EXPERT OPINION — South Korea’s Korea Institute for Defense Analysis recently publicly stated that we underestimated North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. According to their analysis, North Korea has between 127 and 150 nuclear weapons (not 50 to 60 nuclear weapons), and by 2030 they will have 200 nuclear weapons, reaching 400 nuclear weapons by 2040.

At the eighth Central Committee of the Workers’ Congress in late 2022, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered the exponential expansion of North Korea's nuclear arsenal and the development of a more powerful intercontinental ballistic missile. Mr. Kim reportedly said: “They are now keen on isolating and stifling North Korea…and the prevailing situation calls for redoubled efforts to overwhelmingly beef up our military muscle.”

During this six-day meeting of the Central Committee, Mr. Kim not only called for an “exponential increase in North Korea’s nuclear arsenal”, but he also called for the mass production of battlefield tactical nuclear weapons targeting South Korea, and a new ICBM with a “quick nuclear counterstrike capability; a weapon that could strike the mainland U.S.”

North Korean leaders usually say what they plan to do. Indeed, this is the case with Mr. Kim. Not only has he apparently done this with his arsenal of nuclear weapons, but in October 2025, at the parade celebrating the 80th anniversary of the Korean Workers’ Party, the Hwasong-20, a solid fuel, mobile three stage ICBM capable of targeting the whole of the U.S., was introduced to the international community. The Hwasong-20 possibly could also be capable of launching multiple nuclear warheads at different targets, a capability that would challenge any missile defense system. So, the arsenal of ICBMs that could strike the U.S. – Hwasong-18 and 19 – has also grown exponentially with the Hwasong-20, as Mr. Kim said in 2022.

North Korea has also been working on its submarine program, to include a nuclear-powered submarine. This is in addition to its extensive work on hypersonic and cruise missiles, all representing a challenge to any missile defense system.

North Korea is also developing a second-strike capability, with programs to ensure the survivability of some of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and the progress North Korea has made with solid-fuel mobile ICBMs and nuclear-armed submarines, providing a mobile launch platform. Moreover, North Korea’s doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons has changed to a preemptive, first use of nuclear weapons if a nuclear attack against the leadership or command and control systems is imminent or perceived to be imminent.

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Russian President Vladimir visited Pyongyang in June 2024, when he and Mr. Kim signed a mutual defense treaty, part of a “Strategic Comprehensive Partnership” between Russia and North Korea, ratified in November 2024. Article 4 of the treaty states that should either nation “put in a state of war by an armed invasion, the other will provide military and other assistance with all means in its possession without delay”

In October 2024, NATO claimed North Korean soldiers arrived in Russian Kursk Oblast to join Russian forces in its war of aggression with Ukraine. Additionally, North Korea was providing Russia with artillery shells and ballistic missiles. That assistance to Russia continues.

In return, it’s likely that in addition to energy and food assistance, Russia is providing North Korea with assistance with its satellite and ballistic missile programs and, also, with its nuclear program. Indeed, Russia could help with North Korea’s nuclear-powered submarine program, especially with the design, materials and components for such a technically challenging program.

North Korea’s mutual defense treaty with Russia, and its participation in the war with Ukraine, was a major failing of the U.S. and South Korea. We should have seen movement in this direction and did more to prevent it from happening. Of course, there is irony in Russia now saying North Korea should have nuclear weapons when in the Six Party Talks with North Korea, Russia, with China, Japan, South Korea and the U.S., was in sync arguing that North Korea should not have nuclear weapons.

North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs are an existential threat to the U.S. and its allies. Our past policy to “contain and deter” North Korea and to be “strategically patient” with North Korea didn’t work. They failed, as evidenced by North Korea’s robust nuclear and ballistic missile programs and their allied relationship with Russia – and China. Indeed, efforts should be made by the leadership in the U.S. and South Korea to get Mr. Kim to reengage, especially with President Donald Trump.

As South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said, North and South Korea are in a “very dangerous situation” where an accidental clash is possible at any time.

This column by Cipher Brief Expert Ambassador Joseph DeTrani was first published in The Washington Times

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Worries about the US grid’s ability to handle the surge in demand due to data center growth have made headlines repeatedly over the course of 2025. And, early in the year, demand for electricity had surged by nearly 5 percent compared to the year prior, suggesting the grid might truly be facing a data center apocalypse. And that rise in demand had a very unfortunate effect: Coal use rose for the first time since its recent collapse began.

But since the first-quarter data was released, demand has steadily eroded. As of yesterday’s data release by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), which covers the first nine months of 2025, total electricity demand has risen by 2.3 percent. That slowdown means that most of the increased demand could have been met by the astonishing growth of solar power.

