for the Iran war and now a poorly negotiated deal with Riyadh has only compounded the danger writes Foreign Editor David Pratt
Among his many controversial traits, a tendency towards double standards sits high on the list.
If ever confirmation of this were needed, just cast your mind back to April, when US President Donald Trump reiterated that in Iran: “There will be no enrichment of uranium.”
On the face of it, Trump’s message appeared clear cut and, to that end, the
US-Israel war against the Islamic Republic was – along with regime change – aimed at preventing Tehran from possessing an atomic bomb.
But fast-forward just a few months and Trump appears now to have done a deal with Iran’s great rival Saudi Arabia that could, say some experts, put it on a trajectory to enrich its own fuel for nuclear reactors.
So far, so typically Trump, some might argue. But as if such duplicity were not bad enough, Trump then added another characteristic of his fickle decision-making thinking by insisting that the Saudi deal was conditional on Riyadh normalising relations with Israel.
“The Civil Nuclear Deal (There will be no enrichment of material!) being made between the United States Department of Energy and Saudi Arabia, which pertains only to non-military use such as the ones that Iran and UAE (and others) already have, will be approved, but is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform last Thursday.
Trump’s intervention, insisting that the deal was subject to recognition of Israel, arriving as it did some 16 hours after the initial announcement, appeared to come as late news to the Saudis.
For years now the Gulf kingdom has long insisted that their country will not establish formal relations with Israel until there is a clear path for Palestinian statehood, which Israel’s government staunchly opposes.
It came as late news, too, it would appear,
to US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and his team at the Washington Energy Department who some American media reports suggest jumped the gun in announcing the deal, triggering the social media backlash from Trump.
TRUMP, so the media speculation goes, added on the “normalisation” with Israel condition to teach Wright and his team a lesson for getting ahead of themselves.
Whatever the truth behind such internal bickering, the Saudi deal now appears somewhat in limbo, though should it go ahead as planned, will renew fears that Trump is triggering a Middle East nuclear arms race.
It’s not that there is anything new in US nuclear co-operation deals with countries in the region.
But back when America first made such a deal with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2009, the safeguards and conditions surrounding the deal were, according to US officials at the time, “gold standard”.
For starters, the Emiratis had to forgo domestic uranium enrichment and reprocessing, and sign up to the Additional Protocol, a follow-on to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which provides for tough inspections.
All these conditions were met, leaving the UAE with four reactors that now supply 25% of the country’s electricity.
Canada’s silence on the U.S. and Saudi Arabia’s nuclear agreement isn’t neutrality. It’s something much worse
July 28, 2026, By Lloyd Axworthy, Contributor, Lloyd Axworthy is a former longtime MP who served as Canadian foreign minister from 1996 to 2000. https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/canadas-silence-on-the-us-and-saudi-arabias-nuclear-agreement-isnt-neutrality-its-something-much-worse/article_99b7a436-6aa5-4627-9a04-15c688fcc5a7.html
Canada’s nuclear story has always been one of choice. In 1946, with Hiroshima still smouldering, Canada could have become a nuclear weapons state. It possessed the uranium, the scientific expertise, the industrial base, and the Manhattan Project experience that would have made it possible. The St Laurent government chose differently, pushing for international control of nuclear arms while directing Canadian nuclear power toward civilian ends. That was not weakness. It was judgment.
That decision forged a legacy of principled support for nuclear non-proliferation. But somewhere along the way, Canada lost its nerve. Today it speaks firmly against adversaries, grows cautious with allies and falls silent when principle would demand risk. The moral inconsistency is hard to miss.
Consider NATO. In 1998, Parliament did not rubber-stamp the government’s position on the Alliance’s Strategic Concept. It held hearings across the country, listening to Canadians, experts, and international voices. The skepticism about nuclear dependence that emerged was not an elite whim; it was the product of genuine democratic scrutiny, and Parliament pressed NATO to reduce its reliance on nuclear weapons in a post-Cold War world.
