the DON JONES INDEX…
		GAINS POSTED in GREEN LOSSES POSTED in RED 3/6/23… 15,055.33 2/27/23… 15,044.59
	6/27/13… 15,000.00
(THE DOW JONES INDEX: 3/6/23...33,390; 2/27/23...32,816.92; 6/27/13… 15,000.00)

LESSON for March 6, 2023 – “STOP! START! (Part Two: Panic in the Suites)”

Vladimir Putin’s belligerent State of the Nation speech last week (see the first Stop! Start! Lesson) has not only frightened the the sheep (public in America and the West, less so in Russia and China where news is carefully managed and many remain blinded by patriotic lies and varying covert to overt appeals to racism and nationalism as an alternative to fighting for moral and/or financial improvement... a tactic of distraction practiced by our own once - and perhaps future – President) but has thrown the so-called experts on war and responsibility into a hither and thither in their high offices in government, business and the media.

Some are dismissive... Russia is bluffing, spouting the same old same old in the hopes that it might dissuade President Joe from sending more munitions, tanks and... as they fear... fighter jets to the Ukrainians. Others are convinced that total nuclear war is at hand and it’s time to head for the compound, stock up on more freeze dried vittles, fossil fuel in tanks and smaller arms with which to fend off the neighbors.

Nobody can make sense of the situation and few even arrogate to themselves the capacity to do so. Under START and NEW START, the nuclear arsenals of America and Russia were whittled down to a fraction of their previous size and those nukes domiciled in and around Kyev were removed, contingent on promises that the territorial integrity of Ukraine was respected.

It wasn’t.

Slate, cited in last week’s lesson, called it “dumbfounding that Putin has unleashed this provocation. He must know that Russia’s economy and its military-industrial complex—barely able to sustain a conventional war on their border—are in no shape to engage in a renewed nuclear arms race. He must also know that the United States would likely match whatever steps he might take in this race.”

Then again, this Lesson pointed out that... like Donald Trump at the CPAC yesterday, Putan was playing to his domestic base... Russians hungry for conquest and world domination, beginning with Ukraine, if they can get it or blowing up the planet if they can’t.

Congress, Slate reported has recently passed a massive increase in the defense budget by a huge bipartisan majority. “The budget includes funds to develop new weapons for all three legs of the “nuclear triad”—land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and bombers—and that was before the State Department’s declaration of Russian noncompliance with New START.

“Even in gross numbers,” the article noted, “Putin could not hope to race ahead. A detailed analysis by the Federation of American Scientists concludes that, if both sides breached New START limits by fully loading their missiles and bombers, the United States could increase its arsenal of long-range nuclear warheads and bombs from 1,670 to 3,570, while Russia could increase its arsenal from 1,674 to 2,629.

Then again, Putin has made several dumbfounding moves in the past year. It’s not out of the question that he could make another, however self-destructive it might be.

(See last week’s Lesson, Attachments One and Two).

Given the shoddy and, since the onset of the plague, total lack of serious inspections, it is presumed that both the partisans are, have been and will be lying.

The World Population Review (Attachment One) estimates that, under New START there are approximately 13,080 nuclear warheads in the world today. “While this is far fewer than either the U.S. or Russia possessed during their Cold War peak, it is notable that there are more countries with nuclear weapons than there were 30-40 years ago. At present, Russia maintains the highest number of nuclear weapons, with an estimated 6,257 total warheads. Of these, 1,458 are actively deployed (current START II treaty limits both the U.S. and Russia to 1550 deployed total), 3039 are inactive but available to be made active, and 1,760 are retired and awaiting dismantling. The United States follows closely behind with 5,550 total nuclear weapons: 1,389 active, 2,361 inactive but available, and 1,800 in line to be dismantled.”

Here are the 10 countries with the most nuclear weapons:

Russia - 6,257

United States - 5,550

China - 350

France - 290

United Kingdom - 225

Pakistan - 165

India - 156

Israel - 90

North Korea - 50

Nuclear power, for both peaceful and non-peaceful uses, is widely seen as the wave of the future, contends the International Atomic Energy Agency. (Attachment Two) “To achieve carbon neutrality and limit global warming to 1.5°C, energy sector investment must be scaled up and directed towards cleaner and more sustainable technologies that support climate change mitigation and adaptation. At the same time, the world is confronted with the need to reinvigorate and rebalance energy sector investment to address energy security vulnerabilities and broader sustainability challenges. Investment in nuclear power can help address these challenges.”

Last Thursday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov... speaking at a U.N. conference on disarmament, of all places!... denounced the U.S. and its allies for openly declaring the goal of defeating Russia in a “hybrid” war, arguing that it violates their obligations under international agreements and could lead to the ‘clash of nuclear powers with catastrophic consequences’. (Associated Press, March 2, Attachment Three)

He emphasized that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s move to suspend the 2010 New START treaty, the last remaining nuclear arms pact with the U.S. came in response to the U.S. and NATO action on Ukraine.

Putin announced the halt in Moscow’s participation in New START in his state-of-the-nation address last week. He argued that Moscow can’t accept U.S. inspections of Russian nuclear sites envisaged by the pact when Washington and its NATO allies have openly declared Russia’s defeat in Ukraine as their goal.

Ryabkov did, however, reaffirm that Russia “would respect the caps on nuclear weapons set under the treaty,” meaning that they would not resume testing unless and until the United States did.

“We can’t stand idle,” Ryabkov said, noting that if the U.S. conducts a nuclear test, “we will be forced to respond.”

“No one should have dangerous illusions that the global strategic parity could be destroyed,” Ryabkov added.

Environmental, economic and human health damages remain from the golden cays of Cold War testing over seventy years ago.

The Semipalatinsk Test Site (Russian: Семипалатинск-21; Semipalatinsk-21), also known as "The Polygon", was the primary testing venue for the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons. It is located on the steppe in northeast Kazakhstan (in the former Kazakh SSR), south of the valley of the Irtysh River.

American testing centered around the deserts of our own Southwest, leading to the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and, thereafter, to the Pacific and Alaska.

After months of wrangling, negotiators from the United States and the Republic of the Marshall Islands finally signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on a new Compact of Free Association agreement that will govern relations between the two nations for the next 20 years.

Joseph Yun, special envoy for compact negotiations, signed the MOU for the United States and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Kitlang Kabua signed for the Marshall Islands on Jan. 12 in Los Angeles. That same day, the United States also signed an MOU for a new compact with the island nation of Palau. On Feb. 10, the United States signed a similar MOU with the Federated States of Micronesia. (Arms Control Ass. Attachment Four)

After World War II, the U.S. military forcibly displaced thousands of people in the Marshall Islands to allow for nuclear weapons testing and other military activities, which have severely damaged the health and environment and livelihoods of the Marshallese.

The new compact with the Marshall Islands will extend U.S. military basing rights at the Ronald Reagan Missile Defense Site on Kwajalein Atoll and U.S. security rights across the island chain. It also seeks to update and expand U.S. financial and technical assistance to the Marshall Islands, including for the health and environmental damage caused by the 67 atmospheric nuclear test explosions conducted between 1946 and 1958.

The Bikini and Enewetak atolls suffered the most severe direct physical devastation from the testing. Land, lagoons, coral reefs, and the oceanic environment remain contaminated over half a century ago later.

Far to the north the US Government exploded nuclear weapons on Amchitka Island in the Aleutian island chain in southwest Alaska between 1965 and 1967. (Attachment Five) Amchitka Island is the traditional homeland of Aleut Alaska Natives, was designated a wildlife reservation by President William Taft. Unfortunately, the executive order made the islands vulnerable to government appropriation for military and economic purposes. (See Kieran Mulvaney, "A Brief History of Amchitka and The Bomb," Greenpeace, August 25, 2007)

In 1965, the US conducted the first nuclear explosion on Amchitka. An 80-kiloton nuclear blast was set off underground. Scientists used this blast for research purposes. It was analyzed by seismologists to help determine whether other countries were conducting underground nuclear testing. (See Ned Rozell, “The Unknown Legacy of Alaska's Atomic Tests,” University of Alaska Fairbanks, January 18, 2001)

A second blast was set off in 1969, 4,000 feet below the surface of Amchitka. This exercise was used to understand how larger underground explosions “might damage the island, trigger seismic activity, or generate tsunamis. Workers drilled a 4,000-foot hole.”

The most notorious explosion was conducted in 1971, “Project Cannikin.” At 5-megatons, this blast was 250 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It was detonated almost a mile below Amchitka’s surface. The detonation caused the ground surface on Amchitka to rise, then fall 20 feet. A crater a mile wide and 40 feet deep on Amchitka’s surface serves as an ominous reminder of the massive explosion. The shock from the explosion measured 7.0 on the Richter scale, the same as the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti.

Not only is there a commitment, sort of, among the Russians not to test until America does... increasing production, since it cannot be verified without inspections, can go along its merry path... Russia is also a supporter (allegedly) of the “No First Use” policy laid out by the anti-nuke Global Zero combine. (See Attachment Six)

“No First Use” (NFU) is defined by the GZers as a commitment to never use nuclear weapons first under any circumstances, whether as a preemptive attack or first strike, or in response to non-nuclear attack of any kind.

In its Q&A session on the NFU, Global Zero reported that “China is the only nuclear-armed country to have an unconditional NFU policy. India maintains a policy of NFU with exceptions for a response to chemical or biological attacks.

“France, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States maintain policies that permit the first use of nuclear weapons in a conflict. Israel does not acknowledge the existence of its nuclear arsenal so has no publicly known position.”

Consequently, the odds that nuclear weapons will be used — intentionally, accidentally, or due to miscalculation — are, according to GZ, “the highest they’ve been since the worst days of the Cold War.”

A war gaming scenario in the Financial Times (Jan. 19^th, Attachment Seven) asked readers to pretend that they are the President, and that “300 nuclear missiles are heading your way. You must respond. What now?”

“Having been sworn in as US president a few minutes previously, I am sitting in the Oval Office watching TV reports of escalating fighting in Europe. A secret service agent bursts into the room and tells me to leave immediately. I take the lift down to the White House crisis centre known as the Situation Room, where I am joined by my top national security officials, who brief me on the incoming attack. I have 15 minutes to respond. As the clock ticks down, I am presented with three options, all of which involve retaliatory strikes against Russia, projected to kill between 5mn and 45mn people. What do I do?”

This is just of several wargaming scenarios devised by Sharon Weiner and Moritz Kütt, two national security experts from Princeton University, who have tested it on dozens of people to see how they respond.

In a controlled experiment with 79 participants, 90 per cent chose to launch a nuclear counter-strike.

In late 2022, this chilling simulation was being staged at the Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference close to the Capitol in Washington DC. NukeCon, as it is called, was packed with many of the world’s top national security experts, who have become freshly relevant.

At NukeCon, one speaker argued that Ukraine is almost certain to win the war and will drive Russian forces out of the entire country, including Crimea. Another speaker adds that if such a scenario comes to pass, President Vladimir Putin would regard this humiliating defeat as an existential threat to his regime, if not Russia itself. In such circumstances, it is easy to believe that Russia would resort to nuclear weapons.

As the war in Ukraine nears the one-year mark, the mayor of Kyiv is highlighting what’s at stake, hoping to remind people the threat of nuclear war looms, and his country is fighting to defend not just itself, but every country that shares its democratic values.

Vitali Klitschko — in an exclusive Canadian interview airing Sunday with CTV’s Question Period host Vassy Kapelos — stressed that it is important for people to remember the war in Ukraine impacts everyone, not just Ukrainians, adding that it would be a “huge mistake” for people outside of Ukraine to think the war doesn’t affect them. (From CTV News (Canada) February 19, Attachment Eight)

“Please don't forget, we're talking about nuclear weapons,” he said. “An explosion could touch everyone on our planet, and that is why we have to do everything we can to stop this war.”

Meanwhile, Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly paid a surprise visit to Ukraine earlier this month to meet with Zelenskyy, Klitschko, and other top officials.

Zelenskyy briefed Joly about Ukraine’s latest most pressing defence needs, and discussed next steps in his Peace Formula, according to a release from the president’s office.

Joly later attended an international security conference in Munich, where Zelenskyy urged Western allies to send military support to Ukraine quickly, saying “it’s speed that life depends on.”

Klitschko told Kapelos the fighter jets Ukraine is now asking for would be “very effective” against the missiles Russia is using.

“We need the help,” he said, adding the amount of support Ukraine receives will determine how quickly it can end the war.

“We’re talking about defensive weapons [so] we [can] defend our homeland,” he also said. “Ukraine always was peaceful country, we’re peaceful people, but we don’t have right now a choice, we have to fight and defend our families.”

Ryabkov, in Geneva, countered that Ukraine was only an American puppet with Zelenskyy, the Klitschkos and the people a gang of neo-Fascists who oppress Russian-speaking citizens and risk “an open conflict between nuclear powers.”

He also blamed the U.S. for the failure to ratify the global ban on nuclear weapons and reaffirmed Putin's warning that Moscow would resume nuclear tests if the U.S. does so.

“The U.S. effectively bears responsibility for the fact that the treaty still hasn’t come into force more than a quarter century after it was signed,” he said, adding that “the U.S. openly demonstrates an intention to resume the tests.”

“We can’t stand idle,” Ryabkov said, noting that if the U.S. conducts a nuclear test, “we will be forced to respond.” (From AP via Atchinson Globe, March 2^nd, Attachment Ten)

And they are making ready, getting their duck and covers in a row.

While Americans rassle with weather and gape at the Bad Al trials, Russia has spent the last year upgrading old Soviet-era bomb shelters, The Moscow Times reports. (Sinéad Baker in Business Insider, Feb. 7^th, Attachment Eleven)

The Kremlin ordered inspections and repairs of bomb shelters across the country in February 2022, the same month that Russia launched its invasion, with work still ongoing, a current Russian official told the outlet.

Work on the shelters has been happening quietly, without any public announcements. Authorities appear to be spending hundreds of millions of rubles – the equivalent of millions of dollars — The Moscow Times reported.

Putin may preparing for such an eventuality, and any repercussions, or at least trying to reassure his officials and civilians that Russia is prepared.

Ukraine's allies, which are supplying the country with increasingly sophisticated weapons, have also sought assurances from Ukraine that it would not use those weapons to strike Russian territory.

Civil defense in the United States, to all intents and purposes. Remains dormant.

Foreign Policy (Attachment Twelve) expressed fear that “the world is starting to forget the realities of nuclear weapons.”

The flashpoint... where the Kremlin may be willing to risk all that and more... “is in defense of Crimea.” Illegally annexed in 2014 by Moscow, Crimea has a large Russian-speaking population that is generally sympathetic to Russia. It is also home to the strategically important Russian naval base at Sevastopol, which is the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s home port, as well as other military infrastructure, such as Saki air base. Since 2014, Crimea has seen an exodus of ethnic Ukrainians and Tatars, an influx of Russians, and a military buildup.

It’s likely Putin “perceives Crimea as closer to the core of Russian vital interests than, say, the Kharkiv region,” suggested the FP.

Washington remains clearly committed to avoiding direct involvement in the war, but Biden administration officials have noted that Russian detonation of a nuclear weapon, no matter how small, could prompt a reconsideration.

One former government official recently speculated that Russia’s use of nuclear weapons could prompt the United States and its allies to destroy Russian forces inside Ukraine.

That’s all? - DJI

The Business Insiders expressed howlingly contradictory advice and recommendations... try to “minimize the risk of escalating the conflict further along WMD lines” while any imposing “severe punishment of Moscow and the specific individuals who authorized and conducted the nuclear attack.”

Do these self-designated “experts” seriously believe that Russia will permit the hauling up of every soldier in the “war against humanity”... all the way from Corporal Ivan to Vladimir Putin before a war crimes tribunal in Bahkmut?

If there is anything that the Twenty First Century has taught America and the world, its that its leaders... left, right, other and beyond... have only one rock solid interest: themselves.

Foreign Policy does float a “reassessment” of issues ranging from deployment of land-based nuclear missiles in Europe; expanding allied presence in the Baltic states, Poland, and Romania; or increasing allied air and naval presence in and over the Baltic Sea.

Additionally, NATO could eliminate remaining inhibitions on providing the kinds of equipment to Ukraine that it has been reluctant to hand over thus far.

“In sum, there are many responses NATO can and should consider in the event of Russian WMD use that would not necessarily lead to a spiraling nuclear conflagration,” the Foreign Polic-eers dreamily suggest. “Deliberating those options now is wise so they are ready and available should NATO’s leaders need them.”

Which they will.

As well as a rational civil defense policy and, most likely, boots on the ground.

Reuters (March 1^st, Attachment Thirteen) warns that a Russian defence ministry journal says Moscow “is developing a new type of military strategy using nuclear weapons to protect against possible U.S. aggression.

Or, just for the helluvit!

RIA said the article, published in the Voennaya Mysl (Military Thought) magazine, concluded Washington was worried it might be losing dominance over the world and has therefore "apparently" prepared plans to strike Russia to neutralise it.

Although Moscow says it would only use nuclear weapons in case Russia's territorial integrity were threatened, Putin allies have regularly suggested calamity could be close.

While Ryabkov (above) was slicing up Swiss cheese at the U.N. gabfest, former (and perhaps aspiring, should Mad Vlad falter) Russian President Dmitry Medvedev this week said the West's continued supply of weaponry to Kyiv risked a global catastrophe, repeating a threat of nuclear war over Ukraine.

The course of the war might actually be in the hands of the Ukes, as opposed to the Westerners on the sidelines... Abrams or Leopard tanks, fighter jets or naught.

Kyev might not be waiting for the Americans, Germans, Italians or Romanians to rush in and kick Russia out.

In December, Russia's Engels air base near the city of Saratov, home to part of its nuclear-capable strategic bomber fleet and at least 600 km (370 miles) from Ukrainian territory, was hit by drone attacks. Ukraine did not claim responsibility for the attacks, but celebrated them.

So what would happen if the Russian army mutinied or collapsed? asked Tim Willasey-Wilsey CMG of the very proper Royal United Survices Inst. (RUSI) on Jan. 25^th (Attachment Fourteen). Could a Russian military collapse lead to nuclear war?

RUSI solicited views from former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who has dismissed the idea as nonsense.

“There may still be some Russian soldiers who believe their president’s myth about Ukraine being a Nazi state,” RUSI contends, but increasingly the “hastily recruited and partly trained conscripts” must wonder why they are enduring considerable risk and awful conditions. “Is it really for the Russian nation or for the political survival of Vladimir Putin?”

The British Army on the Western Front in the First World War never mutinied in spite of huge casualties and poor living conditions, and the Russian army endured even worse on the Eastern Front in the Second World War. In both cases the troops believed in the need to win the war and knew that it was a national effort involving all strata of society. By contrast, the Afghan army did not exactly mutiny in July and August 2021. It just evaporated because the troops no longer believed in the war as the US negotiated a deal with the Taliban behind the back of their own deeply corrupt government.

There has already been some evidence of near-mutiny. For most of us in the West, a wholesale Russian collapse would be a cause for celebration. But in reality, a mutiny would entail “a few days of very significant risk.

In the event of a total Russian collapse, “Ukraine would have taken tens of thousands of Russian prisoners.” Again, there would be French and German pleas to release them at once and allow them to escape home. But Zelensky would have two countervailing thoughts. Firstly, the prisoners would doubtless include some war criminals. This would argue for them being moved into central Ukraine and formally processed over a period of months.

“The detonation of a nuclear device over the Black Sea or over central Ukraine as a warning shot to stop the Ukrainian advance might even be at the lower end of the spectrum of options presented to a Russian leadership in disarray.” RUSI goes so far as to handicap the Dictators’ Derby that may arise... the moment when Alexander Bortnikov (Director of the FSB) or Nikolai Patrushev (a previous FSB Director) makes a move to supplant Putin.

And then there’s our own choice... or nightmare... as potential Putin replacement: Wagner Group billionaire privateer Yevgeny Prigozhin.

“This,” allows RUSI, “is when bad or even disastrous decisions could be made.”

The liberals at Salon added a “true horror story lurking behind the war in Ukraine” even if escalation to WW3 doesn’t result. “While a nuclear tit-for-tat between Russia and NATO — an exchange that could easily destroy much of Eastern Europe in no time at all — is a genuine, if frightening, prospect, it isn't the most imminent radioactive peril facing the region.”

What is?

“By now, we all ought to be familiar with the worrisome Zaporizhzhia nuclear complex (ZNPP), which sits right in the middle of the Russian incursion into Ukraine. Assembled between 1980 and 1986, Zaporizhzhia is Europe's largest nuclear-power complex, with six 950-megawatt reactors. In February and March of last year, after a series of fierce battles, which caused a fire to break out at a nearby training facility, the Russians hijacked the embattled plant. Representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were later sent in to ensure that the reactors weren't at immediate risk of meltdown and issued a report stating, in part, that:

"…further escalation affecting the six-reactor plant could lead to a severe nuclear accident with potentially grave radiological consequences for human health and the environment in Ukraine and elsewhere and that renewed shelling at or near the ZNPP was deeply troubling for nuclear safety and security at the facility."

But if there are asymmetric horrors inherent in the current crisis, there are also prospects of deliverance.

You’ve heard about UFO’s appearing at our nuclear missile bases and disabling the missiles’ tracking computers,” posted a peanut on the Quora gallery (reproduced as Attachment Sixteen). “You may not have heard that the same thing happened at Soviet missile bases around the same time. I strongly suspect ET’s would intervene should we get close to WW3 breaking out. Nuclear weapons put WW3 in an entirely different category than any previous war.”

And the men from Mars or Star Wars need not even wait for an American exchange with Russia or China.

A 2014 study shows that so-called “limited” nuclear war in South Asia, in which 100 nuclear weapons are used, would have global consequences. Millions of tons of smoke would be sent into the atmosphere, plunging temperatures and damaging the global food supply. Two billion people would be at risk of death by starvation.

And the hits would just keep coming. A large radioactive waste disposal site, the Runit Dome in Enewetak Atoll, was created for radioactive waste from Marshall Islands testing and from the Nevada Test Site. It is leaking, and the Enewetak lagoon contains about 100 times more plutonium than the inventory under the Runit Dome. (Arms Control Assn. Attachment Five, above)

There is little evidence to suggest nuclear weapons are effective in deterring non-nuclear attacks, including biological and chemical use. If the United States suffered a non-nuclear attack, it is difficult to imagine any president considering using nuclear weapons — destroying entire cities and killing hundreds of thousands of people, damaging the environment for generations, spreading deadly radiation possibly to uninvolved countries — in retaliation.

The 2018 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) maintains the policy “the United States would only consider the employment of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States, its allies, and partners.” This loose language holds open the possibility that nuclear weapons would be used in an initial attack (which can be ordered by the president, whose authority to use nuclear weapons is virtually limitless) or in response to a conventional, biological, chemical or cyber attack. (Global Zero, Attachment Six, Above)

And while there are men (and fewer women) of conscience who believe that the human species no longer has the right to exist... overpopulation, ecological outrage (think Tom Clancy’s “Rainbow Six”) or the various atrocities of history perpetrated upon one community or other as deserve no less punishment than annihilation... and a somewhat larger contingent of hotheads nuclear war is postingplenty of sabre rattling and bomb-tossing peanuts tropes upon the “comments” sections of certain galleries, the internet information Q&A site Quora is a cut above, sometimes offering back and forth contentions and responses – sometimes even by correspondents who have some background in what they are contending.

One such response answered that rare white gallery peanut as questioned his own motives in support the end of humanity, posted as this on September 26th...

I want World War 3 to happen. (Yes I know I'm 99.9% likely to die) just explain why I would have these feelings?

To which self-described “Amateur Historian” D.A. replied...

You’re young. For you, war is exciting and the true passage to “manliness” and self worth. You’ll face danger, learn “manly skills,” and do something meaningful. You’ll ride the adrenaline, and become your own personal little war hero. You’ll go to interesting places and witness awesome events, like thousands of planes in the sky, or massive explosions. You’ll form bonds you can’t form anywhere else. You will escape the drudgery of the 9–5.

You don’t want to have to go out and figure out what will give you a sense of meaning and joy. You want all the adventure and excitement thrown at you, where all you have to do is drop in and ride the wave. You don’t want to live with routine and mundane obligations. You want something less linear and bland. You want the most epic excitement out there- war across the entire world.

In reality, war is losing children. War is grieving parents, orphans, widows, and widowers. War is maimed innocents, destroyed art, and the loss of brilliant minds; future doctors, scientists, and inventors. War is becoming best friends with someone, then watching them die next to you, terrified to the last. War is lost love and broken romances. War is the loss of what would have been, so that so much might be destroyed. War is cracked trumpets and torn banners. War is dust, dirt, mud, and grime. War is hunger. War is sleep deprivation. War is fear. War is guilt. War is hours of boredom and apprehension, interrupted by minutes of absolute fear.

War is Hell.

Today’s total war would also include a potential nuclear holocaust, completely destroyed cities, chemical warfare, and terrifying technology that would devastate the globe. We’d see the devastation of natural resources, land, and wildlife.

Sure, sometimes war is necessary. Sometimes you have to fight, but that’s very different from wanting a fight to start.

Why do you want a WWIII?

I’m assuming you’re young and want purpose and adventure, and to avoid a mundane and uninspiring life. A war isn’t the answer. You have to find your path. Find something that is both adventurous and positive. Make the world a better place. You’re sitting there, wanting the worst to happen, so fun and meaning can fall in your lap. Why don’t you go out and get that fun and meaning on your own, rather than at the expense of billions of lives and the ravaging of our planet?

If you don’t fantasize about WWIII for adventure or meaning, and you just want it to happen for the sake of death and mayhem, that’s a very different story, and a very real problem.

To be sure, either the responder or the company posted a “Warning” warning of “assumptions”... there are plenty of old, or sick or disgruntled Americans who would prefer that humanity dies with them, in addition to the deep thinkers as noted above. But it is, perhaps, encouraging that no sitting nor recent member of Congress, the military or the larger Federal Government has advocated WW3 – not even George Santos, or MTG or AOC.

At least not in public.

Even the ultra-conservative, ultra-belligerant Heritage Foundation, which promoting attacking the then-Soviet Union secretly, totally and permanently during the good old days of the Cold War, has moderated – somewhat, modestly observing that: “If Russia continues to ignore its obligations under New START, the U.S. will need to be prepared to compete in an environment without arms control.

“Arms control is not an end in itself, and maintaining strong nuclear deterrence should remain the United States’ number one goal.” (February 21^st, Attachment Eighteen... just as Bad Vlad threw his shoe.)

Blaming, instead, President Joe (and, by extension, Barack Hussein Obama, Slick Willie, the now aging Jimmy Carter and a herd of insufficiently belligerent RINOs) the HF warned that “(i)f Russia can pick and choose which aspects of a treaty it can follow, it defeats the purpose of having a rules-based agreement.”

Which, sort of, admits to the preferability... if not quite necessity... of rules and agreements and the such. So, as opposed to a first strike, they roar out that: “Russian non-compliance highlights the need for the U.S. to double down on its efforts to recapitalize its nuclear forces,” noting that the U.S. currently plans to deploy “modern nuclear capabilities, like the Sentinel missile and Long Range Standoff” weapon, but only by “around the end of the decade.”

And then, like a shot and deflated Chinese surveillance balloon, Heritage proposed that, “if Russia continues to ignore its obligations under New START (duly suspended as of the date of their article), the U.S. will need to be prepared to “compete in an environment without arms control.”

Which is what, they alleged, we are already doing.

And, further, Heritage was reduced to that ultimate transgression of the liberal, Socialist degenerates in New York and Washington and other woke enclaves... spending money!

A lot of money.

Last year, commentator Patty-Jane Geller pointed out that the Congress appropriated just $45 million to continue research and development for the missile and its accompanying warhead. “This year,” Patty proposed, “Congress should provide at least $400 million to move this program into development and field it by the end of the decade...” as a response to Russian “unfaithfulness”, warning that “maintaining strong nuclear deterrence should remain the United States’ number one goal.”

And these self-designated “staunch conservatives” didn’t even begin to tote up the numbers on a viable new Civil Defense initiative on America’s budget abacus. Perhaps they’re dreaming that the money saved by ending Covid food subsidies can be diverted to defense.

On the dovish side of the spectrum, two Senators... Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and two Congressmen Don Beyer (VA-08) and notorious rent control enemy and homelessness generator John Garamendi (CA-08)... did what Democrats always do best in their capacity of co-chairs of the “Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group”, issuing “a statement” on the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (and the day after the shoe drop), announcing the extension of the bicameral Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group into the 118th Congress (Senate Dot Com, February 24^th, Attachment Nineteen).

Ooooh!... FIERCE!!!

“We, the co-Chairs of the Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, reiterate our condemnation of Putin’s war of choice and repeated, thinly-veiled threats to use nuclear weapons. As the devastating war rages on, we must help deliver to the people of Ukraine and our NATO allies the appropriate conventional military support needed repel Russian aggression.”

Furthermore, the Fierce Four declared that “To focus greater attention and build bipartisan support for effective nuclear arms control and disarmament measures, we are today announcing the extension of the bicameral Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group into the 118th Congress.”

Take that, Putin, Medvedev, Ryabkov!

(But no fighter jets to Ukraine until the second, or fifth, or twentieth anniversary of Putin’s War!)

The globalist parakeets at EU, the Gang of Twenty and the United Nations have also issued statements of support and denunciation (mostly denunciations) but the UN’s one-madman veto prevents even a modest gesture of disapproval (let alone hauling thousands, perhaps millions of Russian war criminals to tribunals in some pleasant place like Generva or The Hague).

So, in the interests of world peace, whirled peas (and perhaps fear on the part of some delegates from unpleasant places having to leave New York City and go home), the UNoids did what they do... issuing statements and proclaiming Days. “Days we’ll remember all our lives,” to paraphrase the Kinks.

An International Day against Nuclear Tests, declared on 2 December 2009, in honor of the 64th session of the United Nations General Assembly (Attachment Nineteen), and...

On 29 August 2022, an “International Day for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Awareness” (Attachment Twenty)

The expert experts... meaning scientists, for the most part... have checked in upon a variety of ifs, whens and what-ifs and (surprise!) they tend to disagree.

The voluminal and voluble Stimson Institute’s International Nuclear Security Forum Project has released its “Nuclear Security News and Member Updates Roundup” for February 2023 (March 1^st, Attachment Twenty One) including extensive calendars on Days and Observance as well as “nuke news” of note... as well as charts, graphs and tabulations of interest to other experts and to Joneses worried about survival. (See the full report on the link above)

Aside from the New Start suspension, such dispatches included international atomic monitors that detected “uranium enriched to levels just below nuclear weapons-grade in Iran,” fresh disinformation on nuclear threats, and new risks facing the Ukraine’s civilian nuclear power plants, including “worrying delays to the needed rotation of the IAEA’s Support and Assistance Mission to Zaporizhzhia.” (Worries and delays, not to mention deterioration of other nuke plants worldwide, as well as a potential escalation of attacks on conventional power plants by domestic terrorists.)

Among the newer dangers is the Russian draining of an enormous reservoir in Ukraine, “imperiling drinking water, agricultural production and safety at Europe’s largest nuclear plant, according to satellite data obtained by NPR”, open conflict between Russian and Uke nuke workers at the Zap – which situation Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Support and Assistance Mission to Zaporizhzhia (ISAMZ) – the red tape preventing the EU from sanctioning Russian civil nuclear energy company Rosatom, the loss and found adventures of a “radioactive capsule” at a gas station in the Australian Outback, and more problems in America – from blue-collar Neo-Nazis with dynamite to black hat hackers... both foreign and domestic (See below) and just plain mismanagement, incompetence and obsolete equipment... such as the Feb. 22^nd fire at the Oak Ridge facility in Tennessee.

Imagine the outcry if nuclear materials were being transported through Ohio by Norfolk Southern!

An even larger combine of clockwatchers and big brains that worry much, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists published its response to Putin’s “suspension” (February 21st, Attachment Twenty Two) to which James Acton, not an atomic scientist but co-director of the Nonproliferation Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, tweeted: “Well, this sucks.”

Other less profane (but hardly sacred) scientists denounced Putin’s ploy and suggested that it might backfire on the Evil Empire.

Hans Kristensen, a researcher at the Federation of American Scientists and co-author of the Bulletin’s nuclear notebook, said that New START and nuclear arms control were important to Russia’s security too: “Without it, [the United States] could double [its] deployed arsenal.” Matt Korda, also at the Federation of American Scientists and co-author of the nuclear notebook, reacted: “This is a massive own-goal by Putin. Russia benefits from New START just as much as the United States. This decision is clearly political and emotional, not strategic.”

Perhaps the most pessimistic tweet came from François Heisbourg, a senior advisor for Europe at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a special adviser at the Foundation for Strategic Research, who, pronouncing the US-Russian arms control is “officially dead after more than a half a century,” downpunched Putin’s decision.

“[The United States] remains a superpower. [Russia] now becomes just a power with nukes,” Heisbourg concluded.

Scientists and concerned citizens... not to mention conniving and/or glory-seeking politicians... have been drawing distinctions between limited and total war that, to many, aren’t really distinctions at all.

Global Zero (Attachment Twenty Three)

The history of the past 77 years has been littered with accidents and false alarms that could have escalated into a nuclear conflict. At least one former US defence secretary, William Perry, (in the Financial Times - Attachment Seven, above) has argued that nuclear war is far more likely to result from a blunder than from a deliberate attack. “We have continued to focus our nuclear posture and policies on preparing for a surprise, disarming attack, and those policies actually increase the likelihood of an accidental nuclear war,” he wrote two years ago.

The FT also reported that on September 26 1983, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov was the duty officer at a Soviet early warning command centre when he was alerted to an incoming US missile attack. Three weeks earlier, a Soviet fighter jet had shot down a Korean civilian airliner that drifted off course, killing 269 people. Cold war tensions were at their height. The Soviet satellite warning system had flagged five US missiles heading towards Russia. But Petrov knew the detection system was new and suspected it might be faulty. Ground radar had not corroborated the missile launch. Besides, it would seem illogical for the US to launch an attack with just five missiles.

Disobeying Soviet military protocol, Petrov concluded it was a false alarm and did not report the incident up the chain of command. He may well have prevented an escalation that could have triggered a nuclear war. A Danish documentary film of the incident released in 2014 was entitled The Man Who Saved the World. “I am not a hero. I was just at the right place at the right time,” Petrov says in the film.

To an extent that is little recognised, the world critically depends on sensible people, such as Petrov, being in the right place at the right time... (i)n such circumstances, we ultimately rely on the good sense of our leaders. “We elect presidents to make the final decision and, God willing, those presidents should have both the intellectual and moral responsibility to make the right decision,” Leon Panetta, the former US secretary of defence who also served as President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, says in Cerf’s film.

And then, beyond the risks of accidental first strikes by the United States, Russia, China or anybody... let alone a mad adventure by the NoKo’s, foreign or domestic terrorists our own “peaceful power” nuclear plants carry risks of their own.

Stimson’s Could Nuclear Power Plants Become Radioactive Weapons? has been described as “...a chilling illustration that no international treaty prevents nuclear plants from becoming targets in wartime and that nuclear reactors can turn into radioactivity-spewing weapons themselves.” The hazards of nuclear power plants during wartime have long been known and largely ignored. Bennett Ramberg, a former foreign affairs officer in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, literally wrote the book on the matter — Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy, published by the University of California Press in 1984. “He’s been ringing the alarms ever since.”

Add to the prospect of nuclear power plants becoming a target of overt nation-to-nation hostilities, the prospect of sabotage by there is the risk of sabotage, shoddy maintenance or worker incompetence causing another Three Mile Island or Cernobyl... with a smaller death toll than outright war, perhaps, but devastating enough to those in the vicinity.

So what would be the immediate and collateral damage of a limited or total war, accidental launch or sabotage of domestic power plants in terms of lives, property and the environment. There have been studies and observations of consequences ranging from the merely inconvenient to the catastrophic.

Well... if you survived the blast, the radiation and the cold, you’d go hungry. Very hungry. “A full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia would see global food systems obliterated and over 5 billion people die of hunger.” (Open Access Government org. October 18, 2022, Attachment Twenty Four)

Six months back, President Joe raised the prospect of Armageddon. “[Putin is] not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming.”

But even under the smallest nuclear scenario, say a localised war between India and Pakistan, the destruction would be immense. “The global average caloric production would decrease by 7% within five years of the conflict.”

And in the event of U.S. Russia nuclear conflict, “global average caloric production would decrease by about 90% three to four years after the fighting.”

The prospects are even worse, according to the money managers at Forbes. (Feb. 13, 2023, Attachment Twenty Five)

Citing research from the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), Forbes contended that, as a consequence of nuclear warheads striking cities, causing firestorms and sending huge amounts of soot into the stratosphere...

“That soot would block out much of the Sun for up to a decade.

“Temperatures would drop around the world, leaving many places sub-zero.

“Mass crop failure. International trade in food suspended.

“Mass starvation of hundreds of millions of people in countries remote from the conflict.

“Soil and water close to where nuclear weapons were used would be contaminated.”

Still, whether by choice or necessity, many political leaders are looking for ways in which to win a nuclear war.

And most military experts now believe that the number of nukes in American and Russian arsenals, even megatonnage, would probably play a lesser role than the capability of the parties to deliver, detect and destroy them.

· “Hackers are pursuing nuclear targets, which are some of the most heavily regulated facilities in the United States. Despite those safeguards, the opportunities for espionage and much worse have made them alluring to hackers… Hackers who got into the U.S. nuclear command and control system could, theoretically, “trigger a false alarm, making us think that Russian nuclear weapons were on their way”– giving the president mere minutes to decide whether to launch a retaliatory strike…” (Stimson, Attachment Twenty One, above)

That means the Third World War is increasingly likely to be a Cyberwar. The profile of the warfighter of the future can no longer be Steven Seagal, chop-socking bad guys or even Tom Cruise shooting down the enemy bogeys but, rather, some nerd at a computer station... perhaps with heavy glasses and a pencil protector attached to his shirt pocket... tapping keys and cracking codes.

