Tag: Arms Control and Limitation and Disarmament

A Way Out of the A.I. Arms Race?

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Over the course of two harrowing weeks in October 1962, the world came within an eyelash of nuclear Armageddon. The United States and the Soviet Union were jockeying desperately for advantage during the Cold War arms race. After the United States stationed intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Italy and Turkey, the Soviets, fearing a first strike, sought to station their own nuclear weapons in Cuba. The tense two-week standoff that ensued, the Cuban Missile Crisis, nearly escalated into nuclear war. But it didn’t. Not only did the parties step back from…

South Korean President Calls for Easing Sanctions on the North

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Breaking with decades of policy on North Korea, the president of South Korea, Lee Jae Myung, is now urging the United States to ease sanctions on Pyongyang in exchange for an agreement that it freeze its weapons programs. “I believe there is significant value in a trade-off between sanctions — which are not particularly effective anyway — and a stop to the development of additional nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missile technology,” Mr. Lee said in an interview with The New York Times on Friday. However unpalatable such a bargain…

What To Know as China’s Xi Jinping Heads to North Korea

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The last time China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, traveled to North Korea, that country’s dictator, Kim Jong-un, was reeling from sanctions and failed nuclear talks with the United States. Now, nearly seven years later, as Mr. Xi returns to North Korea on Monday, he will meet with a leader who is newly emboldened by an alliance with Russia that has helped his economy break out of isolation. Mr. Xi is expected to use the two-day summit with Mr. Kim to project a united front between allies against the West. But…

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

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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 of satellites that keep the world connected. In recent weeks, a new warning has circulated from America’s spy agencies: Another launch may be in the works, and the question is whether Russia plans to use…

Fear and Ambition Propel Xi’s Nuclear Acceleration

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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 generals, was a “pillar of our status as a great power.” They must, Mr. Xi said, advance “strategic plans for responding under the most complicated and difficult conditions to military intervention by a powerful enemy,”…

China Quietly Rebuilds Secretive Base for Nuclear Tests

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In the remote desert where China detonated its first atom bomb nearly 60 years ago, a drilling rig recently bored a deep vertical shaft that is estimated to plunge down at least a third of a mile. It is the strongest evidence yet that Beijing is weighing whether to test a new generation of nuclear arms that could increase the lethality of its rapidly expanding missile force. A large drill rig hidden in the eastern hills of the Lop Nur site. The New York Times; satellite image by Maxar For…

A.I. Killer Drones Are Becoming Reality. Nations Disagree on Limits.

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It seems like something out of science fiction: swarms of killer robots that hunt down targets on their own and are capable of flying in for the kill without any human signing off. But it is approaching reality as the United States, China and a handful of other nations make rapid progress in developing and deploying new technology that has the potential to reshape the nature of warfare by turning life and death decisions over to autonomous drones equipped with artificial intelligence programs. That prospect is so worrying to many…

China’s Military is Making Risky Moves and Adding Nuclear Warheads, U.S. Says

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Risky Maneuvers Since the fall of 2021, the Pentagon report says, the United States has recorded more than 180 intercepts of U.S. aircraft by Chinese military forces in the region. Beijing has long bristled at the U.S. military aircraft and ships that operate in international skies and seas near China. China has been increasingly assertive in the region, from building military infrastructure in the disputed South China Sea to buzzing planes flown by the United States, Canada and other Western allies. Such moves risk a midair crash and a wider…

Putin and Kim’s Embrace May Place Xi in a Bind

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To challenge the power of his chief rival, the United States, China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has linked arms with two anti-Western states, declaring a “no limits” partnership with Russia and pledging “unswerving” support for North Korea. But the specter of a budding bromance between President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, after their meeting this week in eastern Russia, may not be as welcome a development for Mr. Xi as it might initially seem. Closer ties between Pyongyang and Moscow could result in…

U.S. Warns China on Nuclear Rivalry and Vows to Keep Patrolling Region

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The United States pressed Beijing on two fronts this weekend, warning both of the near-term risks of military mishaps and of the looming dangers of a nuclear arms rivalry, prompting a vehement accusation from a Chinese general that Washington was stoking confrontation. In speeches from President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, on Friday, and Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III on Saturday in Singapore, the Biden administration sought to draw China toward talks on the rising military perils. Mr. Austin also indicated that the United States would keep operating…