That tradition has withered. Canada remains outside the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, hovers at the margins of disarmament diplomacy, and supports the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty mostly in ways that preserve the system without challenging its glaring contradictions. Canada talks as if the nuclear order is stable, even as norms crumble under selective enforcement and expanding arsenals.
Which brings us to now. The United States and Saudi Arabia are negotiating a nuclear arrangement that could normalize sensitive nuclear know-how and open the door to enrichment capabilities. Meanwhile, Washington uses its military force to stop Iran from pursuing the very same path. The message is unmistakable: nuclear restraint is demanded of some, relaxed for others when strategic or commercial interests beckon.
Canada has said almost nothing. That silence is not neutrality. In matters of nuclear proliferation, silence in the face of double standards is complicity. If enrichment is too dangerous for Iran, it is too dangerous for Saudi Arabia. If latent weapons capacity is unacceptable in one context, it cannot be tolerated in another simply because the recipient is a partner.
Canada has learned, at some cost, what can happen when civilian nuclear cooperation outpaces strategic caution. In the 1960s and 1970s, Canadian-supplied technology and uranium helped power India’s nuclear program, which was later diverted toward weapons development. That episode reshaped Canada’s export controls and helped define its modern non-proliferation posture. It stands as a reminder that intent can change, safeguards can erode and today’s partner can become tomorrow’s proliferator.
The commercial dimension sharpens the point. Westinghouse, poised to profit from Saudi nuclear contracts, is owned by Brookfield Asset Management, which acquired the company in 2023. A former chair of Brookfield is now our Prime Minister. This does not prove wrongdoing. But in nuclear policy, the appearance of conflict can be as corrosive as conflict itself, because credibility depends on the public belief that decisions rest on principle, not convenience.
A serious Canadian response would begin with a simple standard: civilian nuclear cooperation must be judged by the same rules, regardless of the country involved. That means no weakening of safeguards, intrusive verification, strong IAEA oversight, and full transparency.
It is time for another cross-country parliamentary examination of Canadian nuclear policy: a genuine national inquiry for a more dangerous nuclear age. The last serious parliamentary engagement shaped Canada’s thinking in the 1990s. The world has changed. Nuclear rivalry has returned, arms control is fraying and civilian nuclear deals are becoming vehicles for strategic ambiguity once again. Canada needs a fresh review that hears from Parliament, experts, Indigenous communities, diplomats, arms-control advocates and alliance partners
Such an inquiry should ask uncomfortable questions. What does Canada actually believe about nuclear deterrence? How should it respond when allies weaken non-proliferation norms? What standards should govern Canadian approval of civil nuclear cooperation, and should Canada remain on the sidelines of nuclear-ban diplomacy? Most importantly, how does it reconcile its commitment to international law with the strategic bargains being negotiated?
Canada does not need to abandon its alliances to recover its voice. It needs to recover its judgment. The country that once chose not to become a nuclear weapons state (despite having every means to do so) should not now stand silent while others normalize nuclear pathways under the banner of peaceful use. The country that once used Parliament to re-examine its nuclear assumptions should do so again.
The challenge is not merely to condemn nuclear danger where it is politically easy, but to do so everywhere it appears, including among friends, allies and trading partners. That is the standard Canada should set for itself. Parliament should help it reclaim that standard.
Saudi Arabia stares down Trump whiplash on nuclear deal
The text of the agreement is not public, but reported details include a 30-year, multibillion-dollar deal giving American companies a central role in developing Saudi Arabia’s nuclear infrastructure.
“at this juncture,” Trump’s demand for Saudi-Israel ties looks likely to delay implementation of the deal.
Saudi Arabia views Israel as the obstacle toward normalization, insisting on a pathway toward a Palestinian state, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to block.
Comments:by Laura Kelly – 07/27/26, https://thehill.com/policy/international/5992914-saudi-us-nuclear-deal-stalls/
Saudi Arabia is sending no signals it will accept President Trump’s after-the-fact condition that Riyadh establish ties with Israel as part of a nuclear energy deal with the United States. In fact, its leaders haven’t even conceded that the deal signed last week is off.
Normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia was long a central pillar of a package deal for the U.S. to partner with the kingdom in building its civil nuclear program — negotiated during the first Trump administration and then the Biden administration.
But that demand appeared absent when Secretary of Energy Chris Wright announced Wednesday that the U.S. signed a major deal with Saudi Arabia for American companies to jointly build a civil nuclear program in the oil-rich country.
Mohammed Alhamed, a Saudi geopolitical analyst and president of the consultancy group Saudi Elite, said Trump’s demands about the Abraham Accords “do not change the substance of the agreement.”
“If Saudi recognition of Israel had been a formal condition for the nuclear deal, it would have been negotiated before the agreement was signed and explicitly included in its terms,” he said.
“I believe President Trump was primarily speaking to a domestic political audience by reassuring Israel and its supporters in Washington. That does not necessarily mean Saudi Arabia has changed its position.”
Trump on Friday pushed back on reporting that he was caught off guard by Wright solidifying the nuclear agreement.
“No, nobody got out ahead. I mean, I just say that in order to do it, they have to be a member of the Abraham Accords,” he said in the Oval Office with Wright behind him.
“It was always understood, and Chris knew, and Saudi Arabia knew, that if they didn’t join the Abraham Accords — I’m not going to do the deal.”
The Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., declined to comment on the record about the status of the nuclear deal or whether it was considering joining the 2020 deal establishing ties between Israel and Muslim-majority countries.
Michael Ratney, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said Saudi officials are likely taking a deep breath and withholding any actions that could trigger Trump to further bear down on his demand.
“I think if you’re the Saudis, you’re like, all right, let’s kind of see where this goes. Maybe we’ll gradually start having some conversations … Does Trump really want to kind of scuttle this big deal? Which for Trump, it’s a big deal because it’s theoretically big business for U.S. companies. So do you really want to scuttle that?” he asked.
“I think they’re just going to take a pause, take a deep breath, have some quiet conversations, and see where this lands.”
A key test for Trump is if he transmits the nuclear agreement to Congress in the coming weeks, before Republicans possibly lose majorities in the House and Senate.
Once the agreement is transmitted to Congress, lawmakers have 90 days to either oppose the deal or allow it to proceed. If Trump delays in sending the agreement after September, he’ll almost certainly have to contend with slimmer GOP margins or Democratic majorities.
The text of the agreement is not public, but reported details include a 30-year, multibillion-dollar deal giving American companies a central role in developing Saudi Arabia’s nuclear infrastructure.
“We’ve been pushing the U.S. government for decades to get it done,” said Christopher Guith, senior vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Energy Institute.
Guith said, “at this juncture,” Trump’s demand for Saudi-Israel ties looks likely to delay implementation of the deal.
Daniel Shapiro, who served as deputy assistant secretary of Defense for the Middle East under the Biden administration, said Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman always viewed a partnership with the U.S. on nuclear energy as the “holy grail,” adding the Saudis are particularly focused on achieving “special exemptions” permitting possible uranium enrichment as a hedge against Iran pursuing a nuclear weapon.
“The crown prince has always said that he would ensure Saudi Arabia matched that capability if Iran got it,” he said.
There are different phases of the deal, including a two-year feasibility study to determine if uranium enrichment should take place in Saudi Arabia, instead of having such nuclear fuel shipped in by the United States. That provision raised flags for former diplomats and nuclear nonproliferation experts as a potential pathway for Riyadh to develop a nuclear weapon. Other reported details raised concern of lax oversight on nuclear safety and nonproliferation.
Riyadh is unlikely to throw out the deal with the U.S. because of Trump’s demands on Israel.
“They hope the agreement moves forward, that Trump will back down from his tweet,” Shapiro said of the president’s Truth Social post.