The recent adventures of the Chinese spy blimp raised concern amongst military experts and ordinary Joneses. Less reported, however, was an attack by suspected Russian hackers aimed at U.S. national nuclear laboratories. (WashPost, February 3^rd, Attachment Twenty Six)

“The Russian hackers, known as Cold River, went after nuclear scientists at Brookhaven, Argonne and Lawrence Livermore laboratories last summer, James Pearson and Chris Bing reported last month for Reuters.”

And hackers who got into the U.S. nuclear command and control system could, theoretically, “trigger a false alarm, making us think that Russian nuclear weapons were on their way” — giving the president mere minutes to decide whether to launch a retaliatory strike, former White House cybersecurity adviser Richard Clarke said in a video for the nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative last year.”

Other breaches of, defensive ploys and offensive initiatives against American nuclear cybersecurity or that of our enemies, noted by the Post included...

Stuxnet, a joint U.S.-Israel invention used to degrade Iranian nuclear centrifuges that was first discovered in 2010.

Possible North Korean hackers breached the administrative systems of the largest power plant in India, the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tamil Nadu, in 2019. North Korean hackers also were suspected in a 2014 hack on South Korea’s nuclear operator.

In 2016, German news outlet BR24 reported about the discovery of a computer virus at the nation’s Gundremmingen nuclear power plant.

And perhaps the most recent incident, aside from the targeting of national laboratories, came last summer when Russian hackers mounted an “unprecedented,” “major” attack on the website of Ukrainian state nuclear operator Energoatom, the company said.

Some cyberhackers are in it for the money. “After the London-based financial data group ION’s derivative trading unit was hit by a cyberattack, forcing several European and U.S. banks and brokers to process trades manually, regulators in both countries are looking into the hack. Lockbit, a ransomware gang, has threatened to publish stolen data from the firm, Reuters’s James Pearson and Danilo Masoni reported.” (Bloomberg, Attachment Twenty Seven)

Others have a more lethal intent.

“What if a hacker shut down the security system at a highly sensitive nuclear materials storage facility, giving access to terrorists seeking highly enriched uranium to make a bomb?” asked NTI (the Nuclear Threat Initiative, Attachment Twenty Eight) “What if cyber-terrorists seized control of operations at a nuclear power plant–enabling a Fukushima-scale meltdown? Or, worse, what if hackers spoofed a nuclear missile attack, forcing a miscalculated retaliatory strike that could kill millions?”

While the major powers are taking corrective measures to improve security on either defensive or offensive sectors, measures to guard against the cyber-nuclear threat “are virtually non-existent in states with new or emerging nuclear programs.” Expertise in the field of nuclear cybersecurity is in short-supply, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which provides countries with assistance and training in this area, does not have the resources necessary to address the growing threat.

“Measures to guard against the cyber-nuclear threat are virtually non-existent in states with new or emerging nuclear programs. Expertise in the field of nuclear cybersecurity is in short-supply, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which provides countries with assistance and training in this area, does not have the resources necessary to address the growing threat.”

It is widely belived that the Chinese are ahead of Russia in both offensive and defensive cyber-hacking, therefore the purported Putin-Xi alliance is particularly disturbing.

Fortunately, contends Time (February 23^rd, Attachment Twenty Nine) the old adage “you gotta have friends” is working in favor of America and against the ChiComs.

“America’s greatest competitive advantage over China is not wealth or weapons,” contends Gregory Allen, correspondent and strategy and policy analyst, “...but the fact that America has a lot of close friends, and China has none. In fact, the only country that has signed a treaty to support China in the event of a war is North Korea, an impoverished pariah state that deliberately schedules nuclear tests and missile launches to embarrass China during high-profile diplomatic summits. Treaty or no, few would describe China and North Korea as friends.”

These include Taiwan, that produces produces “more than 90% of the world’s most advanced semiconductor computer chips” or a single company based in the Netherlands, ASML, “produces 100% of the most advanced lithography machines that are irreplaceable equipment for computer chip factories.”

On October 7, 2022, the Biden Administration unilaterally imposed a set of export controls that restrict sales to China of advanced computer chips designed for running Artificial Intelligence applications and military supercomputers as well as the manufacturing equipment for making those chips. Since U.S. companies design more than 95% of the AI chips that are used in China, and also produce manufacturing equipment that is used in every single Chinese chip factory, these export controls pose an extraordinary obstacle to China’s ambitions to lead the world in AI technology and to achieve self-sufficiency in semiconductors.

And, unfortunately for China, Japan, and the Netherlands are not going to step into the breach should America impose tougher export controls. Like Taiwan, Japanese and Dutch companies have been victims of China’s government-backed industrial espionage for semiconductor technology. And while they have historically feared Chinese retaliation for any measures taken to stop such provocations, they also have had to reassess their prior foreign policy positions after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Chinese support to Russia government has had disastrous consequences for China’s global image.

And once the birds take wing, solitary hawks with neither rules nor allies may be at a disadvantage to a flock of geese or a murder of crows... perhaps less lethal by themselves, but able to swarm and deform the enemy defenses and then move in for the kill shot, like taking a well-aimed Splat! of birdshit on the windows of their eyes on the skies.

Some Joneses with money might ask what the economic impact of a nuclear would be. An editorial/opinion squawk from the American Enterprise Institute noted that many factors probably contributed to the market’s valuation shift at the end of the 20^th century, but one of the most frequently cited was the so-called peace dividend. “The Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991, and stocks took off. It’s hard to quantify just how much of a boost came from the downfall of a military superpower and the reduced threat of nuclear war. Interest rates also generally fell to new lows during the period; technology and productivity took off; and 401(k)s blossomed along with many Americans’ attachment to the stock market. But a big lift undoubtedly came from a reshuffling of the world order with the United States firmly on top.”

So what would be the economic impact of a nuclear conflict? Well, so bad that even the mere contemplation of the possibility produces negative economic results. In the 1989 paper “Interest Rates in the Reagan Years,” Patric H. Hendershott (Ohio State University) and Joe Peek (Boston College) note evidence that heightened tensions between the US and USSR during President Reagan’s first term “contributed marginally (about a half percentage point) to the high real rates by increasing the feat of nuclear war and thus reducing the private propensity to save.” If the world of the “day after” is one of radiation and nuclear winter, then saving for retirement is less of a priority.

Well, then how about civil defense? While American cyberdefense seems, for the present, paramount, our Civil Defense standards are well below those of much smaller and weaker nations.

Civil defense in Sweden (LeMonde, France, February 15, Attachment Thirty One) “...is in full resurrection after a long interlude lasting almost three decades, since a time when "we wanted to believe in eternal peace," said Marinette Nyh Radebo, in charge of communication at the Swedish armed forces recruitment agency.

The concept returned to the top of Sweden's political agenda in 2015, a year after Russia annexed Crimea. Then, the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, "gave it an entirely new dimension," said Marcus Björklund, head of planning in Skåne county, southern Sweden. Testament to this, for the first time since 1947, the kingdom once again has a civil defense minister, alongside the defense minister and, with Finland, has applied to join NATO.

The 121,500 young Swedes who celebrated their 16th birthday in 2022 were reminded of this defense duty, which had been forgotten by the end of the 20th century. The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) sent them a letter, informing them that they were now part of the kingdom's "total defense" and had an "obligation to help in case of a threat of war, or war."

Another facet of nuclear war prosecution and defense is the deployment of space-based satellites capable of intercepting hostile incoming missiles... the infamous “Star Wars” (or SDI) proposed by Ronald Reagan back in the last century and then laughed out of existence.

But now, at least in some quarters, Star Wars is back. (19FortyFive.com, Jan. 16, Attachment Thirty Two)

Being liberals, they derided Trump’s call for restoration of the program – consiening it to his “rambling” campaign promises back in November.

“As events overseas have show to protect from the unthinkable threat of nuclear weapons and hypersonic missiles, the United States must also build a state-of-the-art next-generation missile defense shield,” Trump declared, “...we need it. The power of these missiles and the power of a word I refuse to say, “nuclear.” We have to have it. We need a defense shield. And we have to do it. And we actually have the technology and we are going to build it, just as I rebuilt our military, I will get this done.”

What 19FortyFive called “the most fantastic aspect of SDI” would have been a series of satellites that could monitor and destroy Soviet missiles either in the boost phase or as they traveled through space toward their targets (thus the moniker Star Wars).

“There seems to be concrete evidence that the Soviets saw SDI as a real threat to their nuclear deterrent and that this impacted their negotiating strategy during the late rounds of arms control meetings in the 1980s.

“It’s also not unreasonable to argue that the US decision to abrogate the ABM Treaty, as much or more than NATO expansion, opened an unbridgeable canyon between Moscow and Washington in the 2000s. It is also possible that US missile defense aspirations are at the core of China’s decision to expand its strategic nuclear arsenal.”

Trump using a second term to make an aggressive push on missile defense would not be surprising, “given both his interest in spectacle and the consistent preferences of Republican Presidents over the past forty years.”

But notably, 18FortyFive stated that “no Democratic President has spoken out against the continuation of the program. The Democratic response to Republican political pressure on missile defense has typically been to defang that pressure by following a “yes, but more slowly” policy towards technology development and systems deployment.”

A policy that might be gaining strength following Putin’s disposal of New START?

“Rhetorically, 19Forty Five correspondent Robert Farley wrote, “the idea of an impenetrable missile shield appeals to the same set that made building the border wall a core foreign policy argument. Any effort will build, however, upon forty years of halting progress on the problem of missile defense.”

As the week began, the New York Times breathed a great, gray sigh of relief and contended that: “FEARS OF RUSSIAN NUCLEAR WEAPONS USE HAVE DIMINISHED, BUT COULD RE-EMERGE” as a result of a more cohesive analysis of “at least some of President Vladimir V. Putin’s red lines.” (Feb. 3, Attachment Thirty Three)

“Concerns remain over Russia using a nuclear weapon, but the tensions have since abated. Several factors explain why, officials said: A more stable battlefield, China’s warnings against the use of nuclear weapons, improved communications between Moscow and Washington and an increased role of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Ukraine have contributed to a measure of stability.”

Still, William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, says the United States had to take seriously the nuclear “saber rattling” of Mr. Putin and his advisers,” even if their purpose is nothing more than what William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director called the nuclear “saber rattling” of Mr. Putin and his advisers.

A call in late October between Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his counterpart, Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, Russia’s chief of the general staff, also relieved tensions. In the call, according to two U.S. officials, General Gerasimov outlined a use of nuclear weapons consistent with Washington’s understanding of Russia’s nuclear doctrine.

Still, while American officials have a better sense of what actions will prompt Russian reaction, determining what might provoke Mr. Putin is imperfect.”

Meeting with Biden last week, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany recalled his previous meeting with Mr. Xi, and the joint statement they issued on the use of nuclear weapons.

“Because the Chinese government, the president and I were able to declare that no nuclear weapons should be used in this (Russo-Ukrainian) war,” Mr. Scholz said, “that alone made the whole trip worthwhile.”

Back at home, the German media monster dw.com returned to the ongoing death and destruction in and around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant due to new missile attaceks.

“Because the Chinese government, the president and I were able to declare that no nuclear weapons should be used in this war,” Mr. Scholz said, “that alone made the whole trip worthwhile.”

"My message to Beijing is clear: use your influence in Moscow to push for the withdrawal of Russian troops," Scholz said. "And do not supply weapons to the aggressor Russia."  

Doubters of the righteousness of America, NATO and the West were few, after Stop START, but a few trolls popped up on various American, Western and, of course, Russian media sites towards the end of the week after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov spoke briefly on Thursday, in their first face-to-face contact since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Their brief encounter occurred during the G20 foreign ministers meeting in the Indian capital of New Delhi. (DW.com, March 2^nd, Attachment Thirty Four)

"Blinken has asked for contact with Lavrov," Lavrov's spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday, according to Russia's state news agency TASS.  

An “unnamed US official” said that Blinken “reiterated US support for Ukraine to the Russian foreign minister. He is said to have also urged Russia to resume the New START nuclear disarmament treaty recently suspended by President Vladimir Putin.”

Lavrov’s response, if any, was either unreported or unprintable.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin alleged Ukraine had staged "another terrorist attack" on the border region of Bryansk, accusing Ukraine of opening fire on civilians in a car, including children, Reuters news agency reported.

While the regional governor said the attack killed two people and wounded a young boy, Ukraine denied responsibility.

Mykhailo Podolyak, the adviser to the head of the Ukrainian President’s Office, said the Russian claims were a "classic deliberate provocation."

Russia wants "to scare its people to justify the attack on another country and the growing poverty after the year of war," he tweeted.

And DW also reported that German Chancellor Scholz confronted Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in Berlin about reports on dodging Western sanctions as is also occurring in other former Evil Empire republics like Kyrgyzstan and reported on Russian efforts to undermine Moldova (above) and the transport of thousands of children” out of occupied areas of eastern Ukraine, which Ukrainian officials have called a "genocidal crime." 

“But what exactly is genocide?” the Germans asked/

Domestic denizens of despair are throwing up their hands and saying ‘bring on the nukes’ owing to American historical infamy, personal crises and weltenschmerz.

Answering the Quora inquiry: “Why is WW3 predicted to start in 2023?”, MP replied “Because the US of A are in shambles, the western world is decadent.”

Adding that he is a “boomer” (if not also a Russian Orthodoz partisan of the Patriarch Kirill persuasion) the respondent responded that all Americans want to do is to “stretch the little bit of power that’s left to us is a world war.” Cynicaly speaking, iwar boosts the economy, makes a load of money thanks to warfare weaponry and army planes and drones sales, hides the real issues to the people of the world behind a “They are the villains, let’s eradicate them” theory” which would seeme contrmptible, but a recent Yankee administration adopted at least some of this philosophy... although stopping short of the shooting phase due to respect (or fear) of Rad Vlad’s “genius”.

For the unfatalists, Business Insider has added to the usual Cold War era survival practices (as well as some tactics adopted by some survivalists who actually want to survive, rather than sulking in the compounds before venturing out to kill the colored, the Jews, the perverts and the liberals) by fingering six cities which Russia or China... or even Iran or NoKo will target when push comes to shove.

These domains of death, according to Irwin Redlener, a public-health expert at Columbia University who specializes in disaster preparedness, are...

New York

Chicago

Houston

Los Angeles

San Francisco, and

Washington D.C.

These cities are not only some of the largest and densest in the country, but home to critical infrastructure (like energy plants, financial hubs, government facilities, and wireless transmission systems) that are vital to US security. (Attachment Thirty Six, January 1, 2023)

Each of these lucky places “has an emergency-management website that informs citizens about what to do in a crisis, but most of those sites (except for LA and New York) don't directly mention a nuclear attack”, which makes it difficult for residents to learn how to protect themselves if a bomb were to hit one of those cities.

"It would not be the end of life as we know it," Redlener said of that scenario in the aforementioned redlined urban centres. "It would just be a horrific, catastrophic disaster with many, many unknown and cascading consequences."

It wouldn’t even take an all out nuke war with Russia or China according to Redlener... a single nuclear explosion such as a missile launch from North Korea could do the job within a few years. Right now, Redlener said, North Korean missiles are capable of reaching Alaska or Hawaii, but they could soon be able to reach cities along the West Coast.

An even more dispersed source of an attack would be a nuclear device that was built, purchased, or stolen by a terrorist organization. “All six cities Redlener identified are listed as "Tier 1" areas by the US Department of Homeland Security, meaning they're considered places where a terrorist attack would yield the most devastation.

"There is no safe city," Redlener said. "In New York City, the detonation of a Hiroshima-sized bomb, or even one a little smaller, could have anywhere between 50,000 to 100,000 fatalities — depending on the time of day and where the action struck — and hundreds of thousands of people injured."

In 2017, New York City officials began removing the yellow signs that once marked these shelters to avoid the misconception that they were still active.

Redlener said there's a reason the shelters no longer exist: Major cities like New York and San Francisco are in need of more affordable housing, making it difficult for city officials to justify reserving space for food and medical supplies (let alone humans whose economic value to the State does not justify their survival).

"Can you imagine a public official keeping buildings intact for fallout shelters when the real-estate market is so tight?" Redlener said.

'This is part of our 21st-century reality'

The DJI asks: given the real estate reality that has impressed more pressing concerns upon the housed and unhoused, couldn’t these facilities be used to shelter the poor (in places like NY and SF, people earning under $100,000/yr until the war becomes immindnet... in which instance the peasants would be kicked out, relocated to the luxurious but lethal highrise, allowing the gentry to take their place.

Just a thought...

"This is part of our 21st-century reality," Redlener reiterates. "I've apologized to my children and grandchildren for leaving the world in such a horrible mess, but it is what it is now."

And finally, for the optimists, the Healthy Journal (Attachment Thirty Seven) has compiled its list of which countries would be safest in a nuclear war.

The Great Eight are...

1- Iceland. Iceland is a North Atlantic island nation. ...

2- Canada. Canada is a top nuclear war survivor. ...

3- Australia. Australia is a leading nuclear war safety contender. ...

4- New Zealand. ...

5- Norway. ...

6- Sweden. ...

7- Greenland (Denmark or, after 2024, either the United States or Erik Trump) ...

8- Fiji.

See more here.

And for more boiled or roated peanuts from Quora and other galleries, see Attachment Thirty Eight.

	February 27^th – March 5^th, 2023
Monday, February 27, 2023 Dow: 32,889.09	Mother Nature steps up and slaps her disobedient children silly with hundred mph winds... not in the midst of a hurricane or tornado, just outside... storms that drench the Pacific Coast and then, blustering eastwards, blanket the Midwest with snow, complicating the Palestinian (Ohio) toxic vinyl chloride cleanup (which, the government re-asserts) is nothing to be concerned about. Record mild temperatures persist on the East Coast south to the Gulf and will linger until Friday. There’s a sort of... uh... problem with all the toxic waste from Norfolk Southern’s derailement: nobody wants it. Not even Texas, nor Idaho... adjacent Pennsylvania refuses to play good neighbor and other Ohio communities refuse, too. For once, nature trumps human depravity as five die in a medical plane crash in Vegas, and a migrant shipwreck off the coast of Italy claims 62. In health news, the FDA doubles down on reefer madness, alleges that vaping wacky or normal tobaccy causes teenage depression (giving rise to the wisdom of the week from the shrinks: “it’s OK to be not OK”), and claims artificial sweeteners kill and may cause hallucinations. Thus: Mexican President Obrador delivers his own address to his countrymen... claiming that he has seen an elf. (Carpers say it’s a raccoon.)
Tuesday, February 28, 2023 Dow: 32,656.70	It’s National Pancake Day. Also the last (truncated) day of Black History Month and, presumably to celebrate, Scott Adams (of the comic strip “Dilbert”) cites a Rasmussen poll and alleges that sensible white people should stay as far away from Negroes as possible. He is, of course, cancelled immediately. And the Feds also celebrate... sort of... by ending plague-related food stamp benefits, meaning that millions of children of various races but similar low incomes will have to go hungry. Racially progressing, the SAG awards augur an “Ocscars So Yellow” as chop socky actress-turned-director Michelle Yeoh garners gold for “Everything Everwhere All At Once” along with supporting actor Ke Huy Quan (returning to glory decades after his star turns in “the Goonies” and “Indiana Jones”) and Jamie Lee Curtis (having finally escape the clutches of Michael Myers). Pacific Islanders get a little boost too as ABC’s Michael Strahan sojourns on Easter Island for the week and introduces the Moai... the giant stone statues whom he calls “bigger than Shaq”. And the same ol’ flapjacks and flapping mouths continue to amuse and annoy... the Bad Al trials (Baldwin and Murdaugh... a Chatty Cathy being kicked off the jury), the One Six (where the Fox... i.e. Rupert Murdoch, no relation to Al... is sued by the voting machine people and admits that “some” of his correspondents were (and presumably remain) “dishonest” and, as ever (as it seems) George Santos. And speaking of money and machines, Jeff Bezos is rumoured to be buying the Red... uh... Washington football... uh Commanders while Elon Musk recaptures the top spot as world’s biggest billionaire.
Wednesday, March 1, 2023 Dow: 32,661.84	Black history passes into the background for another year, but now it’s Women’s Month. Not to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, trounced at the polls, nor Elizabeth Banks, whose “Cocaine Bear” finishes second to “Ant Man and the Wasp” at the box office. King Charles, still angry at Meg and Harry, evicts them from Frogmore Cottage, despite their having a presumed lifetime lease from QE2. Out go their belongings, out to the curb - in comes a new tenant... Prince Andrew and his retinue. Moreover, British kitchens are crying out over a shortage of fresh fruits and vegetables (for which some blame inflation, others Brexit). The good news for the now-American couple is that rents.com says that U.S. rents are beginning to fall (or at least level off). They’re still unaffordable for many as homeless climbs up and up and up and family budgets are strained, but there are many more vacancies and promises of new construction.
Thursday, March 2, 2023 Dow: 33,153.91	Planes, trains and automobiles are in the news on this... Dr. Seuss’ birthday (now that his dirty, racist books have been scrubbed clean)... Yet another near miss on the runway as a Jet Blue flight has to veer upwards to narrowly miss a catastrophe in Boston. Texas turbulence injures ten on a Lufthansa flight to Germany and exploding batteries in the overhead luggage compartment cancels flight and injures seven more on a Spirit Dallas to Orlano flight. And a man bomber is seized trying to smuggle explosives onto a plane in Allentown, Pa. Death toll keeps climbing in head on crash between Greek trains near Athens, Post-Palestinian derailment in Florida releases 30K gallons of propane as Norfolk Southern CEO is called onto the carpet in Congress. Nissan recalls 800K Nissan Rogues whose stopping, starting and braking systems go rogue. Ford develops an app to track, persecute, prosecute and repossess vehicles from customers who miss payments. Athens (Ga.) football star arrested in fatal crash caused by drag racing at speeds up to 104 mph, President Joe wins one (cutting prices on insulin) but appears to be losing his campaign to forgive student debts as SCOTUS tales a jaundiced eye on the measure, gratifying boomers who paid their bills.
Friday, March 3, 2023 Dow: 33,390.97	It’s National Unplug Day... and weary Joneses are finally able to unplug their cackling commentaries about the Liars’ Club. After 28 tedious days of testimony, a South Carolina jury convicts lawyer Bad Al Murdaugh of killing his wife and son – allegedly to distract attention from his financial crimes – and unplugs him from his liberty. Murdaugh is led off to two life sentances without and has his head shaved like Lex Luthor. Officials say it s’not true that was crying in court, “he was only blowing snot.” In another blow to the Liars’ Club, career fabricator and Brazilian drag queen Rep. George Santos (R-NY) will be put on trial by his Congressional peers... some of whome are even more evil, but not so weird. The government in Tennessee prohibits Santosian drag queen shows and other gay-ish things in public schools while drag racing... clothed but drunk... blamed for the fatal car crash that has landed Alabama baller Jalen Carter in court, accused of murder. And twenty Republican states pressure Walgreens into stopping sale of “morning after” abortion pills. Another LC legend, failed plane bomber Marc Muffley’s jaunt through the Allentown, PA airport ended by FAA cops who disbelieve the toys in his luggage were innocent fireworks.
Saturday, March 4, 2023 Dow: (Closed)	After a day of relative peace and quiet, the weather roars back with a West Coast deep freeze and, to the East, killer tornadoes. Residents of Crestline, CA, buried in blizzards for days, contend that they are “prisoners of the snow.” 28 states are under severe weather alerts. More terror and revenge killings rage between Israel and Palestine as Bibi’s boys aid settlers rampaging and burning through the West Bank, killing children and inciting bombing reprisals. A mob in Palestine (Ohio) assails Norfolk Southern spokesthings and government ciphers who keep insisting that the water is safe to drink. While Republicans are rallying against “wokeness” in the CPAC conference... which we’ll cover in more detail next Lesson... Utah police practice affirmative action by murdering a white law student for a traffic violation (he had a gun in his car, but everybody in Utah does... even the Romneys and Osmonds). And astronomers give the moon it’s own time zone, inspiring drunken teenagers all across America to shout: “It’s Moon Time!” before sticking their bare butts out of speeding auto windows.
Sunday, March 5, 2023 Dow: (Closed)	CPAC called “very Trumpy” as his lawyers fight Mike Pence’s One Six testimony on grounds of “executive privilege”. And President Joe gets a challenger... self help guru Marianne Williamson will try again in 2024. Yet another Norfolk Southern train wreck in Ohio... company says that the spilt diesel was “non-toxic”. The public does not believe. Ohio Senators Brown and Vance propose bipartisan rail safety bills; Brown blames “greed and incompetence” for the four derailments in five months as NoSo laid off a third of its workers. Animals in the news as snowmobiler crashes into moose while California dispatches snipers to kill coyotes. And registration for the Ugliest Dog contest begins.
There was bad news, there was strange news but... nonetheless... the numbers in on wages and the Dow (and numbers not yet in on inflation and unemployment) broke a string of declining Dons with a modest gain recorded. With the Fed angry, this may not last... so far they have succeeded in at least holding employment steady (except for the tech sector) but upcoming figures might not prove so fortuitous.

THE DON JONES INDEX

CHART of CATEGORIES w/VALUE ADDED to EQUAL BASELINE of 15,000

(REFLECTING… approximately… DOW JONES INDEX of June 27, 2013)

See a further explanation of categories here…

ECONOMIC INDICES (60%)

CATEGORY	VALUE	BASE	RESULTS			SCORE		OUR SOURCES and COMMENTS
INCOME	(24%)	6/17/13 & 1/1/22	LAST	CHANGE	NEXT			SOURCE
Wages (hrly. per cap)	9%	1350 points	1/9/23	+1.24%	3/23	1,416.49	1,434.03	https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wages   28.61
Median Inc. (yearly)	4%	600	2/20/23	+0.03%	3/6/23	600.87	601.04	http://www.usdebtclock.org/   35,742
Unempl. (BLS – in mi)	4%	600	1/2/23	-2.94%	3/23	670.92	670.92	http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000/  3.4
Official (DC – in mi)	2%	300	2/20/23	-0.29%	3/6/23	276.55	277.10	http://www.usdebtclock.org/      5,542
Unofficl. (DC – in mi)	2%	300	2/20/23	-0.18%	3/6/23	266.47	266.96	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    11,993 971
Workforce Particip. Number Percent	2%	300	2/20/23	+0.35% +0.01%	3/6/23	301.14	301.17	In 160,872 929 Out 100,266 277 Total: 261,206 http://www.usdebtclock.org/  61.61
WP % (ycharts)*	1%	150	1/9/23	+0.16%	3/23	150.95	150.95	https://ycharts.com/indicators/labor_force_participation_rate 62.40
OUTGO	15%
Total Inflation	7%	1050	2/20/23	+0.5%	3/23	998.57	998.57	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm      -0.5
Food	2%	300	2/20/23	+0.5%	3/23	279.90	279.90	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.5
Gasoline	2%	300	2/20/23	+2.4%	3/23	245.67	245.67	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm    +2.4
Medical Costs	2%	300	2/20/23	-0.7%	3/23	292.85	292.85	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     -0.7
Shelter	2%	300	2/20/23	+0.7%	3/23	283.33	283.33	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.7
WEALTH	6%
Dow Jones Index	2%	300	2/20/23	+1.75%	3/6/23	276.08	280,91	https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/index/ 32,816.92 33,390.97
Home (Sales) (Valuation)	1% 1%	150 150	1/16/23	-1.71% -1.03%	3/23	126.40 273.56	126.40 273.56	https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics Sales (M):  4.02 Valuations (K):  366.9
Debt (Personal)	2%	300	2/20/23	+0.85%	3/6/23	279.60	279.36	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    72,796 858
NATIONAL	(10%)
Revenue (trilns.)	2%	300	2/20/23	+0.009%	3/6/23	384.14	384.17	debtclock.org/       4,610.6
Expenditures (tr.)	2%	300	2/20/23	+0.033%	3/6/23	341.52	341.41	debtclock.org/       6,019
National Debt tr.)	3%	450	2/20/23	+0.049%	3/6/23	427.35	427.15	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    31,596 (The debt ceiling was 31.4)
Aggregate Debt (tr.)	3%	450	2/20/23	+0.11%	3/6/23	423.57	423.10	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    94,466
GLOBAL	(5%)
Foreign Debt (tr.)	2%	300	2/20/23	+0.11%	3/6/23	345.95	346.33	http://www.usdebtclock.org/   7,239
Exports (in billions)	1%	150	2/20/23	-0.674%	3/23	159.29	159.29	https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 250.2
Imports (bl.)	1%	150	2/20/23	+1.32%	3/23	169.81	169.81	https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 317.6
Trade Deficit (bl.)	1%	150	2/20/23	+8.75%	3/23	304.78	304.78	https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 67.4
SOCIAL INDICES (40%)
ACTS of MAN	12%
World Affairs	3%	450	2/20/23	-0.2%	3/6/23	452.19	450.38	Mexican kidnappers abduct four American women seeking face lifts. President of Mexico insists he saw AN ELF (but outside, not on a shelf)! (Scoffers say it’s a raccoon.) Deposed Brazilian strongman Bolsonaro lingering in Florida appears at CPAC. So does Mike Lindell.
Terrorism	2%	300	2/20/23	nc	3/6/23	291.26	290.39	Terror tit-for-tat between Israelis and Palestinians escalates. Two Ukrainian pilots in Tucson are training to fly the jets that America says it won’t give them.
Politics	3%	450	2/20/23	+0.1%	3/6/23	471.04	470.19	Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot defeated in MAGA smackdown. President Joe, skin cancer removed, cuts the price of insulin, moves to ban child labor on farms, re-moves Tik Tok app from Federal devices, then goes to Selma to channel MLK. Rupert Murdoch admits some Fox columnists are “dishonest.”
Economics	3%	450	2/20/23	+0.1%	3/6/23	437.89	435.70	Retailers cutting back on promotions, coupons and rewards. Rents in the USA start to level off, still unaffordable. King Charles evicts Harry and Meghan from Frogmore Castle and gives it to... Prince Andrew! (Let the parties begin!) Fergie writes a book.
Crime	1%	150	2/20/23	-0.3%	3/6/23	269.81	269.19	Five children shot, three die in Texas. Three cops shot in Kansas City, schoosl stabbings in California.. Gay drugging murders haunting the club scene. Parent attacks college baseball umpire.
ACTS of GOD	(6%)
Environment/Weather	3%	450	2/20/23	+0.2%	3/6/23	425.97	426.82	West Coast blizzards roar, tornadoes howl - New York finally gets some measurable snowfall and weatherpersons declare California drought over as avalanches trap and kill skiers. Good cops rescue woman buried under Ga. tornado debris.
Disasters	3%	450	2/20/23	-0.5%	3/6/23	441.37	439.16	Planes, trains and automobiles dominate the news... Five die in Vegas mail plane crash, five more during Kentucky storm. Jet Blue narrowly averts runway catastrophe, turbulence injures ten on Lufthansa, kills another in Conn. while fire breaks out in Spirit baggage comparement Greek survivors and families riot after collision kills at least 57. Palestine OH pols admit to a “lack of trust” in transportation execs post-derailment and after another derailing in nearby Springfield. Nissan recalls 800K Rogues that stop without notification. Ford develops a self-repossession app for deadbeat debtors. Gas tanker truck explodes in Michigan, kills driver. And boats too as migrant shipwreck kills dozens off the coast of Italy. Fire near power plant causes Argentine blackout
LIFESTYLE/JUSTICE INDEX			(15%)
Science, Tech, Educ.	4%	600	2/20/23	+0.1%	3/6/23	628.51	626.62	Space X postpones ISS mission due to “mechanical problems.” But Elon Musk regains “World’s Richest Man” anyway. New MLB pitch clock will (hopefully) shorten games.
Equality (econ/social)	4%	600	2/20/23	-0.2%	3/6/23	613.02	611.79	Newspapers cancel “Dilbert” after cartoonist Scott Adams says that “the best thing that white people can do is to stay away from black people.” Michigan neo-Nazi accused of threatening Jews (just like his idol did!) Black Medal of Honor winner gets his award 57 years late.
Health	4%	600	2/20/23	-0.4%	3/6/23	474.41	472.99	Gumment researches mostly concur that plague escaped from a lab in Wuhan, China, but disagree over whether it was failed germ warfare that failed to fail. Doctors concur Havana Syndrome is “imaginary”. Vaping accused of causing teenage depression, while Neo-Prohibitionists insist marijuana causes heart attacks and must be re-criminalized with long prison terms for users “out of an abundance of caution,” and FDA says much the same about artificial sweeteners while also cracking down on loose opioid prescriptions. Also, half the world will be fat by 2035. Or, if a nuclear war breaks out, very hungry. Dirty baby formula is back, too. So are brain-eating amoebas.
Freedom and Justice	3%	450	2/20/23	+0.3%	3/6/23	461.31	459.93	Bad Al Murdoch’s 28 day trial goes to jury who finds him guilty within 45 minutes. SCOTUS turning against student loan foregiveness. Pandemic-era food stamp benefits expire. Hungry children cry and food pantries are swamped. (For its part, Chik-Fil-A bans unparented teens.) Sirhan Sirhan denied parole again.
MISCELLANEOUS and TRANSIENT INDEX					(7%)
Cultural incidents	3%	450	2/20/23	-0.1%	3/6/23	481.70	482.66	Ant Man bites Cocaine Bear at the box office. “Everything Everywhere” sweeos SAG and Independent Spirit awards; Adele, Sir Elton and a growing number of UK celebrities kiss off Charles’ coronation. Baller Joe Morgan suspended for waving a gun around. RIP pole-vaulter Bob Richards, actor Tom (“private ryan”) Sizemore, jazzman Wayne Shorter, disability rights activist Judy Heumann and “Freebird” Gary Rossington (Lynrd Skynrd).
Misc. incidents	4%	450	2/20/23	+0.3%	3/6/23	473.08	473.08	Iditarod begins in Alaska. Foo Fighter David Grohl fights food insecutity by holding a free barbecue for the homeless. U.K. blames climate change, supply chain and Brexit for running out of fruits and vegetables... so make do with bangers and mash. But Americans are stocking up and chowing down on Raspberry Rally Girl Scout cookies.

The Don Jones Index for the week of February 27^th through March 5^th, 2023 was UP 10.74 points

The Don Jones Index is sponsored by the Coalition for a New Consensus: retired Congressman and Independent Presidential candidate Jack “Catfish” Parnell, Chairman; Brian Doohan, Administrator. The CNC denies, emphatically, allegations that the organization, as well as any of its officers (including former Congressman Parnell, environmentalist/America-Firster Austin Tillerman and cosmetics CEO Rayna Finch) and references to Parnell’s works, “Entropy and Renaissance” and “The Coming Kill-Off” are fictitious or, at best, mere pawns in the web-serial “Black Helicopters” – and promise swift, effective legal action against parties promulgating this and/or other such slanders.

Comments, complaints, donations (especially SUPERPAC donations) always welcome at feedme@generisis.com or: speak@donjonesindex.com.

ATTACHMENT ONE – From the International Atonic Energy Agency

CLIMATE CHANGE AND NUCLEAR POWER 2022

To achieve carbon neutrality and limit global warming to 1.5°C, energy sector investment must be scaled up and directed towards cleaner and more sustainable technologies that support climate change mitigation and adaptation. At the same time, the world is confronted with the need to reinvigorate and rebalance energy sector investment to address energy security vulnerabilities and broader sustainability challenges. Investment in nuclear power can help address these challenges.

The Climate Change and Nuclear Power report has been a publication of the International Atomic Energy Agency since 2000. Building on energy statistics and climate change scenarios from organizations like the IEA and IPCC, the report outlines the potential contribution of nuclear power to a decarbonized, secure global energy system. Each edition of the report analyzes various concerns regarding the production of nuclear power, including nuclear plant safety, waste management and investment costs, and outlines the potential of nuclear technology developments to confront these concerns.

The 2022 Edition For charts and graphs, see here.

Including case studies and contributions from 15 international organizations and Member State government, private sector and scientific experts, the 2022 edition of this publication outlines potential role of nuclear technology in the transition to a low carbon future.

The role of nuclear energy in creating decarbonized and reliable energy systems 

The power sector – responsible for more than a third of global energy-related emissions – will require a complete transformation on the path to net zero. The phaseout of unabated fossil fuel use and integration of large shares of variable renewable technologies will pose major technical, economic, societal and political challenges. Considerable investment is needed to ensure a global fleet of low carbon generation, grid infrastructure, energy storage and adequate flexibility measures. With one of the lowest carbon footprints among low carbon technologies, 24/7 availability and the ability to operate flexibly, nuclear power can make an important contributor to the stability and security of a fully decarbonized power system and a good complement to renewable sources.

.

The transport, industry, and building sectors make up more than half of global energy-related emissions today and rely heavily on fossil fuel use for heat applications. Twenty-seven of the world’s nuclear power plants in eleven different IAEA Member States produced 2.3 terawatt hours of electrical equivalent heat for desalination, district heating and process heat in 2021. This thermal output accounted for less than one percent of the nuclear reactors’ total electrical generation, indicating a huge potential to utilize more nuclear capacity for heat applications for future decarbonization efforts. An expanded use of non-electric applications of nuclear power such as desalination, district heating and hydrogen production can be used to reduce emissions and increase the security of supply of the global energy system.

Opportunities and risks for nuclear power in building economic growth and climate resilience 

Around the world, climate related hazards are an increasing threat to all energy infrastructures, including all types of nuclear installations worldwide. Windstorms, tropical cyclones and sea level rise can have intense impact on coastal power supply and grid infrastructure. IPCC climate modelling overlaid with nuclear site locations show that nuclear plant sites located on the eastern coast of the USA are most likely to be exposed to sea level rise and severe cyclones with maximum wind speeds and heavy precipitation, whereas nuclear plant sites in eastern China, the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese Archipelago may face relatively fewer extreme storms in the future.

