The New Nuclear Age

So now we come to a new situation, and that's dual use.

Nuclear diplomacy is colliding with a gray zone of dual use technology.

Missiles like Russia's Orshnik, which can carry either a nuclear or conventional warhead, and which Russia has already fired at Ukraine.

There are also space weapons, hypersonic glide vehicles, lethal autonomous weapons, cyber warfare, the list goes on.

And none of this is governed by treaty.

Is there any realistic path, do you think, to governing any of this before it's already in widespread use?

Well, I think there's a realistic chance of governing some of it, but not all of it.

So let's start with the simplest that was on your list, which is, what do you do about missiles that can carry both a nuclear warhead and a conventional warhead? And that's a big, big problem, because if you see one of those missiles launch, you don't know what's in the warhead, right? So one of the things the United States has always done is separate its global strike weapons, which are non-nuclear but could reach any corner of the world with high precision, from its nuclear weapons.

and make sure that they're launched from different places.

And in the days of New START, when the Russians could come in and inspect our silos and so forth, they would know the difference between what's going to be a nuclear missile and what's a non-nuclear one.

Seems so long ago.

Does seem a long time ago.

And those inspections fell apart long before New START expired.

But that's a real problem.

We would need a way of verifying nuclear and non-nuclear sites.

That's the easier part of this.

You mentioned some other things.

Space weapons.

You may remember that three years ago, it leaked out that there was a high likelihood that Russia would put a nuclear weapon in space in violation of existing treaties that still are in place.

And that that weapon sitting there, of course, would pose a huge danger to taking out our early warning satellites, our communication satellites, Of course, it would also take out China's satellites and it would take out Russia's own satellites.

It's very hard if you exploded a nuclear weapon in space to make sure that it only hit the American...

Self-harm.

Right.

And that was the point the U.S. was trying to make.

Interestingly, even though the Russians had tested a version of this kind of launch several years ago, Putin has not done