I have a new column (“Putin’s Doomsday Machine”) up on Status-6/Kanyon — the Russian underwater drone that is apparently armed with a very dirty thermonuclear weapon. I wasn’t really able to do the science justice in the column, so I…
On the heels of elections this week in Burma, the U.S. Treasury issued a press release this morning adding five new North Korean entities to the Specially Designated Nationals list, two of whom are based in Burma. The most prominent…
“The Martian” is a box office hit because it fits the tenor of the times. This film perfectly reflects the anti-politics-as-usual mood of the U.S. electorate and our craving for genuine heroes. Supporters of presidential candidates Donald Trump and Bernie…
I am going to write something longer on the (accidental?) leak of the slide showing a Russian UUV. But I wanted to share the best quality image I could make. Comments solicited.
I’m really excited (really really excited) about this. Today we find ourselves 11.5 years into this experiment with 3,261 posts, 30,331 approved comments, 880 tags and 30 authors. The main goal with this update is to find ways to highlight and…
Trend lines in the subcontinent are poor and will not improve until there is substantive dialogue between India and Pakistan. Hopes that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would pull a “Nixon goes to China” maneuver with Pakistan have been dashed, at…
Over the weekend many residents in Xinjiang Province posted pictures on Chinese social media sites of a mysterious event in the sky. Rather quickly online commentators began to speculate that this event was a missile defense test from the Korla…
Note to ACW readers: This week, guest contributor Hannah Haegeland continues a series of posts on the morality of nuclear deterrence. Strategic modernization programs, which are proceeding on a significant scale in the United States, Russia, China, Pakistan, and India,…
There have been two Russian cruise missiles in the news lately. One is a ground-launched cruise missile that apparently violates the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the other is a sea-launched cruise missile that Russia recently fired against targets…
[See the previous post. -Ed.] Yes, every kind of weapon, if used against noncombatants, can violate the humanitarian laws of warfare. But nuclear detonations add a whole new scale to this problem. A single mushroom cloud, except under highly particular circumstances,…