Better than feared

If you look over data on the first quarter of 2025, the numbers are pretty grim, with total demand rising by 4.8 percent compared to the same period in the year prior. While solar power continued its remarkable surge, growing by an astonishing 44 percent, it was only able to cover a third of the demand growth. As a result of that and a drop in natural gas usage, coal use grew by 23 percent.

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DEEP DIVE — While Washington is focused on Iran’s accelerating uranium-enrichment program and increasingly aggressive regional posture, an equally consequential shift is unfolding with seemingly less fanfare: North Korea’s rapid nuclear and missile advancements are quietly reshaping the global threat landscape.

For U.S. policymakers, the danger is no longer a pair of isolated challenges but a converging two-front nuclear problem—one that threatens to push America’s deterrence posture, crisis-management capacity, and alliance coordination closer to a breaking point. To understand how these two fronts could interact, experts emphasize that Iran and North Korea share a long-standing strategic alignment.

“The Iran–North alliance represents a four-decade-long partnership driven by shared hostility toward the United States, economic needs, and strategic isolation,” Danny Citrinowicz, a nonresident fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs and former head of the Iran Branch in the Research and Analysis Division (RAD) in Israeli defense intelligence, tells The Cipher Brief. “The Iranians need to rearm and prepare for another campaign, which requires additional and fresh thinking regarding the depth of the relationship between Tehran and Pyongyang.”

He also warns that this moment may become an inflection point.

“If Iran seeks to change its nuclear strategy, it could ask North Korea for nuclear bombs or highly enriched material or spare parts for the destroyed nuclear facilities, such as the conversion facility in Isfahan,” Citrinowicz continued. “The potential damage in the event of such an event is so severe that it is essential that the intelligence organizations of the United States, South Korea, and Israel identify signs of this.”

Pyongyang’s Nuclear Threat

Despite UN sanctions and diplomatic efforts, a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) brief underscored that North Korea continues to surge forward with both nuclear-weapons and ballistic-missile development. For Kim Jong Un, analysts note, nuclear weapons are a guarantor of regime security, and he has no intention of abandoning them.

North Korea’s nuclear doctrine and capability sets are evolving in troubling ways. The 2025 CRS brief states that a September 2023 law expanded the conditions under which Pyongyang would employ nuclear weapons, lowering what had been a high threshold for use. The same report noted the regime “promised to boost nuclear weapons production exponentially and diversify nuclear strike options.”

On the delivery side, the brief outlines how North Korea is fielding solid-fueled road-mobile ICBMs, sea-based launch systems, and pursuing multiple warheads on a single missile — all elements that raise the question not just of deterrence but of crisis stability and escalation control. In short, Pyongyang appears to be reaching toward a survivable deterrent — or perhaps a warfighting capability — that can impose calculations on the U.S. and its allies in a far more challenging way than before.

“Kim’s investment in new nuclear-capable delivery systems reflects the strategic importance of the country’s nuclear arsenal,” Kelsey Davenport, Director for Nonproliferation Policy at the Arms Control Association, tells The Cipher Brief. “North Korea is better positioning itself to evade and overwhelm regional missile defenses and target the U.S. homeland.”

Treston Wheat, chief geopolitical officer at Insight Forward, reinforces that intelligence picture, stressing that open-source assessments now “frame North Korea as a maturing nuclear-warfighting state,” with doctrine “trending toward first-use options in extreme regime-threat scenarios.” He notes that U.S. intelligence already evaluates Pyongyang as having achieved miniaturization: “A 2017 DIA assessment judged DPRK miniaturization sufficient for SRBM-to-ICBM delivery.”

Taken together, those capabilities point to a shifting threat environment for Washington.

“North Korea has tested missiles with the range necessary to target the continental United States,” Davenport underscored. “U.S. military planners have to assume that North Korea can target the United States.”

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Iran’s Nuclear Surge

Meanwhile, Iran is not standing still. Tehran has begun openly emulating aspects of Pyongyang’s nuclear playbook, indicating that if Western strikes against Iranian nuclear infrastructure forced Tehran to go underground, it could adapt quickly. That duality matters: Iran can arguably deploy its program overtly, under inspection and diplomatic cover, but at some threshold, it may decide the only path to survival is accelerated weaponization. If that happens while North Korea is already pushing new strategic capabilities, the U.S. is confronted with two simultaneous flashpoints — one in the Middle East, the other in Northeast Asia.