Climate related incidents affecting nuclear facilities since 2000. (Source: IAEA (2022))

The African continent and the Middle Eastern peninsula are where some of the most severe and damaging manifestations of climate changes are expected to accelerate, putting the environment and populations at risk. Both regions will have to face systemic challenges to achieve emissions reductions, meet climate goals while satisfying fast growing energy demand to support economic development and urbanization. As a result, lower carbon power systems – potentially fuelled in large part by nuclear power – will be indispensable to meet climate goals in the region.

How policy and markets can guide a sustainable future 

Despite an increasing recognition of the role of nuclear energy in meeting national climate commitments, the current market may be unable to mobilize the scale of nuclear investment needed to achieve net zero. For both climate and energy security goals, public sector financing and development of infrastructure will be necessary to fully unlock the potential of financial markets. Private sector frameworks to measure environmental, social and corporate governance can serve as one measurement of sustainable activities but vary by company and are difficult to compare. The public sector can help to guide private investment by establishing coherent, transparent guidance on which activities are compatible with long term climate and sustainability goals to effectively manage financial risk.

Faced with important decisions on how to mitigate climate change and increase security of energy supply, policymakers have turned intense scrutiny towards the sustainability of various energy technologies. Nuclear technologies, including those supporting medicine, agriculture, clean water and environmental monitoring and protection in addition to energy, can help countries meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Balancing the climate and energy security challenges

Climate change mitigation and security of energy supply are two of the foremost global challenges in 2022, likely requiring a complete reimagining of the world’s energy systems. This publication provides guidance on how nuclear energy can work alongside other technologies to achieve a decarbonized global economy. Nuclear energy deployment across the power, industry, building and transportation sectors can help to alleviate reliance on fossil fuels and provide flexibility services to increase the reliability of high-renewable energy systems. Noting the risks that all infrastructure will face in an increasingly volatile climate, this publication outlines some of the key mitigation measures already employed by nuclear operators and provides a roadmap for countries that seek to drive sustainable development for their growing populations. Policy and financial markets are vital to ensuring the success of meeting the climate and energy challenge.

ATTACHMENT TWO – From World Population Review

A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, or a combination of the two. Nuclear weapons are alternately called atom bombs, atomic bombs, A-bombs, nuclear bombs, nuclear warheads, or simply nukes. All nuclear weapons fit into one of two broad categories: fission and combination weapons, or the even-more-destructive fusion-based designs, which are technically thermonuclear weapons and may also be referred to as thermonuclear bombs, fusion weapons, hydrogen bombs, or H-bombs. Nuclear weapons unleash enormous amounts of explosive force, which is measured in kilotons (1,000 tons of TNT) and megatons (1,000,000 tons of TNT), as well as heat and radiation. They are easily the most fearsome weapons on Earth, capable of producing more death, destruction, injury, and sickness than any other weapon.

Nuclear weapon stockpiles today

It is estimated that there are approximately 13,080 nuclear warheads in the world today. While this is far fewer than either the U.S. or Russia possessed during their Cold War peak, it is notable that there are more countries with nuclear weapons than there were 30-40 years ago. At present, Russia maintains the highest number of nuclear weapons, with an estimated 6,257 total warheads. Of these, 1,458 are actively deployed (current START II treaty limits both the U.S. and Russia to 1550 deployed total), 3039 are inactive but available to be made active, and 1,760 are retired and awaiting dismantling. The United States follows closely behind with 5,550 total nuclear weapons: 1,389 active, 2,361 inactive but available, and 1,800 in line to be dismantled.

Which Countries Have Nuclear Weapons?

Russia — 6,257 (1,458 active, 3039 available, 1,760 retired)

United States — 5,550 (1,389 active, 2,361 available, 1,800 retired)

China — 350 available (actively expanding nuclear arsenal)

France — 290 available

United Kingdom — 225 available

Pakistan — 165 available

India — 156 available

Israel — 90 available

North Korea — 40-50 available (estimated)

Nuclear bombs dropped during World War II

To date, nuclear weapons have been used in war only twice. At the end of World War II, the United States dropped a nuclear bomb called Little Boy on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945, and a second bomb called Fat Man on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945. Little Boy detonated with an explosive force of approximately 15 kilotons, which leveled most buildings within a 1-mile radius. The shock wave was followed by a blast of heat at 6,000°C (10,830°F), which ignited or incinerated anything flammable and turned the blast zone into a firestorm. Finally, the explosion produced lethal ionizing radiation and lingering radioactive fallout, in which debris blasted into the stratosphere by the initial explosion is held aloft by atmospheric winds and settles back to Earth over the next several days. All told, the bombing of Hiroshima was estimated by a 1945 government report to have resulted in 66,000 deaths and another 69,000 injuries. Nagasaki's totals were a lesser, but still devastating 39,000 deaths and 25,000 injuries.

Nuclear escalation during the Cold War

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki established nuclear weapons as the ultimate weapons of war, which kicked off an arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. A major component of the "Cold War," in which the U.S. and U.S.S.R. openly competed without actually declaring war on one another, the stockpiling of nuclear weapons continued into the late 1980s. According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the nuclear arms race reached its peak in 1986, by which time the Soviet Union possessed more than 40,000 nuclear warheads and the United States had 23,000 (down from more than 31,000 in 1967). Much of this proliferation was based around the idea of "mutually assured destruction," in which both sides believed that the best way to avoid nuclear war was to have so many nukes that the opponent would not launch an attack because they feared they could not destroy enough of the target country's arsenal to avoid being devastated themselves by a retaliatory attack. After the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, thousands of nuclear weapons on both sides were dismantled.

Treaties that limit nuclear weapons

Because of the broad lethality and destructive potential of nuclear weapons, governments have negotiated arms control agreements such as the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), and the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). The NPT’s purpose is to inhibit the spread of nuclear weapons. It designates five countries as nuclear-weapon states (NWS)—the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom—and classifies the rest as non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS). Under the treaty, NWS agree not to help NNWS develop or obtain nuclear weapons, and NNWS agree not to attempt to develop or obtain nuclear weapons on their own. Countries of both classifications further agree to help one another develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes (see nuclear power by country) and to negotiate nuclear disarmament in good faith. Nearly every country in the world had accepted the NPT as of 2022, though North Korea famously withdrew from the treaty in 2003.

A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, or a combination of the two. Nuclear weapons are alternately called atom bombs, atomic bombs, A-bombs, nuclear bombs, nuclear warheads, or simply nukes. All nuclear weapons fit into one of two broad categories: fission and combination weapons, or the even-more-destructive fusion-based designs, which are technically thermonuclear weapons and may also be referred to as thermonuclear bombs, fusion weapons, hydrogen bombs, or H-bombs. Nuclear weapons unleash enormous amounts of explosive force, which is measured in kilotons (1,000 tons of TNT) and megatons (1,000,000 tons of TNT), as well as heat and radiation. They are easily the most fearsome weapons on Earth, capable of producing more death, destruction, injury, and sickness than any other weapon.

Nuclear weapon stockpiles today

It is estimated that there are approximately 13,080 nuclear warheads in the world today. While this is far fewer than either the U.S. or Russia possessed during their Cold War peak, it is notable that there are more countries with nuclear weapons than there were 30-40 years ago. At present, Russia maintains the highest number of nuclear weapons, with an estimated 6,257 total warheads. Of these, 1,458 are actively deployed (current START II treaty limits both the U.S. and Russia to 1550 deployed total), 3039 are inactive but available to be made active, and 1,760 are retired and awaiting dismantling. The United States follows closely behind with 5,550 total nuclear weapons: 1,389 active, 2,361 inactive but available, and 1,800 in line to be dismantled.

Which Countries Have Nuclear Weapons?

1. Russia — 6,257 (1,458 active, 3039 available, 1,760 retired)

2. United States — 5,550 (1,389 active, 2,361 available, 1,800 retired)

3. China — 350 available (actively expanding nuclear arsenal)

4. France — 290 available

5. United Kingdom — 225 available

6. Pakistan — 165 available

7. India — 156 available

8. Israel — 90 available

9. North Korea — 40-50 available (estimated)

Nuclear bombs dropped during World War II

To date, nuclear weapons have been used in war only twice. At the end of World War II, the United States dropped a nuclear bomb called Little Boy on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945, and a second bomb called Fat Man on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945. Little Boy detonated with an explosive force of approximately 15 kilotons, which leveled most buildings within a 1-mile radius. The shock wave was followed by a blast of heat at 6,000°C (10,830°F), which ignited or incinerated anything flammable and turned the blast zone into a firestorm. Finally, the explosion produced lethal ionizing radiation and lingering radioactive fallout, in which debris blasted into the stratosphere by the initial explosion is held aloft by atmospheric winds and settles back to Earth over the next several days. All told, the bombing of Hiroshima was estimated by a 1945 government report to have resulted in 66,000 deaths and another 69,000 injuries. Nagasaki's totals were a lesser, but still devastating 39,000 deaths and 25,000 injuries.

Nuclear escalation during the Cold War

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki established nuclear weapons as the ultimate weapons of war, which kicked off an arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union. A major component of the "Cold War," in which the U.S. and U.S.S.R. openly competed without actually declaring war on one another, the stockpiling of nuclear weapons continued into the late 1980s. According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the nuclear arms race reached its peak in 1986, by which time the Soviet Union possessed more than 40,000 nuclear warheads and the United States had 23,000 (down from more than 31,000 in 1967). Much of this proliferation was based around the idea of "mutually assured destruction," in which both sides believed that the best way to avoid nuclear war was to have so many nukes that the opponent would not launch an attack because they feared they could not destroy enough of the target country's arsenal to avoid being devastated themselves by a retaliatory attack. After the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, thousands of nuclear weapons on both sides were dismantled.

Treaties that limit nuclear weapons

Because of the broad lethality and destructive potential of nuclear weapons, governments have negotiated arms control agreements such as the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), and the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). The NPT’s purpose is to inhibit the spread of nuclear weapons. It designates five countries as nuclear-weapon states (NWS)—the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom—and classifies the rest as non-nuclear weapon states (NNWS). Under the treaty, NWS agree not to help NNWS develop or obtain nuclear weapons, and NNWS agree not to attempt to develop or obtain nuclear weapons on their own. Countries of both classifications further agree to help one another develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes (see nuclear power by country) and to negotiate nuclear disarmament in good faith. Nearly every country in the world had accepted the NPT as of 2022, though North Korea famously withdrew from the treaty in 2003.

By capacity, the members of the club are…

	Total	Active	Reserve	Inactive
Russia	6,257	1,458	3,039	1,760
United States	5,550	1,389	2,361	1,800
China	350		350
France	290		290
United Kingdom	225		225
Pakistan	165		165
India	156		156
Israel	90		90
North Korea	50		50

ATTACHMENT THREE – From Fortune via the Associated Press

A RUSSIAN DIPLOMAT JUST WARNED THAT WESTERN INVOLVEMENT IN UKRAINE COULD LEAD TO THE ‘CLASH OF NUCLEAR POWERS WITH CATASTROPHIC CONSEQUENCES’

BY JAMEY KEATEN AND THE ASSOCIATED PRESS March 2, 2023 at 10:25 AM EST

A senior Russian diplomat warned Thursday that increasing Western support for Ukraine could trigger an open conflict between nuclear powers.

Speaking at the U.N. conference on disarmament, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov denounced the U.S. and its allies for openly declaring the goal of defeating Russia in a “hybrid” war, arguing that it violates their obligations under international agreements and is fraught with the war in Ukraine spilling out of control.

Ryabkov warned that “the U.S. and NATO policy of fueling the conflict in Ukraine” and their ”increasing involvement in the military confrontation is fraught with a direct military clash of nuclear powers with catastrophic consequences.”

He emphasized that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s move to suspend the 2010 New START treaty, the last remaining nuclear arms pact with the U.S. came in response to the U.S. and NATO action on Ukraine.

Putin announced the halt in Moscow’s participation in New START in his state-of-the-nation address last week. He argued that Moscow can’t accept U.S. inspections of Russian nuclear sites envisaged by the pact when Washington and its NATO allies have openly declared Russia’s defeat in Ukraine as their goal.

The Russian president noted that Moscow wasn’t withdrawing from the pact altogether, and Ryabkov reaffirmed Thursday that Russia would respect the caps on nuclear weapons set under the treaty.

Ryabkov also blamed the U.S. for the failure to ratify the global ban on nuclear weapons and reaffirmed Putin’s warning that Moscow would resume nuclear tests if the U.S. does so.

“The U.S. effectively bears responsibility for the fact that the treaty still hasn’t come into force more than a quarter century after it was signed,” he said, adding that “the U.S. openly demonstrates an intention to resume the tests.”

“We can’t stand idle,” Ryabkov said, noting that if the U.S. conducts a nuclear test, “we will be forced to respond.”

“No one should have dangerous illusions that the global strategic parity could be destroyed,” Ryabkov added.

ATTACHMENT FOUR – From the Arms Control Assn.

By Daryl G. Kimball March 2023

After months of wrangling, negotiators from the United States and the Republic of the Marshall Islands signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on a new Compact of Free Association agreement that will govern relations between the two nations for the next 20 years.

Joseph Yun, special envoy for compact negotiations, signed the MOU for the United States and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Kitlang Kabua signed for the Marshall Islands on Jan. 12 in Los Angeles. That same day, the United States also signed an MOU for a new compact with the island nation of Palau. On Feb. 10, the United States signed a similar MOU with the Federated States of Micronesia.

The funding provisions for the current agreements with the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia expire in September 2023 and for Palau in September 2024.

The extension of the compacts will guarantee the United States exclusive military rights over large areas in the Pacific region at a time of increasing tension and competition with China. The three island nations were formerly U.S. territories that came under the direct control and administration of the United States during World War II. Combined, they cover a maritime area larger than the continental United States, include some 1,000 islands and atolls, and have a population of approximately 200,000 people, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service (CRS).

The MOUs outline key agreements expected to be reflected in the final compacts. Negotiations on an updated compact between the United States and the Marshall Islands, the details of which must still be hammered out, have been particularly contentious. (See ACT, November 2022.)

The new compact with the Marshall Islands will extend U.S. military basing rights at the Ronald Reagan Missile Defense Site on Kwajalein Atoll and U.S. security rights across the island chain. It also seeks to update and expand U.S. financial and technical assistance to the Marshall Islands, including for the health and environmental damage caused by the 67 atmospheric nuclear test explosions conducted between 1946 and 1958.

After World War II, the U.S. military forcibly displaced thousands of people in the Marshall Islands to allow for nuclear weapons testing and other military activities, which have severely damaged the health and environment and livelihoods of the Marshallese.

The U.S. nuclear test explosions totaled about 108.5 megatons, which is the equivalent of one Hiroshima-size bomb every day for 20 years and more than 100 times the total explosive power of all the atmospheric tests carried out at the Nevada Test Site. The nuclear tests caused severe and widespread fallout, including at levels that resulted in immediate, observable harm, such as hair loss, vomiting, diarrhea, and burning of the skin, and a greatly elevated longer-term cancer risk.

The Bikini and Enewetak atolls suffered the most severe direct physical devastation from the testing. Land, lagoons, coral reefs, and the oceanic environment remain contaminated over six decades later. A large radioactive waste disposal site, the Runit Dome in Enewetak Atoll, was created for radioactive waste from Marshall Islands testing and from the Nevada Test Site. It is leaking, and the Enewetak lagoon contains about 100 times more plutonium than the inventory under the Runit Dome.

Under the first compact with the Marshall Islands in 1986, a nuclear claims tribunal was established and mandated that the United States place $150 million in a trust fund to pay for the nuclear-related claims and awards. But the compact released the United States from legal liability for all further claims related to the nuclear testing program and its long-term impacts. The tribunal later concluded that the United States should pay $2.3 billion in claims.

This difficult experience has led the Marshall Islands negotiators to urge the United States to provide more financial and technical support to address ongoing health, environmental, and economic issues resulting from the Cold War-era testing in their homeland.

In a Sept. 29, 2022, joint declaration, the United States said it “remains committed to addressing the Republic of the Marshall Islands’ ongoing environmental, public health…and other welfare concerns.”

Yun said that, under the new MOU, the United States would pay “nuclear-affected communities’ health, welfare and development,” including building a new hospital, the Associated Press reported on Jan. 12.

Yun also said the amounts will be far greater than what the United States had provided in the past and that the Marshallese would be given control over how that money is spent.

Pursuant to past Marshall Islands compacts, the United States provided grant assistance worth approximately $661 million and $309 million on nuclear test-related assistance and compensation, respectively, between 1987 and 2003. During the second compact term, from 2004 to 2023, U.S. grant assistance and trust fund contributions totaled $722 million and $276 million, respectively, according to the CRS.

According to a copy of the U.S.-Marshall Islands MOU obtained by Arms Control Today, key agreements in the document include U.S. assistance of $50 million annually beginning in fiscal year 2024, $200 million over 20 years for joint health care programs and a new joint strategic health initiative, and funding for technical assistance and expertise to cope with the climate impacts that threaten the existence of the low-lying islands and for environmental programs.

In addition, the MOU provides for $10 million for improving accessibility to documents and information relating to the U.S. nuclear testing program, $5 million for a museum and research facility on that testing program, and $700 million for a “repurposed trust fund for priorities determined by the Marshall Islands in accordance with procedures to be mutually agreed.”

With the MOUs concluded, separate agreements regarding the services to be provided under U.S. law by U.S. federal agencies to the Marshall Islands, Palau, and Micronesia will be negotiated and become part of the final compact arrangements. The final compacts must be approved by the U.S. Congress.

ATTACHMENT FIVE – From Nuclear Princeton

AMCHITKA ISLAND (history and description)

Between 1965 and 1967, the US Government exploded nuclear weapons on Amchitka Island in the Aleutian island chain in southwest Alaska. Amchitka Island is the traditional homeland of Aleut Alaska Natives, who lived on Amchitka until the arrival of Russian settlers in the 1760s. Russian settlers forced many Aleut to move from Amchitka to the nearby island of Adak. Others were killed by diseases brought by the Russian settlers.[1] In 1913, the Aleutian island chain was designated a wildlife reservation by President William Taft. Unfortunately, the executive order made the islands vulnerable to government appropriation for military and economic purposes.[1]

In 1965, the US conducted the first nuclear explosion on Amchitka. An 80-kiloton nuclear blast was set off underground. Scientists used this blast for research purposes. It was analyzed by seismologists to help determine whether other countries were conducting underground nuclear testing.[2]

A second blast was set off in 1969, 4,000 feet below the surface of Amchitka. This exercise was used to understand how larger underground explosions “might damage the island, trigger seismic activity, or generate tsunamis. Workers drilled a 4,000-foot hole.”[2]

The most notorious explosion was conducted in 1971, “Project Cannikin.” At 5-megatons, this blast was 250 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It was detonated almost a mile below Amchitka’s surface.[1] The detonation caused the ground surface on Amchitka to rise, then fall 20 feet. A crater a mile wide and 40 feet deep on Amchitka’s surface serves as an ominous reminder of the massive explosion. The shock from the explosion measured 7.0 on the Richter scale, the same as the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti.[2] A social movement against Project Cannikin by a group of environmentalists from British Columbia inspired the formation of the group Greenpeace.[1]

Radioactivity continues to leak into the ocean, groundwater, and air in and around Amchitka. These blasts created underground, rubble-filled cavities which trapped high concentrations of nuclear contamination underneath Amchitka. Groundwater moving through these cavities can pick up radioactivity, carrying it to the ocean. Researchers are still working to figure out how these blasts affected and are continuing to affect Alaska.[2] In 1997, Anchorage biologist Pam Miller, working on a research project for Greenpeace, found radioactive particles, including americium-241 and plutonium, in freshwater samples from the edge of the Bering Sea. The US Department of Energy claims that its environmental testing proves otherwise.[2]

Footage of the 1971 Project Cannikin nuclear explosion.

Sources

[1]  Kieran Mulvaney, "A Brief History of Amchitka and The Bomb," Greenpeace, August 25, 2007, https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/a-brief-history-of-amchitka-and-the-bomb/.

[2] Ned Rozell, “The Unknown Legacy of Alaska's Atomic Tests,” University of Alaska Fairbanks, January 18, 2001, https://www.gi.alaska.edu/alaska-science-forum/unknown-legacy-alaskas-atomic-tests

ATTACHMENT SIX – From Global Zero

NUCLEAR NO FIRST USE (Questions and Answers)

What does No-First-Use (NFU) actually mean?

“No First Use” is a commitment to never use nuclear weapons first under any circumstances, whether as a preemptive attack or first strike, or in response to non-nuclear attack of any kind.

Where do nuclear-armed countries stand on No First Use?

China is the only nuclear-armed country to have an unconditional NFU policy. India maintains a policy of NFU with exceptions for a response to chemical or biological attacks.

France, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States maintain policies that permit the first use of nuclear weapons in a conflict. Israel does not acknowledge the existence of its nuclear arsenal so has no publicly known position.

Why advocate for global NFU commitments now?

The world has never faced so many crises that could escalate to nuclear conflict. In addition to the precarious situation on the Korean peninsula, we’re running acceptably high risks of nuclear weapons use between NATO and Russia, India and Pakistan, and the United States and China. In fact right now the chances that nuclear weapons will be used — intentionally, accidentally, or due to miscalculation — are the highest they’ve been since the worst days of the Cold War.

Establishing global NFU commitments would immediately make the world safer by resolving uncertainty about what a nuclear-armed country might do in a crisis, which removes pressure and incentive for any one country to “go nuclear” first in a crisis.

What are consequences of nuclear first use?

Any use of a nuclear weapon would invite massive retaliation. A recent study by Global Zero estimated U. S. fatalities due to a Russian retaliation to a U.S. nuclear first strike. It found 30% of the total population of the top 145 biggest cities in the United States — 21 million Americans — would die in a Russian nuclear counterattack. To put that in perspective, in the first 24 hours the U.S. death toll would be 50 times greater than all American casualties in World War II.

Not to mention the horrific aftermath of nuclear war. A 2014 study shows that so-called “limited” nuclear war in South Asia, in which 100 nuclear weapons are used, would have global consequences. Millions of tons of smoke would be sent into the atmosphere, plunging temperatures and damaging the global food supply. Two billion people would be at risk of death by starvation.

How are No First Use commitments a step toward the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons?

Global No First Use would be an important step toward making nuclear weapons irrelevant to national security. These policies would strip nuclear weapons of value in the eyes of military planners, enable future nuclear disarmament negotiations, and accelerate the dismantling of these weapons. It would also serve as a “confidence-building measure” that establishes greater trust among nuclear-armed countries and makes it easier to work together to reduce nuclear risks and ultimately eliminate all nuclear weapons.

No First Use in the United States

What does current United States policy say about the first use of nuclear weapons?

The 2018 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) maintains the policy “the United States would only consider the employment of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States, its allies, and partners.” This loose language holds open the possibility that nuclear weapons would be used in an initial attack (which can be ordered by the president, whose authority to use nuclear weapons is virtually limitless) or in response to a conventional, biological, chemical or cyber attack.

Who would believe a U.S. NFU policy?

Making a NFU policy credible — establishing it as a commitment that other countries can count on — means going beyond simple declaratory statements. This would require meaningful changes to the kinds of nuclear weapons the United States builds and the way it deploys them. One tangible way to show your NFU policy means something is to take all nuclear weapons off high-alert, meaning they are no longer ready to launch instantly. Another is to eliminate all land-based nuclear missiles (also known as intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs), which are by definition nuclear first-strike weapons, and prioritize the kinds of systems that would be used only in response to a nuclear attack.

More recommendations for what the posture of U.S. nuclear arsenal could look like under a guiding principle of NFU (erect, slouching or reclining) can be found in Global Zero’s Alternative U.S. Nuclear Posture Review.

How would adoption of a NFU policy affect national security? Don’t we need to keep all our options on the table to deter our enemies?

There exists no plausible circumstance in which the use of a nuclear weapon would be in the national security interests of the United States, American people, or U.S. allies. A nuclear counterattack following a U.S. first strike would be catastrophic, resulting in the deaths of millions of Americans and the total devastation of economic and social infrastructure. Any first use against lesser threats, such as countries or terrorist groups with chemical and biological weapons, would be gratuitous; there are very effective alternative means of countering those threats.

There is little evidence to suggest nuclear weapons are effective in deterring non-nuclear attacks, including biological and chemical use. If the United States suffered a non-nuclear attack, it is difficult to imagine any president considering using nuclear weapons — destroying entire cities and killing hundreds of thousands of people, damaging the environment for generations, spreading deadly radiation possibly to uninvolved countries — in retaliation.

Is there support for U.S. adoption of NFU?

There is growing momentum for NFU in the United States. A 2016 poll showed at least two-thirds of Americans support NFU. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Representative Adam Smith (D-WA9) have introduced the No First Use Act (S.1219/H.R.2603) which states, “It is the policy of the United States to not use nuclear weapons first.”

A number of former senior-level military commanders and government officials support U.S. adoption of NFU, including former Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General (ret.) James E. Cartwright, Ambassador Thomas Pickering, and former Secretary of Defense William Perry. 

How would adoption of No First Use affect U.S. commitments to its allies and partners? Would they be encouraged to develop their own nuclear arsenals?

NFU in no way reduces the ability of the United States to deter nuclear attacks on the U.S. or its allies. Allies would be able to rely on the superior capabilities of U.S. non-nuclear forces, which are sufficient to deal with threats to the U.S. and its allies, including biological or chemical weapons threats. A NFU policy would also help allay apprehensions among some allies about the U.S. using nuclear weapons first in a conflict. The first use of nuclear weapons against Russia or China would invite massive retaliation against the U.S. and its allies. First use against lesser threats like North Korea could result in blanketing allies or others uninvolved in the conflict with deadly radioactive fallout.

A 2016 Global Zero study that looked at the potential for a NFU policy to encourage proliferation by U.S. allies with extended deterrence agreements found no evidence that a country’s decision to remain non-nuclear was based on its expectation that the United States would conduct a nuclear first strike on its behalf. The reliability of commitments to second-strike and conventional (non-nuclear) defense were found to be more important to extended deterrence. A move to develop nuclear weapons would also go against allied obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Is it true the U.S. President has the sole authority to order the launch of nuclear weapons? What effect does NFU have on that authority?

Every American president has sole authority to order the launch of nuclear weapons. No one — not Congress, not the secretary of defense, not the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — can veto his or her decision. That means under the current system, one person has the power to start a nuclear war at any time, for any reason.

A legally-binding NFU policy would change that by making the first use of nuclear weapons illegal, clearly limiting the circumstances under which a president’s nuclear launch order could be executed.

ATTACHMENT SEVEN – From the Financial Times

300 NUCLEAR MISSILES ARE HEADING YOUR WAY. YOU MUST RESPOND. WHAT NOW?

By John Thornhill in Washington JANUARY 19 2023

“Having been sworn in as US president a few minutes previously, I am sitting in the Oval Office watching TV reports of escalating fighting in Europe. A secret service agent bursts into the room and tells me to leave immediately. I take the lift down to the White House crisis centre known as the Situation Room, where I am joined by my top national security officials, who brief me on the incoming attack. I have 15 minutes to respond. As the clock ticks down, I am presented with three options, all of which involve retaliatory strikes against Russia, projected to kill between 5mn and 45mn people. What do I do?”

Mercifully, Mr. Thornhill replies, “I am watching all this play out through a clunky virtual reality headset strapped to my face. The polygonal avatars in front of me are crude enough that I am never going to mistake this exercise for reality. Even so, my head is spinning and my heart is racing as the drama unfolds amid throbbing alarms and raised voices. For a few minutes, I have been forced to think about the toughest decision that any individual will ever have to make in the history of humanity.” No, actually the first striker will have to! – DJI (Unless he’s crazy...) The sense of responsibility is crushing. And the words of my national security adviser echo in my ears: “If you do not retaliate and the attack is real, what will you tell the American people afterwards?”

This immersive experience has been devised by Sharon Weiner and Moritz Kütt, two national security experts from Princeton University, who have tested it on dozens of people to see how they respond. The experience highlights the agonies of making life-and-death decisions based on imperfect information under extreme pressure. It is based on the current US nuclear launch protocols that have changed little since the height of the cold war. In a controlled experiment with 79 participants, 90 per cent chose to launch a nuclear counter-strike.

Weiner admits the precise details of the exercise are not fully accurate. (The fact that, in my case, it crashes after a few minutes means we have to reboot the VR, too.) “But we have been true to what is likely,” she says. “The real authenticity is the stress and the complexities that result from including several decision makers in the room.” Each one of these participants is trying to do their job as best they can. But they have conflicting priorities. Each one has emotional baggage; each responds to stress differently. So, ultimately, the system depends on the president asserting agency and making a decision. “If the president is not directing all this,” Weiner says, “then the crisis mismanages itself.”

It is late 2022, and this chilling simulation is being staged at the Carnegie International Nuclear Policy Conference close to the Capitol in Washington DC. NukeCon, as it is called, is packed with many of the world’s top national security experts, who have become freshly relevant. The war in Ukraine has added a whiff of danger to proceedings, and a grim humour prevails, as speakers joke about the appropriateness of the event being held in an underground bunker. The coffee stall is labelled Baristas of Armageddon.

Robert Oppenheimer, the American physicist who directed the Los Alamos laboratory during the second world war that developed the atomic bomb, once compared two great nuclear powers to “scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life”. Conflict in Ukraine has once again shaken those bottled scorpions with two powers, Russia and the US, indirectly locked in a proxy war on Russia’s border.

At NukeCon, one speaker argues that Ukraine is almost certain to win the war and will drive Russian forces out of the entire country, including Crimea. Another speaker adds that if such a scenario comes to pass, President Vladimir Putin would regard this humiliating defeat as an existential threat to his regime, if not Russia itself. In such circumstances, it is easy to believe that Russia would resort to nuclear weapons. Putin has been conducting military drills, warning Nato that he is not bluffing. The US has just reasserted its own commitment to nuclear deterrence to counter any aggression from rival powers, including Russia and China.

Which is to say, the macabre psychological dance of nuclear deterrence has begun again. It will be familiar to anybody who lived through the cold war. But I’ve come to Washington to meet an activist for modernising the decision-making process that could potentially end all life on earth.

Having cast off my presidential responsibilities, I take a brisk 30-minute walk across town to a very different conference. Poptech, boasting an R&B yoga playground and air-freshening Himalayan salt lamps, draws a crowd sporting far more colourful clothing and more facial hair. Speakers here are discussing everything from exploiting data from the James Webb space telescope to building communication apps for sex workers. One of Poptech’s hosts is Moran Cerf, a 45-year-old Israeli neuroscientist and professor at Northwestern University, who is running a session on reimagining national security policy. He is wearing faded jeans and a chequered waistcoat, and sports three-day stubble. As an expert in decision-making, Cerf has grown increasingly alarmed about the flaws in the nuclear launch protocols of the world’s nine nuclear powers (the US, Russia, China, Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea). He is campaigning to rewrite these nuclear launch rules. Over the past 18 months, Cerf has interviewed dozens of nuclear weapons experts, military leaders and politicians from around the world about how to lower the risks of a nuclear catastrophe. Mutually Assured Destruction, his documentary on the subject, is due to be broadcast this year.

Cerf’s interest in the nuclear threat was sparked by a discussion at a Poptech conference in 2018 during which two Nobel Prize winners — Beatrice Fihn, a Swedish lawyer who won the peace prize, and Barry Barish, who won in physics — talked about the urgency of the issue. Cerf argues that humans are very bad at processing extreme risks, such as nuclear war. We may experience a flash of concern about the issue from time to time but will quickly move on to everyday concerns. “Our brains are good at living in the here and now. But it is difficult for our brains to contemplate catastrophe, or high-risk and low-probability events,” he says.

After Poptech has wrapped up, I sit down with Cerf in a dimly lit hotel lounge. In heavily accented English, he rattles off his life story: born in Paris and raised in Israel, he studied physics at Tel Aviv University and worked in military intelligence during his national service, with stints guarding Israel’s nuclear plant at Dimona. He then built his career as a “white hat” hacker at the cyber security company Imperva, where he performed penetration tests on banks and government institutions.

Cerf’s life changed direction following a chance meeting with Francis Crick, the English biologist who helped decipher the structure of DNA. In his later career, Crick focused on the mystery of consciousness. He encouraged Cerf to do the same by trying to “hack” the most interesting vault in the universe: the human brain. “Leave your job and go do real stuff,” Crick advised him.

Cerf studied for a PhD in neuroscience at the California Institute of Technology and later conducted research at UCLA neurosurgery department. UCLA ran one of the few hospitals where surgeons would open up the skull and implant electrodes in the brain to diagnose various conditions. Taking advantage of this opportunity, Cerf persuaded patients to allow him to study the circuitry of their brains. He would, for example, show the patients pictures of their relatives, show them videos or play simple games with them and monitor which neurons fired. His research has helped explain why the brain responds to certain stimuli but ignores others, perhaps one of the first intimations of consciousness. “Within neuroscience, I am part of a niche that is tiny in terms of resources but is very sexy,” he says. “We had access to golden data. You could ask a patient a question and see how the electrodes responded.”

One of the conclusions Cerf says he drew from his research is that we are living in a world that is now far too complex for our brains to process. Our grey matter worked fine when our ancestors lived in the savannah and only needed to recognise 100 people and five plants. But now that we live in an infinitely more sophisticated world, it is little wonder that our brains struggle to make the necessary connections or identify significant patterns.

That is especially true when it comes to issues as abstract and remote as climate change or nuclear war. Cerf explains that if the brain assesses the likelihood of something happening as very, very small, say 0.0000-something, it does not know how to deal with such a low-probability event. “So, it just assigns it a value of zero,” he says. “The only way to deal with that is to cheat the brain.”

Alarming though that sounds, Cerf gives an example of how this can be done to good effect. With colleagues from Northwestern University, Cerf has been working with the US Transportation Security Administration to help airport screening teams detect explosives in passengers’ luggage. The vast majority of security staff in airports around the world will never see a bomb in their entire careers. So their brains tend to become dismissive of the possibility. After millions of times of seeing nothing, nothing, nothing, the chances of them one day detecting a real bomb are close to zero, Cerf says. But if you randomly inject a dummy bomb into the process every 10 minutes or so, then you can keep the screeners’ brains responsive.

Lottery operators work on a similar principle to cheat the brain in a different way. Even though an individual’s chances of winning the lottery are close to zero, the operators will regularly show advertisements of players winning the jackpot. See enough smiling faces of winners on your television screen, and you will convince yourself that you too stand a fair chance. “This is what we in neuroscience call choice architecture: you force the brain to confront something it otherwise wouldn’t,” Cerf says.

Backed by the Carnegie Corporation, Cerf has interviewed dozens of people involved in crisis decision-making around the world. That has convinced him nuclear powers must change the choice architecture of their launch protocols. Several design changes could be made to the decision-making process to make it safer, according to Cerf. The first would be to remove the 15-minute response time, which forces a US president to launch on warning. Cerf argues this hair-trigger response procedure is a “relic of the past”, considering that the US would retain a second-strike capability by air and sea even if all its land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles were destroyed.

Cerf also thinks that key decision makers should repeatedly practise emergency drills and analyse their responses to learn from their mistakes. They could also conduct “pre-mortems”, in which they imagine worst-case outcomes and then work backwards to see how they could be avoided. Another tweak would be to appoint one member of the decision-making team to oppose the consensus. Rachel Bronson, president and chief executive of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which has been warning of the dangers of nuclear war since 1945, hopes that Cerf’s forthcoming film will raise awareness and help nudge the world towards a saner, safer future. “What Moran is doing is very important,” she tells me at the PopTech conference. When it comes to nuclear launch protocols, she adds: “We need to rethink every aspect of this system and push for more time and more engagement and more democracy.”

In November, the Union of Concerned Scientists, another campaigning organisation, wrote to President Joe Biden urging him to revise the nuclear launch protocol. Any launch order should require the consent of two high-level officials in the presidential line of succession, the scientists wrote. “As the risk of nuclear war continues to grow, you have the power to take concrete, immediate steps to build a more stable nuclear weapons system, one that isn’t subject to the whims and questionable judgment of one person alone.”

Cerf argues that if the US were to change its protocol, other nuclear powers would almost certainly do the same. Washington would stand a good chance of persuading its Nato allies, including the UK and France, to follow suit and could put pressure on other countries, such as Pakistan and India, to modify their procedures. Having interviewed policymakers from potentially hostile powers, such as Russia and China, Cerf believes they would also be open to moving to a safer regime. “The hope and the strong belief that I have is that it won’t just be the US that adopts this protocol,” he says.

On September 26 1983, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov was the duty officer at a Soviet early warning command centre when he was alerted to an incoming US missile attack. Three weeks earlier, a Soviet fighter jet had shot down a Korean civilian airliner that drifted off course, killing 269 people. Cold war tensions were at their height. The Soviet satellite warning system had flagged five US missiles heading towards Russia. But Petrov knew the detection system was new and suspected it might be faulty. Ground radar had not corroborated the missile launch. Besides, it would seem illogical for the US to launch an attack with just five missiles.

Disobeying Soviet military protocol, Petrov concluded it was a false alarm and did not report the incident up the chain of command. He may well have prevented an escalation that could have triggered a nuclear war. A Danish documentary film of the incident released in 2014 was entitled The Man Who Saved the World. “I am not a hero. I was just at the right place at the right time,” Petrov says in the film.

To an extent that is little recognised, the world critically depends on sensible people, such as Petrov, being in the right place at the right time. The history of the past 77 years has been littered with accidents and false alarms that could have escalated into a nuclear conflict. At least one former US defence secretary, William Perry, has argued that nuclear war is far more likely to result from a blunder than from a deliberate attack. “We have continued to focus our nuclear posture and policies on preparing for a surprise, disarming attack, and those policies actually increase the likelihood of an accidental nuclear war,” he wrote two years ago.

In such circumstances, we ultimately rely on the good sense of our leaders. “We elect presidents to make the final decision and, God willing, those presidents should have both the intellectual and moral responsibility to make the right decision,” Leon Panetta, the former US secretary of defence who also served as President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, says in Cerf’s film.