While Russia and China are alternatives for civil-nuclear cooperation, Saudi Arabia is demonstrating it sees more value in a long-term partnership with the U.S. — despite Trump’s whiplash diplomacy, growing partisanship in the Congress on foreign policy and the immense fallout from the war with Iran.
“The Saudis really want their security anchored in the United States,” said Ratney, who is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“So this is kind of a piece of that — If they’re going to develop nuclear energy, they would like it anchored in a relationship with the United States. That’s just where they’ve always been. … I don’t know that they’re going to see this as a reason to kind of brandish alternatives for their nuclear power.”
Alhamed, the Saudi consultant, said there are clear incentives for both the Trump administration and Riyadh to see the nuclear deal put into play.
“For the United States, the agreement strengthens a decades-long strategic partnership, supports American companies and the U.S. economy, and preserves U.S. influence,” he said.
“For Saudi Arabia, it advances the Kingdom’s long-term energy and economic transformation while reinforcing a trusted partnership with Washington.”
But it’s not clear if Riyadh or Trump are ready to move off their stances toward the Accords.
Saudi Arabia views Israel as the obstacle toward normalization, insisting on a pathway toward a Palestinian state, which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to block. The long-serving Israeli leader is also heading into consequential elections on Oct. 27, where engaging on the issue of resolution with the Palestinians is radioactive for nearly all Israeli politicians.
Israel’s brutal response to Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack, increasing violence and deadly clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank, and the war in southern Lebanon have made it all but impossible for Riyadh to embrace Israel.
“As the leading Arab and Islamic country, Saudi Arabia carries broader regional responsibilities, making normalization difficult without meaningful progress on Palestinian rights and a credible pathway to a two-state solution,” Alhamed said.
Canada remains anti-nuke, but its potential path to the bomb is getting shorter.
This country has all the elements needed for a clandestine nuclear weapons program — if it so desired
Evan Dyer · CBC News · Jul 26, 2026, https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-remains-antinuke-road-to-bomb-getting-shorter-9.7283194
For decades, Canada’s official policy on nuclear weapons has been that they shouldn’t exist, and there is no sign that principle is about to be abandoned.
But for reasons of history and geography, Canada is also one of the world’s non-nuclear countries with the easiest technical path to a nuclear weapon. And because of the particular design of its CANDU reactors, it would also be one of the countries best-positioned to produce weapons-grade fissile material without tripping international alerts — although such a move would carry huge geopolitical risks.
Technological changes that are expected in the coming years will likely make Canada even more of a threshold nuclear arms power than it is today, whether it chooses to cross that threshold or not.
“The only thing that inhibits Canada is the will to do it, the political decision to do it,” said nuclear weapons expert Steve Fetter of the University of Maryland, who served as head of national security and international affairs in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
He’s also a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on International Security and Arms Control, and the originator of the “Fetter Model,” the standard technique used in arms control verification for detecting the presence of nuclear warheads through radiography.
“Canada was a major participant in the Manhattan Project, as was the U.K.,” Fetter told CBC News. “Immediately after the [Second World War], we froze you out and said, ‘No co-operation.’ So Canada decided — as did the U.K. — to develop its own completely indigenous program.”
The heavy water route
The U.K., of course, went on to become a nuclear arms power, while Canada did not.
Canada designed the CANDU heavy water reactors that use unenriched, natural uranium containing only about 0.7 per cent of the U-235 isotope needed to make nuclear weapons. Most of the world’s 440-odd nuclear reactors are light water units that require uranium enriched to about four per cent U-235 content.
For this reason, and despite being the world’s second-biggest producer of uranium, Canada has never enriched domestically.
However, the CANDU is anything but a proliferation-proof technology, because it is not only the best kind of reactor for producing the plutonium-239 isotope used in bombs, but also for concealing its production.
“You do produce plutonium in a light water reactor,” said Fetter. “But that plutonium is contained in highly radioactive spent fuel and it’s not really high-quality.”