Deterrence, by definition, demands clarity of purpose, credible capabilities, and correctly calibrated signals. When the U.S. must manage a nuclear-armed North Korea and a near-breakout Iran at the same time, the risk is that strategic bandwidth becomes overstretched.

“Despite the failure of that approach, Iran maintains that its nuclear doctrine is unchanged and it does not intend to pursue nuclear weapons,” Davenport noted. “(But) without a pragmatic diplomatic approach that addresses Iranian economic and security concerns, Tehran’s thinking about nuclear weapons could shift.”

That potential shift in Tehran’s calculus becomes even more concerning when paired with broader warnings about Western inattention.

“If Western focus on the Iran threat dwindles, there is a risk the regime could take a new, covert path to nuclear weapons using remaining or reconstituted assets or foreign help,” Andrea Stricker, Deputy Director of the Nonproliferation and Biodefense Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, tells The Cipher Brief. “Such a lack of focus is similar to how North Korea became nuclear-armed.”

Tehran, experts caution, still retains deep technical capacity.

“Iran retained enough fissile stock and technical expertise to rebuild quickly, meaning the setback was tactical rather than strategic,” Wheat noted.

From Washington’s vantage point, the real danger is a dual crisis hitting at once — an Iranian enrichment surge or strike on its facilities in West Asia, paired with a North Korean missile volley or nuclear test in East Asia. That scenario forces the U.S. into parallel decision-cycles, stretching military, diplomatic, and intelligence resources, straining alliances, and creating openings that adversaries could exploit.

North Korea’s expanding warfighting delivery systems add another layer of risk: limited, precision escalation meant to test U.S. resolve. As the CRS notes, its ballistic-missile testing is designed to evade U.S. and regional defenses, putting American and allied forces at heightened risk. In effect, Pyongyang is developing not only a survivable deterrent but potential coercive leverage — just as Iran’s enrichment trajectory edges closer to a threshold that could trigger a U.S.-led military response.

“The possibility of Pyongyang providing nuclear assistance to Tehran is increasing,” Citrinowicz said. “The United States will need to focus its intelligence on this possibility, with the help of its allies who are monitoring developments.”

But that intelligence challenge intersects with another problem: mounting questions about U.S. credibility.

“President Trump has dealt a serious blow to U.S. credibility in both theaters,” Davenport asserted. “This risks adversaries attempting to exploit the credibility deficit to shift the security environment in their favor.”

U.S. Intelligence and Strategic Implications

Open-source intelligence paints a worrying picture: North Korea may have enough fissile material for perhaps up to 50 warheads, though the accuracy and reliability of delivery remain questions. It also signals Pyongyang’s development of submarine-launched ballistic missiles and multiple-warhead ICBMs. The regime has restored its nuclear test site and is now postured to conduct a seventh nuclear test at a time of its choosing.

The IAEA’s November 2025 report says it can no longer verify the status of Iran’s near–near-weapons-grade uranium stockpile after Tehran halted cooperation following the June 2025 Israeli and U.S. strikes on Natanz, Fordow, and Esfahan.

The last confirmed data, from September, showed Iran holding 440.9 kg of uranium enriched to 60 percent — a short step from weapons-grade and potentially enough for up to 10 bombs if fully processed. IAEA chief Rafael Grossi says most of this material is now entombed in damaged facilities. Moreover, satellite imagery activity around storage tunnels in Isfahan has raised serious red flags. The IAEA further cautions that oversight of this highly-enriched uranium site is “long overdue,” warning that the agency has lost “continuity of knowledge.”

Moreover, before the strikes, the IAEA assessed Iran could produce enough weapons-grade material for one bomb in about a week using part of its 60 percent stockpile at Fordow. Damage to centrifuges has likely slowed that timeline. Still, the larger question is political: whether Iran, under renewed UN sanctions and scrutiny, decides that staying within NPT safeguards costs more than openly moving toward a weapon, particularly if work resumes at undeclared or rebuilt sites.

“The U.S. and Israeli strikes have created a window of respite. What happens next depends greatly on Iran’s will to provoke new Israeli strikes,” Stricker said. “North Korea is a wild card and could provide nuclear fuel, facilities, and equipment to Iran.”

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Looking Ahead

For Washington, the takeaway is stark: systems designed to manage one nuclear threat at a time may crumble should two crises flare simultaneously. The U.S. would need tighter allied coordination, faster intelligence sharing, and stronger, more flexible military deployments to cope.

Yet above all, policymakers must anticipate the possibility of simultaneous escalation in different theatres.