One common argument is that, since 1945, the very existence of nuclear weapons has saved us from another world war. Humanity has peered over the edge of the abyss and recoiled from the brink. That suggests the theory of nuclear deterrence has worked. Leaders have behaved responsibly because the costs of irresponsibility would be catastrophic. But according to Weiner, the Princeton academic who designed the VR simulation, this argument is nothing more than “sloppy causal inference”. One could make a similar argument that it was the existence of the UN that has helped to keep the peace over the same time, she says.

Humanity has peered over the edge of the abyss and recoiled from the brink

Even if we make the decision-making process safer, as Cerf would like, that does not automatically mean that we will avoid catastrophic outcomes. “If you look at the literature about human behaviour and the heuristics of decision-making and change the launch protocol accordingly, it does not mean that the person in the room will not launch the missiles immediately,” says Weiner. “You cannot programme people to make rational decisions. But you can at least try to eliminate irrational decisions.”

When Cerf first started investigating the issue, he thought that an objective decision-making system, powered by artificial intelligence, might help strip emotion from the process and reduce the possibility of an irrational response. But he quickly realised that deterrence is a psychological relationship in which irrationality can be a key part of the game. As Weiner says, the whole theory of deterrence rests on the assumption that a leader would be prepared to kill themselves (and perhaps the rest of humanity) in defence of national security. “You need a madman theory in deterrence,” she says.

The fullest explanation of the madman theory was contained in the memoirs of Harry “Bob” Haldeman, chief of staff to President Richard Nixon when he was looking to wind down the Vietnam war. “I want the North Vietnamese to believe that I’ve reached the point that I might do anything to stop the war,” Nixon said, according to Haldeman’s account. “We’ll just slip the word to them that, ‘for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about Communism. We can’t restrain him when he is angry — and he has his hand on the nuclear button’ and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted many to question Putin’s rationality. At the beginning of last year, he swore that he did not intend to attack Ukraine. In October, he said he saw no point in a nuclear strike. But fears of nuclear war have skyrocketed since the outbreak of conflict, says Fihn, the Nobel-winner who inspired Cerf back in 2018. “People are really scared and rightfully so,” she says. The Russian-language page of her International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons website, explaining the humanitarian consequences of a nuclear exchange, has been one of the most visited on the site. Only by working for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons, she says, can the world ever be safe from the threat of Armageddon.

In a video interview from Geneva, Fihn argues that it is naive to believe that the leaders of the nine nuclear powers will forever be rational and will never make a mistake or do something stupid. “There’s this kind of fallacy of nuclear deterrence that is now exposed by Russia’s actions that no rational country would ever use these weapons, only an irrational country would,” she says. “This is a weapon that favours the crazy.”

Still Fihn, like many of the experts I interviewed for this article, rejects fatalism. Most were hopeful that change is possible. “I am quite optimistic. If we get through this crisis alive and we don’t see the use of nuclear weapons, I think we will see a moment of opportunity just as there was after the Cuban missile crisis when there was massive progress on non-proliferation,” Fihn says. Cerf also describes himself as an optimist. When researching his film, he was surprised by how willing his interviewees were to talk. “In all the countries, this knowledge is burning inside them,” he says. “I do imagine the US making drastic changes.”

Back in the immersive nuclear scenario, I am being shouted at by the security service who tell me that a missile might hit the White House at any point. I need to evacuate as soon as possible. I demand that everything should be done to warn those who may be targeted by the incoming attack. (This is a somewhat forlorn hope.) I agree that US forces should be moved to to Defcon 1, maximum military readiness. And, when I ask why we have not yet contacted the Russians, I’m told they are apparently not returning our calls.

Three options are thrust in front of me on virtual cards. The first authorises a limited counter-strike against Russia’s intercontinental ballistic missile sites and its primary submarine and air bases. That would result in between 5mn and 15mn casualties. The second involves targeting all nuclear sites in Russia, inflicting between 20mn and 25mn casualties. And the third option would add Russia’s main industrial sites and leadership to the target list, causing up to 45mn casualties. “We need to know your guidance,” I am told.

In all the countries, this knowledge is burning inside them

Faced with such hellish options, I decide to authorise none of them. I refuse to verify the nuclear launch code. My logic is as follows: there is nothing I can do to stop the incoming missiles from striking their targets. Moreover, I do not know for certain that the attack is real and who may have launched it. Reassured that the US retains a second-strike capability, I conclude there is no need to rush a response. I wonder how things might’ve gone in a version of the simulation guided by rules Cerf might shape.

As Weiner explains afterwards, there are no right or wrong answers. Some people who undergo the experience are convinced they have done the right thing in launching a counter-strike. Others, who have authorised a missile launch, immediately regret their decision and agonise over having made a terrible mistake.

What would you do?

ATTACHMENT EIGHT – From CTV News (Canada) x68

'WE'RE TALKING ABOUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS', KYIV MAYOR WARNS AS WAR ANNIVERSARY APPROACHES

By Spencer Van Dyk Published Feb. 19, 2023 7:00 a.m. EST

As the war in Ukraine nears the one-year mark, the mayor of Kyiv is highlighting what’s at stake, hoping to remind people the threat of nuclear war looms, and his country is fighting to defend not just itself, but every country that shares its democratic values.

Vitali Klitschko — in an exclusive Canadian interview airing Sunday with CTV’s Question Period host Vassy Kapelos — stressed that it is important for people to remember the war in Ukraine impacts everyone, not just Ukrainians, adding that it would be a “huge mistake” for people outside of Ukraine to think the war doesn’t affect them.

“Please don't forget, we're talking about nuclear weapons,” he said. “An explosion could touch everyone on our planet, and that is why we have to do everything we can to stop this war.”

Full coverage at CTVNews.ca/Ukraine

· Russian diplomats ordered out of the Netherlands

· Kremlin critic missing amid prison transfer, allies say

· U.S.: Russia has committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine

· Lawmakers ask EU countries to pressure IOC for Russia's ban

· Graveside portraits of Ukraine's war dead fading nearly year after war began

· Russia, Belarus discuss closer military, economic ties

· Tank plant in small Ohio city plays big role in Ukraine war

· Canadian foreign minister Joly meets Ukrainian President Zelenskyy in Kyiv

· First tank sent by Canada for Ukrainian forces arrives in Poland

Feb. 24 marks one year since Russia invaded Ukraine, which at the time Russian President Vladirmir Putin called a "special military operation." Since then, there have been 7,199 civilian deaths and more than eight million refugees scattered across Europe, according to the United Nations.

While Ukraine prepares for a likely spring offensive from Russia — and after starting to receive the long-time ask of battle tanks from allied countries — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is asking for fighter jets.

Meanwhile, Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly paid a surprise visit to Ukraine earlier this month to meet with Zelenskyy, Klitschko, and other top officials.

Zelenskyy briefed Joly about Ukraine’s latest most pressing defence needs, and discussed next steps in his Peace Formula, according to a release from the president’s office.

Joly later attended an international security conference in Munich, where Zelenskyy urged Western allies to send military support to Ukraine quickly, saying “it’s speed that life depends on.”

Klitschko told Kapelos the fighter jets Ukraine is now asking for would be “very effective” against the missiles Russia is using.

“We need the help,” he said, adding the amount of support Ukraine receives will determine how quickly it can end the war.

“We’re talking about defensive weapons [so] we [can] defend our homeland,” he also said. “Ukraine always was peaceful country, we’re peaceful people, but we don’t have right now a choice, we have to fight and defend our families.”

When asked however about the concern of some governments that sending more help to Ukraine — for example in the form of fighter jets — could spur a Russian escalation, Klitschko said his country is fighting to defend its democracy and that of other former Soviet Union countries.

“We defend right now not just Ukraine,” he said.

ATTACHMENT NINE – From the Associated Press via Atchinson (Ks) Globe

RUSSIAN ENVOY SAYS NUCLEAR POWERS MAY CLASH OVER UKRAINE

A senior Russian diplomat has warned that Western support for Ukraine could trigger an open conflict between nuclear powers

By JAMEY KEATEN

Speaking at the U.N. conference on disarmament, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov denounced the U.S. and its allies for openly declaring the goal of defeating Russia in a “hybrid” war, arguing that it violates their obligations under international agreements and is fraught with the war in Ukraine spilling out of control.

Ryabkov warned that “the U.S. and NATO policy of fueling the conflict in Ukraine” and their ”increasing involvement in the military confrontation is fraught with a direct military clash of nuclear powers with catastrophic consequences."

He emphasized that Russian President Vladimir Putin's move to suspend the 2010 New START treaty, the last remaining nuclear arms pact with the U.S. came in response to the U.S. and NATO action on Ukraine.

Putin announced the halt in Moscow’s participation in New START in his state-of-the-nation address last week. He argued that Moscow can’t accept U.S. inspections of Russian nuclear sites envisaged by the pact when Washington and its NATO allies have openly declared Russia’s defeat in Ukraine as their goal.

The Russian president noted that Moscow wasn't withdrawing from the pact altogether, and Ryabkov reaffirmed Thursday that Russia would respect the caps on nuclear weapons set under the treaty.

Ryabkov also blamed the U.S. for the failure to ratify the global ban on nuclear weapons and reaffirmed Putin's warning that Moscow would resume nuclear tests if the U.S. does so.

“The U.S. effectively bears responsibility for the fact that the treaty still hasn’t come into force more than a quarter century after it was signed,” he said, adding that “the U.S. openly demonstrates an intention to resume the tests.”

“We can’t stand idle,” Ryabkov said, noting that if the U.S. conducts a nuclear test, “we will be forced to respond.”

“No one should have dangerous illusions that the global strategic parity could be destroyed,” Ryabkov added.

ATTACHMENT TEN – From Business Insider

RUSSIA SPENT THE LAST YEAR UPGRADING THOUSANDS OF SOVIET-ERA BOMB SHELTERS, REPORT SAYS, IN A SIGN PUTIN FEARS AN ATTACK ON HIS HOME SOIL

By Sinéad Baker Feb 7, 2023, 7:28 AM

Russia has spent the last year upgrading old Soviet-era bomb shelters, The Moscow Times reported.

· Shelters that have not been used for decades are now being made fit for use, per the report.

· Putin says Ukraine could attack Russia, and has put the country on nuclear alert.

Russia has been repairing and upgrading thousands of Soviet-era bomb shelters over the past year, ever since it invaded Ukraine, current and former officials told The Moscow Times. 

The Kremlin ordered inspections and repairs of bomb shelters across the country in February 2022, the same month that Russia launched its invasion, with work still ongoing, a current Russian official told the outlet.

"A decision to inspect the network of bomb shelters was made by the government in the spring," the official said, adding that the order came from ministries including the Emergency Situations Ministry and the Defense Ministry.

Other current and former officials confirmed the work to The Moscow Times, which also viewed government tenders for bomb shelter upgrades.

The upgrades come as Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned of retaliation if anywhere in Russia is targeted, and after he put his own country's nuclear forces on high alert.

Work on the shelters has been happening quietly, without any public announcements. Authorities appear to be spending hundreds of millions of rubles – the equivalent of millions of dollars — The Moscow Times reported.

Thousands of shelters which have not been used for decades are being made fit for use.

The outlet also pointed to other media reports that showed authorities spending large sums on shelters across the country.

Some cities don't have enough shelter space for their populations, it added, pointing to a report that said officials in the northern city of Petrozavodsk warned in January that public shelters there could only take one-eighth of the city's residents.

Russia on alert

While Ukraine has repeatedly pledged not to strike Russian territory, saying it only wants to protect its own soil, Putin has warned that Russia could be targeted, and that it would retaliate if it does.

Ukraine's allies, which are supplying the country with increasingly sophisticated weapons, have also sought assurances from Ukraine that it would not use those weapons to strike Russian territory.

Meanwhile, Putin has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons if provoked, sparking outcry and condemnation from the US.

Putin may preparing for such an eventuality, and any repercussions, or at least trying to reassure his officials and civilians that Russia is prepared.

Putin has described his invasion of Ukraine as being necessary to stop the West attacking Russia.

ATTACHMENT ELEVEN – From Foreign Policy

CAN VAGUE U.S. THREATS DETER RUSSIA FROM USING NUKES?

Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Ukrainian territories raises the risk of nuclear confrontation, but it’s unclear whether Washington’s rhetoric will stop him.

By EMMA ASHFORD, MATTHEW KROENIG

However, one area where the Kremlin may be willing to risk all that and more is in defense of Crimea. Illegally annexed in 2014 by Moscow, Crimea has a large Russian-speaking population that is generally sympathetic to Russia. It is also home to the strategically important Russian naval base at Sevastopol, which is the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s home port, as well as other military infrastructure, such as Saki air base. Since 2014, Crimea has seen an exodus of ethnic Ukrainians and Tatars, an influx of Russians, and a military buildup.

Given all this at stake, it’s likely Putin perceives Crimea as closer to the core of Russian vital interests than, say, the Kharkiv region, which was recently liberated by Ukrainian forces. If and when Ukrainian conventional military forces approach Crimea in hopes of liberating it, Putin may feel more tempted to use a nuclear weapon.

Whether used to defend threats to Russia’s occupation of Crimea or otherwise, potential Russian use of nuclear weapons demands at least thinking through possible responses. The United States has reportedly devoted some effort to studying this, beginning shortly after Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine. Washington remains clearly committed to avoiding direct involvement in the war, but Biden administration officials have noted that Russian detonation of a nuclear weapon, no matter how small, could prompt a reconsideration.

It’s important for alliance members to discuss potential alliance-wide responses now, rather than waiting until a crisis moment.

Although the administration has rightly been vague in spelling out what that reconsideration might entail, one former government official recently speculated that Russia’s use of nuclear weapons could prompt the United States and its allies to destroy Russian forces inside Ukraine. Although U.S. officials have reportedly briefed allies on contingency plans in Washington, it’s unclear if NATO itself has conducted an in-depth discussion or assessment of options. In an alliance that operates by consensus and given strong U.S. preferences to maintain a unified approach to Moscow, getting NATO on board is critical. It’s important for alliance members to discuss potential alliance-wide responses now, rather than waiting until a crisis moment, and this week’s meeting presents an ideal venue.

Ministers should begin by acknowledging that they have a collective, vital security interest in maintaining the taboo on nuclear weapons usage. Whether responding to a violation of that taboo would lead to immediate, direct allied military involvement in Ukraine is unclear, but ministers should be clear that such an attack would compel an unprecedented alliance response.

What might the menu of next steps include? There are too many variables at play to identify with precision if, where, or how the allies might respond to a Russian nuclear attack on Ukraine. Ideally, any set of responses should entail severe punishment of Moscow and the specific individuals who authorized and conducted the nuclear attack. It should also try to minimize the risk of escalating the conflict further along WMD lines. And it should seek to reestablish the taboo by leaving open the possibility of additional options as a way of deterring another Russian use of WMD.

Within this broad framework, the alliance could consider several options if Russia were to unleash a nuclear weapon against Ukraine. First, NATO could consider further augmenting its presence in Eastern, Northeastern, and Southeastern Europe at sea, in the air, and on land.

Decisions on the alliance’s military presence in Eastern Europe made at the Madrid summit just a few months ago were somewhat restrained, and there remains significant room for increasing NATO’s presence. This might include a reassessment of whether the alliance should deploy land-based nuclear missiles in Europe; expanding allied presence in the Baltic states, Poland, and Romania; or increasing allied air and naval presence in and over the Baltic Sea.

Additionally, NATO could eliminate remaining inhibitions on providing the kinds of equipment to Ukraine that it has been reluctant to hand over thus far. Foremost among these might be longer-range precision artillery, advanced Western tanks, and advanced combat jets. (Air defenses are reportedly already en route.) Furthermore, NATO could authorize and coordinate cyberattacks against critical dual-use Russian infrastructure used to support or finance the war effort. And the allies could begin to seize Russian assets abroad, owned by both the Russian government and individuals directly involved in WMD use, using them to finance recovery in Ukraine.

Other steps could include more direct operational support of Ukrainian forces, such as by embedding military personnel in Ukrainian units. This could be aimed at facilitating advice; providing training and field support for more advanced Western weapons; further easing and speeding the flow of intelligence; and helping in target identification on the battlefield.

In a similar vein, the alliance could conduct clandestine military operations within Russian-occupied Ukraine, including sabotage and aiding resistance forces. And if the alliance wanted to pursue horizontal escalation, it could consider similar clandestine military operations in Russian-occupied Moldova and Russian-occupied Georgia.

In sum, there are many responses NATO can and should consider in the event of Russian WMD use that would not necessarily lead to a spiraling nuclear conflagration. Deliberating those options now is wise so they are ready and available should NATO’s leaders need them. Moreover, examining possible alliance-wide responses to a Russian nuclear attack on Ukraine would help achieve two other important goals.

First, it would prepare both allied leaders and citizens for such a crisis. Although NATO remains a nuclear alliance, some European allies have long preferred to see nuclear weapons relegated to the background when it comes to allied defense. And second, just indicating that NATO was conducting a robust assessment of possible responses would signal to Moscow that WMD use would bring not only greater U.S. involvement but also broad-based European action.

ATTACHMENT TWELVE – From Reuters

RUSSIA JOURNAL: MOSCOW MULLS POSSIBLE USE OF NUCLEAR ARMS TO FEND OFF US ATTACK -RIA

March 2 (Reuters) - A Russian defence ministry journal says Moscow is developing a new type of military strategy using nuclear weapons to protect against possible U.S. aggression, RIA news agency reported on Thursday.

The article is the latest in a series of combative remarks by Russian politicians and commentators after the invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 last year, suggesting Moscow would, if necessary, be prepared to deploy its vast nuclear arsenal.

RIA said the article, published in the Voennaya Mysl (Military Thought) magazine, concluded Washington was worried it might be losing dominance over the world and had therefore "apparently" prepared plans to strike Russia to neutralise it.

In response, Russian specialists were "actively developing a promising form of the strategic use of the Russian armed forces - an operation of strategic deterrence forces", RIA said.

This, it continued, "presupposes the use of modern strategic offensive and defensive, nuclear and non-nuclear weapons, taking into account the latest military technologies".

Moscow, the article said, needed to be able to show the United States that it could not cripple Russia's nuclear missile system and would not be able to fend off a retaliatory strike.

Russia's defence ministry did not immediately respond to a query asking for confirmation of the RIA story.

Russian President Vladimir Putin last week suspended a landmark nuclear arms control treaty, announced new strategic systems had been put on combat duty, and threatened to resume nuclear tests.

Although Moscow says it would only use nuclear weapons in case Russia's territorial integrity were threatened, Putin allies have regularly suggested calamity could be close.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev this week said the West's continued supply of weaponry to Kyiv risked a global catastrophe, repeating a threat of nuclear war over Ukraine.

ATTACHMENT THIRTEEN – From US News and World Report

RUSSIA WON'T BE FIRST TO TEST NUCLEAR DEVICE - DEPUTY FM

By Reuters March 2, 2023, at 7:17 a.m.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Thursday Russia would not be the first to test a nuclear device, following Moscow's suspension of the New START nuclear arms control treaty with the United States.

Addressing reporters at the Russian mission in Geneva after a disarmament conference, Ryabkov said Moscow would not carry out tests if Washington also refrained, but that Russia still had to prepare for the worst.

Ryabkov also accused the United States of providing intelligence on the location of strategic sites inside Russia to Ukraine, for it to attack them with drones.

In December, Russia's Engels air base near the city of Saratov, home to part of its nuclear-capable strategic bomber fleet and at least 600 km (370 miles) from Ukrainian territory, was hit by drone attacks. Ukraine did not claim responsibility for the attacks, but celebrated them.

ATTACHMENT FOURTEEN – From the Royal United Survices Inst. (RUSI)

COULD A RUSSIAN MILITARY COLLAPSE LEAD TO NUCLEAR WAR?

By Tim Willasey-Wilsey CMG 25 January 2023

Former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has suggested that a Russian defeat in Ukraine could lead to nuclear war. Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has dismissed the idea as nonsense. So what would happen if the Russian army mutinied or collapsed?

There is no exact template for mutiny or the sudden disintegration of an army. The British Army on the Western Front in the First World War never mutinied in spite of huge casualties and poor living conditions, and the Russian army endured even worse on the Eastern Front in the Second World War. In both cases the troops believed in the need to win the war and knew that it was a national effort involving all strata of society. By contrast, the Afghan army did not exactly mutiny in July and August 2021. It just evaporated because the troops no longer believed in the war as the US negotiated a deal with the Taliban behind the back of their own deeply corrupt government.

There may still be some Russian soldiers who believe their president’s myth about Ukraine being a Nazi state, but increasingly they must wonder why they are enduring considerable risk and awful conditions. Is it really for the Russian nation or for the political survival of Vladimir Putin? Furthermore, the hastily recruited and partly trained conscripts will soon experience the delta between their old Soviet-era equipment and the inventiveness with which Ukraine has integrated commercial drones and satellite imagery with precision artillery fire.

There has already been some evidence of near-mutiny. The sudden evacuation of the Kharkiv area in September bore the hallmarks of a rout, with troops abandoning their positions in a hurry and leaving equipment and personal effects behind.

For most of us in the West, a wholesale Russian collapse would be a cause for celebration, heralding a rapid end to the war and an alleviation of some of the economic effects which the conflict has engendered – in particular high energy and food costs. However, in reality, a mutiny would entail a few days of very significant risk.

Imagine the scene as Ukrainian forces suddenly find there is no resistance in front of them as Russian troops retreat in disarray. Like the British Army in August 1918, they can suddenly advance 20 miles instead of 20 yards in a day. A fast advance would test Ukrainian logistics, but within a few days Ukraine would have recovered all the territory lost since 24 February 2022. That is when things start to get difficult.

There may still be some Russian soldiers who believe their president’s myth about Ukraine being a Nazi state, but increasingly they must wonder why they are enduring considerable risk and awful conditions

The Moscow government would doubtless issue an ultimatum that Ukraine must not infringe into areas of Donbas under Russian control before 24 February and, above all, that it must not enter the Crimean Peninsula. Moscow would make plain its willingness to use nuclear weapons to protect its territorial integrity.

President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany would send urgent messages to President Volodymyr Zelensky not to go beyond the 24 February line. The UK might take a more robust line encouraging Zelensky to retake all of Donbas but to pause before crossing into Crimea pending consultation among NATO and G7 allies. US President Joe Biden would probably lean more towards the latter position, conscious that Crimea is a much more sensitive issue, the home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and traditionally under Russian control until a somewhat whimsical decision by Nikita Khrushchev in 1954 ceded it to Ukraine (which was anyway part of the Soviet Union at the time).

How would Zelensky react? The probability is that he would give his troops a tight deadline by which to secure both Donbas and Crimea. He would plead to Paris and Berlin the need for a day or two to halt the forward momentum of his army while stressing the importance of protecting the citizens of Donbas and Crimea from war crimes inflicted by the retreating Russian soldiery. He might calculate that he could turn a Nelsonian blind eye to Western blandishments for 72 or 96 hours at the most. He would also assure Russia that there would be no incursions into pre-2014 Russian territory, while reserving the right to return artillery fire across the national border.

Meanwhile, Ukraine would have taken tens of thousands of Russian prisoners. Again, there would be French and German pleas to release them at once and allow them to escape home. But Zelensky would have two countervailing thoughts. Firstly, the prisoners would doubtless include some war criminals. This would argue for them being moved into central Ukraine and formally processed over a period of months. They might also include officers with access to important intelligence about Russian capabilities, some of whom might be willing to defect. Secondly, the prisoners would be an important equity for any future peace agreement. There would be some similarity here to how India retained 93,000 Pakistani troops for eight months after the collapse of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1971 until after the Simla Agreement was signed the following year.

The detonation of a nuclear device over the Black Sea or over central Ukraine as a warning shot to stop the Ukrainian advance might even be at the lower end of the spectrum of options presented to a Russian leadership in disarray

Moscow would be in turmoil following the mutiny and the loss of so much territory. Putin would doubtless blame and sack Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and the Army Chief Valery Gerasimov, but his own fingerprints are too firmly on the war to avoid consequences. This might be the moment when Alexander Bortnikov (Director of the FSB) or Nikolai Patrushev (a previous FSB Director) makes a move to supplant Putin. The strong probability is that any new leader would be from the same ex-KGB stable as Putin and equally or even more hawkish. Uhh... the Wagner group (whether Prince Prigozhin or, perhaps, a convict comrade)? - DJI

Medvedev is right that no nuclear-armed country has ever lost a war of national survival. This would be new territory for the whole world, and it would be a high-risk moment. Furthermore, a power struggle in Moscow would raise questions about the command authority over the Russian nuclear arsenal. In the words of a former senior UK defence official, ‘Mutiny would by definition destroy the reliability of the chain of command’. As also, perhaps, the world.

This is when bad or even disastrous decisions could be made. The detonation of a nuclear device over the Black Sea or over central Ukraine as a warning shot to stop the Ukrainian advance might even be at the lower end of the spectrum of options presented to a Russian leadership in disarray. A new nationalist leader in Moscow might argue that NATO countries had enabled the Ukrainian success and should therefore be regarded as targets.

None of this is an argument for not pushing Russia out of Ukraine, but it is a prompt for Western leaders to communicate their intentions to Moscow with absolute clarity. Fundamental would be an assurance to the Russian government and people that their pre-2014 territorial integrity is not at any risk. It would also be important for all Western allies to agree that Crimea still belongs to Ukraine and that Russia’s Black Sea Fleet would remain the property of Russia so long as it offered no resistance following Ukraine’s recapture of Crimea. Its future basing rights would be a matter for a subsequent peace conference.

ATTACHMENT FIFTEEN – From Salon

THE NUCLEAR "WAR" IN UKRAINE MAY NOT BE THE ONE WE EXPECT

How a nuclear power plant became a tool of war

By JOSHUA FRANK PUBLISHED MARCH 1, 2023 4:00AM (EST)

In 1946, Albert Einstein shot off a telegram to several hundred American leaders and politicians warning that the "unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe." Einstein's forecast remains prescient. Nuclear calamity still knocks.

Even prior to Vladimir Putin's bloody invasion of Ukraine, the threat of a nuclear confrontation between NATO and Russia was intensifying. After all, in August 2019, President Donald Trump formally withdrew the U.S. from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, long heralded as a pillar of arms control between the two superpowers.

"Russia is solely responsible for the treaty's demise," declared Secretary of State Mike Pompeo following the announcement. "With the full support of our NATO allies, the United States has determined Russia to be in material breach of the treaty and has subsequently suspended our obligations under the treaty." No evidence of that breach was offered, but in Trump World, no evidence was needed.

Then, on February 21st of this year, following the Biden administration's claims that Russia was no longer abiding by its obligations under the New START treaty, the last remaining nuclear arms accord between the two nations, Putin announced that he would end his country's participation.

In the year since Russia's initial assault on Ukraine, the danger of nuclear war has only inched ever closer. While President Biden's White House raised doubts that Putin would indeed use any of Russia's tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists ominously reset its Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest since its creation in 1947. Those scientific experts weren't buying what the Biden administration was selling.

"As Russia's war on Ukraine continues, the last remaining nuclear weapons treaty between Russia and the United States… stands in jeopardy," read a January 2023 press release from the Bulletin before Putin backed out of the agreement. "Unless the two parties resume negotiations and find a basis for further reductions, the treaty will expire in February 2026. This would eliminate mutual inspections, deepen mistrust, spur a nuclear arms race, and heighten the possibility of a nuclear exchange."

Of course, they were correct and, in mid-February, the Norwegian government claimed Russia had already deployed ships armed with tactical nukes in the Baltic Sea for the first time in more than 30 years. "Tactical nuclear weapons are a particularly serious threat in several operational scenarios in which NATO countries may be involved," claimed the report. "The ongoing tensions between Russia and the West mean that Russia will continue to pose the greatest nuclear threat to NATO, and therefore to Norway."

For its part, in October 2022, NATO ran its own nuclear bombing drills, designated "Steadfast Noon," with fighter jets in Europe's skies involved in "war games" (minus live weaponry). "It's an exercise to ensure that our nuclear deterrent remains safe, secure, and effective," claimed NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, but it almost seemed as if NATO was taunting Putin to cross the line.

And yet, here's the true horror story lurking behind the war in Ukraine. While a nuclear tit-for-tat between Russia and NATO — an exchange that could easily destroy much of Eastern Europe in no time at all — is a genuine, if frightening, prospect, it isn't the most imminent radioactive peril facing the region.

Averting a Meltdown

By now, we all ought to be familiar with the worrisome Zaporizhzhia nuclear complex (ZNPP), which sits right in the middle of the Russian incursion into Ukraine. Assembled between 1980 and 1986, Zaporizhzhia is Europe's largest nuclear-power complex, with six 950-megawatt reactors. In February and March of last year, after a series of fierce battles, which caused a fire to break out at a nearby training facility, the Russians hijacked the embattled plant. Representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were later sent in to ensure that the reactors weren't at immediate risk of meltdown and issued a report stating, in part, that:

"…further escalation affecting the six-reactor plant could lead to a severe nuclear accident with potentially grave radiological consequences for human health and the environment in Ukraine and elsewhere and that renewed shelling at or near the ZNPP was deeply troubling for nuclear safety and security at the facility."

Since then, the fighting has only intensified. Russia kidnapped some of the plant's Ukrainian employees, including its deputy director Valery Martynyuk. In September 2022, due to ongoing shelling in the area, Zaporizhzhia was taken offline and, after losing external power on several occasions, has since been sporadically relying on old diesel backup generators. (Once disconnected from the electrical grid, backup power is crucial to ensure the plant's reactors don't overheat, which could lead to a full-blown radioactive meltdown.)

However, relying on risk-prone backup power is a fool's game, according to electrical engineer Josh Karpoff. A member of Science for the People who previously worked for the New York State Office of General Services where he designed electrical systems for buildings, including large standby generators, Karpoff knows how these things work in a real-world setting. He assures me that, although Zaporizhzhia is no longer getting much attention in the general rush of Ukraine news, the possibility of a major disaster there is ever more real. A backup generator, he explains, is about as reliable as a '75 Winnebago.

"It's really not that hard to knock out these kinds of diesel generators," Karpoff adds. "If your standby generator starts up but says there's a leak in a high-pressure oil line fitting, it sprays heated, aerosolized oil all over the hot motor, starting a fire. This happens to diesel motors all the time. A similar diesel engine fire in a locomotive was partly responsible for causing the Lac Megantic Rail Disaster in Quebec back in 2013."

Sadly enough, Karpoff is on target. Just remember how the backup generators failed at the three nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan, in 2011. Many people believe that the 9.0 magnitude underwater earthquake caused them to melt down, but that's not exactly the case.

It was, in fact, a horrific chain of worsening events. While the earthquake itself didn't damage Fukushima's reactors, it cut the facility off from the power grid, automatically switching the plant to backup generators. So even though the fission reaction had stopped, heat was still being produced by the radioactive material inside the reactor cores. A continual water supply, relying on backup power, was needed to keep those cores from melting down. Then, 30 minutes after that huge quake, a tsunami struck, knocking out the plant's seawater pumps, which subsequently caused the generators to go down.

"The myth of the tsunami is that the tsunami destroyed the [generators] and had that not happened, everything would have been fine," former nuclear engineer Arnie Gunderson told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! "What really happened is that the tsunami destroyed the [sea] pumps right along the ocean… Without that water, the [diesel generators] will overheat, and without that water, it's impossible to cool a nuclear core."

With the sea pumps out of commission, 12 of the plant's 13 generators ended up failing. Unable to cool, the reactors began to melt, leading to three hydrogen explosions that released radioactive material, carried disastrously across the region and out to sea by prevailing winds, where much of it will continue to float around and accumulate for decades.

At Zaporizhzhia, there are several scenarios that could lead to a similar failure of the standby generators. They could be directly shelled and catch fire or clog up or just run out of fuel. It's a dicey situation, as the ongoing war edges Ukraine and the surrounding countries toward the brink of a catastrophic nuclear crisis.

"I don't know for how long we are going to be lucky in avoiding a nuclear accident," said Rafael Grossi, director general of the IAEA in late January, calling it a "bizarre situation: a Ukrainian facility in Russian-controlled territory, managed by Russians, but operated by Ukrainians."

Bad Things Will Follow

Unfortunately, it's not just Zaporizhzhia we have to worry about. Though not much attention has been given to them, there are, in fact, 14 other nuclear power plants in the war zone and Russia has also seized the ruined Chernobyl plant, where there is still significant hot radioactive waste that must be kept cool.

Kate Brown, author of Plutopia, told Science for the People last April:

"Russians are apparently using these two captured nuclear installations like kings on a chessboard. They hold Chernobyl and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power reactor plants, and they are stockpiling weapons and soldiers there as safe havens. This is a new military tactic we havinstallations, as a defensive tactic. The Russians apparently figured that the Ukrainians wouldn't shoot. The Russians noticed that when they came to the Chernobyl zone, the Ukrainian guard of the Chernobyl plant stood down because they didn't want missiles fired at these vulnerable installations. There are twenty thousand spent nuclear fuel rods, more than half of them in basins at that plant. It's a precarious situation. This is a new scenario for us."

Of course, the hazards facing Zaporizhzhia and Chernobyl would be mitigated if Putin removed his forces tomorrow, but there's little possibility of that happening. It's worth noting as well that Ukraine is not the only place where, in the future, such a scenario could play out. Taiwan, at the center of a potential military conflict between the U.S. and China, has several nuclear power plants. Iran operates a nuclear facility. Pakistan has six reactors at two different sites. Saudi Arabia is building a new facility. The list only goes on and on.

Even more regrettably, Russia has raised the nuclear stakes in a new way, setting a distressing precedent with its illegal occupation of Zaporizhzhia and Chernobyl, turning them into tools of war. No other power-generating source operating in a war zone, even the worst of the fossil-fuel users, poses such a potentially serious and immediate threat to life as we know it on this planet.

And while hitting those Ukrainian reactors themselves is one recipe for utter disaster, there are other potentially horrific "peaceful" nuclear possibilities as well. What about a deliberate attack on nuclear-waste facilities or those unstable backup generators? You wouldn't even have to strike the reactors directly to cause a disaster. Simply take out the power-grid supply lines, hit the generators, and terrible things will follow. With nuclear power, even the purportedly "peaceful" type, the potential for catastrophe is obvious.

The Greatest of Evils

In my new book Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America, I probe the horrors of the Hanford site in Washington state, one of the locations chosen to develop the first nuclear weapons for the covert Manhattan Project during World War II. For more than 40 years, that facility churned out most of the plutonium used in the vast American arsenal of atomic weapons.

Now, however, Hanford is a radioactive wasteland, as well as the largest and most expensive environmental clean-up project in history. To say that it's a boondoggle would be an understatement. Hanford has 177 underground tanks loaded with 56 million gallons of steaming radioactive gunk. Two of those tanks are currently leaking, their waste making its way toward groundwater supplies that could eventually reach the Columbia River. High-level whistleblowers I interviewed who worked at Hanford told me they feared that a hydrogen build-up in one of those tanks, if ignited, could lead to a Chernobyl-like event here in the United States, resulting in a tragedy unlike anything this country has ever experienced.

All of this makes me fear that those old Hanford tanks could someday be possible targets for an attack. Sabotage or a missile strike on them could cause a major release of radioactive material from coast to coast. The economy would crash. Major cities would become unlivable. And there's precedent for this: in 1957, a massive explosion occurred at Mayak, Hanford's Cold War sister facility in the then-Soviet Union that manufactured plutonium for nukes. Largely unknown, it was the second biggest peacetime radioactive disaster ever, only "bested" by the Chernobyl accident. In Mayak's case, a faulty cooling system gave out and the waste in one of the facility's tanks overheated, causing a radioactive blast equivalent to the force of 70 tons of TNT, contaminating 20,000 square miles. Countless people died and whole villages were forever vacated.

All of this is to say that nuclear waste, whether on a battlefield or not, is an inherently nasty business. Nuclear facilities around the world, containing less waste than the underground silos at Hanford, have already shown us their vulnerabilities. Last August, in fact, the Russians reported that containers housing spent fuel waste at Zaporizhzhia were shelled by Ukrainian forces. "One of the guided shells hit the ground ten meters from them (containers with nuclear waste…). Others fell down slightly further — 50 and 200 meters," alleged Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-appointed official there. "As the storage area is open, a shell or a rocket may unseal containers and kilograms, or even hundreds of kilograms of nuclear waste will be emitted into the environment and contaminate it. To put it simply, it will be a 'dirty bomb.'"

Ukraine, in turn, blamed Russia for the strike, but regardless of which side was at fault, after Chernobyl (which some researchers believe affected upwards of 1.8 million people) both the Ukrainians and the Russians understand the grave risks of atomically-charged explosions. This is undoubtedly why the Russians are apparently constructing protective coverings over Zaporizhzhia's waste storage tanks. An incident at the plant releasing radioactive particles would damage not just Ukraine but Russia, too.

As former New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges so aptly put it, war is the greatest of evils and such evils rise exponentially with the prospect of a nuclear apocalypse. Worse yet, a radioactive Armageddon doesn't have to come from the actual detonation of nuclear bombs. It can take many forms. The atom, as Einstein warned us, has certainly changed everything.

ATTACHMENT SIXTEEN – From Quora (see also PG as attachment Thirty Eight)

Posted by SJ

If World War Three were to occur, do you think extraterrestrials would intervene in some sort of way?

I believed that they HAVE intervened numerous times in world history and will do so in the future. The War of 1812, actually instigated by the USA, causing Great Britain to attempt to retake the USA, has a good example. How many times have you heard of tornados in the Washington, DC area? They are extremely infrequent. Yet, a tornado dropped down into the middle of where thousands of British troops were camped, in preparation for taking and holding DC. The British troops withdrew shortly thereafter.

The Khan dynasty tried to conquer Japan. Tens of thousands of ships. An unusual storm arose and wiped out their entire navy.

Of course, these and similar incidents can be attributed to chance, but these have the distinct feeling of Someone tampering with the timeline.

You’ve heard about UFO’s appearing at our nuclear missile bases and disabling the missiles’ tracking computers. You may not have heard that the same thing happened at Soviet missile bases around the same time. I strongly suspect ET’s would intervene should we get close to WW3 breaking out. Nuclear weapons put WW3 in an entirely different category than any previous war.