Light water reactors work by loading enriched uranium, sealing the reactor core and then running it for 18-24 months before shutting down, reopening the core and replacing fuel. This makes it relatively easy to keep track of how much fuel is going in, and what is happening to the spent fuel that comes out. It’s impossible to secretly swap fuel rods while the reactor is generating power.
The Canadian heavy water reactor doesn’t work that way.
Harder to monitor
“All uranium-fuelled reactors produce plutonium. The issue with the CANDU is that it has online refuelling,” explained Ed Lyman, director of nuclear safety for the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, D.C. “You’re refuelling continuously, which makes it harder for the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency].”
Canada, which produces all of its own uranium, would be in a strong position to divert fissionable material undetected if so inclined, say the experts.
The plutonium produced in a heavy water reactor is also much easier to turn into a nuclear weapon, said Fetter.
“Of the countries that have made nuclear weapons with plutonium, many of them have used a heavy water reactor,” he said.
That’s why India used a Canadian heavy water reactor to produce its first nuclear weapon in 1974, an all-plutonium implosion-type bomb. The “Smiling Buddha” test was the first to break the nuclear monopoly of the “Big Five” UN Security Council powers.
Fetter said the U.S. had heavy water reactors only for the purpose of producing plutonium and tritium. (Tritium, also produced in abundance by the CANDU reactor, is another critical component of a modern two-stage thermonuclear weapon that Canada has in abundance.)
Using riskier fuels
Canada is also branching out into a new kind of technology that will require enriched uranium: the small modular reactor (SMR). Some of the proposed SMRs would use uranium enriched to a level as high as 20 per cent, known as high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU).
HALEU is already a proliferation concern in itself, said Lyman.
“Anything below 20 per cent is considered low-enriched uranium and has a much lower level of oversight. The IAEA considers it indirect-use material you can’t directly use in a bomb,” he explained. “But there’s evidence, both historical and technical, that that’s not true, and that the actual cutoff for weapon-usable uranium is below 20 per cent. Could be 15 per cent, could be 10 per cent.
“And so I worry about this push for advanced reactors, SMRs that use HALEU up near 20 per cent, like the ARC 100 in Canada, that the material itself is in the dangerous band. And if Canada were to pursue a whole fleet of SMRs using HALEU, and especially if they were to build their own enrichment plants to support that, that might give them a threshold capability for bombs, even if they never make highly enriched [over 20 per cent] uranium.”
ARC Canada points out that its proposed reactor in New Brunswick, which would become the only commercial fast-breeder reactor in the world outside Russia, mitigates against proliferation risks by having a long fuel cycle with a core that stays sealed for 20 years.
But there’s another factor: The arrival of SMRs that consume enriched uranium has got the government of Canada thinking about enrichment.
To enrich or not to enrich
“Any country which has a complete fuel cycle is a latent nuclear weapons country, in the sense that it is not far from making a nuclear weapon,” said former IAEA director and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei.
Scientists consulted by CBC News said Canada would probably have little economic motive to build its own enrichment facilities. Canada’s nuclear energy strategy foresees importation of enriched uranium from France and the U.S. in the immediate future, even though that often means buying back Canadian-mined uranium after other countries have added value.
But the strategy also notes that “geopolitical volatility has exposed fragility in nuclear fuel supply chains at every stage — mining, milling, refining, conversion, enrichment, and fabrication.”
Canada plans to double its exports of uranium in raw form, “but there is also a compelling case for expanding downstream capabilities selectively.”
Domestic enrichment might not save Canada money, but would increase its strategic autonomy.
“Canada will continue to monitor the energy security implications of these supply chains,” says the strategy. “The longer-term question of whether Canada should develop domestic enrichment capability remains under assessment.”
Enrichment could get easier
A handful of non-nuclear arms powers have developed enrichment facilities. They include Brazil, Japan, Argentina, Germany and the Netherlands, but only Brazil combines a modern centrifuge facility with a large domestic supply of uranium.