In the coming months and years, key indicators will include North Korea’s choice to conduct a seventh nuclear test or field a credible submarine-launched nuclear force, and Iran’s enrichment trajectory or decision to strike a covert breakout path. The U.S. must also watch for signs of cross-coordination between Moscow and Pyongyang, or between Tehran and Pyongyang — though open links remain murky.

From a policy perspective, a dual-front scenario demands updated wargames, an inter-theatre force posture review, and close allied coordination across NATO, the Indo-Pacific, and Middle East partners. Washington must also guard against the “umbrella illusion” — the belief that the same deterrence logic will apply unchanged across two theatres facing two distinct adversaries with differing doctrine, capabilities, and thresholds.

Finally, media and public attention naturally tend to focus on Iran’s progress or North Korea’s missile launches — one at a time. However, deterring two simultaneous nuclear-adversary theatres demands strategic awareness that the world may not be sequentially configured. For the U.S., what happens in one theatre may shape adversary calculations in the other. The risk is that by the time Washington pivots from Iran, Pyongyang — or Tehran — may have forced a new reality.

In this two-front nuclear dilemma, the question is no longer whether to monitor Iran or North Korea, but how the U.S. will deter both at the same time — and whether its strategic framework is ready for that challenge.

Emerging forms of collaboration amplify that challenge.

“More concerning is that North Korea is positioning itself to benefit from Russian expertise and to further refine its missile systems using data collected from Russia’s use of North Korean systems against Ukraine,” Davenport added.

That was a quote from Don Haynes, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) senior director at the Nevada National Security Sites, from an article published in LANL’s National Security Science magazine just 13 days ago on October 29, 2025.

The article goes on to explain, “Subcritical experiments allow researchers to evaluate the behavior of nuclear materials (usually plutonium) in combination with high explosives. This configuration mimics the fission stage of a modern nuclear weapon. However, subcrits remain below the threshold of reaching criticality. No critical mass is formed, and no self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction occurs -- there is no nuclear explosion.”

I’m going to quote more from the LANL article because it shows what subcritical testing the U.S. has been doing for years. For example, I wrote a Cipher Brief column in July 2021 that described subcrits this way: “Put simply, inside a steel container, a chemical high-explosive is detonated around a coin-like, small sample of plutonium [less than eight ounces] to simulate aspects of a nuclear explosion. No actual chain reaction or nuclear explosion occurs. But this contained detonation, with the assistance of computers, has helped scientists determine how plutonium behaves under the extreme pressures that do occur during detonation of a nuclear weapon.”

I further explained four years ago, “The main purpose, up to now, of subcritical experiments has been to identify and decrease uncertainties in the performance of currently deployed U.S. nuclear weapons, at a time when actual testing is not being done.”

I write this to deal with President Trump’s rather confused – and at times inaccurate -- series of recent statements about restarting U.S. nuclear testing. The President’s words have caused varied responses from his own officials – some of whom apparently did not want to appear correcting him. And the President’s words have gone so far as to encourage Russian President Vladimir Putin to convene a publicized Kremlin meeting last Wednesday where senior Russian national security officials discussed the possibility of Russia exploring the restart of their own full-scale underground nuclear testing.

To make it clear, the U.S. and Russia, by agreement, conducted their last underground nuclear tests in 1992. China did their last one in 1996. All three were signatories to the 1996 Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which prohibited “any nuclear weapon test explosion or any other nuclear explosion.” However, under the treaty, as the U.S. State Department explains on its website, the CTBT “does not prohibit subcritical experiments to help ensure the continued safety and reliability of nuclear weapons.”

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Russia has conducted at least 25 subcritical experiments at its Novaya Zemlya test site, according to past statements by U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Russian authorities. As of May 2024, the U.S. had conducted some 34 subcrits at the Nevada test site, according to DOE.

In 2022, a spokesperson for DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which manages the nuclear program, told Kyodo News that in June and September 2021, the U.S. conducted two subcritical tests, the first under the Biden administration. Three rounds of subcritical nuclear tests were conducted under the first Trump administration, and four rounds under Obama, according to other sources.

Currently, LANL has subcritical experiments scheduled into the year 2032, according to the recent National Security Science magazine article.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is developing several new warheads including the W93, which is intended for deployment on U.S. sub-launched ballistic missiles by 2040, according to NNSA. The NNSA website said of the W93, “Key nuclear components will be based on currently deployed and/or previously tested nuclear designs…The W93 will not require additional nuclear testing.”

Against that background, let’s review what President Trump has been saying, along with some of the responses.