ATTACHMENT SEVENTEEN – From Senate.com

FEBRUARY 24, 2023

JOINT STATEMENT FROM NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND ARMS CONTROL WORKING GROUP ON ANNIVERSARY OF RUSSIA’S INVASION OF UKRAINE

Working Group continues into 118th Congress as threat of nuclear weapons use grows with Putin’s suspension of New START Treaty

Washington (February 24, 2023) – Senators Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Representatives Don Beyer (VA-08) and John Garamendi (CA-08), co-chairs of the Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, issued the following statement on the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, announcing the extension of the bicameral Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group into the 118th Congress:

“Today marks one year since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his illegal and unjustified invasion of Ukraine, leading to the loss of thousands of innocent lives and massive disruptions to the international system. 

“We, the co-Chairs of the Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group, reiterate our condemnation of Putin’s war of choice and repeated, thinly-veiled threats to use nuclear weapons. As the devastating war rages on, we must help deliver to the people of Ukraine and our NATO allies the appropriate conventional military support needed repel Russian aggression. Just as importantly, we must work with our international allies and partners to underscore that nuclear weapons use or threats of use by Russia are, as the Group of 20 nations declared in November, ‘inadmissible.’

“In addition, as President Joe Biden has said, even as the United States rallies the world to hold Russia accountable for its brutal and unprovoked war on Ukraine, we must continue to ensure that common-sense limits on U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals remain in place.

“Unfortunately, Russia’s ‘suspension’ of the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) and its refusal to engage in talks on a New START follow-on agreement exacerbates the danger of an unconstrained arms race – not only between the owners of the world’s two largest nuclear weapons arsenals but also with China. There are no winners – only losers – in a nuclear arms race.

“We urge Russia to reverse course and to return expeditiously to full compliance with New START by resuming on-site inspections and to engage with the United States on concluding a new nuclear arms control framework before the treaty expires on February 5, 2026. Otherwise, the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals will go without limits for the first time since 1972.

“To focus greater attention and build bipartisan support for effective nuclear arms control and disarmament measures, we are today announcing the extension of the bicameral Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group into the 118th Congress. We urge all our colleagues who are concerned about the risks of unconstrained nuclear weapons arsenals to join us in this effort. This working group will continue to encourage the Biden administration to pursue common-sense nuclear arms control with Russia, as well as China, and to advance other overdue nuclear policies and risk reduction measures in order to move towards a future in which nuclear weapons no longer threaten all humanity.”

ATTACHMENT EIGHTEEN – From the Heritage Foundation

RUSSIA’S NEW START BREACH MEANS U.S. NUCLEAR WEAPONS MODERNIZATION IS A MUST

By Patty-Jane Geller Feb 21, 2023 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Moscow once again has shown its total disregard for international security commitments.

If Russia continues to ignore its obligations under New START, the U.S. will need to be prepared to compete in an environment without arms control.

Arms control is not an end in itself, and maintaining strong nuclear deterrence should remain the United States’ number one goal.

Russia is certainly consistent. It violated the INF Treaty. It violated the Open Skies Treaty. And now, the State Department reports, it is in non-compliance with the New START agreement—the very last arms control treaty in place. 

When U.S. President Joe Biden took office, he agreed to extend New START through 2026 despite its flaws. While New START limits the total number of warheads the U.S. and Russia can deploy on their strategic launchers, it does not limit Russia’s growing stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons, nor its new and novel capabilities such as nuclear-armed hypersonic weapons and the Poseidon underwater drone. 

Even with these advantages, Moscow once again has shown its total disregard for international security commitments. By failing to convene a Bilateral Consultative Commission—a forum to discuss issues related to treaty implementation—and refusing to allow required inspections of its nuclear forces, it leaves the State Department with no confidence that Moscow has remained within the New START limit of no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads throughout 2022.

This is an unacceptable state of affairs, one that puts U.S. national security at risk. If Russia can pick and choose which aspects of a treaty it can follow, it defeats the purpose of having a rules-based agreement.

>>> China Surpasses U.S. in Nuclear Missile Launchers; U.S. Unprepared to Deter Growing Threat

It gets worse. While the State Department assessed that Russia did not go significantly over the treaty warhead limits, Russia’s non-compliance could be the first step toward a serious material violation. 

Russian non-compliance highlights the need for the U.S. to double down on its efforts to recapitalize its nuclear forces. The U.S. currently plans to deploy modern nuclear capabilities, like the Sentinel missile and Long Range Standoff weapon, around the end of the decade.

But if Russia continues to ignore its obligations under New START, the U.S. will need to be prepared to compete in an environment without arms control.

In particular, the Biden administration should work with Congress to identify ways to accelerate nuclear modernization timelines. This can include increasing funding for nuclear programs, including the nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile.

Last year, Congress appropriated just $45 million to continue research and development for the missile and its accompanying warhead. This year, Congress should provide at least $400 million to move this program into development and field it by the end of the decade.

Moreover, last year Congress required the Pentagon to consider assigning these nuclear programs a DX acquisition rating—designating them as highest-priority. Congress could take this further, mandating the DX rating and taking additional steps to separate nuclear modernization programs from the traditional cumbersome acquisition bureaucracy.

The White House should also work with Congress to identify ways to improve the flexibility and resilience of the U.S. nuclear enterprise in order to better hedge against a nuclear threat environment that—as demonstrated by Russia’s willingness to flout arms control—can rapidly change. 

>>> It’s Time To Consider Our Nuclear Forces

It’s possible that Russia is refusing to comply with New START to punish the U.S. for its support of Ukraine. Or perhaps Moscow hopes to gain concessions in exchange for returning to compliance.

Or, it may be trying to gain an advantage over the United States in future negotiations for a follow-on agreement to New START.

Indeed, Russia has expressed its interest in both preserving New START and negotiating a follow-on agreement. But the U.S. should not budge an inch.

Instead, the administration should communicate that Russia’s continued unfaithfulness only makes it an increasingly unattractive partner for any arms control pact.

Arms control can certainly provide an important tool for maintaining nuclear stability, and the U.S. should reserve this option for times when it can contribute to national security. But arms control is not an end in itself, and maintaining strong nuclear deterrence should remain the United States’ number one goal.

Russia should understand that, as well.

ATTACHMENT NINETEEN – From the United Nations

Since nuclear weapons testing began on 16 July 1945, over 2,000 have taken place. In the early days of nuclear testing little consideration was given to its devastating effects on human life, let alone the dangers of nuclear fallout from atmospheric tests. Hindsight and history have shown us the terrifying and tragic effects of nuclear weapons testing, especially when controlled conditions go awry, and in light of the far more powerful and destructive nuclear weapons that exist today.

On 2 December 2009, the 64th session of the United Nations General Assembly declared 29 August the International Day against Nuclear Tests by unanimously adopting resolution 64/35. The resolution calls for increasing awareness and education “about the effects of nuclear weapon test explosions or any other nuclear explosions and the need for their cessation as one of the means of achieving the goal of a nuclear-weapon-free world.” The resolution was initiated by the Republic of Kazakhstan, together with a large number of sponsors and cosponsors with a view to commemorating the closure of the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test site on 29 August 1991.

2010 marked the inaugural commemoration of the International Day against Nuclear Tests. In each subsequent year, the day has been observed by coordinating various activities throughout the world, such as symposia, conferences, exhibits, competitions, publications, lectures, media broadcasts and other initiatives. 

Since its establishment, many bilateral and multilateral governmental level developments as well as broad movements in civil society have helped to advance the cause of banning nuclear tests.

Moreover, “convinced that nuclear disarmament and the total elimination of nuclear weapons are the only absolute guarantee against the use or threat of nuclear weapons,” the General Assembly designated 26 September as the “International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons", which is devoted to furthering the objective of the total elimination of nuclear weapons, through the mobilization of international efforts. The International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons was observed for the first time in September 2014. The International Day against Nuclear Tests, together with other events and actions, has fostered a global environment that strongly advocates for a world free of nuclear weapons.

The international instrument to put an end to all forms of nuclear testing is the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). Unfortunately, this has yet to enter into force.

As the Secretary-General recognized in his disarmament agenda “Securing our Common Future” launched on 24 May 2018, the norm against testing is an example of a measure that serves both disarmament and non-proliferation objectives. By constraining the development of advanced new types of nuclear weapons, the CTBT puts a brake on the arms race. It also serves as a powerful normative barrier against potential States that might seek to develop, manufacture and subsequently acquire nuclear weapons in violation of their non-proliferation commitments.

Every effort needs to be made to ensure the entry into force of the CTBT and to preserve its place in the international architecture. In this regard, the Secretary-General appeals to all remaining States whose ratifications are required for the CTBT to enter into force to commit to sign the Treaty at an early date if they have not already done so, and to accelerate the completion of their ratification processes.

It is the hope of the UN that one day all nuclear weapons will be eliminated. Until then, there is a need to observe International Day against Nuclear Tests as the world works towards promoting peace and security.

Background

On 2 December 2009, the 64th session of the United Nations General Assembly declared 29 August the International Day against Nuclear Tests through the unanimous adoption of its resolution 64/35. The Preamble of the resolution emphasizes that "every effort should be made to end nuclear tests in order to avert devastating and harmful effects on the lives and health of people" and that "the end of nuclear tests is one of the key means of achieving the goal of a nuclear-weapon-free world.”

The main mechanism for eradicating nuclear weapons testing is the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). It was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 September 1996. To date, 185 countries have signed the treaty and 170 have ratified it. For the Treaty to enter into Force, it must be ratified by those States with significant nuclear capabilities.

While the general consensus within the international community is that nuclear weapons tests pose life-threatening risks, there still exists to some degree a lingering suspicion of the possibility of clandestine nuclear weapons testing. There is also a concern that if nuclear weapons cannot be tested their reliability may be in jeopardy. However, over the years, advances in science and technology have exponentially boosted the capacity to monitor and verify compliance mechanisms and nuclear weapons proliferation detection. These activities and tracking tools have been initiated and developed by the Provisional Technical Secretariat of the CTBT Organization (CTBTO) Preparatory Commission. Despite the stalled entry-into-force, an increasingly robust public advocacy, including activities and events undertaken on the International Day against Nuclear Tests, is exerting pressure on the powers-that-be to move forward on the ratification of the treaty with a view towards the ultimate eradication of nuclear weapons testing.  

The Preparatory Commission of the CTBTO and its 170 ratifying States vigorously continue to push for the Treaty’s entry into force. The CTBTO’s International Monitoring System, already encompassing nearly 90 per cent of States, provides confidence that no nuclear explosion will escape detection.

However, nothing can play as crucial a role in avoiding a nuclear war or nuclear terrorist threat as the total elimination of nuclear weapons. Bringing an irreversible end to nuclear explosions will prevent the further development of nuclear weapons.

Developments

Since the International Day against Nuclear Tests was first declared, there have been a number of significant developments, discussions and initiatives relevant to its goals and objectives as well as conferences convened to elaborate and advance these developments.

2022

· 9 June: The Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) adopted a resolution, by a vote of 30 in favour, two against and three abstentions, which called upon Iran to clarify and resolve outstanding safeguards issues.

· 21-23 July: The First Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was held in Vienna.

· 1-26 August: Tenth Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was held at United Nations Headquarters in New York.

2021

· 22 January: the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) formally entered into force.

· 3 February: the Treaty between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (“New START Treaty”) was extended for an additional five-year period through February 4, 2026.

· 6 April: The talks among the JCPOA parties and the United States on the return to the full implementation of the JCPOA started in Vienna.

· 19-23 April: The first meeting of the Group of Governmental Experts on nuclear disarmament verification was held in Geneva.

· 16 June: the United States and the Russian Federation issued a Joint Presidential Statement on Strategic Stability at the outcome of the two Presidents’ summit in Geneva.

· 21 July: the Tenth Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was further postponed to a later date due to COVID-19 pandemic, as soon as the circumstances permit, but no later than February 2022.

· 29 July: the Fourth Conference of Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones and Mongolia was further postponed by the General Assembly to later date due to COVID-19 pandemic.

· 1-5 November: The second meeting of the Group of Governmental Experts on nuclear disarmament verification was held in Geneva.

· 29 November: The talks among the JCPOA parties and the United States on the return to the full implementation of the JCPOA, which had been on hold since June 2021, resumed in Vienna.

· 29 November – 3 December: The Second Session of the Conference on the Establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction was held at United Nations Headquarters in New York.

2020

· 14 January: the E3 (France, Germany, the United Kingdom) referred the matter of phased withdrawal of nuclear-related commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action (JCPOA) by the Islamic Republic of Iran to the JCPOA’s Joint Commission, invoking the dispute resolution mechanism of the agreement.

· 27 March: The Tenth Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was postponed to a later date due to COVID-19 pandemic, as soon as the circumstances permit, but no later than April 2021.

· 13 April: The Fourth Conference of Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones and Mongolia was postponed to a period in 2021 to be decided by the General Assembly at its seventy-fifth session.

· 2 July: the Islamic Republic of Iran referred the implementation issues with the E3 (France, Germany, the United Kingdom) to the JCPOA’s Joint Commission, invoking the dispute resolution mechanism of the agreement.

· 24 October: the 50th instrument of ratification for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was deposited with the United Nations.

2019

· 1 February: The United States announced the suspension of its compliance to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty).

· 2 February: Russian Federation suspended the INF Treaty.

· 27-28 February: The Summit between the leaders of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the United States of America was held in Hanoi, Viet Nam.

· 8-12 April: The third meeting of the Group of Governmental Experts to consider the role of verification in advancing nuclear disarmament was held in Geneva.

· 29 April - 10 May: The third session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2020 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference was held in New York.

· 8 May: The Islamic Republic of Iran announced its intention to no longer commit itself to some of the provisions of the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action (JCPOA).

· 30 June: The Summit between the leaders of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the United States of America was held in the Korean Demilitarized Zone.

· 18-22 November: First Session of the Conference on the Establishment of a Middle East Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and Other Weapons of Mass Destruction was held in New York.

· 12 December: General Assembly adopted a resolution 74/50 establishing the Group of Governmental Experts to further consider nuclear disarmament verification issues.

2018

· 5 February: The United States of America and the Russian Federation met the central limits on the Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (“New START”).

· 15-16 February: The second informal Consultative Meeting of the FMCT High-level Expert Preparatory Group was held in New York.

· 23 April - 4 May: The second session of the Preparatory Committee  for the 2020 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference was held in Geneva.

· 8 May: The United States announced its intention to withdraw from the JCPOA, an agreement on the Iranian nuclear programme.

· 14 -18 May: The first meeting of the Group of Governmental Experts to consider the role of verification in advancing nuclear disarmament was held in Geneva.

· 24 May: The UN Secretary-General launched his new disarmament agenda “Securing our Common Future” in Geneva.

· 28 May – June 8: The FMCT High-Level Expert Preparatory Group held its final meeting in Geneva.

· 12 June: The Summit between the leaders of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the United States of America was held in Singapore.

· 1 July: Commemorated the 50th anniversary of the opening for signature of Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons

· 7 July: Commemorated the first anniversary of the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

· 20 October: The United States declared its intention to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty).

· 12 -16 November: The second meeting of the Group of Governmental Experts to consider the role of verification in advancing nuclear disarmament was held in Geneva.

The role of civil society

From the beginning of the nuclear age, civil society has played a prominent role in the effort to permanently halt testing of nuclear weapons. Physicists, seismologists, and other scientists; physicians and lawyers; women’s organizations; research institutes and disarmament NGOs; mayors and parliamentarians; “downwinders” exposed to radioactive contaminants resulting from atmospheric testing and the hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and the wider public - all have been involved.

Some highlights from the decades of activities:

· In the 1950s, physicians and women’s groups raised awareness of the health effects of atmospheric testing, including the presence of radioisotopes in children’s teeth. This campaign helped lead to the Partial Test Ban Treaty, which prohibits testing under water, in the atmosphere and outer space – but not underground.

· In the 1980s, US and Russian scientists conducted joint experiments to demonstrate the feasibility of verifying a ban on underground testing.

· Also in the 1980s, US groups conducted mass protests at the Nevada Test Site in the United States, and a powerful anti-testing campaign, known as the Nevada-Semipalatinsk Movement, emerged in Kazakhstan, home to the principal Soviet test site at Semipalatinsk. Well-publicized actions and Campaigns were also directed at the French test site at Mururoa in the Pacific in the 1980s and again in the 1990s.

· Beginning in 1985, NGOs lobbied in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review process for a commitment to achieve a Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). It was first adopted in connection with the 1995 decision to extend the treaty and reaffirmed at the 2000 and 2010 review conferences. Especially since the end of the Cold War, civil society has vigorously advocated, in growing numbers, for NPT review conferences to commit to steps leading to the elimination of nuclear weapons, including the CTBT, and the 2000 and 2010 conferences in fact have done so.

· In the 1990s, NGOs and parliamentarians sparked the convening of a 1991 conference on amending the Partial Test Ban Treaty to make it comprehensive, a process which helped to lay the groundwork for CTBT negotiations.

· Non-governmental researchers developed understanding of verification techniques.

· Non-governmental research and advocacy groups monitored the negotiations that led to the 1996 adoption of the CTBT.

NGOs campaigned to persuade their governments to negotiate, then ratify, the CTBT. Some also critiqued experimental and supercomputing facilities intended to replace nuclear explosiv

ATTACHMENT TWENTY – Also from the United Nations

MESSAGE OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY ON THE INTERNATIONAL DAY FOR DISARMAMENT AND NON-PROLIFERATION AWARENESS

1 March 2023

Distinguished delegates,

Almost 80 years ago, humanity was confronted with the most devastating weapons ever invented.

Pained by the horrors of nuclear bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the international community made a promise to never again use nuclear weapons, and to undertake all efforts to destroy them.

This month we mark 53 years since the entry into force of the Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Yet we are in a time of grave danger.

The Doomsday Clock is at 90 seconds to midnight, and the shadow of nuclear warfare is once again looming large.

That is an unconscionable threat, with potentially catastrophic global implications.

Let me be clear: a nuclear war cannot be won and should never be fought.

I urge all Member States to uphold their commitments towards nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation and continue to work together to overcome mistrust.

On this International Day for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation Awareness, we unite in a common desire to spread the message of peace, and to advance non-proliferation efforts.

We must ensure that the present and future generations do not choose the path of destruction, the path leading to Armageddon.

I express my appreciation to Kyrgyzstan, which, with the support of the Office for Disarmament Affairs, has shown a strong commitment to promoting awareness and understanding of disarmament issues among the public.

In this time of unprecedented challenges, let us take action to prevent the worst errors that humanity could ever make.

I thank you.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY ONE – From Stimson Research

INTERNATIONAL NUCLEAR SECURITY FORUM PROJECT

Nuclear security news and member updates roundup, february 2023

By  Anna Pluff  •  Sneha Nair  •  Christina McAllister March 1, 2023

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

As the world reflects on a year of war in Ukraine with no end in sight, recent headlines highlight new risks facing the country’s civilian nuclear power plants, including worrying delays to the needed rotation of the IAEA’s Support and Assistance Mission to Zaporizhzhia. The past month has also seen international atomic monitors detect uranium enriched to levels just below nuclear weapons-grade in Iran, and Russia suspending participation in New START and spreading fresh disinformation on nuclear threats. Amidst this gloom in an already dark season, it is heartening to review the summary of good work accomplished and underway by INSF members committed to strengthening the principles and practices of nuclear security around the world.

Christina

Interim Director, International Nuclear Security Forum

Updates

· The International Nuclear Security Forum (INSF) published a special edition of the newsletter, Resilience in Ukraine: A Retrospective of the Occupation of Zaporizhzhia and Efforts to Prevent Disaster, to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine. The special edition highlights civil society and member activities over the year and major news stories. Read here.

Nuclear Security News

IMPACT: THE RUSSIAN INVASION OF UKRAINE

· Russia Says Protection Structures at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant Near Completion—TASS: “The construction of protective structures for key facilities at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in southeast Ukraine is nearing completion, Russia’s state TASS news agency reported on Tuesday, citing an adviser to the head of Russia’s nuclear plants operator. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, was captured by Russian troops in March of last year, in the opening days of Moscow’s invasion in Ukraine.”

· IAEA Chief’s Fresh Zaporizhzhia Talks, Ukraine Brings in Nuclear Sanctions: “Grossi has spent months seeking to get agreement on the details of a safety and security zone around the six-unit Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant – Ukraine’s largest – which has been under Russian military control since early March 2022…On Sunday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said the country had introduced sanctions against Russia’s nuclear industry. He also said the country’s diplomats would continue efforts “to extend global sanctions to this part of the Russian aggression machine.” Last week, the European Parliament voted in favour of the EU also imposing such sanctions, but any such decision would require all member states to back the plan, and Hungary has publicly pledged to veto such a move.”

· Russia is Draining a Massive Ukrainian Reservoir: Endangering a Nuclear Plant: “Russia appears to be draining an enormous reservoir in Ukraine, imperiling drinking water, agricultural production and safety at Europe’s largest nuclear plant, according to satellite data obtained by NPR. Since early November 2022, water has been gushing out of the Kakhovka Reservoir, in Southern Ukraine, through sluice gates at a critical hydroelectric power plant controlled by Russian forces. As a result, satellite data shows that the water level at the reservoir has plummeted to its lowest point in three decades…At stake is drinking water for hundreds of thousands of residents, irrigation for nearly half-a-million acres of farmland, and the cooling system at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Late last week, the International Atomic Energy Agency said it was aware of the potential risk posed by dropping water levels at the reservoir.”

· Energoatom: Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant Staff Refuse to Train Russian Workers: “Ukrainian workers at the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant refused to train workers from the Kalinin nuclear plant in Russia’s Tver Oblast, according to Energoatom. The state nuclear energy operator reported on Feb. 14 that the Russian workers lack the knowledge and skills to operate the nuclear plant. Ukrainian workers have faced threats, torture, blackmail, and constant intimidation at the hands of Russian forces since they seized the plant in March 2022.”

· Grossi’s Appeal Over Delay to IAEA Staff Rotation at Zaporizhzhia: “The planned rotation of the three International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Support and Assistance Mission to Zaporizhzhia (ISAMZ) staff has now been delayed for more than two weeks, with Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi urging both sides to help facilitate the change in experts at the site…Grossi said: “The nuclear safety and security situation in Ukraine – especially at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant – continues to be dangerous and unpredictable. ISAMZ has been playing key role in helping to protect this major nuclear facility – with its six reactors – during the war. Their presence is contributing to the maintenance of nuclear safety and security, which is in everybody’s interest. The agency is doing everything it can to conduct the safe rotation of our staff there as soon as possible. Their safety and security are my top priority.”

INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURE

· IAEA’s Network for Response and Assistance for Nuclear Emergencies Grows Beyond 40 Countries: “The IAEA’s Response and Assistance Network (RANET), a group of states offering international assistance to countries responding to nuclear and radiological emergencies, has grown to 41 countries after Italy registered this week. Through RANET countries offer global support with radiological measurements, medical advice or treatment, and specialized equipment to help to mitigate the consequences of nuclear or radiological emergencies for human health, the environment, and property. Thanks to RANET, Ukraine has received vital equipment and other assistance coordinated by the IAEA to help ensure nuclear safety and security in the country since February 2022.”

· Zelensky: Global Sanctions Must be Imposed on Russia’s Nuclear Industry: “President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address on Feb. 12 that Ukraine is doing its best to ensure that global sanctions are imposed on Russia’s nuclear industry. He said that “Russia’s nuclear blackmail of the world must be punished,” recalling Russia’s seizure of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in the town of Enerhodar in Zaporizhzhia Oblast in March.”

· EU Commission Scratches Russia Nuclear Sanctions Plans: “The European Commission has abandoned plans to sanction Russia’s nuclear sector or its representatives in its next sanctions package, three diplomats told POLITICO on Thursday. The EU executive initially told EU countries that it would try to draw up sanctions targeting Russia’s civil nuclear sector. And, ahead of a meeting of EU leaders last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged the bloc at least to issue sanctions against Russian nuclear energy company Rosatom. But that plan has failed, the three diplomats said, pointing to the latest sanctions drafts. The EU’s sanctions packages are divided into multiple parts: New rules that target specific sectors, such as aviation or military, and lists that impose visa restrictions and asset freezes on individuals and companies — but none include the nuclear sector, according to drafts seen by POLITICO and EU diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity.”

· Iran’s Uranium Enrichment Hits a New High, Testing Diplomacy: “International atomic monitors in Iran have detected uranium enriched to levels just below nuclear weapons-grade, risking an escalation over Tehran’s expanding program. The International Atomic Energy Agency is trying to clarify how Iran accumulated uranium enriched to 84% purity — the highest level found by inspectors in the country to date, and a concentration just 6% below what’s needed for a weapon. Iran says its decades-long atomic program is for peaceful purposes but Western powers and Israel have accused it of working toward a nuclear bomb. Building a bomb would require further technical steps which have so far not been detected by the IAEA and a political decision to go ahead.”

THREATS

· U.S. Nuclear Sites Face Hacking and Espionage Threats: “Hackers are pursuing nuclear targets, which are some of the most heavily regulated facilities in the United States. Despite those safeguards, the opportunities for espionage and much worse have made them alluring to hackers…Hackers who got into the U.S. nuclear command and control system could, theoretically, “trigger a false alarm, making us think that Russian nuclear weapons were on their way”– giving the president mere minutes to decide whether to launch a retaliatory strike…”

· (Radiological) War by Other Means: A Dirty Bomb in Ukraine?: “Fear is mightier than the sword, and few things stoke fear like a dirty bomb. So, it should have come as no surprise when Russia accused Ukraine of building a radiological dispersal device (RDD), possibly setting the stage for a false-flag attack. By manipulating widespread fear of radioactivity, such a device is a potent weapon of terror, and Russia has transformed it into an instrument of “war by other means.” To manage this, relevant chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) doctrine must also shift to emphasize public information and crisis recovery…The evolution of the radiological dispersal device into a strategic weapon requires CBRN professionals around the world to reconceptualize this threat, particularly in terms of crisis management. While traditionally categorized as a weapon of mass destruction, a dirty bomb is really a weapon of fear. As such, the potential impacts are overwhelmingly psychological, economic, and political, as opposed to destructive, making them ideal for irregular warfare. Institutional knowledge should be amended to reflect this, particularly in the realms of public information and incident recovery.”

· Russia Accuses Kyiv of Planning to Stage Nuclear Incident: “Russia said…that Ukraine was planning to stage a nuclear incident on its territory to pin the blame on Moscow ahead of a United Nations meeting, without providing evidence for the accusation. Since the start of its invasion of Ukraine nearly a year ago, Russia has repeatedly accused Kyiv of planning ‘false flag’ operations with non-conventional weapons, using biological or radioactive materials. No such attack has materialised. Russia’s defence ministry said in a statement that radioactive substances had been transported to Ukraine from a European country and Kyiv was preparing a large-scale ‘provocation.’ ‘The aim of the provocation is to accuse Russia’s army of allegedly carrying out indiscriminate strikes on hazardous radioactive facilities in Ukraine, leading to the leakage of radioactive substances and contamination of the area,’ it said.”

· Russia’s Putin Issues New Nuclear Warnings to West Over Ukraine: “President Vladimir Putin […] delivered a warning to the West over Ukraine by suspending a landmark nuclear arms control treaty, announcing that new strategic systems had been put on combat duty, and threatening to resume nuclear tests… ‘The elites of the West do not hide their purpose. But they also cannot fail to realize that it is impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield,’ he told his country’s political and military elite. Alleging that the United States was turning the war into a global conflict, Putin said Russia was suspending participation in the New START treaty, its last major arms control treaty with Washington.”

WEAPONS, MATERIALS, AND FACILITIES

· Fire at Oak Ridge Y-12 Uranium Processing Facility Contained: “A fire at a uranium processing facility in the Y-12 National Security Complex led to the evacuation of hundreds of workers on the morning of Feb. 22, but officials said the fire was quickly contained and no radioactive material was released. The fire at the Y-12 in Oak Ridge, a highly secure facility where experts manufacture parts for America’s nuclear weapons and provide enriched uranium to the U.S. Navy, started around 9:15 a.m. in a uranium processing area in building 9212, Y-12 communications manager Taz Painter told Knox News. Hours after the fire, officials said all evacuated workers were accounted for and no injuries or contaminations were found. The building’s air monitors did not go off, which meant no radioactive material was released, officials said. As of that afternoon they said they did not know what caused the fire or the extent of the damage.”

· Los Alamos Will Have Equipment to Make 30 Nuke Cores by 2030, According to DOE Memo: “The Los Alamos National Laboratory will install by 2030 the equipment needed to make at least 30 plutonium pits annually, according to a Jan. 19 memo from the Deputy Secretary of Energy.”

· No Radiation Issues at Turkey’s Nuclear Power Plant, Officials Say: “Turkey wasn’t in danger of radiation exposure on Monday after two powerful earthquakes struck around 200 miles from the construction site of what is to be the country’s first nuclear power plant, the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency said. Turkey’s Nuclear Regulatory Authority hadn’t reported issues related to the Akkuyu Nuclear power plant, the IAEA said on Twitter.”

· Could Nuclear Power Plants Become Radioactive Weapons?: “It is a chilling illustration that no international treaty prevents nuclear plants from becoming targets in wartime and that nuclear reactors can turn into radioactivity-spewing weapons themselves. The hazards of nuclear power plants during wartime have long been known and largely ignored. Bennett Ramberg, a former foreign affairs officer in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, literally wrote the book on the matter — Nuclear Power Plants as Weapons for the Enemy, published by the University of California Press in 1984. He’s been ringing the alarms ever since.”

· Delays Mount for Underground Lab Upgrades Seen as Critical for New Navy Nuke: “Upgrades to a nuclear-weapon test facility in Nevada are falling further behind schedule, government officials and weapon-site managers said […]. Officially called Enhanced Capability for Subcritical Experiments (ECSE), the upgrades involve expanding the Nevada National Security Site’s U1a underground complex and installing a sophisticated new X-Ray camera to measure explosive plutonium tests. The expansion has slipped about a year since the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) set the schedule last summer and the equipment could be three years behind or more, owing in part to the materials shortages that began during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

SECURITY CULTURE

· AP Announces Nuclear Security Reporting Initiative: “With journalists in nearly 100 countries, AP will leverage its global reporting network to provide expanded explanatory, visual, enterprise and investigative coverage to inform the general public about nuclear security issues. AP retains editorial control of all content. “From the war in Ukraine to missile tests by North Korea, it is clear there is a pressing need to advance the public understanding of nuclear security issues,” said Ron Nixon, AP vice president for investigations, enterprise, partnerships and grants. “We are working to not only increase the volume and depth of AP’s coverage of nuclear security, but also to equip other news organizations with tools they need to tell the story with context and authority for their own communities.” Additionally, AP will develop ways to help newsrooms improve general news industry understanding of nuclear security issues.

· NRC Issues First Update of 2010 Regulatory Guide to Strengthen Cybersecurity at Nuclear Plants: “The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has updated a 13-year-old guide to protect nuclear plants from cyber-attacks, requiring plans that detail operations and protections against vulnerabilities… The Regulatory Guide posted on the NRC’s website describes “design-basis threats” to be used to build safeguards systems to protect against acts of radiological sabotage and prevent the theft of radiological material…The guidance requires nuclear plants to describe in cybersecurity plans how they have “achieved high assurance” that digital systems are protected from cyberattacks. A plan must demonstrate a safety-related and emergency-preparedness function, including offsite communications.”

· Ukraine Gave up Nuclear Weapons at our Behest. Here’s What We Owe Them: “The world is on the cusp of a dangerous new nuclear era, and the war in Ukraine might be a glimpse of what is to come…But even if the Ukraine war never goes nuclear, any ultimate Russian victory would add to the sense that nuclear weapons are increasingly useful elements of state policy, for both offense and defense…Any outcome to today’s war that fundamentally undermines Ukraine’s long-term sovereignty would add to the argument that Kyiv made a fatal error in giving up on nukes. Such a lesson would inform decision-making in other states.”

· Armenia to Expand Nuclear Security Cooperation with US: “The government of Armenia has approved signing a nuclear safety co-operation agreement with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Under the agreement with the Nuclear Safety Regulatory Committee of Armenia, NRC will support Armenia to strengthen its regulatory body and to develop the skills and abilities of the Armenian NPP personnel. This includes the licensing stages for construction of a new NPP, as well as analysis and assessment of safety.”

· South Korea Defence Paper Calls North ‘Enemy,’ Estimates Plutonium Stockpile at 70kg: “South Korea released its latest defence white paper on Thursday, describing North Korea as its ‘enemy’ for the first time in six years and reporting an increase in Pyongyang’s stockpile of weapons-grade plutonium…The 2022 paper revived the description of the North Korean regime and military as ‘our enemy,’ last used in its 2016 edition, citing Pyongyang’s ongoing weapons development, cyber and military provocations and its recent portrayal of the South as an ‘enemy.’ ‘As North Korea continues to pose military threats without giving up nuclear weapons, its regime and military, which are the main agents of the execution, are our enemies,’ the document said.”

· IAEA Releases Report on Nuclear Safety, Security and Safeguards in Ukraine: “The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued a report today on Nuclear Safety, Security and Safeguards in Ukraine, covering the period between February 2022 and February 2023. The 52-page report provides an overview of the situation and the IAEA’s activities to reduce the likelihood of a nuclear accident during the armed conflict. ‘One year has passed since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, marking the first time in history that a war is being fought amid the facilities of a major nuclear power programme,’ IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a foreword of the report. ‘As this tragic war enters its second year, I want to reassure the people of Ukraine and the international community that they can count on the IAEA, and me as its Director General, to do everything possible within our remit to assist them and to avert the danger of a nuclear accident that could cause even more suffering where there is already far too much.’

· How a Radioactive Capsule Was Lost and Improbably Found in the Australian Outback: “At Sue Schmidt’s gas station and roadhouse off a remote highway in the Australian Outback, employees usually watch out for snakes when they are walking outside. But this week, they were looking for something else: A tiny capsule of radioactive material that sparked a search along a roughly 900-mile stretch of the road…Officials were preparing for the possibility of a long search, but there was a breakthrough after just seven says…Authorities say they are now investigating how the capsule of radioactive material, transport for which is heavily regulated, went missing and whether there were any issues in the packaging or trucking of the object.”

· ‘Relatively Common’: WA’s Lost-and-Found Radioactive Capsule not the Only Missing Material Around: “If finding the tiny radioactive capsule that went missing in the vast Australian outback was like finding a needle in a haystack, at least the needle was crying out “here I am!”, Dr Edward Obbard says…The search for the missing capsule captured the world’s imagination, but Obbard says radioactive material goes AWOL about 100 times a year around the world. A radioactive piece of material that is not currently being regulated – that is, it isn’t under some kind of authority or oversight – is known as an “orphan source”. And while Australia is a highly regulated country, it has had its own orphan sources…Globally, the Centre for Nonproliferation Studies’ global incidents and trafficking database shows there have been 1,205 incidents of “nuclear and other radioactive materials outside regulatory control” since 2013.

EVOLVING AND EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

· Keeping Humans in the Loop is not Enough to Make AI Safe for Nuclear Weapons: “Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems suffer from a myriad of unique technical problems that could directly raise the risk of inadvertent nuclear weapons use. To control these issues, the United States and the United Kingdom have committed to keeping humans in the decision-making loop. However, the greatest danger may not lie in the technology itself, but rather in its impact on the humans interacting with it…[The] support for AI integration with nuclear command is happening at the same time as a massive modernization of the US nuclear command apparatus. In the near future, experts foresee AI integration being used to improve the capabilities of early-warning and surveillance systems, comb through large data sets, make predictions about enemy behavior, enhance protection against cyberattacks, and improve communications infrastructure throughout nuclear command systems.”

· Nuclear Energy Security: Sleep Walking into the Next Energy Crisis? Nuclear Energy Security: Sleep Walking into the Next Energy Crisis?: “Nuclear energy produces roughly one fifth of electricity in the EU and USA. Commentators focus on Russia’s dominance over European and American nuclear power in three areas. Firstly, Russia is a major uranium supplier, the material mined for nuclear fuel. Secondly, Russia is even more dominant in developing uranium into nuclear fuel via conversion and enrichment processes, representing 46% of the world’s enrichment capacity. On average, the EU and USA depend on Russia for over 20% of their supplies and services in these areas. Thirdly, commentators note that many nuclear plants in Eastern Europe are Russian made and rely on Russia for maintenance and fuel supply. While Europe and the USA have some counter measures—principally restarting or building processing capacity—these will take time, money, and a thus far absent urgency. Focusing on these areas, particularly Russia’s dominance in processing, is an insufficient analysis of the risks to the West’s nuclear energy security. A broader, more holistic view reveals that uranium is potentially the most vulnerable facet of the nuclear sector. Russia can target the uranium supply beyond its services and trade, and a tight uranium market will amplify the impact of disruptive action.”

MATERIAL MINIMIZATION

· AUKUS: Biden Urged to Fast-Track Research Into Submarines Using Non-Weapons Grade Uranium: “The Biden administration is being urged to fast-track research into submarines that do not use weapons-grade uranium, as four Democratic politicians warn the AUKUS deal with Australia makes the task “even more pressing”. Australia’s deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, arrived in the United States for crucial talks with the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, on Friday (US time), amid renewed congressional concerns about aspects of the flagship AUKUS project.”…A newly published letter coordinated by Bill Foster, a physicist serving as US representative for an Illinois congressional district, asks the Biden administration to ramp up research into alternatives to using weapons-grade uranium to power submarines. It adds to concerns already raised by experts that if the Australian submarines are powered by highly enriched uranium (HEU), other countries may seek to follow the precedent – even though they will not be armed with nuclear weapons.”

Member Organization Announcements and Updates

AFRICAN CENTER FOR SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY (AFRICSIS)

·  From February 16-17, AFRICSIS held a High-Level Meeting on Facilitating Adherence to the Amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (A/CPPNM) in Accra, Ghana. Director Hubert Foy led opening remarks as the talks explored CPPNM and its importance in international nuclear security architecture.

CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE

· On February 13, 2023, Toby Dalton co-director and senior fellow of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment and Eric Brewer published a commentary, “South Korea Nuclear Flirtations Highlight the Growing Risks of Allied Proliferation” about South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s January comments about his country possibly acquiring nuclear weapons. Read their take.

CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (CSIS)

· On March 14, 2023, CSIS PONI will host IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi to discuss the Agency’s role in Ukraine and other nuclear issues. Register here.

HENRY L. STIMSON CENTER

· Christina McAllister took part in the Virtual Discussion on the 1540 Committee Mandate Renewal and Next Steps organized by the U.S. Department of State on February 16, 2023.

JAMES MARTIN CENTER FOR NONPROLIFERATION STUDIES (CNS)

· On February 14, 2023, CNS announced the publication of a report, “Radiological Security in Contested Territories: The Successful Case of the Removal of Disused Radioactive Sources and Materials from Transdniestria.” Download the report.

· On February 22, 2023, the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) announced the latest edition of the “Global Incidents and Trafficking Database,” produced by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies exclusively for NTI. The report documents 352 incidents of nuclear and radiological material outside of regulatory control between 2020-2021. Explore the full database.

NUCLEAR THREAT INITIATIVE (NTI)

· On February 16, 2023, NTI shared that it is participating in the Munich Security Conference: Advancing Global Nuclear Fail-Safe and Addressing Catastrophic Biological Risks. Learn more.

· On March 2, 2023, NTI will host White House Assistant to the President for Homeland Security Dr. Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall and other senior U.S. officials to discuss the Biden Administration’s new WMD strategy. Register here.

ODESA CENTER FOR NONPROLIFERATION (ODCNP)

· On February 7, 2023, Ali Alkis presented the international legal framework regarding the attacks against nuclear facilities during a workshop organized by the Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS) and OdCNP in Paris, France.

· On February 21, 2023, Ali Alkis and Valeriia Gergiieva published an article in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “Why Russia May Control Turkey’s Nuclear Energy for the Next 80 Years.” Read their analysis.

UNIVERSITY OF ANTWERP

· On February 15, 2023, Tom Sauer of Research Group International Politics at the University of Antwerp, Belgium had an interview with the Clingendael Institute about nuclear threats and the war in Ukraine. Read the Q&A.

VIENNA CENTER FOR DISARMAMENT AND NON-PROLIFERATION (VCDNP)

· On January 26, 2023, the VCDNP hosted a webinar with Dr. Trevor Findlay to discuss his new book, Transforming Nuclear Safeguards Culture: The IAEA, Iran, and the Future of Non-Proliferation, which explores the evolution of organizational culture at the IAEA from pre-1990 to today. Learn about his work.

· On January 31, 2023, the VCDNP and the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded Practical Arrangements in recognition of their cooperative relationship of more than a decade. Read the announcement.

· On February 1, 2023, Senior Research Associate Hanna Notte spoke at a briefing on the future of the New START Treaty. Listen here.

WORLD INSTITUTE FOR NUCLEAR SECURITY (WINS)

· On March 21, 2023, WINS will host the EMEA and Pacific Edition of the Virtual Tabletop Exercise – “Responding to Nuclear Security Incidents during Transport: Encouraging a More Diverse Workforce.” Register for the event.

· On March 22, 2023, WINS will host the EMEA and Americas Edition of the Virtual Tabletop Exercise – “Responding to Nuclear Security Incidents during Transport: Encouraging a More Diverse Workforce.” Register here.

INDIVIDUAL MEMBER UPDATES

· Sylvia Mishra, a Senior Nuclear Policy Associate at the Institute for Security and Technology (IST) updated INSF with the following updates:

o She published “Nuclear Crisis Communications: Mapping Risk Reduction Implementation Pathways” in IST Report on January 23, 2023. Look here.

o On January 27, 2023, Sylvia Mishra wrote “The Nuclear Risk Reduction Approach: A Useful Path Forward for Crisis Mitigation” in the Asia Pacific Leadership Network. Read more.

o On December 1, 2022, Sylvia Mishra produced a piece, “Nuclear Risk Reduction: In Search for a Common Denominator.” Read the op-ed.

· Artem Lazarev from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) shared the following updates:

o On February 6-8 2023, UNODC conducted a mission to the Republic of Mauritius to hold, among other things, held bilateral meetings with high-level representatives of the country on the importance of joining the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism (ICSANT), synergies of this Convention with other treaties in the area of nuclear security and relevant UNODC’s assistance

o On February 14, 2023, UNODC conducted a country visit to the Republic of Maldives to promote adherence to, and effective implementation of, ICSANT. Both visits took place within the context of the EU-funded project “Union support to promote universalization and effective implementation of the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism.”

o On February 7-8, 2023, UNODC participated in the virtual Middle East and Central Asia Regional Workshop on the Amended Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (A/CPPNM), organized by the NGOs Ambit Advisory and Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), and delivered a presentation on UNODC’s contribution to the universalization and effective implementation of the CPPNM and its Amendment.

o On 16-17 February, UNODC contributed to the High-Level Meeting on Facilitating Adherence to A/CPPNM in Africa, organized by the African Center for Science and International Security (AFRICSIS). UNODC delivered presentations on its work to promote universalization and implementation of A/CPPNM and synergies with ICSANT, as well as its legislative and capacity-building assistance services, and participated in the open discussion on practical challenges to challenges to, and opportunities for, joining nuclear treaties.

· Dr. Bahram Ghiassee, associate fellow of the Henry Jackson Society and Member of the International Nuclear Law Association (Brussels), and the Nuclear Institute (UK), shared the following updates:

o From April 25-29, 2022, he presented at the IAEA Conference in Vienna, Austria on “International Conference on Nuclear Law: The Global Debate.”

o Bahram wrote an opinion piece, “The War in Ukraine Contains Lessons for Iran” in March 2022. Read the op-ed.

o In July 2022, he issued a research report on “Radiological Terrorism: A Global Policy Challenge in Need of Urgent Action” through the Henry Jackson Society. Learn more.

o In October 2022, Bahram published “The Need to Enhance the International Legal and Institutional Frameworks Governing Radioactive Sources and Radiological Facilities,” Nuclear Future (UK Nuclear Institute J) 18, no. 5 (October 2022).

o On January 13, 2023, he commented on the detection of uranium at the Heathrow Airport. Ghiassee countered claims that the uranium found at Heathrow could have been intended for a dirty bomb and explained that uranium in its natural form poses little threat to public health. Read the article.

o On January 22, he was quoted by the Sunday Express on Iran’s nuclear program and enrichment process. Read the full piece.

o Bahram also published a January 2022 report, The Vulnerabilities of Iran’s Nuclear Facilities to Drone Strikes that resonates with the recent drone strikes on military installations and other infrastructure in Iran. Explore the report.

o February 20, 2023, Bahram served as an expert for a Voice of America (Farsi) interview on “Iran’s Nuclear Weapons, Capabilities in Light of Uranium Enrichment at 84%.” Watch here.

o Under his supervision, the following MSc dissertation projects were completed in September 2022 at the University of Surrey Physics Department:

§ “Radiological Terrorism is Posing a Major Threat at International, Regional, and National Levels, Requiring Counter Measures to be Instituted Urgently.”

§ “Micro-Reactors (MRs) and Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) Are Proving to Be the Technology Choice for the Next Generation of Nuclear Power Reactors Across the Globe.”

§ “To Counter the Threat of Radiological Terrorism, Action Must be Taken at International, Regional, and National Levels.”

§ “‘Emerging Technologies’ Are Posing Threats to the Security of Nuclear Weapons Systems and Civil Nuclear Facilities.”

· Igor Khripunov, a former nonresident fellow of the Stimson Center, recently published his book, Human Factor in Nuclear Security. His work provides an applicable framework for developing a shared architecture of CBRN culture and offers an approach to make the human factor an asset for a robust nuclear security regime. Check out his book.

Opportunities

· The Partnership for Global Security (PGS) is currently seeking applications for the Della Ratta Fellowship. The Fellow will conduct policy research related to the intersection of nuclear energy, climate change, and global security. This is a six-month stipend-supported fellowship. To apply, please send a resume and cover letter to drfellow@partnershipforglobalsecurity.org by April 14, 2023. Click here 2023. Click here to learn more about the application.

· The IAEA launched a new initiative, the Lise Meitner Programme (LMP), which provides early- and mid‑career women professionals with opportunities to participate in a multiweek visiting professional programme and advance their technical and soft skills. Professionals are invited to submit applications to join the programme by March 19, 2023. Learn more and apply.

· The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) is accepting applications for a Research Assistant and Programme Administrator for Defence and Military Analysis Programme at its London Office. The position will assist the Defense and Military Analysis Programme in the implementation of the Missile Dialogue Initiative, a multi-year Track 1.5 project that seeks to strengthen international discussion and to promote a high-level exchange of views on missile technologies and related international security dynamics. Apply here.

· CRDF Global is hiring a Program Manager for its Nuclear Security Team. View the vacancy.

· George Washington University is searching for a Program Manager for Nuclear Security Engagement. Apply for the role.

· The National Nuclear Security Administration is looking for an Associate Administrator for Defense Nuclear Security and Chief of Defense Nuclear Security. Learn more.

· The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) is offering an opportunity to join its Proliferation and Nuclear Policy Programme (PNP). The Programme Manager would support the work of the PNP team, and other RUSI research groups on an ad hoc basis. This is a chance to make a substantial contribution to the day to day running of the PNP team and support high-level dialogues on nuclear policy, research on nuclear and chemical weapons issues in North Korea and Iran, and the UK Project on Nuclear Issues, a next-generation network connecting emerging nuclear professionals to established experts in the field. Apply for the position by March 3, 2023.

· The NATO Defense College Research Division, in collaboration with the Nuclear Policy Directorate at NATO Headquarters recently announced a call for applicants for the 5th Annual Early-Career Nuclear Strategists Workshop (ECNSW), to be hosted in-person at the NATO Defense College in Rome, Italy on 21-23 June 2023. Learn more and apply.

· The Public Policy and Nuclear Threats Boot Camp at UC San Diego is open for applications. The 2023 PPNT Boot Camp will be hosted by IGCC at UC San Diego from July 9–21 and is open to all graduate-level students, post-docs, and professionals, and features lectures, discussions, debates, and policy simulations. Participants attend talks by distinguished researchers, academics, policy officials, and operational specialists from leading universities, the National Laboratories, international organizations, and government agencies dealing with nuclear threats, command and control, international safeguards, nonproliferation strategies, and other nuclear issues. Read more to apply.

· Center for New American Security (CNAS) is hosting The Pitch: A Competition of New Ideas, its annual premier event to elevate emerging and diverse voices in national security. Selected applicants will make their pitch for innovative policy ideas to meet new challenges in U.S. national security policy in front of a distinguished panel of judges. Apply by March 12, 2023.

· The Wilson Center is now accepting applications for the 2023 Nuclear History Boot Camp. Aimed at building a new generation of experts on the international history of nuclear weapons, the eleventh Nuclear History Boot Camp is an initiative of the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project (NPIHP). NPIHP’s Nuclear History Boot Camp is an intensive, eight-day immersion in the history of nuclear matters ranging from the evolution of nuclear technology to the origins and development of deterrence theory and nuclear strategy through the historical roots of today’s global nuclear landscape. Applications due March 7, 2023. Learn more.

· Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), in support of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), are pleased to announce the 2023 International Nuclear Safeguards Policy and Information Analysis Course, a one-week, tuition-free, intensive course in Monterey, California (or online due to Covid-19 restrictions), and up to six paid summer internships at LLNL. The course is tuition free and open to all nationalities. Some stipends may be available to nonlocal applicants to partially cover transportation and housing. Course applicants who are U.S. citizens may also apply for a ten-week paid internship at LLNL. The internships pay $6,000 total, which is paid in two installments of $3,000. A selection panel will interview qualified applicants for internships. Successful completion of the course is a prerequisite for the internships. Apply by March 3, 2023. Apply here.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY TWO – From the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

RUSSIA SUSPENDS NEW START AND IS READY TO RESUME NUCLEAR TESTING

By François Diaz-Maurin | February 21, 2023

On Tuesday, in his long-delayed state-of-the-nation address, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Moscow would suspend its participation in the New START nuclear arms treaty, but not withdraw from it. Putin added that Russia stands ready to resume nuclear weapons tests if the United States does.

The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty is the only bilateral nuclear arms control agreement between the United States and Russia, which possess the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals and more than 90 percent of its nuclear warheads.

Since 2010, New START has limited the United States and Russia to 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads and 700 delivery vehicles each. In addition, the treaty allows each party to conduct 18 on-site inspections every year. New START is set to expire in February 2026—three years from now.

Echoing his president, a Russian lawmaker told TASS, the Russian state-owned news agency, that Moscow may “denounce” New START if the United States continues to ignore Russian calls to reconsider the way it is implemented. The “[treaty’s] implementation needs to be clarified,” the lawmaker added. This request for clarification left experts both perplexed and puzzled as to why a treaty that has been working properly for over a decade suddenly would need clarification, with no party having changed its posture.

Putin’s speech was quickly followed by a flurry of comments on Twitter from nuclear policy experts about the significance and consequences of his decision to suspend New START.

Jon Wolfsthal, a senior advisor at Global Zero and a member of the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board, warned that both the United States and Russia have many more nuclear weapons and delivery systems in reserve that they could deploy if the treaty goes away. But Wolfsthal lowered concerns that Putin’s decision would affect US security: “[The United States] still has extensive ability to monitor Russian nuclear forces even without a treaty in place.” Laura Kennedy, a former US ambassador to Turkmenistan and US permanent representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, also cautioned about the political implications: “Putin is also aiming to unsettle the US domestic political situation. Here too, important that we not take the bait, but consult and respond appropriately.”

Hans Kristensen, a researcher at the Federation of American Scientists and co-author of the Bulletin’s nuclear notebook, said that New START and nuclear arms control were important to Russia’s security too: “Without it, [the United States] could double [its] deployed arsenal.” Matt Korda, also at the Federation of American Scientists and co-author of the nuclear notebook, reacted: “This is a massive own-goal by Putin. Russia benefits from New START just as much as the United States. This decision is clearly political and emotional, not strategic.” Korda added that the expected biannual data exchange scheduled for March 1, 2023, “presumably won’t happen now.” This is a “huge loss for transparency,” he added.

James Acton, co-director of the Nonproliferation Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, had a pithier initial reaction on Twitter: “Well, this sucks.” With less transparency comes more uncertainty about the other party’s deployed nuclear forces, with a possible increase in the perceived threat, Acton said: “There’s an assumption that, by ‘suspending’ [rather than withdraw from] New START, Putin is signaling an intention to stay below the central limits. I think this is *probably* right but, in my opinion, there’s real uncertainty here.” Wolfsthal went further adding that “the loss of agreements will increase uncertainty and chances of misunderstanding, inflate threat perception and fuel accelerating arms race.”

Experts were also worried about the long-term consequences of Putin’s decision. In a Twitter space, Monica Montgomery, a policy analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation said: “It’s not a change on any posture on the ground, but it is a concerning development [for] the long-term future of arms control.” Others were even more pessimistic. François Heisbourg, a senior advisor for Europe at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and a special adviser at the Foundation for Strategic Research, said on Twitter that the “US-Russian arms control is officially dead after more than a half a century,” referring to Putin’s decision. “[The United States] remains a superpower. [Russia] now becomes just a power with nukes,” Heisbourg concluded.

RELATED:

“When it comes to Russia, it’s like living in a volcano” — Interview with Farida Rustamova, an independent reporter in Putin’s Russia

While many were hopeful that Putin would use his speech to announce that Russia would be pulling out of Ukraine, instead the partial pullout he announced involves New START. But Putin’s decision to suspend New START was not exactly a jaw-dropping surprise. It came after a series of decisions had already started to undermine the treaty in recent years. On-site inspections under New START have been suspended since 2020—first due to the COVID-19 pandemic and now because of the war in Ukraine. Last year, Russia postponed a meeting of the Bilateral Consultative Commission, the treaty’s implementing body, planned for November 2022. In addition, Russia’s ongoing war on Ukraine has reduced the prospects that a follow-on agreement could be negotiated before New START expires in 2026.

Putin’s suggestion on Tuesday that Russia could resume nuclear testing has so far received less attention than the announcement of a New START suspension. It was not clear why Russia alluded to the United States possibly resuming nuclear testing.

Nuclear weapons tests have had a record of wide and long-lasting impacts on military personnel, populations, and the environment. A resumption of nuclear testing would put an end to a global moratorium in place since Cold War times.

Putin’s decision happened while US President Joe Biden made a surprise visit in Ukraine to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky and offer his administration’s “unwavering support” against Russian forces. In his address, the Russian president put the blame for his decision on the United States and its NATO allies for openly seeking to inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia in Ukraine.

Later on Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken offered the first official US reaction. Addressing journalists from the US embassy in Athens, Blinken qualified Russia’s decision as “deeply unfortunate and irresponsible,” but added “it matters that [the United States] continues to act responsibly in this area. It’s also something the rest of the world expects of us.”

ATTACHMENT TWENTY THREE – From Global Zero

NUCLEAR NO FIRST USE

What does No-First-Use (NFU) actually mean?

“No First Use” is a commitment to never use nuclear weapons first under any circumstances, whether as a preemptive attack or first strike, or in response to non-nuclear attack of any kind.

Where do nuclear-armed countries stand on No First Use?

China is the only nuclear-armed country to have an unconditional NFU policy. India maintains a policy of NFU with exceptions for a response to chemical or biological attacks.

France, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States maintain policies that permit the first use of nuclear weapons in a conflict. Israel does not acknowledge the existence of its nuclear arsenal so has no publicly known position.

Why advocate for global NFU commitments now?

The world has never faced so many crises that could escalate to nuclear conflict. In addition to the precarious situation on the Korean peninsula, we’re running acceptably high risks of nuclear weapons use between NATO and Russia, India and Pakistan, and the United States and China. In fact right now the chances that nuclear weapons will be used — intentionally, accidentally, or due to miscalculation — are the highest they’ve been since the worst days of the Cold War.

Establishing global NFU commitments would immediately make the world safer by resolving uncertainty about what a nuclear-armed country might do in a crisis, which removes pressure and incentive for any one country to “go nuclear” first in a crisis.

What are consequences of nuclear first use?

Any use of a nuclear weapon would invite massive retaliation. A recent study by Global Zero estimated U. S. fatalities due to a Russian retaliation to a U.S. nuclear first strike. It found 30% of the total population of the top 145 biggest cities in the United States — 21 million Americans — would die in a Russian nuclear counterattack. To put that in perspective, in the first 24 hours the U.S. death toll would be 50 times greater than all American casualties in World War II.

Not to mention the horrific aftermath of nuclear war. A 2014 study shows that so-called “limited” nuclear war in South Asia, in which 100 nuclear weapons are used, would have global consequences. Millions of tons of smoke would be sent into the atmosphere, plunging temperatures and damaging the global food supply. Two billion people would be at risk of death by starvation.

How are No First Use commitments a step toward the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons?

Global No First Use would be an important step toward making nuclear weapons irrelevant to national security. These policies would strip nuclear weapons of value in the eyes of military planners, enable future nuclear disarmament negotiations, and accelerate the dismantling of these weapons. It would also serve as a “confidence-building measure” that establishes greater trust among nuclear-armed countries and makes it easier to work together to reduce nuclear risks and ultimately eliminate all nuclear weapons.

No First Use in the United States

What does current United States policy say about the first use of nuclear weapons?

The 2018 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) maintains the policy “the United States would only consider the employment of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States, its allies, and partners.” This loose language holds open the possibility that nuclear weapons would be used in an initial attack (which can be ordered by the president, whose authority to use nuclear weapons is virtually limitless) or in response to a conventional, biological, chemical or cyber attack.

Who would believe a U.S. NFU policy?

Making a NFU policy credible — establishing it as a commitment that other countries can count on — means going beyond simple declaratory statements. This would require meaningful changes to the kinds of nuclear weapons the United States builds and the way it deploys them. One tangible way to show your NFU policy means something is to take all nuclear weapons off high-alert, meaning they are no longer ready to launch instantly. Another is to eliminate all land-based nuclear missiles (also known as intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs), which are by definition nuclear first-strike weapons, and prioritize the kinds of systems that would be used only in response to a nuclear attack.

More recommendations for what the U.S. nuclear arsenal could look like under a guiding principle of NFU can be found in Global Zero’s Alternative U.S. Nuclear Posture Review.

How would adoption of a NFU policy affect national security? Don’t we need to keep all our options on the table to deter our enemies?

There exists no plausible circumstance in which the use of a nuclear weapon would be in the national security interests of the United States, American people, or U.S. allies. A nuclear counterattack following a U.S. first strike would be catastrophic, resulting in the deaths of millions of Americans and the total devastation of economic and social infrastructure. Any first use against lesser threats, such as countries or terrorist groups with chemical and biological weapons, would be gratuitous; there are very effective alternative means of countering those threats.

There is little evidence to suggest nuclear weapons are effective in deterring non-nuclear attacks, including biological and chemical use. If the United States suffered a non-nuclear attack, it is difficult to imagine any president considering using nuclear weapons — destroying entire cities and killing hundreds of thousands of people, damaging the environment for generations, spreading deadly radiation possibly to uninvolved countries — in retaliation.

Is there support for U.S. adoption of NFU?

There is growing momentum for NFU in the United States. A 2016 poll showed at least two-thirds of Americans support NFU. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Representative Adam Smith (D-WA9) have introduced the No First Use Act (S.1219/H.R.2603) which states, “It is the policy of the United States to not use nuclear weapons first.”

A number of former senior-level military commanders and government officials support U.S. adoption of NFU, including former Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General (ret.) James E. Cartwright, Ambassador Thomas Pickering, and former Secretary of Defense William Perry. 

How would adoption of No First Use affect U.S. commitments to its allies and partners? Would they be encouraged to develop their own nuclear arsenals?

NFU in no way reduces the ability of the United States to deter nuclear attacks on the U.S. or its allies. Allies would be able to rely on the superior capabilities of U.S. non-nuclear forces, which are sufficient to deal with threats to the U.S. and its allies, including biological or chemical weapons threats. A NFU policy would also help allay apprehensions among some allies about the U.S. using nuclear weapons first in a conflict. The first use of nuclear weapons against Russia or China would invite massive retaliation against the U.S. and its allies. First use against lesser threats like North Korea could result in blanketing allies or others uninvolved in the conflict with deadly radioactive fallout.

A 2016 Global Zero study that looked at the potential for a NFU policy to encourage proliferation by U.S. allies with extended deterrence agreements found no evidence that a country’s decision to remain non-nuclear was based on its expectation that the United States would conduct a nuclear first strike on its behalf. The reliability of commitments to second-strike and conventional (non-nuclear) defense were found to be more important to extended deterrence. A move to develop nuclear weapons would also go against allied obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Is it true the U.S. President has the sole authority to order the launch of nuclear weapons? What effect does NFU have on that authority?

Every American president has sole authority to order the launch of nuclear weapons. No one — not Congress, not the secretary of defense, not the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — can veto his or her decision. That means under the current system, one person has the power to start a nuclear war at any time, for any reason.

A legally-binding NFU policy would change that by making the first use of nuclear weapons illegal, clearly limiting the circumstances under which a president’s nuclear launch order could be executed.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY FOUR – From Open Access Government.org

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THERE WAS A NUCLEAR WAR?

October 18, 2022

A full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia would see global food systems obliterated and over 5 billion people die of hunger

In his starkest assessment yet, U.S. president Joe Biden has declared that the world is the closest it has come to nuclear catastrophe in 60 years and so it comes as no surprise that many of us are worried.

“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis,” he said.

“[Putin is] not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming.”

And it’s true in the sense that Putin and his officials have threatened nuclear weapons against the U.S. and allies in pursuit of its invasion of Ukraine.

As dark and depressing as the prospect of nuclear war is, it is natural to be curious about its potential. A global study led by Rutgers climate scientists estimates post-conflict crop production.

Lead author Lili Xia, an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers, and co-author Alan Robock, a distinguished Professor of climate science in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University have built upon past research to determine what would happen if there was a nuclear war.

We must prevent a nuclear war from ever happening

“The data tell us one thing: We must prevent a nuclear war from ever happening,” comments Robock.

Xia, Robock and colleagues have calculated how much sun-blocking soot could be ignited, as a result of nuclear weapons. The researchers determined soot dispersal for a variety of war scenarios – from smaller India-Pakistan wars to a large U.S.-Russia war. They based the destruction on the size of each country’s nuclear arsenal.

So, what would happen if there was a nuclear war?

Even under the smallest nuclear scenario, say a localised war between India and Pakistan, the destruction would be immense. The global average caloric production would decrease by 7% within five years of the conflict.

Global average caloric production would decrease by about 90%

The team also tested what would happen in the event of U.S. Russia nuclear conflict. In this instance, global average caloric production would decrease by about 90% three to four years after the fighting.

Severe crop declines in mid-high latitude nations

Crop declines would be the most severe in the mid-high latitude nations. This includes major exporting countries such as Russia and the U.S.

Declining crops could lead to export restrictions and cause severe disruptions in places dependent on imports such as Africa and the Middle East.

The research team predicted that these changes would induce a catastrophic disruption of global food markets.

In fact, a 7% global decline in crop yield might not sound like much, but its impact would be astronomical. It would exceed the largest anomaly ever recorded since the beginning of Food and Agricultural Organization observational records in 1961.

And under the largest war scenario – a war between the U.S. and Russia – more than 75% of the planet would be starving within two years.

The team considered whether using crops fed to livestock as human food or reducing food waste could offset caloric losses in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear war, but concluded that the savings were minimal under the large injection scenarios.

“Future work will bring even more granularity to the crop models,” Xia said.

The ozone layer would be destroyed by the heating of the stratosphere

“For instance, the ozone layer would be destroyed by the heating of the stratosphere, producing more ultraviolet radiation at the surface, and we need to understand that impact on food supplies.”

Nuclear weapons must be banned

Robock attests that researchers already know how dangerous a nuclear war would be. A nuclear attack of any size would obliterate global food systems and kill billions of people in the process.

The only solution, is to ban nuclear weapons, explains the professor: “If nuclear weapons exist, they can be used, and the world has come close to nuclear war several times.

Banning nuclear weapons is the only long-term solution

“Banning nuclear weapons is the only long-term solution. The five-year-old UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has been ratified by 66 nations, but none of the nine nuclear states.

“Our work makes clear that it is time for those nine states to listen to science and the rest of the world and sign this treaty.”

ATTACHMENT TWENTY FIVE – From Forbes

NO SUNNY DAYS FOR A DECADE, EXTREME COLD AND STARVATION: ‘NUCLEAR WINTER’ AND THE URGENT NEED FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION

By Jamie Carter Feb 13, 2023,07:15pm EST

What would a “nuclear winter” be like? While there is no immediate sign of nuclear warheads being used in the Russia-Ukraine war, the risks of a nuclear exchange are surely at their highest for 40 years.

So why is there so little awareness of the potential consequences of the use of nuclear warheads?

That’s the question at the core of new research published  by the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER). It’s based on a survey last month of 3,000 people in the US and UK that was designed to discover how much is known about “nuclear winter.”

It reveals a lack of awareness among US and UK populations of what a “nuclear winter” would entail. Just 3.2% in the UK and 7.5% in the US said they had heard of “nuclear winter” in contemporary media or culture.

In short, we need another Carl Sagan, the late popular scientist who in the early 1980s famously warned the world about the effects of nuclear war.

“There is an urgent need for public education within all nuclear-armed states that is informed by the latest research,” said Paul Ingram, CSER senior research associate. “We need to collectively reduce the temptation that leaders of nuclear-armed states might have to threaten or even use such weapons in support of military operations.”

A “nuclear winter” would be the result of a chain reaction that would go something like this:

· Nuclear warheads striking cities would cause firestorms and send huge amounts of soot into the stratosphere.

· That soot would block out much of the Sun for up to a decade.

· Temperatures would drop around the world, leaving many places sub-zero.

· Mass crop failure. International trade in food suspended.

· Mass starvation of hundreds of millions of people in countries remote from the conflict.

· Soil and water close to where nuclear weapons were used would be contaminated.

A paper published in August 2022 in Nature Food modeling the amount of soot injected into Earth’s atmosphere after the detonation of nuclear weapons predicted that more than five billion people could die from a war between the U.S. and Russia. The authors suggested that while the use of relatively few nuclear weapons may have a small global impact, “once a nuclear war starts, it may be very difficult to limit escalation.”

If most people are unaware of the consequences of nuclear warfare then that’s a problem for society, particularly in the event of a Russian nuclear attack on Ukraine, according to the CSER. “Any stability within nuclear deterrence is undermined if it is based on decisions that are ignorant of the worst consequences of using nuclear weapons,” said Ingam. “Of course, it is distressing to consider large-scale catastrophes, but decisions need to account for all potential consequences to minimize the risk.”

The survey also gauges support in the UK and US for western retaliation against Russia in the event of a nuclear attack on Ukraine. Fewer than one in five people surveyed in both countries supported nuclear retaliation, with men more likely than women to back nuclear reprisal: 20.7% (US) and 24.4% (UK) of men compared to 14.1% (US) and 16.1% (UK) of women.

However, support for nuclear retaliation was lower by 16% in the US and 13% in the UK among participants shown infographics on “nuclear winter” than among a control group.

“In 2023 we find ourselves facing a risk of nuclear conflict greater than we’ve seen since the early 1980s,” said Ingam. “Yet there is little in the way of public knowledge or debate of the unimaginably dire long-term consequences of nuclear war for the planet and global populations.”

“Ideas of nuclear winter are predominantly a lingering cultural memory as if it is the stuff of history, rather than a horribly contemporary risk.”

ATTACHMENT TWENTY SIX – From the Washington Post

THE CYBERSECURITY 202

U.S. nuclear sites face hacking and espionage threats

Analysis by Tim Starks with research by Vanessa Montalbano February 3, 2023 at 7:25 a.m. EST

Hackers are pursuing nuclear targets, which are some of the most heavily regulated facilities in the United States. Despite those safeguards, the opportunities for espionage and much worse have made them alluring to hackers. 

The latest apparent espionage threat is a Chinese spy balloon over Montana, which is the site of several nuclear missile silos, my colleagues Dan Lamothe and Alex Horton report. Military advisers have advised President Biden against shooting down the balloon. The incident was first reported by NBC News.

· A Pentagon spokesman, Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, said that “the U.S. government acted immediately to prevent against the collection of sensitive information” once it spotted the balloon.

· Ryder said that the U.S. government has observed similar activity over a period of “several years.” A U.S. intelligence official said that similar balloons have been previously detected over Hawaii and Guam, which houses U.S. military assets.

And the leaders of two House committees on Thursday asked the Energy Department to send them documents related to cyberattacks by suspected Russian hackers aimed at U.S. national nuclear laboratories.

The Russian hackers, known as Cold River, went after nuclear scientists at Brookhaven, Argonne and Lawrence Livermore laboratories last summer, James Pearson and Chris Bing reported last month for Reuters.

“Although it is unclear whether the attempted intrusions were successful, it is alarming that a hostile foreign adversary targeted government labs working on scientific research critical to the national security and competitiveness of the United States,” Reps. James Comer (R-Ky.), chair of the Oversight and Accountability panel, and Frank D. Lucas (R-Okla.), chair of the Science, Space and Technology Committee, wrote in a letter seeking communications between agencies, labs and contractors. 

Hackers who got into the U.S. nuclear command and control system could, theoretically, “trigger a false alarm, making us think that Russian nuclear weapons were on their way” — giving the president mere minutes to decide whether to launch a retaliatory strike, former White House cybersecurity adviser Richard Clarke said in a video for the nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative last year.

Joining the list, here’s a partial accounting of prominent nuclear-related cyber incidents in recent years:

· One of the most famous computer worms is Stuxnet, a joint U.S.-Israel invention used to degrade Iranian nuclear centrifuges that was first discovered in 2010. Two years ago, Israel appeared to confirm another cyberattack on Iran’s main nuclear facility.

· The Justice Department last year unsealed charges against four Russian hackers over cyberattacks, including one on a breach of business systems at the Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation in Burlington, Kan.

· U.S. nuclear regulators have suffered cyberattacks. An internal investigation at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) found the agency had been hacked three times between 2010 and 2013. The landmark SolarWinds hack led to compromised systems at the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in 2020. In 2005, hackers made off with information about 1,500 NNSA employees.

· Possible North Korean hackers breached the administrative systems of the largest power plant in India, the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant in Tamil Nadu, in 2019.

· North Korean hackers also were suspected in a 2014 hack on South Korea’s nuclear operator.

· In 2016, German news outlet BR24 reported about the discovery of a computer virus at the nation’s Gundremmingen nuclear power plant.

· Perhaps the most recent incident, aside from the targeting of national laboratories, came last summer when Russian hackers mounted an “unprecedented,” “major” attack on the website of Ukrainian state nuclear operator Energoatom, the company said. A top Ukrainian official had said earlier in the Russian war that its nuclear power stations were “well protected.”

State of defenses

The Biden administration has been trying to install baseline security mandates for more industries, but nuclear is a sector that is among the most regulated already, alongside defense contractors and the financial services industry. The NRC “has really strict rules,” a White House official speaking on the condition of anonymity to more candidly discuss matters told me in a recent interview.

The NRC first put cybersecurity rules in place in the early 2000s, and under existing regulations, nuclear power plant operators must submit security plans to the agency for approval. The NRC is expected to propose additional cybersecurity rules for fuel cycle facilities this summer.

· The security of U.S. nuclear weapons is less a matter of regulation than how well the NNSA protects them.

Still, there are shortcomings.

The NRC needs to reorient how it conducts cybersecurity inspections at nuclear plants to focus on measuring performance, the agency’s inspector general said in a 2019 report. The report also warned that “the inspection program faces future staffing challenges because demographic and resource constraints work against optimal staffing.”

The Government Accountability Office said in a report last year that the NNSA “and its contractors have not fully implemented six foundational cybersecurity risk practices in its traditional IT environment,” such as assessing and updating organization-wide cyber risks. “NNSA also has not fully implemented these practices in its operational technology and nuclear weapons IT environments,” it wrote.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY SEVEN – From Bloomberg News

THE FINANCIAL CONDUCT AUTHORITY OFFICE IN LONDON.

By Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg News

After the London-based financial data group ION’s derivative trading unit was hit by a cyberattack, forcing several European and U.S. banks and brokers to process trades manually, regulators in both countries are looking into the hack. Lockbit, a ransomware gang, has threatened to publish stolen data from the firm, Reuters’s James Pearson and Danilo Masoni reported. 

· The United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority and Prudential Regulation Authority have started a joint probe, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private conversations, Bloomberg News’s William Shaw and Mark Burton report. The FCA is “aware of this ongoing incident” and will continue to work with other agencies and firms affected, a spokesman said.

· The United Kingdom’s National Cyber Security Center is also looking into the cyberattack, Bloomberg News’s William Shaw reports.

· Meanwhile in the United States, “the issue is currently isolated to a small number of smaller and midsize firms and does not pose a systemic risk to the financial sector,” said Todd Conklin, the Treasury Department’s deputy assistant secretary of the office of cybersecurity and critical infrastructure protection. “We remain connected with key financial sector partners, and will advise of any changes to this assessment.”

· The FBI also said it is seeking information on the cyberattack and has reached out to several ION executives to learn about how it is impacting customers. The agency has not yet launched an official probe, but “is aware of this incident and has nothing additional to report at this time,” a representative of the agency said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg News’s Katherine Doherty and Lydia Beyoud. 

“ION told clients Thursday that its systems won’t be fully operational until Feb. 5 and the firm still hasn’t been able to start several crucial recovery steps, according to email correspondence obtained by Bloomberg,” Shaw and Burton write. 

The attack directly impacted 42 of ION’s clients, but has upended derivatives trading across the globe, “as transactions back up and firms struggle to determine their margin requirements to enter or exit positions, according to multiple people familiar with the matter,” they added. 

North Korean hackers stole medical and energy research data in months-long breach

In a campaign that lasted between August and November 2022, the North Korean hacking group Lazarus stole nearly 100 gigabytes of research from private medical, chemical engineering, energy, and defense companies, along with information from a top university, according to a report released Wednesday by the Finland-based cybersecurity group WithSecure, Bill Toulas reports for Bleeping Computer. 

The campaign, known as No Pineapple!, did not cause any immediate destruction to the victims. However, the group was able to obtain emails, administrator credentials and other details from devices, likely for intelligence purposes. 

“WithSecure was able to attribute the activity based on multiple pieces of evidence,” Toulas writes, including “using IP addresses without domain names, a new version of the Dtrack info-stealer malware, and a new version of the GREASE malware used in admin account creation and protection bypass.” 

According to WithSecure, the hackers also made a mistake — one of the web shells planted by the infamous group was communicating with a North Korean IP address — which helped confirm their identity. 

House Homeland Security Committee chairman says panel will prioritize cyberthreats

After meeting with Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly, House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.) on Thursday said he is committed to strengthening the nation’s public and private resilience against cyberattacks. His comments come as a growing number of global adversaries are posing threats to U.S. infrastructure. 

“The Committee has a clear charge on cybersecurity oversight efforts this Congress and it will be critical we work hand in glove with CISA and industry to meet those objectives,” Green said in a statement. 

“My mission will be to strengthen CISA as an information enabler rather than as a regulatory agency,” Green said. “We are not here to overly burden industry, but we are here to ensure companies are doing their part to secure their systems and protect against the cascading and devastating impact one vulnerability can have on an entire network.” 

ATTACHMENT TWENTY EIGHT – From NTI (Nuclear Threat Initiative)

ADDRESSING CYBER-NUCLEAR SECURITY THREATS

What if a hacker shut down the security system at a highly sensitive nuclear materials storage facility, giving access to terrorists seeking highly enriched uranium to make a bomb?