Japan could theoretically produce weapons-grade uranium, but its nuclear technology, like South Korea’s, is largely American, its nuclear program is subject to strict inspections, and it has no uranium mines of its own — in fact it buys much of its supply from Canada.
A Canadian company, Cameco, is currently exploring the next frontier of uranium enrichment. The SILEX method uses laser excitation to separate U-235 more quickly and efficiently than spinning it in a centrifuge.
Already, a centrifuge facility can fit in an area the size of a high school gym. SILEX, said Fetter, “potentially could be even smaller and use less energy than centrifuge enrichment, which would make it harder to detect a clandestine facility.”
The SILEX project has already received U.S. government funding and acquired land in western Kentucky for a plant expected to be operating by 2030.
Crossing the threshold
For all the Carney government’s talk of “a more dangerous and divided world,” there is still no public signal that Canada might abandon its long-held opposition to nuclear arms.
If the strategic situation were to change, Canada would have to decide whether to go the open route and formally depart the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), or pursue nuclear arms through a clandestine program as other countries have done with a mixed record of success.
Plasma physicist Tara Drozdenko worked on nuclear weapons issues under the administrations of Barack Obama and George W. Bush. She represented the United States on NATO’s Senior Group on Proliferation, and headed the Country/Regime Sanctions Unit at the U.S. Department of Treasury, where she managed the government’s nuclear-related sanctions on countries such as Iran and North Korea.
Today, she’s not sure Washington remains committed to preventing proliferation, or how it would react to a Canadian decision to leave the NPT.
“In a normal administration, there would be condemnation, there would be reproach, there would be a lot of diplomatic efforts,” she told CBC News. “I don’t know what would happen in this administration. Would there be threats? Would there be some people that are like, yeah, everybody should have nuclear weapons? I really can’t predict what this particular administration would do.”
Clandestine plants and secret programs
So far, all the countries that have developed nuclear weapons — Israel, South Africa, India, Pakistan and North Korea — began their efforts in secret.
Drozdenko says Canada’s own nuclear industry, the design of its reactors and the fact that it has the world’s best uranium deposits would all give it a strong hand were it ever to pursue such a risky course.
“Canada is probably really well-positioned to do that, if Canada was determined,” said Drozdenko. “You have a lot of land that’s not heavily populated, and if you used technologies that didn’t have a lot of energy or thermal signature, I don’t think the U.S. has its intelligence assets pointed at Canada right now.”
At some point, such a program would inevitably become known.
“It would require withdrawal from the non-proliferation treaty, which would be really impactful to the treaty worldwide, especially as a NATO country and up until now a pretty close ally of the U.S. I think that would be pretty catastrophic to that treaty,” Drozdenko said.
Fetter said Canada could probably easily assemble a simple “gun-type” nuclear weapon like the one used on Hiroshima, but would face scientific hurdles if it tried to build a modern thermonuclear weapon without conducting tests. North Korea required half a dozen tests to get there.
In the U.S., Russia and China, supercomputers today have replaced actual testing. Canada has the computing capacity but lacks the detailed data that nuclear arms powers have assembled on materials science, and the complicated timing and interactions inside a nuclear warhead — some of the most closely guarded secrets in the world.
But Fetter also said he didn’t expect North Korea to be able to put a modern, two-stage thermonuclear warhead on a ballistic missile and make it work.
“Canada has a lot of smart people,” he noted.
With Canada embarked on a new era of greater military spending, including the purchase of modern submarines and its first foray into the world of cruise missiles, it is clearly assembling elements that could bring it closer to “breakout” as a nuclear arms power, if it desired.
The question of how other countries would react is the unknowable factor, said Drozdenko.
“Does Canada want to be in the position of North Korea, the pariah state that’s making clandestine nuclear weapons?” she asked.
So far, the answer has always been no.
The rise of the military-technology complex
How Silicon Valley tech firms remade US defense contracting. And then opened the Pentagon’s checkbook—wide.
Bulletin, By Bernice Yeung, July 23, 2026
The tale of how the Pentagon lost its spirit of innovation often begins with an incident known as “the Last Supper.”