The testing issue began with Trump in Korea on the evening of October 29. He had a meeting scheduled for 11 a.m. the next morning with Chinese Leader Xi Jinping. At 9 p.m., Trump sent off a message on his Truth Social public website that said: “The United States has more Nuclear Weapons than any other country. This was accomplished, including a complete update and renovation of existing weapons, during my First Term in office. Because of the tremendous destructive power, I HATED to do it, but had no choice! Russia is second, and China is a distant third, but will be even within 5 years. Because of other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis. That process will begin immediately.”

What triggered Trump’s message has not yet been explained. Three days earlier, Putin, dressed in a military uniform, had publicly announced with some fanfare that Russia had successfully tested a nuclear-powered missile over the Arctic Ocean after years of development.

It may have been just competitiveness, but Trump was not clear what he was talking about when he wrote “testing our nuclear weapons.” Was he talking about nuclear delivery systems, as Putin had just been? Or was he talking about testing nuclear warheads or bombs?

If it were the latter, Russia actually has more nuclear weapons than the U.S., primarily because the U.S. has retired most of its tactical nuclear weapons. But if Trump meant strategic nuclear delivery systems, he was correct.

Then there was the ambiguity of what kind of testing Trump was talking about? He mentions instructing the Pentagon to “start testing,” which implied nuclear delivery systems, such as missiles, which the military controls. DOE’s NNSA tests the nuclear portion of warheads and bombs.

The next day, October 30, hours after the Xi meeting, Trump was flying back to the U.S. from Korea aboard Air Force One, and held an impromptu press conference. After 10 minutes of questions about meeting Xi, Trump was asked why he wrote the Truth Social piece about nuclear testing, Trump initially replied, “Well, that had nothing to do with them,” meaning the Chinese.

Trump went on, “It had to do with others.” He paused and then continued, “They seem to all be nuclear testing. We have more nuclear weapons than anybody. We don't do testing. You know, we've halted it years, many years ago, but with others doing testing, I think it's appropriate that we do.”

Since Trump mentioned the U.S. had halted the testing “years ago,” he created the impression at that moment he must have been thinking of explosive underground nuclear testing. When asked a follow-up question on where or when such testing would take place, Trump waved it off saying, “It will be announced. You know, we have test sites. It'll be announced.”

Having given the idea that he had ordered the resumption of explosive underground nuclear tests, it was no surprise that the next day, Friday, October 31, when Trump sat down at Mar-a-Lago with Norah O’Donnell for the 60 Minutes CBS News television program to be aired two days later.

Here I am using the CBS transcript of the entire one-hour, thirteen-minute Trump/O’Donnell interview and not the shorter, edited version shown on Sunday night, October 31.

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Well into the interview, after covering Trump’s Asia trip and meeting with China’s Xi, O’Donnell referred to his October 29, Truth Social message where he mentioned new nuclear testing and asked Trump, “What did you mean?”

Trump initially gave this wide-ranging response: “Well, we have more nuclear weapons than any other country. Russia's second. China's a very distant third, but they'll be even in five years. You know, they're making them rapidly, and I think we should do something about denuclearization, which is going to be some-- and I did actually discuss that with both President Putin and President Xi. Denuclearization's a very big thing. We have enough nuclear weapons to blow up the world 150 times. Russia has a lot of nuclear weapons, and China will have a lot. They have some. They have quite a bit, but…”

At that point, O’Donnell interrupted and asked specifically, “So why do we need to test our nuclear weapons?”

This time Trump answered, “Well, because you have to see how they work. You know, you do have to-- and the reason I'm saying-- testing is because Russia announced that they were going be doing a test. If you notice, North Korea's testing constantly. Other countries are testing. We're the only country that doesn't test, and I don’t want to be the only country that doesn't test.”

As I have pointed out above, other than North Korea’s six underground nuclear tests beginning in 2006 and ending in September 2017, there have been none confirmed, other than Russia’s acknowledged subcritical nuclear tests. So it again is unclear what Trump was mentioning.

Trump actually went on saying, “We have tremendous nuclear power that was given to us largely because when I was President (and I hated to do it, but you have to do it)-- I rebuilt the military during my first term. My first term was a tremendous success. We had the greatest economy in the history of our country.”

Trump then tried to turn the conversation to the economy, but O’Donnell brought him back to the subject by asking, “Are you saying that after more than 30 years, the United States is going to start detonating nuclear weapons for testing?”

This time Trump insisted, “I'm saying that we're going to test nuclear weapons like other countries do, yes,” and went on saying “Russia's testing nuclear weapons...And China's testing them too. You just don't know about it.”

Trump claimed the U.S. is an open society, but “they [Russia, China] don't go and tell you about it. And, you know, as powerful as they are, this is a big world. You don't necessarily know where they're testing. They test way underground where people don't know exactly what's happening with the test. You feel a little bit of a vibration. They test and we don't test. We have to test.”