Challenge

Cyber threats to nuclear materials, nuclear facilities and nuclear command, control and communications are becoming more sophisticated every day, and the global technical capacity to address the threat is limited.

Action

Working with some of the world’s top experts as well as stakeholders to develop forward-looking approaches to and guidelines to protect nuclear facilities from cyber attack.

Results

Two significant studies assessing cybersecurity practices at nuclear facilities and offering recommendations for improvement; ongoing efforts to strengthen cyber-nuclear security and response capabilities.

Details

What if a hacker shut down the security system at a highly sensitive nuclear materials storage facility, giving access to terrorists seeking highly enriched uranium to make a bomb? What if cyber-terrorists seized control of operations at a nuclear power plant–enabling a Fukushima-scale meltdown? Or, worse, what if hackers spoofed a nuclear missile attack, forcing a miscalculated retaliatory strike that could kill millions? Who and why? - DJI

The cyber threat affects nuclear risks in at least two ways: It can be used to undermine the security of nuclear materials and facility operations, and it can compromise nuclear command and control systems.

Traditional nuclear security practices have been focused on preventing physical attacks—putting in place “guns, guards, and gates” to prevent 1) theft of materials to build a bomb, 2) sabotage of a nuclear facility, or 3) unauthorized access of nuclear command, control, and communications systems. Important progress has been made in this “traditional” nuclear security arena, but the threat of a cyber attack is escalating. All countries are vulnerable, and nuclear cybersecurity practices haven’t caught up to the risk.

Across the nuclear sector worldwide, the technical capacity to address the cyber threat is extremely limited, even in countries with advanced nuclear power and research programs. Measures to guard against the cyber-nuclear threat are virtually non-existent in states with new or emerging nuclear programs. Expertise in the field of nuclear cybersecurity is in short-supply, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which provides countries with assistance and training in this area, does not have the resources necessary to address the growing threat.

The threat extends to the command, control, and communications (NC3) for nuclear weapons. Even in the United States, officials have stated that it cannot be fully confident that these systems will operate as planned if attacked by a sophisticated cyber opponent. Such attacks could jeopardize the confidence of U.S. officials of our nuclear systems, lead to false warning or even potentially allow an adversary to take control of a nuclear weapons system.

Governments are working to understand and minimize these vulnerabilities, but cyber threats are becoming more sophisticated every day and those responsible—from policymakers to military officials to facility operators to regulators— are working to keep pace.

Drawing upon the expertise of both nuclear and cybersecurity experts, NTI is working to develop a set of guiding principles for cybersecurity at nuclear facilities. The current mindset is one of slow, incremental change that cannot keep pace with an ever-evolving threat—a fresh look at the overarching framework that guides cybersecurity at nuclear facilities is needed.

NTI is also working to strengthen global cyber-nuclear security and response capabilities. Even with a new strategy to guide cyber-nuclear security, addressing implementation challenges will be a multi-year (or even multi-decade) effort. However, the potential for a catastrophic cyber incident will only continue to grow. In response, NTI is addressing the geographic unevenness of cyber-nuclear expertise by bringing together the global technical cyber-nuclear community to facilitate information exchange and foster a network of relationships upon which nuclear operators can draw for advice and assistance.

Finally, recognizing the game-changing threat cyber risks pose to nuclear command, control, and communications, NTI is working with former senior officials and other experts to determine the implications of cyber threats to nuclear command and control for U.S. nuclear policies and force postures.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY NINE – From Time

IN THE TECH WAR WITH CHINA, THE U.S. IS FINDING FRIENDS

BY GREGORY C. ALLEN FEBRUARY 23, 2023 3:20 PM EST

Allen is the Director of the AI Governance Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Previously, he was the Director of Strategy and Policy at the Department of Defense Joint Artificial Intelligence Center.

Whether the topic of the day is Chinese balloons or American AI breakthroughs, Washington and Beijing are increasingly seeing world events through the lens of a “tech war.” This ever intensifying rivalry is usually framed as “America vs. China,” but that misses a key point: America is not alone.

America’s greatest competitive advantage over China is not wealth or weapons, but the fact that America has a lot of close friends, and China has none. In fact, The only country that has signed a treaty to support China in the event of a war is North Korea, an impoverished pariah state that deliberately schedules nuclear tests and missile launches to embarrass China during high-profile diplomatic summits. Treaty or no, few would describe China and North Korea as friends.

It’s good to have friends, especially since many of America’s are world leaders in technologies of major strategic and geopolitical importance, including semiconductors. Most Americans are at least vaguely aware that Saudi Arabia is a key player in the global economy because it produces more than 10% of the world’s oil, but far fewer know that Taiwan produces more than 90% of the world’s most advanced semiconductor computer chips or that a single company based in the Netherlands, ASML, produces 100% of the most advanced lithography machines that are irreplaceable equipment for computer chip factories. Today, computer chips are vital inputs not only to datacenters and smartphones, but also to cars, critical infrastructure and even household appliances like washing machines. As the global economy has become more and more digitized, it has also grown more and more dependent upon chips. It’s for good reason that national security experts routinely declare semiconductors to be “the new oil” when it comes to geopolitics and international security.

Which brings us to the Biden Administration’s remarkable string of tech diplomacy achievements over the past several months. On October 7, 2022, the Biden Administration unilaterally imposed a set of export controls that restrict sales to China of advanced computer chips designed for running Artificial Intelligence applications and military supercomputers as well as the manufacturing equipment for making those chips. Since U.S. companies design more than 95% of the AI chips that are used in China, and also produce manufacturing equipment that is used in every single Chinese chip factory, these export controls pose an extraordinary obstacle to China’s ambitions to lead the world in AI technology and to achieve self-sufficiency in semiconductors.

However, the export controls were also a major diplomatic gamble. If the U.S. forced U.S. industry to stop selling advanced chips and chip-making equipment to China, only for other countries to step in and replace the United States, the policy would have dealt a major blow to U.S. industry. The U.S. would suffer a huge loss of market share and revenue in China and gain in return only a fleeting national security benefit, perhaps setting China back only a matter of months. The policy’s success depended entirely upon persuading U.S. allies—particularly Taiwan, the Netherlands, and Japan—to follow the U.S. lead and adopt similar export control regulations.

Taiwan was the first to signal that it was onboard with the new restrictions, announcing on October 8th that it would no longer allow Chinese chip design companies to contract with Taiwanese chip factories to produce chips that could replace those that America is no longer allowing to be sold to China. China has world class chip designers, but its chip factories are significantly behind the state of the art in Taiwan. Taiwan has ample reason to support Washington, both because Joe Biden has been more open than any American president in decades about defending Taiwan from possible Chinese invasion and also because the Taiwanese semiconductor industry has also been a serious victim of Chinese government-backed industrial espionage and illegal talent poaching campaigns. Taiwan’s government knows that China’s goal is to end its strategic semiconductor dependence upon Taiwan—which Taiwan refers to as its “silicon shield”—as fast as possible. Naturally, Taiwan is onboard with U.S. policies that aim to prevent that, though they generally prefer to be as quiet as possible about it to minimize the blowback from China.

Like Taiwan, Japan and the Netherlands are also global giants in the semiconductor industry. They, along with the United States, dominate the market for the astonishingly complicated equipment that is a vital component of every chip factory on Earth. While there are Chinese companies that produce semiconductor manufacturing equipment, they only produce a fraction of the many different types of equipment that are required to produce chips, and the equipment that Chinese companies do produce is far behind the state of the art in the U.S., the Netherlands, and Japan. The most advanced Dutch lithography machines, for example, contain more than 100,000 parts, cost more than $340 million each, and rival the James Webb Space telescope or Large Hadron Collider in terms of technological complexity.

With the October 7th export controls, the U.S. cut China off from the most advanced U.S. semiconductor manufacturing equipment, but this would be a fleeting, hollow victory if Japan and the Netherlands did not immediately follow suit. There are some kinds of equipment that only U.S. companies can currently make, but Dutch and Japanese companies produce equivalently advanced machines in highly related technical disciplines. In other words, they could develop new products to replace U.S. tech relatively quickly—at least a decade faster than China by itself—if the reward was guaranteed monopoly access to a large Chinese customer base.

Unfortunately for China, Japan, and the Netherlands are not going to do that. In late January, the Biden Administration secured a remarkable diplomatic victory: a deal with the Netherlands and Japan to establish multilateral semiconductor technology export controls on China. Though the specific details of the deal will take months of continued negotiation to finalize and likely will not be known until the Netherlands and Japan publish their updated export control regulations, two essential details are now known: Japan and the Netherlands will not allow their equipment companies to replace U.S. industry for sales to China, and the countries will broaden the set of export control restricted equipment to include items that U.S. industry does not make, including advanced lithography equipment. If adequately enforced, the deal will likely add a decade or two to the timeline for China’s plans for semiconductor self-sufficiency—and China may now never reach it at all.

Like Taiwan, Japanese and Dutch companies have been victims of China’s government-backed industrial espionage for semiconductor technology. And while they have historically feared Chinese retaliation for any measures taken to stop such provocations, they also have had to reassess their prior foreign policy positions after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Chinese support to Russia government has had disastrous consequences for China’s global image.

Just as important, though, Taiwan, Japan, and the Netherlands share America’s democratic values and interest in a peaceful, rules-based international order. For the most part, the U.S. did not reach this export controls agreement through diplomatic carrots and sticks, but through genuine persuasion on the merits of the policy as well as a genuine willingness to be persuaded when the allies made good points. For months before and after October 7th, U.S. diplomats have been engaging with their foreign counterparts, listening closely to concerns, and working diligently and collaboratively to address those concerns.

This is a hallmark of the Biden Administration’s approach to negotiation not only in foreign policy, but also domestically. After the 2021 passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill in Congress, Senator Mitt Romney praised the Biden Administration’s earnest collaborative approach: “You can tell the difference between an adversarial negotiation and a collaborative one,” he said. “In this case, when one side had a problem, the other side tried to solve the problem, rather than to walk away from the table.”

Obviously, that’s not the right negotiating style for every situation. But nothing works better when the goal requires deserving and preserving the trust of friends, and it’s good to have friends.

And once the birds take wing, solitary hawks with neither rules nor allies may be at a disadvantage to a flock of geese or a murder of crows... perhaps less lethal by themselves, but able to swarm and deform the enemy defenses and then move in for the kill shot, like taking a well-aimed Splat! of birdshit on the windows of their eyes on the skies. What might be the collateral damage as might make the rich folks take notice, and what means of defense... civil, uncivil or Space Force... might be employed? - DJI

ATTACHMENT THIRTY – From the American Enterprise Institute

DOOMSDAY ECONOMICS: WHAT IF SOMEONE EXPLODES A NUCLEAR BOMB?

By James Pethokoukis January 21, 2022

“. . . almost all of humanity’s life lies in the future, almost everything of value lies in the future as well: almost all the flourishing; almost all the beauty; our greatest achievements; our most just societies; our most profound discoveries. We can continue our progress on prosperity, health, justice, freedom and moral thought. We can create a world of wellbeing and flourishing that challenges our capacity to imagine. And if we protect that world from catastrophe, it could last millions of centuries.” – Toby Ord, The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity

When I typically write about a “coming boom,” I’m referring to the prospects for a rapid acceleration in economic growth and technological progress. But the unsettling way that 2022 has started means a different kind of “boom” has been top of mind:

• In The Washington Post on Monday, Jon Wolfsthal, arms control and nonproliferation specialist on President Obama’s National Security Council, warns the “risk of a nuclear conflict erupting between the United States and Russia, and increasingly between the United States and China, is dangerously high.”
• Over at the Defense One, another Obama administration security official, Evelyn Farkas, earlier this month raised the “horrible possibility” that an invasion of Ukraine would mean “Americans, with our European allies, must use our military to roll back Russians — even at risk of direct combat.”
• Then in the background there’s the accelerating hypersonic arms race between China, Russia, and the US. (A Financial Times “Year in word” selection for 2021 was “hypersonic: (adjective) describing a type of weapon or aircraft that flies at more than Mach 5 — or five times the speed of sound.”
• And on Thursday, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists kept its “Doomsday Clock at a mere 100 seconds (since lowered to 90) to midnight, “the most dangerous situation that humanity has ever faced.” That analysis, while taking into account nuclear issues, also factors other risks such as climate change and “disruptive” technologies such as AI, cyber attacks, and genetic editing.So, yes, I’ve been thinking a bit lately about nuclear war. And for the purpose of this newsletter, I’ve especially been pondering the economic impact of such an escalation. Now because I’m weird, the first thing that pops into my head is that much-discussed question of whether Americans are better off today than, say, the 1970s or 1980s. It’s an issue I’ve spent considerable time exploring over the years. (Much of the debate revolves around how one selects and defines variables such as wages, compensation, income, mobility, and inflation. Especially inflation.)

And while I think the economic evidence overwhelmingly suggests a “yes” answer, the dispositive bit of proof has nothing to do with economics: The odds of a catastrophic nuclear war are almost certainly a lot lower today than back during the Cold War. Nuclear arsenals are smaller and less potent. According to the Federation of American Scientists, the number of warheads declined from a peak of 70,000 in 1986 to about 9,500 currently in the military stockpiles for operational use by missiles, aircraft, ships, and submarines. And with the ratcheting down of Cold War tension — and improvement in command-and-control systems — we’ve stopped hearing about all the scary near-misses.

But let’s assume the Doomsday Clock is closer to the truth than my cheery assessment, especially given recent events. Back to economics: What would be the economic impact of a nuclear conflict? Well, so bad that even the mere contemplation of the possibility produces negative economic results. In the 1989 paper “Interest Rates in the Reagan Years,” Patric H. Hendershott (Ohio State University) and Joe Peek (Boston College) note evidence that heightened tensions between the US and USSR during President Reagan’s first term “contributed marginally (about a half percentage point) to the high real rates by increasing the feat of nuclear war and thus reducing the private propensity to save.” If the world of the “day after” is one of radiation and nuclear winter, then saving for retirement is less of a priority.

Cold War fears also seem to have suppressed a propensity to highly value stocks. In a 2019 Bloomberg column, Stephen Gandel highlights the work of Nobel laureate economist Robert Shiller in noting that from 1871 through 1990, the average P/E of the stock market was 13.6 and rarely rose above 18. Then something changed. Starting in 1991, the market’s P/E multiple took off. Since then, Gandel continues, it has rarely been below 18, averaging 23 in the 1990s and 19.5 in the 2000s. It’s currently at 25.

So what might have changed to prompt that financial rethink? Gandel (bold by me)

Many factors probably contributed to the market’s valuation shift, but one of the most frequently cited is the so-called peace dividend. The Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991, and stocks took off. It’s hard to quantify just how much of a boost came from the downfall of a military superpower and the reduced threat of nuclear war. Interest rates also generally fell to new lows during the period; technology and productivity took off; and 401(k)s blossomed along with many Americans’ attachment to the stock market. But a big lift undoubtedly came from a reshuffling of the world order with the United States firmly on top.

Sidenote: I recall reading a book as a Soviet Politics major in college where the opening vignette imagined traders buying and selling on the floor of a commodities exchange. Suddenly breaking news: The Soviet Union has launched a massive nuclear attack. Markets start to collapse. What should the traders do? Go long, of course. If it’s a false alarm, markets will quickly rally. And if it’s not a false alarm? Then no one is going to care about their portfolios. Instead of buy, buy, buy, it will be bye, bye, bye.

But let’s set aside the notion of a full-scale, “the missiles are flying, hallelujah, hallelujah” global nuclear war. (Fun fact: The world’s nuclear stockpiles aren’t nearly big or powerful enough to lethally irradiate every last bit of the planet. So that’s something, I guess.) Let’s even dismiss the possibility of a far more limited conflict, such as a 100-warhead exchange between India and Pakistan. (About nuclear winter: Computer modeling apparently differs on whether a war of nature could radically alter the climate. It really depends on how much soot gets thrown up into the atmosphere, and there’s a wide range of estimates.)

What would be the impact of even a single nuclear explosion, the first since World War Two? Yes, maybe real interest rates would start rising. (So, too, defense spending.) And stocks falling. But also more than that. From the 2012 paper “The Economic and Policy Consequences of Catastrophes” by Robert S. Pindyck (MIT Sloan School of Management) and Neng Wang (Columbia Business School):

Various studies have assessed the likelihood and impact of the detonation of one or several nuclear weapons (with the yield of the Hiroshima bomb) in major cities. At the high end, Allison (2004) put the probability of this occurring in the next ten years at about 50%! Others put the probability for the next ten years at 1 to 5%. . . . What would be the impact? Possibly a million or more deaths. But the main shock to the capital stock and GDP would be a reduction in trade and economic activity worldwide, as vast resources would have to be devoted to averting further events.

One wonders if an updated version of that study would incorporate what we’ve learned about global supply chains during the pandemic. In addition, there would be massive policy uncertainty, which has been shown to be a real economic drag. Looking at spikes in such uncertainty — including tight presidential elections, the Gulf Wars, the Iraq War, the 9-11 attacks, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the 2011 debt-ceiling dispute — as measured in part by analyzing newspaper articles, economists Scott R. Baker (Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University), Nicholas Bloom (Stanford University), and Steven J. Davis (Booth School of Business UChicago) wrote in 2015:

Using firm-level data, we find that policy uncertainty raises stock price volatility and reduces investment and employment in policy-sensitive sectors like defense, healthcare, and infrastructure construction. At the macro level, policy uncertainty innovations foreshadow declines in investment, output, and employment in the United States and, in a panel VAR setting, for 12 major economies.

By the way, the uncertainty spike in 2020 was wild:

Now for you ultra-longtermists out there, here’s a positive ending note — and this is supposed to be an optimistic Substack, after all — from The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity by Toby Ord (which also provides the quote leading off this issue of Faster, Please!):

“ … nuclear winter appears unlikely to lead to our extinction. No current researchers on nuclear winter are on record saying that it would and many have explicitly said that it is unlikely. Existential catastrophe via a global unrecoverable collapse of civilization also seems unlikely, especially if we consider somewhere like New Zealand (or the southeast of Australia) which is unlikely to be directly targeted and will avoid the worst effects of nuclear winter by being coastal. It is hard to see why they wouldn’t make it through with most of their technology (and institutions) intact. … My mentor, Derek Parfit, asked us to imagine a devastating nuclear war killing 99 percent of the world’s people. A war that would leave behind a dark age lasting centuries, before the survivors could eventually rebuild civilization to its former heights; humbled, scarred— but undefeated.

See Charts and graphs here.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY ONE – From Le Monde (France)

IN NEUTRAL SWEDEN, CIVIL DEFENSE AND CITIZENS GEAR UP FOR POSSIBILITY OF WAR

Civil defense has returned to the top of the Swedish political agenda since the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 2014. The country is making preparations to ensure that inhabitants can resist in the event of conflict.

By Anne-Françoise Hivert (Malmö (Sweden) correspondent) Published on February 16, 2023 at 05h00

There were 404,218 of them, on December 31, 2022 – 16% more than in June. Among them were career soldiers and reservists, civil servants, bus drivers and childcare workers. They have all received their "war assignment." If Sweden is attacked, they know what is expected of them. Most of them, like the public television and radio station employees who were notified in October, will have to continue working in their jobs, which are considered critical for the functioning of society. Others are selected for their specific skills.

Everyone has been asked to exercise discretion, because the country's civil defense is at stake. Now, it is in full resurrection after a long interlude lasting almost three decades, since a time when "we wanted to believe in eternal peace," said Marinette Nyh Radebo, in charge of communication at the Swedish armed forces recruitment agency. The agency maintains a record of all assignments, making sure there are no duplicates. "When the police sent us their lists, we discovered that several thousand peacekeepers were reservists," explained Nyh Radebo.

France's military would like to boost society's resilience capacity

The mobilization has only just begun. By way of comparison, in 1992, the country, which then had 8.5 million inhabitants (10 million today), was able to requisition 2.2 million people for its civil defense, in addition to the million who could be called up to join the army. For everyone else aged between 16 and 70 and non-assigned, fleeing was not an option either: They were to continue their usual activities but could be called upon by the national employment agency.

'Very serious security situation'

The 121,500 young Swedes who celebrated their 16^th birthday in 2022 were reminded of this defense duty, which had been forgotten by the end of the 20^th century. The Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) sent them a letter, informing them that they were now part of the kingdom's "total defense" and had an "obligation to help in case of a threat of war, or war."

The concept returned to the top of Sweden's political agenda in 2015, a year after Russia annexed Crimea. Then, the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, "gave it an entirely new dimension," said Marcus Björklund, head of planning in Skåne county, southern Sweden. Testament to this, for the first time since 1947, the kingdom once again has a civil defense minister, alongside the defense minister.

Conservative Carl-Oskar Bohlin, who has the minister for civil defense since October 18, 2022, justified his appointment by "the very serious security situation which Sweden and Europe find themselves in." His role, he explained, is to coordinate efforts to rebuild the country's civil defense, so that "society continues to function in the event of a military attack, despite very serious disruptions" and that "it is also able to concentrate all its resources and energy to support the army in its task."

ATTACHMENT THIRTY TWO – From 19FortyFive.com

DONALD TRUMP WANTS A ‘STAR WARS’ MISSILE SHIELD LIKE REAGAN

SDI or Star Wars Comeback Thanks to Trump?

By Robert Farley Published January 16, 2023

During his rambling campaign announcement on back in November of last year, former President Trump took time to plug his plans for future missile defense:

“As events overseas have show to protect from the unthinkable threat of nuclear weapons and hypersonic missiles, the United States must also build a state-of-the-art next-generation missile defense shield, we need it. The power of these missiles and the power of a word I refuse to say, “nuclear.” We have to have it. We need a defense shield. And we have to do it. And we actually have the technology and we are going to build it, just as I rebuilt our military, I will get this done.”

Does all this indicate that missile defense will become a Trump signature issue in anticipation of the 2024 race?

“Star Wars,” or the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), was the term used by the Reagan administration to describe a new, advanced form of strategic missile defense that would sharply reduce the threat that intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and some submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) could pose to the United States. The most fantastic aspect of SDI would have been a series of satellites that could monitor and destroy Soviet missiles either in the boost phase or as they traveled through space toward their targets (thus the moniker Star Wars).

SDI was hardly the first US effort at ballistic missile defense, as research on various interception methods had begun as early as the 1950s. Still, it did capture public attention in ways that previous proposals had not.

Star Wars never panned out in the timeframe projected by the Reagan administration. However, it did generate some combination of worthwhile investment in technologies and wasteful government spending, depending on which watchdog organization you ask.

The commitment of the US government to missile defense has waxed and waned depending on the Presidential administration, but the US institutional commitment to missile defense has never been stronger.

ABM technology has moved ahead dramatically over the past four decades, although generally not in the direction that SDI had predicted. The means of destroying ballistic missiles are now decidedly earthbound, even if they include satellites and spectacular lasers as part of the package.

The Political Impact

It is not an exaggeration to say that SDI, and strategic anti-ballistic technology more generally, is the most disruptive military technology that has never been deployed at scale.

There seems to be concrete evidence that the Soviets saw SDI as a real threat to their nuclear deterrent and that this impacted their negotiating strategy during the late rounds of arms control meetings in the 1980s.

It’s also not unreasonable to argue that the US decision to abrogate the ABM Treaty, as much or more than NATO expansion, opened an unbridgeable canyon between Moscow and Washington in the 2000s. It is also possible that US missile defense aspirations are at the core of China’s decision to expand its strategic nuclear arsenal.

Domestically, while Democratic administrations have typically pursued missile defense with somewhat less enthusiasm than their Republican counterparts, no Democratic President has spoken out against the continuation of the program. The Democratic response to Republican political pressure on missile defense has typically been to defang that pressure by following a “yes, but more slowly” policy towards technology development and systems deployment.

Trump and Biden

Former President Trump says many things, and it’s never clear how sincere he is about his claims and promises or even whether he understands what he’s saying.

During his first term, Trump called for a return to a form of SDI that would have involved space-based weapons, but the Pentagon did not act aggressively on that particular element of the plan. Trump also presided over creating the United States Space Force (USSF), which shares responsibility for some of the components of existing missile defense systems.

The evolution of the institutional landscape has not stopped under President Biden. The USSF now represents a presence within the Department of Defense to advocate for all things space. And to be clear, a huge component of the already existing network of missile defenses involves satellites that can identify launches and track missiles in flight.

Indeed, in September, Space Systems Command announced plans to develop an integrated program office that would involve Space Systems Command, the Space Development Agency, and the Missile Defense Agency, reducing redundancy and ensuring that the one hand knows what the other hand is doing.

Trump using a second term to make an aggressive push on missile defense would not be surprising, given both his interest in spectacle and the consistent preferences of Republican Presidents over the past forty years.

Rhetorically, the idea of an impenetrable missile shield appeals to the same set that made building the border wall a core foreign policy argument. Any effort will build, however, upon forty years of halting progress on the problem of missile defense.

Perhaps more importantly, steps to revolutionize US missile defense programs will undoubtedly have an impact abroad, particularly on how Russia and China think about the needs of their own nuclear arsenals.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY THREE – From the New York Times

FEARS OF RUSSIAN NUCLEAR WEAPONS USE HAVE DIMINISHED, BUT COULD RE-EMERGE

Nearly a year into the war in Ukraine, U.S. policymakers and intelligence analysts have more confidence that they understand at least some of President Vladimir V. Putin’s red lines.

By Julian E. Barnes and David E. Sanger Feb. 3, 2023

WASHINGTON — Last fall, tensions in Washington reached a crescendo as Moscow made persistent nuclear threats and U.S. intelligence reported discussions among Russian military leaders about the use of such weapons.

Concerns remain over Russia using a nuclear weapon, but the tensions have since abated. Several factors explain why, officials said: A more stable battlefield, China’s warnings against the use of nuclear weapons, improved communications between Moscow and Washington and an increased role of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Ukraine have contributed to a measure of stability.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, a senior U.S. official said recently, may well have come to the conclusion that the threats, which he once saw as leverage, were backfiring.

The possibility of nuclear escalation continues to influence American decisions over what advanced weaponry to give Ukraine. But nearly a year into the war there, American policymakers and intelligence analysts have more confidence that they understand at least some of Mr. Putin’s red lines — and what kinds of support for Ukraine will prompt statements of condemnation versus what might risk something more dangerous.

Inside the Biden administration, officials caution that Russia’s threats over nuclear escalation are not over, and that the next time the Kremlin wants to remind the West about the power of its arsenal, it could potentially move a nuclear weapon that it knows can be observed by the United States. The U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss deliberations.

The Pentagon continues to war game what might happen if Mr. Putin moves tactical weapons into position as a reminder that he can back up his conventional forces. But overwrought threats, in the absence of other intelligence, are causing little stir. A nuclear threat last month by Dmitri Medvedev, the former Russian president who serves as a deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, was met mostly with shrugs in the United States.

This week, in response to Germany’s decision to supply Ukraine with tanks, Mr. Putin delivered a veiled warning. “We aren’t sending our tanks to their borders,” he said. “But we have the means to respond, and it won’t end with the use of armor. Everyone must understand this.”

The State of the War

· An Unexpected Meeting: Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia spoke face-to-face for the first time since Moscow’s invasion during a Group of 20 summit.

· Reinforcing Bakhmut: Kyiv is sending reinforcements to the devastated city in eastern Ukraine, leading more troops into a bloody crucible where Russian forces have gradually tightened their grip.

· A Rout for Russia’s Tanks: A three-week fight near the town of Vuhledar in southern Ukraine produced the biggest tank battle of the war so far, and a stinging setback for the Russians.

· Softening Support: With U.S. public support for arming Ukraine waning, proponents of more aid fear that growing taxpayer fatigue could undercut the war effort.

At a speech in Washington on Thursday, William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, said the United States had to take seriously the nuclear “saber rattling” of Mr. Putin and his advisers. Mr. Burns added that he had made clear to Russian officials the serious consequences of any use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine.

“It is a risk we cannot afford to take lightly; on the other hand, the purpose of the saber rattling is to intimidate us, as well as our European allies and the Ukrainians themselves,” he said. “So I think we have to stay on an even keel in weighing those threats carefully but also not being intimidated by them.”

Heightened nuclear fears in October came against the backdrop of a successful counteroffensive by the Ukrainian military when it reclaimed a huge swath of territory east of Kharkiv, in the northeast. It then made a drive at Kherson, in the south, forcing the Russian military to eventually retreat from there. With their army in disarray, Mr. Putin and other Russian officials warned against Ukraine’s use of a so-called dirty bomb: a crude device that spreads radiological material but does not create a nuclear reaction. U.S. officials were unsure what Moscow might do.

As winter set in and Russia managed to pull its forces from Kherson in a relatively orderly retreat, the battlefield stabilized. Intense fighting remains around Bakhmut, in the Donbas region, but there are no drastic territorial shifts. In the south, the Russians have dug in, intensifying their defenses; they do not appear to be on the brink of a collapse that could make their leaders think that only the use of a tactical nuclear weapon could stave off defeat.

U.S. officials also credit an improved dialogue with Moscow, at least over nuclear issues.

Amid Russia’s battlefield failures, U.S. intelligence concluded that Russian military officials had discussed situations in which a tactical nuclear weapon could be used. Two calls between Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and the Russian defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, worried Washington because Mr. Shoigu had raised concerns about Ukraine’s possible use of a dirty bomb.

The claims were propaganda, but some U.S. officials said Russian officials appeared to believe their own disinformation. Getting International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors into Ukraine — and, in early November, when the agency found no evidence of a dirty bomb — helped ease tensions.

A call in late October between Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his counterpart, Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, Russia’s chief of the general staff, also relieved tensions. In the call, according to two U.S. officials, General Gerasimov outlined a use of nuclear weapons consistent with Washington’s understanding of Russia’s nuclear doctrine.

Mr. Burns also met with his counterpart, Sergei Naryshkin, the director of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, in Turkey to warn Russia about its nuclear threats. The purpose of the trip, Mr. Burns said on Thursday, was “to make very clear the serious consequences of any use of tactical nuclear weapons.” The meeting, officials said, opened up a new line of communication with Russian leadership.

President Biden has been criticized for being overly cautious in sending assistance to Ukraine, but U.S. officials insist his top priority is ensuring that the war does not escalate into a nuclear conflict between Russia and the West. And while American officials have a better sense of what actions will prompt Russian reaction, determining what might provoke Mr. Putin is imperfect.

“This is a very dynamic situation,” Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said after a visit to Kyiv last month. “It’s a day-to-day basis on what’s a red line.”

Administration officials say they are trying to distinguish between Mr. Putin’s threats and his actual opportunities to use nuclear weapons, in hopes of cutting those off.

So far, they have no evidence that he is moving nuclear weapons toward the battlefield, though they note that with some of his tactical weapons — small battlefield arms, including some that can fit into an artillery shell — they might not see such movement. But the officials expect that if Mr. Putin wants to raise the level of alarm, he will make a public show of transferring weapons or make sure Western allies pick up chatter among the units that control those weapons.

“We don’t have any indication that Mr. Putin has any intention to use weapons of mass destruction — let alone nuclear weapons, tactical or otherwise,” John Kirby, a White House spokesman, said at a news briefing last week. “We monitor as best we can, and we believe that — that our strategic deterrent posture is appropriate. But we have seen no indication that that’s in the offing.”

U.S. officials have repeatedly said publicly that Russia might use a nuclear weapon if Mr. Putin’s grip on power was threatened, if Moscow thought NATO would directly enter the war in Ukraine, or the Russian army faced a sudden, catastrophic defeat.

Throughout the war in Ukraine, U.S. officials have developed a more refined, though imperfect, sense of what actions might escalate the conflict. Weapons sent to the country — even those with increasingly advanced abilities — have so far not provoked a response from Russia, given that Ukraine has been using them within its borders.

But the ever-changing battlefield dynamics could shift the Russian calculus on the use of nuclear weapons.

Still, their use makes little sense for Russia, U.S. officials insist — not least because it could potentially alienate countries that have either explicitly supported Russia or remained neutral. Who? Mali? Nicaragua?

The United States and its allies say that appealing to Russia’s partners is vital to warning Moscow against a nuclear weapon. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, whose support Mr. Putin needs, issued an explicit warning — pushed in part by Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany during his visit to Beijing in November. The German diplomatic push came with the support of the United States, several U.S. officials said.

Mr. Scholz said publicly that his joint statement with Mr. Xi on the use of nuclear weapons justified his visit to Beijing.

“Because the Chinese government, the president and I were able to declare that no nuclear weapons should be used in this war,” Mr. Scholz said, “that alone made the whole trip worthwhile.”

In other words, toss democracy out the window no matter who prevails - DJI

ATTACHMENT THIRTY FOUR – From dw.com

UKRAINE UPDATES: BLINKEN AND LAVROV EXCHANGE WORDS AT G20

March 2, 2023

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov spoke briefly on Thursday, in their first face-to-face contact since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The brief encounter occurred during the G20 foreign ministers meeting in the Indian capital, New Delhi.

"Blinken has asked for contact with Lavrov," Lavrov's spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday, according to Russia's state news agency TASS.  

Their encounter was not the product of any formal meeting or even negotiations, she said. 

The last time Blinken and Lavrov were in the same room was at a G20 meeting in Bali in 2022, where Lavrov is said to have stormed out, according to Western officials at the time. 

An unnamed US official told AFP that Blinken reiterated US support for Ukraine to the Russian foreign minister. He is said to have also urged Russia to resume the New START nuclear disarmament treaty recently suspended by President Vladimir Putin.

Blinken also appealed for the release of US citizen Paul Whelan, who is currently in prison in Russia. 

But Zakharova downplayed the significance of the talk, telling state news agency RIA Novosti that Blinken had initiated it and that it had been very brief. 

Here are some of the other notable developments concerning the war in Ukraine on Thursday, March 2:

US: Possibility remains for China to arm Russia

The United States said there is "no indication" China has decided to supply weapons to Russia, but it believes the possibility is still "on the table."

"This is not a move that would be in the best interest of the Chinese and their standing in the international community, which we know they highly prize," National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.

"We've communicated to the Chinese our concerns about this," Kirby added.

The statement echoes comments made by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz earlier on Thursday.

Beijing has forcefully denied allegations that it is considering arming Russia.

Putin accuses Ukraine of 'terrorist' attack on Bryansk, while Ukraine rejects claims

Russian President Vladimir Putin alleged Ukraine had staged "another terrorist attack" on the border region of Bryansk, accusing Ukraine of opening fire on civilians in a car, including children, Reuters news agency reported.

While the regional governor said the attack killed two people and wounded a young boy, Ukraine denied responsibility.

Mykhailo Podolyak, the adviser to the head of the Ukrainian President’s Office, said the Russian claims were a "classic deliberate provocation."

Russia wants "to scare its people to justify the attack on another country and the growing poverty after the year of war," he tweeted.

Russia's FSB security service later added that "Ukrainian nationalists" who had allegedly crossed into the southern Bryansk region had been pushed back over the Ukrainian border. 

Putin convenes national security council meeting

Russian President Vladimir Putin has called for a special meeting of the National Security Council following reports about fighting with Ukrainian troops on Russian territory.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he could not speak to the topic when asked by journalists.

While the outcome of the meeting is yet to be seen, there are speculations that Russia could officially declare war on Ukraine and order an additional mobilization of troops.

Scholz speaks to Armenian prime minister about Western sanctions

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in Berlin about reports on dodging Western sanctions.

"Naturally, we talked about this situation," Scholz told reporters, adding that Germany was monitoring the situation.

The EU and its allies are investigating a surge in exports to countries in Russia's neighborhood, especially Armenia and Kyrgyzstan.

The spike in trade flows, according to a report by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development released last month, raised questions about whether sanctions against Russia were being evaded.

Russian oligarch speaks out against war in rare public criticism

Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska urged the Russian government to create a predictable environment based on the rule of law to attract foreign investors back to a Russian economy foundering under Western sanctions.

The billionaire told an economic forum in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk that he didn't expect the war to de-escalate before mid-2025 at the earliest.

Russia needed to and could attract investors from friendly countries, Deripaska said. 

"I'm very worried all the time that the state and business are constantly being set against each other," he said.

The 55-year-old founder of aluminum giant Rusal was surprisingly critical of the Russian government's policies in public. 

Most oligarchs have maintained a low profile following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

Moldovan Parliament condemns Russian aggression in Ukraine

Moldova's Parliament adopted a declaration condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, saying that Russia was waging an illegal and unprovoked war of aggression.

A narrow majority of 55 lawmakers in the 101-seat assembly voted for the declaration, which stated that Moscow's invasion began with the seizure of the Crimean peninsula in February 2014.

Tensions between Russia and Moldova, which lies on Ukraine's southwestern border, have grown sharply since the war began.

In February, the former Soviet republic accused Russia of plotting to topple the pro-Western government in Chisinau, which Russia denies. 

Russian airstrike hits Zaporizhzhia apartment building

Ukrainian police said a Russian strike on a five-story apartment block in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia killed at least three people. Search and rescue operations were ongoing, authorities added. 

"One missile hit a high-rise residential building. Residents sleeping peacefully were trapped under the rubble," the police said on Facebook.  

More than 10 apartments were destroyed and emergency services videos showed rescuers combing through debris. Zaporizhzhia Mayor Anatoliy Kurtiev said seven people were injured, including a pregnant woman. 

"The terrorist state wants to turn every day for our people into a day of terror," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said following the strike. "But evil will not reign in our land. We will drive all the occupiers out and they will definitely be held accountable for everything."

The city of Zaporizhzhia lies in the region of the same name. Along with Donetsk, Lugansk and Kherson, it is one of the regions Russia claims to have annexed in Ukraine.

Russia accuses Ukraine of border incursion 

The Kremlin accused Ukrainian fighters of entering its territory, in a region bordering Ukraine, which Moscow labeled as a "terrorist attack." 

Russian President Vladimir Putin said "neo-Nazis" and "terrorists" had opened fire on civilians in the southern Bryansk region.

"Our soldiers and officers... protect against neo-Nazis and terrorists... those who today committed another terrorist attack, penetrated the border area and opened fire on civilians," Putin said in a televised address.

