I’ve been quoted in two news articles yesterday and today. I’m reasonably pleased with both of them. Exclusive: US assessing reported leak at Chinese nuclear power facility Zachary Cohen called me with not enough information on this reported leak. The odd thing about it was that France had notified the United States, and high-level US …
Rofer on Nuclear Issues
The Biden-Putin Summit
What can we expect from the summit meeting between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin? Nothing. That is the expectation that Biden is setting. There will be no grand pronouncements, no reset, maybe not even a perfunctory statement of agreement on a minor point. That is part of the reason that Biden plans to hold a …
Quick Open Thread
I plan to write a post on what to expect from the Biden-Putin summit, but here’s a foretaste. Last week I finally said on Twitter, in plain English, what I’ve thought for some time: that nuclear weapons are unusable unless we want to destroy the Earth, so we should say that and explicitly move toward …
Two News Stories – Free To Reporters
Covering government is boring, until it isn’t. Trouble is, you need to know something about the boring parts to see when it isn’t. I’ve seen two of those – potentially big stories – today. Trump’s Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Non-Proliferation Spills The Beans Chris Ford has been in government a long …
Kazakhstan Cleans Up
In the 1990s, the United States and other countries helped the newly independent states that had been part of the Soviet Union to deal with their nuclear weapons and materials. It’s a story that has been almost completely forgotten, but it contains a number of lessons that might be helpful today. David Frum reminds us …
Continuing Impeachment Trial Open Thread
The previous thread was getting long. I’m not sure how much more there is to go – I am not watching, just getting snips from Twitter as I get some other stuff done. I found this interesting – the nuclear football that follows the Vice President around was also at risk. You can see the …
Continuing Impeachment Trial Open ThreadPost + Comments (151)
Chain of Command
Nancy Pelosi says that she “spoke to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley to discuss available precautions for preventing an unstable president from initiating military hostilities or accessing the launch codes and ordering a nuclear strike.” I can tell her the available precautions, and I hope Milley did too: NONE The …