Tag: Nuclear Weapons

Biden’s Next Crisis Might Be North Korea

How do you solve a problem like North Korea? Since the end of the Cold War, it seems that every formula, from threatening war to promising peace, has been tried. And yet, despite being under more sanctions than just about any other country, North Korea developed a nuclear arsenal estimated at 50 warheads and sophisticated […]

Read More

Putin Plays Down Threat of Nuclear War in Pre-Election State TV Interview

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia tried to play down fears of nuclear war in an interview released on Wednesday and denied having considered using weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine, aiming to bolster his domestic image as a guarantor of stability before the Russian presidential election this weekend. In a lengthy interview released by […]

Read More

‘Oppenheimer’ Is the Origin Story. These Three Movies Reveal Our Nuclear Present.

The national security writer W. J. Hennigan has spent many years ringing the alarm about the world’s new nuclear era — the subject of At The Brink, a new series from New York Times Opinion — and the crisis on the horizon. For anyone whose interest was piqued by the origin story of nuclear weapons […]

Read More

“Oppenheimer,” My Uncle and the Secrets America Doesn’t Want to Tell

The darkened sky stretches over miles of desert sand as in the distance, from an illuminated scaffold, the object rises that will change the world. The first atomic test is the defining scene in “Oppenheimer,” which won seven Academy Awards on Sunday night, including best picture. The scene plays out over seven or so minutes […]

Read More

Biden’s Armageddon Moment: When Nuclear Detonation Seemed Possible in Ukraine

President Biden was standing in an Upper East Side townhouse owned by the businessman James Murdoch, the rebellious scion of the media empire, surrounded by liberal New York Democrats who had paid handsomely to come hear optimistic talk about the Biden agenda for the next few years. It was Oct. 6, 2022, but what they […]

Read More

Macron and Scholz Spar Over Policy on Ukraine and Russia

It was a private dinner in a Parisian garden on the Boulevard St. Germain, meant to cement the important personal relationship between the leaders of France and Germany. After the meal on July 4, 2022, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said “Merci beaucoup” in a Twitter post praising “close exchanges.” But on the way out, President Emmanuel […]

Read More

Putin’s Nukes in Space Are Back to Scare Us Again

In 1982, President Ronald Reagan was considering what became known as “Star Wars,” a plan to shield America from Soviet missiles by deploying up to thousands of weapons in space. At the same time, as a young science writer, I was reporting on how the rays from a single nuclear detonation in orbit could wipe […]

Read More

Putin’s Nuclear Threats Become Background Theme of Ukraine War

President Vladimir V. Putin has threatened to reach into Russia’s arsenal of nuclear weapons at three points in time in the past two years: once at the outset of the war against Ukraine two years ago, once when he was losing ground and again on Thursday, as he senses that he is grinding down Ukrainian […]

Read More

Putin Warns West of Nuclear War if It Intervenes More in Ukraine

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said the West faced the prospect of nuclear conflict if it intervened more directly in the war in Ukraine, using an annual speech to the nation on Thursday to escalate his threats against Europe and the United States. Mr. Putin said NATO countries that were helping Ukraine strike Russian […]

Read More

As Putin Threatens, Despair and Hedging in Europe

As the leaders of the West gathered in Munich over the past three days, President Vladimir V. Putin had a message for them: Nothing they’ve done so far — sanctions, condemnation, attempted containment — would alter his intentions to disrupt the current world order. Russia made its first major gain in Ukraine in nearly a […]

Read More

Intelligence Chairman Defends His Hints About a Russian Space Weapon

Representative Michael R. Turner defended his decision to hint publicly about classified intelligence that Russia is moving to deploy a new space-based nuclear weapon. “They needed to know this information,” Mr. Turner, an Ohio Republican and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that aired Sunday. […]

Read More

U.S. Fears Russia Might Put a Nuclear Weapon in Space

When Russia conducted a series of secret military satellite launches around the time of its invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, American intelligence officials began delving into the mystery of what, exactly, the Russians were doing. Later, spy agencies discovered Russia was working on a new kind of space-based weapon that could threaten the thousands […]

Read More

Russia’s Antisatellite Technology Poses No Immediate Threat, White House Says

A White House spokesman said on Thursday that antisatellite technology being developed by Russia had not been deployed and posed “no immediate threat to anyone’s safety.” “We are not talking about a weapon that can be used to attack human beings or cause physical destruction here on earth,” the spokesman, John F. Kirby, told reporters. […]

Read More

Israelis Enter Gaza Hospital, and Super Bowl Parade Shooting

The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists […]

Read More

U.S. Has New Intelligence About Russia’s Nuclear Capabilities

The United States has informed Congress and its allies in Europe of new intelligence about Russian nuclear capabilities that could pose an international threat, according to officials briefed on the matter. Officials said that the new intelligence was serious — but that the capability was still under development, and Russia had not deployed it. Consequently, […]