It was the fall of 1993. About two dozen executives from leading defense contractors had received an unexpected invitation to dinner at the Pentagon. After the meal, the group was ushered into a briefing room where William Perry, then the deputy secretary of defense (and soon, the defense secretary), gave a presentation that startled the room.
In the wake of the Cold War, he said, the defense industry should prepare for catastrophic cuts to military spending. “They should not look at it as a little dip here but as a new low plateau and adjust their plans accordingly,” Perry would later recall.
Within a couple of decades, the US defense industrial base shrank from dozens of firms to today’s so-called Big Five—Lockheed Martin, RTX (formerly Raytheon), General Dynamics, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman, which together receive about a third of the Defense Department’s annual contract obligations.
Two decades of defense contractor mergers and acquisitions consolidated the defense industry from more than 75 firms to the Big Five—Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, and Raytheon (now RTX)—also known as “primes.” Chart [on original] by Thomas Gaulkin. Source: NASA, “Final Report of the Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry”
Silicon Valley executives, like Shyam Sankar of the tech firm Palantir, have pointed to that dinner as the start of a decades-long “decoupling of commercial innovation from defense.” The chill between the Defense Department and Silicon Valley grew so strong that Sankar dubbed it “the Great Schism” in a 4,000-word, viral-among-some manifesto he called The Defense Reformation.
During those years of estrangement, the Pentagon became increasingly entrenched in the status quo, buying and maintaining hulking weapons within a ponderous bureaucracy. Silicon Valley, for its part, dashed ahead with innovations around cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and product design—though usually to enhance consumer experiences in shopping, gaming, or food delivery.
The distrust and disdain between the two camps grew serious. “There’s plenty of people in Washington in the last 20 years who’ve made a point of how much, you know, they hate us,” Netscape founder-turned-VC-titan Marc Andreessen said in a 2025 podcast.
By the early aughts, there were people in both the Pentagon and Silicon Valley who knew that mending the breach was urgently needed. China’s leaps in technological advancement sounded an alarm in foreign policy circles. In October 2024, Sankar, who is Palantir’s chief technology officer, was still making a case for the reunification of tech and defense when he published the Defense Reformation.
Sankar began the essay by summoning the story of the Last Supper as a way to explain why the country was in a “state of undeclared emergency.” Consolidation had led to the demise of the defense industrial base, he argued. The China threat meant robust innovation adoption at the Pentagon was an imperative. To get there, speed and deregulation were required.
“We need a defense Reformation to … transform the way the government does business,” Sankar wrote.
Sankar and Palantir, the controversial data-mining company that provides AI-enhanced platforms for battlefield analysis, are powerful voices in a growing chorus. Anduril, which makes autonomous weapons systems, issued a 7,000-word decree pushing for policy changes, such as aligning Pentagon tech purchasing with “industry best practices” to “reboot the arsenal of democracy.” Venture capitalists like Andreessen Horowitz are investing upwards of $1 billion in defense tech, demanding deregulation because “America’s most innovative founders are building the tools our warfighters need—but the current system locks them out.”
In the past year, there have been indications that the Silicon Valley crowd is being heard. “Industry has become influential in shaping national security policy, with leading AI companies framing too much regulation as a national security liability,” said Emile Ayoub, senior counsel with the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program.
Within months of entering office, President Donald Trump issued a flurry of executive orders to accelerate AI adoption and streamline defense buying. To transform the US military into “an ‘AI-first’ warfighting force,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has mandated faster but riskier methods of acquiring frontier technologies. “This is the beginning of an unrelenting onslaught to change the way we do business …………………………………………………………………………………………………
AI-related defense tech contractors have been generous in their financial contributions to elected officials. The support goes well beyond the most conspicuous displays, such as Big Tech’s eye-popping donations to Trump’s re-election campaign, inauguration, and ballroom………………………………….
