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BỞI VÌ MẶC DÙ ĐÃ KÝ NHƯNG CẢ CÁC BÊN ĐỀU "KHÔNG NGỪNG NGHIÊN CỨU HAY ÂM THẦM SẢN XUẤT" -KHÔNG BÊN NÀO CÓ THỂ KIỂM SOÁT LẪN NHAU ĐƯỢC CẢ- CHI BẰNG CỨ KHÔNG CÓ CAM KẾT GÌ CẢ- MAY RA MỖI BÊN TỰ MÌNH GIỚI HẠN SẼ TỐT HƠN - 

NẾU BIẾT CHƠI NHAU BẰNG NGUYÊN TỬ "CẢ 2 ĐỀU CHẾT HẾT"

= CÒN NHƯ LÃNH TỤ NÀO ĐÓ VẪN CƯƠNG QUYẾT chơi nguyên tử CŨNG NÊN PHẢI "THỬ SỨC MỘT LẦN" XEM AI SỐNG, AI CHẾT SAU KHI TIỆC TÀN./-Mt68

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 ©Sydney Morning Herald

The Poseidon super-torpedo is a marvel of Russian engineering (if accounts are to be believed). A sinister black cylinder the length of a train carriage, weighing more than 100 tonnes and powered by its own on-board nuclear reactor, it can travel thousands of kilometres in deep water, virtually undetected. Equipped with a nuclear warhead, it can wipe out an aircraft carrier group or swamp a coastal city under a radioactive tsunami – apocalypse fiction made horrendously real."US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, have not negotiated a new nuclear arms limitation treaty, although Trump has indicated he might try to – with China on board too." "US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, have not negotiated a new nuclear arms limitation treaty, although Trump has indicated he might try to – with China on board too." />

US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, have not negotiated a new nuclear arms limitation treaty, although Trump has indicated he might try to – with China on board too.© Artwork: Marija Ercegovac

This is a particularly ominous development given the last remaining bilateral agreement between Russia and the United States limiting their stockpiles of nuclear warheads, long-range bombers and missiles, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (or New START), will expire on February 5.="China Cuts Supply - Aussie Miners Set to Jump"Then there were the “SALT” talks in the late 1960s that led to two major agreements in 1972, known as SALT I, the first substantive effort by the US and the USSR to limit their strategic arms, in this case land- or submarine-based nuclear missiles as well as limits on rockets to counter incoming missiles, a key component of the calculus of deterrence. (“Strategic” in this context means weapons capable of crossing continents; shorter-range “tactical” weapons are employed on battlefields against armies and have been subject to a separate agreement.)

Broader international agreements have generally proved harder to get over the line. While the US, Britain and the USSR signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty in 1963, prohibiting explosions underwater, in the atmosphere and space, France didn’t, instead testing above ground in the South Pacific until 1974, and underground there until 1996; its 46 atmospheric tests around Mururoa Atoll contaminated 110,000 local people with radioactive fallout,according to a 2021 study

. China joined the nuclear club in 1964 but declined to sign the 1963 treaty and continued atmospheric testing until 1980.A similarly ambitious United Nations agreement brought into force in 2021, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), makes it illegal for signatories to develop, test, produce, manufacture, acquire, possess, stockpile, transfer, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons, but none of the nine known nuclear states has yet joined it so are not beholden to its rules. Australia, which has no nuclear weapons but exports uranium and is a strong ally of the US, hasn’t signed either, though Labor’s national policy platform has since 2018 committed Labor in government to join the treaty, according to Ruff. Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in 2023 that the Labor government was “considering the TPNW systematically and methodically as part of our ambitious agenda to advance nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament”.Nevertheless, the TPNW treaty still has a valuable social context, argues Marianne Hanson, an expert in international relations at the University of Queensland. “The idea is that over time, more and more states will join such a treaty, and this puts moral pressure on the nuclear states to exercise restraint and move to disarmament.”Critically, for much of the duration of New START, both sides also agreed to a rigorous program of monitoring and inspections. “All of that helps to reduce nuclear risk, keep communication lines open, improve stability and confidence in a crisis,” says Ruff. “You know who to talk to. You know what they’re doing. You know that this exercise, or these rockets being moved from here to there, isn’t the start of an attack.”

‘Clearly, there’s no transparency any longer, and transparency and developing trust and confidence-building measures is a really, really strong part of all arms control agreements.’

That communication began to break down during COVID, which restricted the capacity to conduct on-site inspections, and thanks to the war in Ukraine, says Hanson, who is also a co-chair of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. “Clearly, there’s no transparency any longer, and transparency and developing trust and confidence-building measures is a really, really strong part of all arms control agreements.” Iran may yet ramp up its nuclear program, giving regional foes such as Saudi Arabia cause to consider their own plans to join the nuclear club, as might Japan and South Korea, long considered “nuclear-latent” states with the technology and expertise to develop nuclear weapons quickly. Artificial intelligence could make weapons development easier and faster.

The stakes could not be higher. Even a so-called limited nuclear exchange between, say, India and Pakistan – which came to blows as recently as 2025 over Kashmir – would throw enough soot into the atmosphere to plunge the globe into a nuclear winter, causing crop failures and starving billions, Ruff tells us.

‘How many do you need? Two, three, five, 10? You don’t need thousands.’

While the US is pursuing a trillion-dollar program to update and replace ageing missiles and bombers and Russia boasts of weapons breakthroughs, in practical terms they are hampered somewhat by resources, says Podvig, pointing to both nations’ limited industrial capacity after years of allowing their nuclear infrastructure to run down. Surely, though, even the 1550 strategic warheads each that Russia and the US have operational already would be sufficient? Certainly, says Ruff: “How many do you need for deterrence? Two, three, five, 10? You don’t need thousands. You would have them on a platform that was invulnerable to attack and detection. These days, on a submarine.”"A man pushes his bicycle through the devastation in Nagasaki after the US dropped a nuclear bomb on the Japanese city in 1945,"

A man pushes his bicycle through the devastation in Nagasaki after the US dropped a nuclear bomb on the Japanese city in 1945,© Getty Images

This is where we get into the game theory of deterrence, now even more complicated by the US potentially facing not one but two major foes. Says Fruehling: “If you find yourself in a nuclear conflict with one, you want to make sure that you have enough left over to deter the other – that’s basically the argument behind this. There are good arguments that the Americans will increase numbers.”

It was not a surprise, then, that on January 27, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, founded by scientists and engineers of the Manhattan Project in the wake of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, declared it had moved the hands of its famous “Doomsday Clock” forward to 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to indicating looming annihilation. Says Hanson: “The analysts who do this, they base their research on bilateral relations between various nuclear states, the imminent collapse of New START treaty, increasing hostile rhetoric. So it’s all moving the wrong direction.”

Bottom line, says Ruff: “We’re in a really alarming situation of multiple arms races accelerating. We’re seeing no disarmament negotiations under way. We’re seeing nuclear-armed states actively involved in wars, making nuclear threats. We’re seeing attacks on sovereign states, including by nuclear-armed states. We know that nuclear command-and-control systems are vulnerable to cyberattack, and we’re on the cusp of applications of artificial intelligence in military systems, including nuclear command-and-control systems, before we’ve really even understood the implications and risks. So it’s a pretty comprehensively alarming nuclear risk landscape.”/-