That same day of the Trump/O’Donnell interview, October 30, Vice Admiral Richard Correll, Trump’s nominee to be head of Strategic Command, was having his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Asked if he knew whether Russia, China or any other country were doing explosive testing of nuclear warheads, Correll answered, “No.”

Asked whether Trump could have been talking about nuclear delivery systems, Correll said, “I don't have insight into the President's intent. I agree that could be an interpretation.”

On November 2, Energy Secretary Chris Wright appeared on Fox News and was asked about the new nuclear tests mentioned by the President. Wright replied, “I think the tests we're talking about right now are system tests. These are not nuclear explosions. These are what we call non-critical explosions.”

Asked whether the tests involve the existing stockpile weapons or new systems, Wright said, “The testing that we'll be doing is on new systems, and again these will be non-nuclear explosions.”

Wright explained that thanks to the nation’s national laboratories “the U.S. actually has a great advantage with our science and our computation power. We can simulate incredibly accurately exactly what will happen in a nuclear explosion. And we can do that because in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, we did nuclear test explosions. We had them detailed and instrumented and we measured exactly what happened. Now we simulate what were the conditions that delivered that and as we change bomb designs, what will they deliver. We have a reasonable advantage today in nuclear weapons design over all of our adversaries.”

On November 3, CIA Director John Ratcliffe came to Trump’s defense on the Russia, China testing issue, writing a Tweet on X saying the President “is right.” To back it up, Ratcliffe cited a May 2019 quote from then-Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley Jr. saying Russia “probably” was conducting low-yield tests although Ashley did not claim to have specific evidence. He stated that Russia had the "capability" to conduct very low-yield nuclear tests.

Ratcliffe also cited a 2020 Wall Street Journal article that said the U.S. believed China may have secretly conducted a low-yield nuclear test based on circumstantial evidence, such as increased excavation, activity in containment chambers, and a lack of transparency at the site.

That same day, Sen. Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, put out his own Tweet on X saying, “After consultations with Director Ratcliffe and his team, they have confirmed to me that the CIA assesses that both Russia and China have conducted super-critical nuclear weapons tests in excess of the U.S. zero-yield standard. These tests are not historic and are part of their nuclear modernization programs.”

Despite all this Trumpian back and forth, I strongly doubt the U.S. will return to explosive nuclear testing, but rather remain with subcritical experiments as currently planned.

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals.

Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

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The National Nuclear Security Administration and Los Alamos National Laboratory successfully completed the depressurization of four flanged tritium waste containers and moved them to a waste staging location on site.

Offsite impacts were indistinguishable from background and pose no health or environmental consequences.

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Mr. Kim’s recent meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the new mutual defense treaty with the Russian Federation have developed into an alliance of unexpected consequences. The 15,000 North Korean troops assisting Russian forces in the Kursk region and the massive amount of artillery shells, drones and ballistic missiles provided to Russia for its war of aggression in Ukraine was a significant development that surprised many of the pundits who viewed North Korea as a distraction, confined to the Korean Peninsula.

Indeed, Mr. Kim’s presence in Beijing for the 80th anniversary of World War II Victory Day celebrations, standing next to Chinese President Xi Jinping and Mr. Putin was testimony to China’s decision that North Korea cannot be ignored and a close alliance with North Korea is in China’s interest.

And certainly, last Friday’s parade and gala in Pyongyang on the 80th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Korean Workers’ Party was an emboldened Mr. Kim announcing to the world that North Korea has arrived and can not be ignored. In the presence of Chinese Premier Li Qiang, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Vietnam’s Communist Party Chief To Lam and others, Kim made it clear when he said North Korea “was a faithful member of Socialist forces… and a bulwark for independence… against the West’s global hegemony.”

Doubling down, North Korea at the military parade introduced their new Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, the Hwasong-20, a solid fuel massive missile capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads and capable of targeting the whole of the U.S. Other weaponry, to include hypersonic and cruise missiles also were on display, making it clear that Mr. Kim was serious when he said North Korea would enhance its nuclear capabilities.

At a recent Workers’ Party Plenary session, Mr. Kim said he was prepared to meet with Mr. Trump, on the condition that the U.S. would accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state. Mr. Kim spoke of fond memories of his previous encounters with Mr. Trump. And at the United Nations on September 29, after seven years of no-show, North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Kim Son-Gyong said North Korea would never give-up its nuclear weapons; to do so would be tantamount to giving up its sovereignty.