Read More

The Doomsday Clock Keeps Ticking

The Bomb and I go way back. In Seattle, where I grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, it was common wisdom that in the event of nuclear war, we were No. 2 on the target list because Seattle was the home of Boeing, maker of B-52 bombers and Minuteman missiles. In school we had […]

Read More

An Outburst by Trump on NATO May Push Europe to Go It Alone

Long before Donald J. Trump threatened over the weekend that he was willing to let Russia “do whatever the hell they want” against NATO allies that do not contribute sufficiently to collective defense, European leaders were quietly discussing how they might prepare for a world in which America removes itself as the centerpiece of the […]

Read More

Fear and Ambition Propel Xi’s Nuclear Acceleration

Nineteen days after taking power as China’s leader, Xi Jinping convened the generals overseeing the country’s nuclear missiles and issued a blunt demand. China had to be ready for possible confrontation with a formidable adversary, he said, signaling that he wanted a more potent nuclear capability to counter the threat. Their force, he told the […]

Read More

That Humanity-Is-Doomed Feeling Is Back, Right on Schedule

The pathbreaking biologist J.B.S. Haldane, another socialist, concurred with Wells’s view of warfare’s ultimate destination. In 1925, two decades before the Trinity test birthed an atomic sun over the New Mexico desert, Haldane, who experienced bombing firsthand during World War I, mused, “If we could utilize the forces which we now know to exist inside […]

Read More

The Shadowy Story of Oppenheimer and Congress

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion […]

Read More

Is North Korea Planning a War?

North Korea fired hundreds of artillery shells in waters near South Korean border islands on Jan. 5. Last week, it said it no longer regarded the South as inhabited by “fellow countrymen” but as a “hostile state” it would subjugate through a nuclear war. On Friday, it said it had tested an underwater nuclear drone […]

Read More

Why North Korea Is Offering New Reasons to Worry

The globe is already pockmarked with crises, and here may be another: North Korea is acting in highly unusual ways, leading some veteran analysts to fear it is preparing a surprise attack on South Korea and perhaps on Japan and Guam as well. I’ve seen many false alarms since I began covering and visiting North […]

Read More

A Reporter’s Journey Into How the U.S. Funded the Bomb

As I sat in a dark, cavernous movie theater in Berlin watching the film “Oppenheimer,” my mind was thousands of miles away. Like many other people who turned out to see the biopic, I was captivated by Christopher Nolan’s portrayal of the Trinity test and Cillian Murphy’s performance as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the singularly ambitious, […]

Read More

From Lebanon to the Red Sea, a Broader Conflict With Iran Looms

President Biden and his top national security aides believed last summer that the chances of conflict with Iran and its proxies were well contained. After secret talks, they had just concluded a deal that led to the release of five imprisoned Americans in return for $6 billion in frozen Iranian funds and some Iranian prisoners. […]

Read More

North Korea’s New Reactor Increases Ability to Produce Plutonium

In what would be a fresh breach of United Nations sanctions, a new reactor ​in North Korea’s ​main nuclear complex appears to​ have gone into operation, providing the country with a potential source of additional plutonium for its growing nuclear arsenal, according to the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog. ​Since mid-October, the International Atomic Energy Agency […]

Read More

Militant Rocket Hit Base Linked to Israeli Nuclear Missile Program

A rocket most likely fired by Hamas militants during their Oct. 7 attack on Israel struck an Israeli military base where, experts say, many of the country’s nuclear-capable missiles are based, according to a visual analysis of the attack’s aftermath by The New York Times. While the missiles themselves weren’t hit, the rocket’s impact, at […]

Read More

Russia Televises New Nuclear-Capable Hypersonic Missile Being Loaded Into Silo

Russia’s Defense Ministry broadcast the loading of a new kind of nuclear-capable missile into a silo on TV this Thursday. It was the Avangard, an intercontinental ballistic missile with a hypersonic glide reentry vehicle designed to deliver a nuclear payload while avoiding missile defense systems. The Avangard is a much-hyped missile system. Its hypersonic glide […]

Read More

The Urgent Need to Nuclear Talks with China

After months of troubled relations, and then some tentative steps to bridge the gap between the United States and China, there is one glaring omission: American and Chinese military leaders still don’t communicate with one another directly. That’s important because those lines of communication are the best way to avoid the kind of misunderstandings or […]

Read More

Russia Pulled Out of a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Here’s What That Means.

In a landmark moment marking the closing chapters of the Cold War, Presidents Ronald Reagan of the United States and Mikhail S. Gorbachev of the Soviet Union concluded a 1985 summit in Geneva by issuing a joint statement declaring that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” That commitment paved the […]

Read More