Ukraine responded to the accusation saying it was a "deliberate provocation."  

"Russia wants to scare its people to justify the attack on another country and the growing poverty after the year of war," Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhaylo Podolyak said on Twitter. 

Scholz urges China to not send Russia weapons 

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Thursday asked China not to support Russia with weapons in its war against Ukraine. Scholz spoke about China in the context of the war in a speech to the German Parliament 

"My message to Beijing is clear: use your influence in Moscow to push for the withdrawal of Russian troops," Scholz said. "And do not supply weapons to the aggressor Russia."  

He expressed disappointment that Beijing had refused to condemn Moscow for invading Ukraine, although he welcomed efforts toward nuclear de-escalation. 

The remarks came after China put forward a 12-point peace plan calling for a cease-fire. "One can rightly expect China to discuss its ideas with the main stakeholders, with the Ukrainian people and with (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelenskyy," Scholz said of the proposal.

Russia says UN monitors 'excessively delayed' at Zaporizhzhia

A senior Russian official said the latest rotating team of experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has failed to take up its post at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

The nuclear power plant was occupied by Russia in the early days of the invasion and it remains near the front line. IAEA monitors have been posted at the site in order to prevent a nuclear catastrophe.

"It is true that the rotation of specialists, which is planned for once a month, has been excessively delayed," Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia's representative to the IAEA in Vienna, told Russia's TASS news agency on Tuesday.

"It was supposed to occur on February 7, but hasn't yet happened, through no fault of our own. We expect the changeover of experts to take place very soon, in the next few days."

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi said in a statement on Monday that he hoped the changeover would take place this week. He also said the agency's teams had reported more explosions near the plant.

Belarus state TV denies attack on Russian spy plane

Belarusian state television on Wednesday denied claims by a local anti-government group that it destroyed a Russian Beriev A-50 spy plane that was stationed in Minsk.

In a segment titled "Stop fake!," the Belarusian state broadcaster showed a short clip of what it said was the same plane the activists claimed to have destroyed.

State television said the plane "is carrying out its work within the framework of the allied grouping of Belarus and Russia, alive and in one piece," during the broadcast.

The TV segment is the first time an official source in either Belarus or Russia has commented on the incident.

Ukraine survives its 'most difficult winter'

Ukrainian officials said the country survived its "most difficult winter" ever as it welcomed what Ukrainians consider the first day of spring on Wednesday.

Russian bombardment at the tail end of 2022 damaged Ukraine's electricity, heating and water infrastructure, leaving civilians vulnerable in freezing conditions.

"We have overcome this winter. It was a very difficult period, and every Ukrainian experienced this difficulty, but we were still able to provide Ukraine with power and heat," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Wednesday during his daily address.

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba described the first day of spring as a "major defeat" for Russia's ambitions in Ukraine.

"We survived the most difficult winter in our history," he said in a statement. "It was cold and dark, but we were unbreakable."

Russia has reportedly transported thousands of children out of occupied areas of eastern Ukraine, which Ukrainian officials have called a "genocidal crime." But what exactly is genocide?

ATTACHMENT THIRTY FIVE – From Quora

WHY IS WW3 PREDICTED TO START IN 2023? (Feb. 10^th)

By “MP” (name withheld to prevent likely violence against the poster)

Because the US of A are in shambles, the western world is decadent ( I’m a boomer ) and the only way to stretch the little bit of power that’s left to us is a world war, it boosts the economy, makes a load of money thanks to warfare weaponry and army planes and drones sales, hides the real issues to the people of the world behind a “They are the villains, let’s eradicate them” theory, the old tricks you know, good vs evil etc…but wait, it began in march 2020, when a man made virus was put forward by every media in the world, words like Lockdowns, curfews, are military words, the third world war has already started, we’re in the middle of it, and you want to know IF it’ll happen in 2023, you must be joking, look at your political representatives, do you feel they’re genuinely representing you or are they stuffing their pockets before the next election? you see, you already know the answers, why ask the question?

See a few other Quora Q&A sessions...

Why is Biden doing his best to start WW3?

Is WW3 going to happen? If it did, would it start a nuclear war?

When is the most likely time WW3 will happen?

Did Nostradamus predict WW3?

Is the likelihood for WW3 high in the next months?

ATTACHMENT THIRTY SIX – From Business Insider

A NUCLEAR ATTACK WOULD MOST LIKELY TARGET ONE OF THESE 6 US CITIES — BUT AN EXPERT SAYS NONE OF THEM ARE PREPARED

By Taylor Ardrey Jan 1, 2023, 1:20 PM

A nuclear attack on US soil would most likely target one of six cities: New York, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Washington, DC.

· But a public-health expert says any of those cities would struggle to provide emergency services to the wounded.

· The cities also no longer have designated fallout shelters to protect people from radiation.

The chance that a nuclear bomb would strike a US city is slim, but nuclear experts say it's not out of the question.

A nuclear attack in a large metropolitan area is one of the 15 disaster scenarios for which the US Federal Emergency Management Agency has an emergency strategy. The agency's plan involves deploying first responders, providing immediate shelter for evacuees, and decontaminating victims who have been exposed to radiation.

For everyday citizens, FEMA has some simple advice: Get inside, stay inside, and stay tuned. Duck and cover!

But according to Irwin Redlener, a public-health expert at Columbia University who specializes in disaster preparedness, these federal guidelines aren't enough to prepare a city for a nuclear attack.

"There isn't a single jurisdiction in America that has anything approaching an adequate plan to deal with a nuclear detonation," he said.

That includes the six urban areas that Redlener thinks are the most likely targets of a nuclear attack: New York, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. These cities are not only some of the largest and densest in the country, but home to critical infrastructure (like energy plants, financial hubs, government facilities, and wireless transmission systems) that are vital to US security.

Each city has an emergency-management website that informs citizens about what to do in a crisis, but most of those sites (except for LA and New York) don't directly mention a nuclear attack. That makes it difficult for residents to learn how to protect themselves if a bomb were to hit one of those cities.

"It would not be the end of life as we know it," Redlener said of that scenario. "It would just be a horrific, catastrophic disaster with many, many unknown and cascading consequences."

Cities might struggle to provide emergency services after a nuclear strike

Nuclear bombs can produce clouds of dust and sand-like radioactive particles that disperse into the atmosphere — what's referred to as nuclear fallout. Exposure to this fallout can result in radiation poisoning, which can damage the body's cells and prove fatal.

The debris takes at least 15 minutes to reach ground level after an explosion, so a person's response during that period could be a matter of life and death. People can protect themselves from fallout by immediately seeking refuge in the center or basement of a brick steel or concrete building — preferably one without windows.

"A little bit of information can save a lot of lives," Brooke Buddemeier, a health physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, told Business Insider. Buddemeier advises emergency managers about how to protect populations from nuclear attacks.

"If we can just get people inside, we can significantly reduce their exposure," he said.

The most important scenario to prepare for, according to Redlener, isn't all-out nuclear war, but a single nuclear explosion such as a missile launch from North Korea. Right now, he said, North Korean missiles are capable of reaching Alaska or Hawaii, but they could soon be able to reach cities along the West Coast.

Another source of an attack could be a nuclear device that was built, purchased, or stolen by a terrorist organization. All six cities Redlener identified are listed as "Tier 1" areas by the US Department of Homeland Security, meaning they're considered places where a terrorist attack would yield the most devastation.

"There is no safe city," Redlener said. "In New York City, the detonation of a Hiroshima-sized bomb, or even one a little smaller, could have anywhere between 50,000 to 100,000 fatalities — depending on the time of day and where the action struck — and hundreds of thousands of people injured."

Some estimates are even higher. Data from Alex Wellerstein, a nuclear-weapons historian at the Stevens Institute of Technology, indicates that a 15-kiloton explosion (like the one in Hiroshima) would result in more than 225,000 fatalities and 610,000 injuries in New York City.

Under those circumstances, not even the entire state of New York would have enough hospital beds to serve the wounded.

"New York state has 40,000 hospital beds, almost all of which are occupied all the time," Redlener said.

He also expressed concern about what might happen to emergency responders who tried to help.

"Are we actually going to order National Guard troops or US soldiers to go into highly radioactive zones? Will we be getting bus drivers to go in and pick up people to take them to safety?" he said. "Every strategic or tactical response is fraught with inadequacies."

Big cities don't have designated fallout shelters

In 1961, around the height of the Cold War, the US launched the Community Fallout Shelter Program, which designated safe places to hide after a nuclear attack in cities across the country. Most shelters were on the upper floors of high-rise buildings, so they were meant to protect people only from radiation and not the blast itself.

Cities were responsible for stocking those shelters with food and sanitation and medical supplies paid for by the federal government. By the time funding for the program ran out in the 1970s, New York City had designated 18,000 fallout shelters to protect up to 11 million people.

In 2017, New York City officials began removing the yellow signs that once marked these shelters to avoid the misconception that they were still active.

Redlener said there's a reason the shelters no longer exist: Major cities like New York and San Francisco are in need of more affordable housing, making it difficult for city officials to justify reserving space for food and medical supplies.

"Can you imagine a public official keeping buildings intact for fallout shelters when the real-estate market is so tight?" Redlener said.

'This is part of our 21st-century reality'

Redlener said many city authorities worry that even offering nuclear-explosion response plans might induce panic among residents.

"There's fear among public officials that if they went out and publicly said, 'This is what you need to know in the event of a nuclear attack,' then many people would fear that the mayor knew something that the public did not," he said.

But educating the public doesn't have to be scary, Buddemeier said.

"The good news is that 'Get inside, stay inside, stay tuned' still works," he said. "I kind of liken it to 'Stop, drop, and roll.' If your clothes catch on fire, that's what you should do. It doesn't make you afraid of fire, hopefully, but it does allow you the opportunity to take action to save your life."

Both experts agreed that for a city to be prepared for a nuclear attack, it must acknowledge that such an attack is possible — even if the threat is remote.

"This is part of our 21st-century reality," Redlener said. "I've apologized to my children and grandchildren for leaving the world in such a horrible mess, but it is what it is now."

ATTACHMENT THIRTY SEVEN – From the Healthy Journal

WHICH COUNTRIES WOULD BE SAFEST IN A NUCLEAR WAR?

· 1- Iceland. Iceland is a North Atlantic island nation. ...

· 2- Canada. Canada is a top nuclear war survivor. ...

· 3- Australia. Australia is a leading nuclear war safety contender. ...

· 4- New Zealand. ...

· 5- Norway. ...

· 6- Sweden. ...

· 7- Greenland (Denmark) ...

· 8- Fiji.

See more here.

ATTACHMENT THIRTY EIGHT – From Quora

PEANUT GALLERY (See long “continue reading” posts here)

Dima Vorobiev

Is World War 3 around the corner?

Originally Answered: Is World War 3 around the corner? Will its starting ground be Syria?

No.

The last Western strike on Syria confirms that we are comfortably far from WWIII. Moreover, it looks like today’s conflicts may settle into a relatively safe pattern demonstrated in the run-up to the missile launch against Assad.

1. A war is fought between proxies

2. The scale of war is controlled by the opposing world powers as an elaborate, thoroughly managed dance (two-, three- or more parties)

3. Publicly, the world powers demonstrate cheeky taunts (Trump), sulky rumbles (Putin), moral indignation (Macron), defiant insults (Russia’s Foreign Office). Behind the colorful scenes and the entertaining noise, everyone is talking business to each other like normal people do in boardrooms and customer offices.

4. It all cooks down to a bloodless backroom compromise where NATO tells the Russians what exactly they are going to bomb, well before the fireworks start. Everyone sits down ringside to watch how many missiles Assad manages to shoot down when he knows exactly where they are supposed to land.

136.1K views

View upvotes

View 16 shares

Answer requested by 

Rahul Sancheti

Mehmet Akdağ

Msc from University of Salford (Graduated 2007)Updated 10mo

1923 was the year the main agreements were signed with the countries that won and lost WW1 . Even tho these agreements state the borders of countries and military personel that can be kept on those borders. It is strongly believed that the countries that won the war gained control over the resources and trade routes of these countries. Basically telling them what they can mine , how much they can mine and and who they can sell it too. It is believed that these contracts are ending in 2023 and these countries will be free to trade with their old neighbors. This also contians the conspicacy theory that petrol is actually a very widely found source of energy and the freedom to mine it in the agean, the black sea and the mediteranian will be permited. That is why the western world is in a dilema, stating that they spent trillions of dollars on a war to control these areas since 2001 and this policy is not working anymore. So they are going for a softer approach by convincing these countries (Iran, Turkey) to go nuclear (Iran having nuclear power is another concern thus giving birth to another dilema) . And also spending considerable amounts of money for the research and developement of renewable energy, which Europe will produce (solar panels, wind turbines etc.) and export to developing countries and keep the on going balance or “order” . So basically USA is ending the age of petrol not because we are runing out of petrol but to control the energy supply of the central world by selling them nuclear power with Russia as an ally and giving patents and know how of renewable energy to EU zone so they can keep the balance we already have. Global warming /climate change and the in coming petrol/gas shortage is here to support these policies. This is also making the price of petrol very volitile making the Gulf countries unhappy. So when you look at the big picture; petrol will be mined in a lot of countries in the future but the countries who produce it will have to pay a fee to the world carbon exhange making it not very feesible as it used to be and countries will be forced to change their direction for alternatives like nuclear and solar etc. to keep the order. If some of these countries (Germany, Austria, Hungary, Turkey, Iran ,Ukraine, Greece Egypt and variying countries in the Balkans , Caucasia , North Africa and Middle east can’t be pleased in this newly forming way of a new world order, a war might start. Technicaly by Roman standarts it wont be WW3 but the First half of the war of the 21th century in the central world . Hope it makes sense. Also there is the chance the war started in 2001-2015 and ended in 2019 with the pandemic and they are trying to settle everything till 2023 with trade agreements and during this period everyone is in a lock down and the trade has stopped. Just a guess

31.7K views

View upvotes

25

4

Historian (2017–present)Upvoted by 

Li Song

, Docter Mathematics & History, Colleges and Universities (2020) and 

Steve Stewart

, Masters Political Science Major & History, A School. (2013)Author has 2K answers and 115.2M answer views2y

Related

What would World War 3 be like?

It’s so hard to say really because WW3 could happen tomorrow, or in a year, or in a decade, or in 4 millennia.

Obviously, WW3 in the year 3287 would be slightly different from a 2020 WW3.

Since technology is impossible to predict (if you could predict it, you’d be inventing it) let’s go with a more recent period of time.

Let’s say WW3 takes place between 2020 and 2050, shall we?

So I think there are some broad assumptions we can make starting off with largely comparing WW3 to the previous World Wars, specifically WW2.

---

1: It won’t be as deadly or as large as WW2

This sounds strange, right? I mean how could it be smaller? There are more people, more guns, and better technology. Certainly, it would have to be a larger war.

I don’t think so.

In WW2 we fought a war of attrition. This meant wartime production was key to winning. You had to be able to produce enough tanks, bullets, and guns to replace your losses and outproduce the bad guys.

Tanks were basically trucks with tons of steel and a big gun. Rifles were wooden and simple. Soldiers were given basic green outfits, a basic kit, a rifle, and some bullets.

It was all made to be cheap, reliable, and easy to produce.

And the war reflected this production ability. Nations threw themselves at each other until 1 side ran out of everything. Germany lost because there were no more men, they were low on oil, and their enemy overwhelmed them. This made WW2 particularly deadly. Winning battle never mattered- overwhelming your enemy by inflicting more casualties than they could replace is what mattered.

Compare that to today.

The Abrams tank has acid-proof armor, stabilization software, complex optics, and a jet engine. We need literal rocket scientists to make this thing. We could never scale up production to meet demand because it takes years of education to qualify to work at an Abrams factory.

Then you get to the jet fighters and even the basic kit for soldiers. I mean every single infantryman has an advanced rifle, complex optics, Kevlar equipment, and other high-tech stuff. Even their gloves are high-end specialized combat gloves.

The ability to produce any of this in scale is questionable at best.

The ability to afford all this is even more dubious. A single Abrams is 8 million dollars. A single soldier not including pay cost 15k a year. How the heck do you pay for all this?

In WW2 we expanded the US military to include 16 million servicemen. There is no way we could even touch that number today. There is no way we could produce enough gear for 16 million soldiers and even if we could there is no way we could afford it.

In the long-ago days of the Middle Ages wars were simple. If you lost a battle the war was done. You could not afford to magically raise another army and even if you could it would take years to produce thousands of more sets of armor and weapons.

In WW2 you could replace losses easily. When the USSR lost almost its entire military in the opening days of the German invasion they could easily just draft millions more and hand them all rifles.

I think WW3 may strike a balance between these extremes. Given the complexity and cost of the equipment involved, we cannot afford to just keep throwing men and tanks at the bad guys. Losses will mean something and be irreplaceable to a certain degree.

This means the war cannot be as deadly or as large as WW2. It may compare in raw size but won’t come close in terms of per-capita size.

---

2: It will involve cyberwarfare

There is no question that the next battlefield is cyberspace. The damage a group of hackers can cause is insane. They could

· Shut down national GPS systems, haunting trucking, trade, and even basic air travel

· Shutdown power grids

· Crash markets or delete bank account information

· Cause overloads and explosions

Every heard of Stuxnet? It’s terrifying.

Years ago Iran was enriching uranium at a uranium enrichment facility. This is a complex process that involves uranium being spun around in large centrifuges. The US and Israel wanted this stop but were not willing to go to war.

So Stuxnet, a computer virus, was engineered.

First, it spread all over the world infecting millions of computers. It was searching for a specific type of computer and if it was in a normal computer type it wouldn’t do anything.

It was looking for a specific type of Iranian computer used in uranium enrichment facilities.

After spreading all over the globe it found its way into the enrichment facilities computers.

Then Stuxnet just sat there- recording data of the facility during normal operation.

After a few weeks of this it began to alter the rotation of the centrifuges. This caused them to break and malfunction and ruined the uranium.

While it was doing this is spat out the data of normal operation it had recorded the last few weeks. To those in the control room, things seemed normal- in reality though things were far from normal.

This is a computer virus affecting the real world in physical significant ways. Stuxnet was years ago and today our abilities in cyberspace are miles ahead of where they were when Stux was built.

Militaries will love this. Just destroy your enemies economy and infrastructure with computer viruses. It’s cheap, effective, and simple compared to physical warfare. Disable an aircraft carrier, fire missiles into space, or disrupt communications nationwide.

This is the next battleground for nations- cyberspace

---

3. It won't be ideological

WW2 was an ideological war in many ways. It pitted democracy and socialism against Fascism and the war was fought along those lines.

WW3 was also supposed to be ideological- putting socialism against capitalism.

Today though such a war is unlikely. Firstly there aren’t many socialists left. While China claims to be socialist they are most capitalist, preferring trade and commerce to communal farming and communism.

There just aren’t lines in the sand over ideology worldwide. It’s far more complex today.

When it comes to combatants I think we will likely see the US square off against China. Both sides will claim to fight for freedom, sovereignty, and their people. In reality, it will be a war for the throne.

China will aim to accomplish its long-held ambition of becoming the next superpower while the US tries to retain its position at the top.

The war will be fought in the Pacific, Korea, Japan, and maybe even on the Indian border.

4. It won’t go nuclear

I can’t imagine WW3 becoming a nuclear war no matter what happens.

The second you launch nukes it’s over- you lose. Your entire population dies, the earth is devastated for generations, and your infrastructure is in ruins.

Even if 1 side is losing badly a terrible humiliation would be preferable to total destruction and both sides know this.

I think there is a fear that WW3 will be a nuclear war but I don’t see it.

260.6K views

View upvotes

View 36 shares

1.2K

36

74

Cobi Blair

Author has 86 answers and 242.7K answer views5y

Related

When do you predict WWIII will happen?

WWIII could literally happen at anytime. If it happens very soon (within next few years), here are the three possible scenarios that could happen

1:Russia invades Ukraine, and the EU responds aggressively, pulling NATO into a massive conflict.

2:The nations of the Middle East (Syria, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, ect) invade Israel, which receives American support. The Russians back the aggressors and could go to war with the USA

3:North and South Korea go to war, and the US and Japan assists the South Koreans. China invades South Korea and Taiwan, and declares war on the United States. Russia supports Chin

Gary Zhang

Lives in AustraliaAuthor has 538 answers and 16.6M answer views4y

Related

If the WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones, can the sticks be missiles and stones be kinetic weapons from space?

The extract from the quote is from Albert Einstein, although the entire thing, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones” tells an entirely different story. Einstein believed that because of technological advancement, a Third World War would be so devastating, that it would either completely wipe out the human race or at the very least send us back into the stone age where if we were to continue fighting a Fourth World War would be “fought with sticks and stones”.

Dennis Manning

Studied at Mineral Area College (Graduated 2010)Author has 20.2K answers and 227M answer views4y

Related

I’m so scared of World War Three happening next year. People say it is going to end humanity and that certain soothsayers predicted it. Are my fears well founded?

No. First off, nobody knows how or when the end is coming.

Second, after two World Wars, a third is going to be avoided as much as is reasonably possible.

In fact wars have shown a trend to be shorter and less deadly, because we have better weapons.

Could WWIII happen? Sure. Will it? Unlikely.

Douglas Adolph

Amateur historianAuthor has 1.9K answers and 5.2M answer viewsUpdated Sep 26

Related

I want World War 3 to happen. (Yes I know I'm 99.9% likely to die) just explain why I would have these feelings?

WARNING: assumptions lie ahead

You’re young. For you, war is exciting and the true passage to “manliness” and self worth. You’ll face danger, learn “manly skills,” and do something meaningful. You’ll ride the adrenaline, and become your own personal little war hero. You’ll go to interesting places and witness awesome events, like thousands of planes in the sky, or massive explosions. You’ll form bonds you can’t form anywhere else. You will escape the drudgery of the 9–5.

You don’t want to have to go out and figure out what will give you a sense of meaning and joy. You want all the adventure and

Continue Reading (or see above)

Mario Oiram

TranshumanistAuthor has 833 answers and 574.7K answer views5y

Related

Is it possible for North Korea to start WW3?

What North Korea is doing is basically wishing death upon their own country. They are a small nation waging war against a nation that makes theirs look like a dwarf by comparison. What do you think would happen if North Korea tried to attack the United States? They would swat the country like the annoying bug it is. That fat little chubby man baby does not take into consideration the size of his enemy. He has no allies. South Korea has allies that are much larger then them. Do the math. If North Korea tries to start a second Korean War it will only end with disaster for North Korea.

Nathan Zhang

Student at Upper Canada College1y

Related

Will there ever be a WW3 in 2022?

It’s literally happening right now.

Russia just invaded Ukraine, and it will only be a matter of time before China invades Taiwan. With Russia invading Ukraine and China invading Taiwan, USA will most certainly interfere, and if USA interferes, then it will only be a matter of time before NATO joins in. Most likely the sides will look like this:

CSTO, China, Pakistan, and North Korea (and allies) vs NATO, India, Japan, and South Korea (and allies)

Julien Boyer

Lives in Berlin (2017–present)Upvoted by 

Ibrahim Kamara

, M.A Political Science & International Relations, Howard University (2020)Author has 1.3K answers and 6.5M answer viewsUpdated 6y

Related

Which country is most likely to trigger WW3?

Saudi Arabia has the third largest military budget in the world. It’s also a dictatorship, and one of the really bad ones. The rhetoric that comes out of it is just as bellicose as what we’re used to from the silly little atomic loon North Korea. The Saudis hate many things, but they hate Iran above all.

Iran is recovering from their own silly little atomic loon. They have Turkish-level potential, but suffered a lot from bad politics and war. Now that Iraq is quite literally out of the picture, they should become quite a power.

A thought that makes every Saudi royal blood boil.

Saudi Arabia doesn

Continue Reading

Active in Russian-American RelationsUpvoted by 

Carl Holmberg

, BS Comp Sci, BA Poli Sci, 35 yr aerospace engineering careerAuthor has 11.3K answers and 122.4M answer views1y

Related

What would be the first thing you would do if a nuclear war broke out?

In the event of a nuclear war, I would be FUCKED. I have decided to drop the veil of silence and talk a bit more about myself, because some of my youtuber, content creator friends advise me that that is a good way to build a loyal following, despite the fact that I might be jeopardizing operational security a bit.

Back to the nuclear war: I live on Cape Cod, a peninsula located about an hour south of Boston that stretches out into the Atlantic Ocean. Cape Cod is actually an island these days, because the US carved a canal through the “shoulder” of the Cape back around the turn of the century. T

Continue Reading

Richard DeLotto

Grass-roots Republican (1970–present)Author has 6.1K answers and 513.3K answer views3y

Related

Who is waiting for World War III to happen?

Let’s see…

· all the way through elementary and middles school, and right up to my freshman year in highschool (roughly November 1966) we had monthly air raid practice and did “duck and cover drills” in gym class.

· Our school had a bomb shelter. So did just about every public building, and about a third of the houses in our neighborhood.

· During the Bay of Pigs crisis our parish priest performed a Mass Against the Heathen in the school chapel for us just before sending us home, firmly believing we would not be alive to come back to class.

· There were nuclear-tipped Nike anti-aircraft missiles in my tow

Continue Reading

Former Retired USAF and Major Airline PilotAuthor has 14.5K answers and 14.1M answer views1y

Does Donald Trump like to start World War III?

No. I think the only positive thing for Trump as president was that he really didn't want to start a war.

History enthusiastAuthor has 2.2K answers and 6.1M answer views3y

Related

Will World War III happen, and can it be avoided?

Yes, it can be avoided. Avoiding ww3 comes down simply to the big countries not going to war with each other. It's as simple as that.

But will it happen? It most probably will. One of these days, some is going to come up with a way to neutralize nuclear weapons (in my humble opinion it was nuclear weapons that have kept the big countries from going to war with each other in the last 70 years), and then some politician is going to lose the fear of annihilation, and a lot of people are going to suffer for it. And the worst thi g about it is, that the politician who makes this retarded move is goi

Continue Reading

Ricky Tack

Freelance Writer, Polymath and Anti-Communist.Author has 33.9K answers and 43.7M answer views9mo

Related

What are your plans if WW3 breaks out and your nation has to join the war?

I am a 63 year old Englishman. There is no chance of an invasion, but if there were, I would naturally defend my nation by rifle or any other weapon I could lay my hands on. Logic, however would dictate that this would never happen, and the only way to attack England would be by nuclear force. If that occurred, the aggressor would be wiped out. That is the good principle of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). It prevented both “Stalin”, and his successor, Khrushchev, even at their most insane, from ever trying it.

64

1

5

David Kleemann

Combat Medic at U.S. Army (2005–present)Author has 1.7K answers and 5M answer views3y

Related

What would start WWIII?

1. China by accident or miscalculation attacks an American Fleet or its Air Wing in disputed waters. Unless quick action is taken to deescalate, a wider confrontation would quickly happen. Likely before the President is even notified that an attack occurred the PACOM Commander or lower would have already authorized retaliatory strikes against the sites or units that initiated the attack. China may, believing the US will respond violently, conduct further strikes to defend itself.

2. A miscommunication between Russian and US forces anywhere in the world where both are actively and passively supporting

Continue Reading

Herb Fluitt Jr

Former Managing Director at Fluitt Consulting LLC (2002–2018)7mo

Related

If WW3 breaks out, who do you want to be president?

Well that is a tough question; but I can say with authority that it needs to be someone besides Joe Biden, nothing against our President except he is not a “tough no nonsense” leader. We need someone with actual war experience, preferable in his or her mid to late fifties, with the ability to speak with emotion and the skill to rally others…

War takes a different kind of leader, and I really am not familiar enough with all of the players to give a good opinion. If we go to war this year or next, then Joe Biden is our man…
Hope this helps..

Anonymous

3y

Related

Who would win WW3 If it started tomorrow?

No one. There will not be a World War Three simply because too many of the major players have nuclear weapons, and NO ONE (not even that idiot Kim from North Korea) wants a nuclear war. No one wins in a Nuclear war.

Evan Jones

Read years and watched months worth of non-fiction4y

Well, it’s the year before Trump’s ending second term, and as we know how much Russia loves interfering with the US elections, he’ll get voted in, and as such, he’ll want to go out with a bang!

What type of bang? You may be asking, well, of course, as in trump style, A Nuclear Bang!

And that is why we will all die in 2023

Note this is a joke, please don’t get triggered or offended, it was a silly answer to a good question

James Stewart

Former Dental Officer/Medic, USNR (1972–2020)Author has 21K answers and 7.8M answer views11mo

Related

Is there even a point of living anymore now that the world is sleepwalking to WW3? I'm so scared of the war in Ukraine. Will we even live to see the start of 2023?

I have lived with the specter of global thermonuclear war since 1954, along with lots of other people, which was punctuated with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963. I sleep fine, eat fine, and do not waste any tears about it. There was many a rake who talked a young naive gal into having sex “because we could all be dead at any moment.”

Vladimir Putin’s threat is a joke. Look at this: ” Shit. Oh hell, let's just do what we always do. Hijack some nuclear weapons and hold the world hostage. Yeah? Good!” Dr. Evil from “Austin Power”.

Putin wants to re-establish the Rodina, Russia, and the Soviet Unio

Aidan Colyer

13+ years as a commercial archaeologistAuthor has 755 answers and 2.5M answer views6y

Related

Will World War III happen in the 21st century?

There is a high likelihood considering how much of the century we have left.

As for the reasons why it may happen that is a very open ended question. So let’s start with Trump as you mentioned him. No I don’t mean in a ‘he is going to hit the big red button kind of way’ but more of what he represents in a broader sense.

If you look at the reasons why he won over Hillary you will likely have to sift

Continue Reading

Jay Faulkner

Property ManagementAuthor has 4.3K answers and 3.3M answer viewsUpdated 6mo

Related

Should I be worried about World War 3?

Why you shouldn’t be worried about the possibility of WW3?

The US and Russia are well aware that nuclear war would be devastating to both of them. If you look back over the history of the cold war you will find many confrontations far, far, far worse than any recent disagreements and none resulted in a nuclear war. Some of the historical confrontations will positively freeze up your bowels. The US missiles strike in Syria is less than nothing by comparison. Both the US and Russian national security institutions are well used to such incidents and know how to handle them. Relax. Read up on the C

Lek Kodra

interested in Orthodox theologyAuthor has 5.6K answers and 589.8K answer views2y

Related

Do you believe in the prophecy of St. Paisos, mainly the one about WW3?

if someone first makes sure a prophecy comes indeed from the Saint, then we can trust him.

His character, and his behaviour and his personality, do clearly show that was a man that had fear (respect) of God.

Specifically of this prophecy, is cross-confirmed by other saints as well, for example, from St. John the Russian (Euboea Greece ) through St. Iakovos Tsalikis.

While it could sound like a impossible yesterday, things have changed now. Many non religious sources like geopolitical scientists, (I believe/ think) Zionist sources too, refer to it.

For me, the reality nowadays, is like reading St.

Continue Reading

Eugene St Clair

Bachelor of Science History.Author has 458 answers and 1M answer views7y

Related

What should I do to prepare for World War 3?

Originally Answered: What should I do to prepare for World War 3? ?

World war 3 will not be like any war we have seen before. It won't involve massive tanks and aircraft but electronics. We are now so dependent on our electronic devices such as smartphones, PC'S, tablets, and the ubiquitous Internet that it is easy to contemplate that war can now be waged virtually causing as much economic damage as a nuclear device.

This type of warfare is already underway as I type. It is now widely assumed that the US and possibly Israel planted a computer virus that attacked specific types of machine controllers that were used in nuclear fuel processing facilities in

Continue Reading

Bruce Gao

4y

Related

Will the UN actually be able to prevent WW3?

If tensions are high, then the countries, in this case US and Russia, would attempt to deescalate with an UN meeting, maybe in the General Assembly, after all nobody wants a third world war, but then, if World War 3 actually started like nukes are flying and tanks are rolling down europe, I’m pretty sure the UN could do no damn thing to stop it, as much as the UN wants to. After all pieces of paper signed by delegates wearing suits could never stop ballistic missiles that are already launched and headed for their targets, hell, I don’t even believe the UN would survive, the UN headquarter is i

Continue Reading

AnalystAuthor has 122 answers and 2.8M answer views4y

Related

When will World War 3 happen?

There are certain flash-points that may lead to World War 3

SOUTH CHINA & EAST CHINA SEA

The Chinese government claim that these regions rightfully belong to them. Why? Because there about 10 billion barrels of oil and 260 TCF of gas beneath the seas. About $5 trillion worth of container trade pass through the South China Sea. Neighbors like Japan, Philippines, Brunei and Vietnam are close allies of the United States. Therefore, the potential for conflict in the Asia Pacific region of two nuclear armed nations makes this issue a potential flash-point for a World War 3.

KOREAN PENINSULA

The only th

Continue Reading

Edward Lafreniere

Former Stone age Cobol programmer. (1965–1995)Author has 13.3K answers and 2.4M answer views1y

Related

What are the chances of WWIII to happen? What would be the results?

It's halftime and we await the score at the end of the game.

3

Tomaž Vargazon

Practicing atheistAuthor has 8K answers and 283.3M answer viewsDec 6

Related

Why doesn't Ukraine retaliate with a missile strike on a city in Russia?

Because Ukrainian leadership is intelligent and knows missile strikes on Russian cities don’t solve their problems. Just yesterday, December 5th, they once more showed Russians and the world how war is done properly.

Ukraine recieved intelligence Russia was preparing another massive wave of missile strikes all over the country. An absolutely massive strike was planned, from four different directions, to completely saturate Ukrainian air defense and shut down the power grid for a week or more. However this time, Ukrainians were prepared. Their own defense industry produced a

Continue Reading

Teacher of PhilosophiesAuthor has 1.1K answers and 1.1M answer views6y

Related

What are signs that war is coming to a country?

There are some posts below that have spoken about the government and military actions that tell you war is imminent, but what about the social context? Here are some signs that have led up to wars throughout history based on societal action, rather than anything specifically involving the military:

1. A general division between society and government. The government wants to go one way, most of society goes a different direction. This has happened dozens of times, and seems to be the top sign, though there are plenty of times that this didn’t happen.

2. A general division within the governing power re

Continue Reading

26

5

Maciej Pas

Author has 1.9K answers and 2.9M answer views6y

Related

How likely is world war 3 to happen in the next 30 years?

Highly likely.

If you go through the history of mankind, there’s hardly (actually, there practically isn’t) a century without a war that for contemporary people wouldn’t be an equivalent to a World War.

We went without such a large-scale conflict for about seventy years now, so statistically speaking, there’s one bound to happen within the next 30 years.

71

12

Chakra

Philosophy of LifeAuthor has 2.6K answers and 675.4K answer views9mo

Related

Will WW3 start in 2021?

Not in 2021 but in 2025 it will start from the most unexpected corner of the world and end in the middle of Europe.

2

4

Mark Kell

Tax Attorney Author has 1K answers and 348.1K answer viewsUpdated 1y

Related

What are the odds of WW3 happening, and how can we survive it if there's a good chance of it?

The long term odds may be unknowable but, in the near term, probably higher due to Putin’s arrogance and unpredictability. For instance, Putin said recently that Russia could have sunk a British destroyer (in the Black Sea) without causing WW3. He may be right but that is scary thinking! I hope Putin doesn’t really believe it as it shows his dangerous calculations and potential for miscalculation. But, if nuclear war/WW3 broke out, it is possible to survive because with today’s reduced nuclear arsenals about 1200 Russian warheads would be devoted to destroying our 600 ICBMs (at a rate of 2 warheads per silo. Hypersonic, maneuvering nuclear missiles may be more accurate and harder to defend against so the 2:1 ratio may change in 10 years). But prudence requires that some Russian nukes must be kept in reserve. Therefore, the remaining available nukes would be spread across the US and NATO military installations and major cities. That’s a lot of targets! According to Soviet nuclear targeting plans obtained after the fall of the USSR many military installations and major cities would get 2 or 3 warheads each. Even Vienna was targeted with 2 or 3 warheads. Vienna? Wtf? Keep in mind that we would further attrit the Russian nuke arsenal by our own massive attacks. Therefore, most of US wouldn’t be directly affected by actual blast effects. However, virtually the entire US would have to wait out the fallout. After the fallout cooled down the main threats would be starvation, thirst, disease and significant inter-personal conflict over scarce resources. Reference Pentagon study conducted in the 70s, perhaps by the RAND CORP. Unless, of course, cobalt bombs are used extensively in which case we all die. This is because its half life is measured in many decades , maybe 80 years or so. No one can survive in bomb shelters for 200 or 300 years. Reference Dr. Strangelove. Yes, it’s a movie but the explanation about the lingering radioactive half life of cobalt bombs is relatively accurate. “No one will survive, not even in the shelters.” In the late 50s or early 60s a Soviet scientist really did propose a cobalt doomsday bomb which, fortunately for humanity, Kruschev vetoed. But it was plausible! Also refer to recent news articles over the past few years about Russia’s claim to be developing extremely long range, high speed, undersea, unmanned, autonomous cobalt bomb nuclear torpedoes. This potential doomsday weapon is designed to explode off our coasts and swamp us with radioactive mega tsunamis to irradiate enormous portions of the US coastline and render them uninhabitable for centuries. If true then Norfolk, New York, Boston, Puget Sound, San Francisco, San Diego, LA, etc would be targeted. We really must hope that Putin is not mad enough to actually do this because, if used extensively, then we are looking at an “On the Beach” type scenario. Therefore, you should reside at least 40 miles from likely targets, far from both coasts, have a deep fallout shelter for a few weeks shelter (for the initial fallout) food, fuel for cooking/heating/ lighting for at least a year or 2 (hopefully some kind of civil order and food and fuel production MAY possibly be restored in that time) weapons and enough ammunition to defend your food and shelter from all the survivors who didn’t plan ahead. Some people may prefer to be near ground zero rather than to live through the aftermath. Or move to central Alaska, South America, Africa or very large, high volcanic, pacific islands. With the same food, resources, equipment and weapons plus a fishing sailboat and fishing nets, etc. Personally, I like the big island of Hawaii.