Indeed, North Korea succeeded in getting Russia to accept its nuclear weapons status. Russia was a member of the Six Party Talks with North Korea and actively assisted the U.S., South Korea, Japan and China in demanding that North Korea denuclearize completely and verifiably. Russia is now saying North Korea should retain and enhance its nuclear weapons and is probably assisting North Korea with its nuclear weapons program.

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Hopefully, China will not relent and continue to demand that North Korea denuclearize. Some say that China is now less committed to North Korean denuclearization than in the past. It’s likely this was discussed when North Korea’s Foreign Minister, Choe Son Hui, met with her counterpart in China, Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Interestingly, both participated in the Six Party Talks with North Korea, when Mr. Wang was the chairman of the Talks in Beijing and Ms. Choe was an adviser to Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Kwan, head of the North Korean delegation to the Talks.

North Korea’s goal is to have a normal relationship with the U.S. This is something Mr. Kim’s father, Kim Jong il, and grandfather, Kim il Sung, pursued since 1994. A relationship with the U.S. would give North Korea international credibility and access to international financial institutions for economic development purposes. It will also untether North Korea to China. It is no secret that historically, and even after Mr. Xi assumed power in China in 2013, the bilateral relationship between North Korea and China has been tense.

And indeed, given North Korea’s experience in dealing with the former Soviet Union in 1991, at the end of the Cold War, when Moscow downgraded relations with North Korea and in 1995, when Russia officially renounced the mutual assistance treaty with North Korea. It, therefore, should be obvious to North Korea that once the war in Ukraine is over, Russia’s need for continued North Korean assistance will end and the relationship will likely be downgraded.

This is the time for Mr. Trump to meet with Mr. Kim to talk about security assurances and a path to normal bilateral relations. The issue of North Korea’s nuclear status need not be the focal point for future discussions. It should, however, continue to be our goal, but at an appropriate time.

This column by Cipher Brief Expert Joseph Detrani was first published in The Washington Times.

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That was Russian President Vladimir Putin speaking to members of his Security Council in the Kremlin on September 22, 2025, in the Kremlin.

Later that day, when White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about Putin’s offer, she said, “The President is aware of this offer extended by President Putin, and I'll let him comment on it later. I think it sounds pretty good, but he wants to make some comments on that himself, and I will let him do that.”

One day later, 22 minutes into his long, rambling speech before the U.N. General Assembly, President Trump departed from his prepared remarks and said, “We want to have a cessation of the development of nuclear weapons. We know and I know and I get to view it all the time — Sir, would you like to see — and I look at weapons that are so powerful that we just can’t ever use them. If we ever use them, the world literally might come to an end. There would be no United Nations to be talking about. There would be no nothing.”

I want to believe that was President Trump beginning to respond, extemporaneously, to Putin’s offer, and serious talks will soon begin to extend the New START limits on U.S. and Russian deployed nuclear warheads and delivery systems.

Let me suggest a reason why Putin made the offer and more reasons why Trump should go along.

In calling for the New START extension, Putin made reference to “U.S. plans to expand strategic components of its missile defense system, including preparations for the deployment of interceptors in outer space.” That was a reference to Trump’s so-called Golden Dome, space-based, missile defense plans of which Putin said, “practical implementation of such destabilizing measures could nullify our efforts to maintain the status quo in the field of strategic offensive arms.”

It reminded me of 1984, when then-President Ronald Reagan started his own space-based missile defense program, the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which also drew complaints from Moscow. However, three years later, Reagan and then Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev signed the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which at that time did away with a whole class of nuclear weapons.

Eventually, when SDI proved unworkable, in 1991 then-President George H.W. Bush and Gorbachev agreed to the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).

At the time, the was a belief that Gorbachev sought negotiations that led up to START because Russia could not afford to match the costs the U.S. was putting into space-based missile defense.

Back then, I believed that was the case and today I think that Putin, faced with continued fighting in Ukraine, cannot afford a space-based missile defense competition with the U.S. -- and neither can Trump, although the latter does not know it yet.

The Ukraine war costs are dominating Russia’s economy.

After raising personal income taxes sharply at the start of the year, Putin had pledged there would be no more big changes to the tax system until 2030. But the Russian Finance Ministry last week said it intends to raise the country’s value added tax (VAT) by two percent to 22 percent, to help meet the growing deficit. Russia’s VAT applies to the sale of goods and services within Russia, the import of goods, and the provision of electronic services by foreign companies, much like a U.S. excise tax.

