Madison Rose

Opinion | D.E.I. in College, Attacked and Defended Readers discuss diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Also: The debate; Donald Trump’s mental state; the Sentinel missile program; a walker in Manhattan.

My colleague Laura Grego has an excellent LTE on the @nytimes.com website today, making the case for why the over-budget, unneeded and dangerous Sentinel ICBM program should be cancelled. You can see it here: www.nytimes.com/2024/09/13/o... [Scroll down a bit!]

Why a substantive and verifiable no-first-use treaty for nuclear weapons is possible The next US administration should respond positively to China’s invitation to negotiate a no-first-use nuclear weapons treaty.

Li Bin, professor of Intl Relations at Tsinghua Univ in China, is doing a presentation on negotiating a No First Use treaty. Here is the paper he is basing his presentation on: thebulletin.org/2024/06/why-...

The Price of the Sentinel Nuclear Weapons Program Keeps Going Up—But the True Costs Are Even Higher Recent analysis of the Sentinel nuclear weapons program found the estimated costs to be much higher than anticipated--and the system will not make us any safer from the threat of nuclear war than we a...

My colleague Jennifer Knox lays out the distressing facts about the unnecessary, expensive & dangerous US program to build new silo-based long-range missiles. Known as Sentinel, the new missile will cost more than $140 billion while increasing the risk of nuclear war: blog.ucsusa.org/jknox/the-pr...

I folded a paper crane to honor the anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Sadako Sasaki, and all the children impacted by conflicts they didn’t create. Every child deserves to live free of the threat of nuclear weapons.
#CranesForOurFuture

China Suspended Nuclear Arms Control Talks With the US. Here's Why. In response to a question during a regular press conference, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lin Jian said, “the Chinese side decided to hold off discussion with the US on a new round of consult...

While recent events may seem dismal, my colleague
Gregory Kulacki, East Asia Project Manager at the @ucsusa.bsky.social, ends on a hopeful note about the long-term future of #nuclear arms control negations between the United States and China. blog.ucsusa.org/gregory-kula...

Today @ucsusa.bsky.social released a letter from 700+ scientists to Biden & Congress, calling on them to cancel the proposed new long-range, land-based, nuclear-armed missile known as Sentinel, and to scrap such missiles permanently. Here is the letter: ucs-documents.s3.amazonaws.com/global-secur...

Another reason to cancel the Sentinel missile: the rising cost of its nuclear warhead The total cost of the Sentinel missile, when you include all the costs of the warhead it will carry, will be more than $185 billion. The ever-increasing price tag for the new intercontinental ballisti...

Today @bulletinatomic.bsky.social published my piece on the rising cost of the massive effort by NNSA to produce new plutonium pits, the fissile core of nuclear weapons. Those new pits are for new warheads for the vastly over-budget Sentinel missile. thebulletin.org/2024/05/anot...

Gen Z: An untapped pool of support for nuclear disarmament Young people drive social movements. Nuclear disarmament advocates should more aggressively recruit help from Gen Z.

I'm so grateful that young folks like Rishi Gurudevan are speaking out about the importance of younger generations to the nuclear disarmament movement. I agree that, "Only through intergenerational collaboration will humanity be spared."

thebulletin.org/2024/04/gen-...

Sickened by U.S. Nuclear Program, Communities Turn to Congress for Aid In St. Louis and around the country, people harmed by the drive for an atomic bomb have been shut out of a federal law enacted to help such victims.

It is infuriating and unjust that some in St. Louis have cancer and other illnesses because of uranium processing.

We need Speaker Mike Johnson to strengthen and reauthorize the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to the floor for a vote immediately.

www.nytimes.com/2024/04/06/u...

And Rohlfing leaves us with important and hopeful reminders.

We don't have to live with this sword of Damocles hanging over our head. We have a toolkit of new solution sets and technology and we know how to use arms control to produce a safer future.

Hideko Tamura Snider, the survivor of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima shares her main message that we should, "Create hope and work towards peace so that no one ever experiences what we went through... I hope for not a another nuclear bomb."

Geist: There haven't been debates on nuclear spending. We should demand that candidates discuss nuclear matters and their plan moving forward.

And a reminder from me, there is a nation-wide campaign working at the grassroots to abolish nuclear weapons: Bringing Communities Together to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

preventnuclearwar.org

What can US citizens do to reduce the threat of nuclear weapons?

Rohlfing: Speak up, reclaim our agency, approach our elected officials and ask what they are doing to keep us safe. We need to educate ourselves, there are policy initiatives we can achieve to create a safer and more secure world.

Rohlfing: We need intellectual innovation in this space. Of all philanthropy, less than 1/10 of 1% goes to nuclear issue, that number is declining. Need people to get re-engaged and save us from where we are headed.

Geist: Has hope because we don't appear to be on a trajectory to reach the number of weapons at the Cold War peak.

And he is worried about the multi-polar landscape we are in now.

We need new ideas and people from new fields to address our new challenges. Need intellectual diversity.

Ed Geist, policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, joins the conversation and discusses the growing demand for nuclear experts and anxieties about AI and nuclear weapons. In his book he concludes that AI will not make nuclear war winnable, but the strategic landscape is changing.

Preventing Nuclear War We're mobilizing scientists, activists, and everyday people to help change US nuclear policy.

Rohlfing: What does this generation need to do to ensure nuclear weapons are not used?

My answer - organize! advocate! make our voices heard to our decisionmakers that there are better, safer ways to ensure our security. Our take action page is a good place to start www.ucsusa.org/take-action/...

Hennigan: The Department of Defense is saying that they need to invest in the nuclear triad. This will be a nearly $2 trillion investment in the coming decade.

Rohlfing: We need to ask ourselves - why do we heave these weapons? Are they useful? Do we need to live with this terror?

Hennigan: The US is building new missiles, bombers, and submarines - and new weapons for the first time in a long time, and the plutonium pits that go inside these weapons.

Rohlfing: We've been unable to imagine a paradigm that doesn't require the threat of nuclear annihilation. We have deeply entrenched thinking. We need to question the idea that nuclear deterrence is the only way to stay safe. It is time for a deep rethink about our strategy.

Tactical Nuclear Weapons Also called nonstrategic nuclear weapons, they're designed for battlefield use and have a shorter range than other nuclear weapons.

Rohlfing explains the definition of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons.

This is our UCS explainer on the subject: www.ucsusa.org/resources/ta...

Threats of nuclear war are not low, but they are lower than some of the most concerning moments during the ongoing war on Ukraine. We are not out of the woods by any stretch.

Vladimir Putin's nuclear weapons comments and threats are deeply troubling. Nuclear weapons threats should never be made lightly. It is deeply troubling. The Biden administration has been keeping an eye on these threats. Fears were palpable in fall of 2022 given the state of the war on Ukraine.

Why is the public less concerned with nuclear weapons?

Rohlfing: There's a perfect storm, diverting attention, growing competition, erosion of arms control, etc. We made great progress on arms control, now face new threats. Our thinking is outdated. It's time to rethink how we protect ourselves

Hennigan: We have entered a new nuclear age. All 9 nuclear nations are enhancing or expanding their nuclear arsenals. Guardrails are gone or hanging on by a thread. More nations are making nuclear threats.

Rohlfing: It is not just the blast effect of nuclear weapons, it is the radiation, the intense heat

Rohlflng: "We forget about the power of nuclear weapons and the horrors associated with nuclear use. Most people have forgotten that nuclear weapons still exist... nuclear weapons can be up to 80 times more powerful than the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima"

Guests include: Joan Rohlfing, president and COO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative and W.J. Hennigan, the lead writer for The New York Times series “At the Brink.”