Between 2022 and 2024, these nine trailblazing AI companies and their employees have increased their campaign contributions by about 60 percent to the members of Congress who control Pentagon policy. Their defense-specific lobbying has jumped from about $650,000 to $7.7 million in the past decade…………
………Simultaneously, the Trump administration has installed a revolving door between defense-tech companies and the Pentagon.
…..If companies move quickly from “concept to combat,” “the Department’s checkbook is open.”
In the past decade, Palantir’s revenue from defense contracts grew by an annual average of 50 percent, among the fastest of any defense firm, according to a Brennan Center analysis. That translates to at least $1.4 billion in defense department payouts since 2008.
Thanks to a surge in work with the military, Palantir became profitable in 2022. And its slice of the Pentagon pie continues to expand. Recently, the Defense Department embedded Palantir’s AI platform, used for battlefield awareness and target recognition, throughout the military. Now, as a “program of record,” Palantir will receive ongoing and long-term funding from the department.
…………………………………………………………………………As the Valley grew into a hub of global capitalism, O’Mara observes, Washington looked to the tech industry as an economic engine and a source of campaign financing. It courted Silicon Valley dollars by offering tax breaks, subsidies, and skilled worker visas and promised to fill classrooms with computers and internet connections.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….Meanwhile, organizations ranging from the United Nations, to the Pope, to a consortium of nonprofits and academics known as Stop Killer Robots, decry the use of AI in warfare, especially in the deployment of lethal autonomous weapons. They argue that there’s an inherent lack of transparency when the black box of AI models is further obscured by the opaque or classified nature of military operations.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………One of the companies joining this group of Silicon Valley heavy hitters is Reflection AI, a relatively new firm that receives VC funding from 1789 Capital. In yet another example of the red flags around conflicts of interest and self-dealing emerging from the Trump administration, Donald Trump, Jr., the president’s son, is a partner at 1789 Capital—in fact, the lead partner on the deal.
……………………………………………………….o understand what’s driving the renewed relationship between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon, it’s instructive to look at where venture capital is flowing. Between 2024 and 2025, venture capital investments to defense technology nearlydoubled, from about $27 billion to $49 billion, according to PitchBook, a repository of data on capital markets.
The Silicon Valley Defense Group analyzes the prospects of the top VC and private equity-backed defense tech firms, and its 2026 report found that In-Q-Tel is still the largest funder of defense tech. But BlackRock, the world’s largest investment firm, significantly increased its focus on this sector in 2025. Not to be left out, the Big Five have also thrown funding at these companies through their own venture capital arms.
Overall, the Silicon Valley Defense Group observes “seismic” shifts in the sector……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Elke Schwarz, a professor at Queen Mary University of London who studies military AI, observed that Silicon Valley has successfully reshaped how the Pentagon does business—and to its benefit.
“With its focus on iteration, agility, risk, speed, and scale, the new defence culture performs both the logics of its new AI products and that of the VC companies that fund the startups,” she writes. “It is a holistic shaping of the environment towards the vectors that make Silicon Valley VC investors enormously rich.”
She adds: “[M]ove fast and break things is not a suitable motto for any conscientious military organization.”
San José State University professor Roberto González has been studying the rise of defense tech from the heart of Silicon Valley. He said there’s an analogy to be made with the California Gold Rush. “That’s just a part of the mentality of this part of the world—you have an opportunity to get rich quick, and you go for it,” said González, author of War Virtually:The Quest to Automate Conflict, Militarize Data, and Predict the Future.
But, he warns, there’s a crucial difference between the two.
“What we’re talking about, in the end, is taxpayer dollars,” González said of the money helping to fuel the defense tech boom. “A lot of the startups will fail. But in the meantime, the pot can just keep growing larger and larger, as long as we can be convinced, as taxpayers, to keep that Pentagon budget growing.” https://thebulletin.org/2026/07/the-rise-of-the-military-technology-complex/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=New%20investigation%3A%20The%20rise%20of%20the%20military-technology%20complex&utm_campaign=20260723%20Thursday%20Newsletter
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