The Russian budget deficit increased to 4.9 trillion rubles ($58 billion) in the January-July 2025 period, up from 1.1 trillion rubles ($13 billion) the year before. Russia has already revised its 2025 deficit projection upward from 1.7% to 2.6% of GDP. Russia’s oil and gas revenues fell 19% compared with the year earlier, in part due to lower global oil prices, but also thanks to lower world purchases, such as Moscow’s loss of most of its natural gas sales to Europe.

At home, inflation is around 8 percent as wholesale gasoline prices in Russia have surged in part because of Ukrainian drone attacks that have damaged oil refineries and shut down some major facilities. In August, the government introduced a temporary gasoline export ban and last week Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said the plan is to extend that ban through the end of the year.

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On Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia had not yet received signals from the American side via secure channels in response to President Putin’s proposal to extend New START. But, when asked about the timing of a Washington reply, Peskov said, “We’ll wait this week,” noting Trump’s busy schedule during the United Nations meetings. “Understandably, these have been difficult days for him [Trump],” Peskov added.

Trump’s most immediate problem this week is the looming shutdown of the government. But when he gets around to dealing with Putin’s offer to extend New START, he faces some new U.S. nuclear weapons cost problems that he needs to recognize, along with serious technical issues facing his Golden Dome program.

For example, on September 18, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported to Congress that the modernized, uranium processing facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee that was originally to be operational in 2026 to ensure uranium for nuclear weapons and to fuel U.S. Navy ships will not be ready before 2034. Meanwhile, the original cost has ballooned from $6.5 billion in 2018 to $10.35 billion.

More concerning, the GAO said the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which runs the nuclear complex, said its contractor has said that it will cost about $463 million to safely continue uranium processing operations until 2035 for current needs in the 80-year-old Building 9212 at Oak Ridge.

At the same time, the U.S. is in the midst of modernizing its three major strategic nuclear delivery systems – B-52 long-range heavy bombers with the B-21; Ohio class strategic nuclear submarines with Columbia class submarines; and Minuteman III land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with the Sentinel system.

This ambitious program, which the Congressional Budget Office this year said may cost nearly $946 billion to operate and modernize over the next ten years, has shown some troubling problems. While the B-21 bombers seem to be on schedule, the Columbia submarines are running about one year behind schedule. Although the Navy claims the first one will go on patrol in 2030, the Navy is planning to extend the service lives of up to five Ohio-class SSBNs to hedge against potential delays in the deliveries of Columbia-class boats.

Problems with the Sentinel ICBM system are much more serious.

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The Defense Department (DoD) earlier this month estimated the Sentinel program, which involves replacing 450 Minuteman IIIs, currently based in silos in three different states, will cost more than $140 billion and be delayed by years.

Because of the Sentinel delay, the Air Force “must continue to operate and maintain the aging Minuteman III system over the next decade and beyond to meet strategic deterrent requirements until Sentinel is fully fielded,” according to a September 10, GAO report. Air Force Global Strike officials told the GAO that “operating two weapon systems simultaneously while executing a massive military movement to convert the old system to the new system,” would be “a very complex operation.”

Another issue: “As part of Sentinel restructuring, the Air Force is reassessing all aspects of its plan to field Sentinel, including the extent to which Sentinel will use the existing Minuteman III launch facilities. The Air Force has yet to finalize the design for Sentinel launch facilities,” the GAO said.

I have to add to the current strategic nuclear issues facing the Trump administration, serious doubts remain as to whether the President’s space-based Golden Dome missile defense will ever reach fruition.

I have in past columns quoted Todd Harrison, Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, as explaining the complications with the idea of space-based interceptors killing enemy ICBMs during their boost phase, which is a key element of Golden Dome. As Harrison has explained it, you have only two-to-three minutes to target and shoot during the enemy ICBM’s boost phase, and then because your orbiting interceptors need to be in range, there’s a requirement that at least 500 interceptors would be needed for each target.

During a September 16, interview at the Council on Foreign Relations, Harrison added a Golden Dome price when he said, “If you want to do boost-phase intercept from space, we're talking something if you really want to do the scale of protection they're talking about for a Russian or a Chinese or a Russian Chinese simultaneous launch, Worst case, you are talking something that's going to go into the trillions of dollars over the next twenty years or so.”

I lay out these details to show that Trump, as well as Putin, has a financial incentive to do the right thing and together renew the New START agreement.

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I’m not surprised by Mr. Kim’s comments. When the Six Party Talks with North Korea commenced in 2003, North Korea’s principal representative to the Talks often mentioned that North Korea wanted nuclear weapons as a deterrent, never to be used for offensive purposes. They asked to be treated as we treated Pakistan, a country that has good relations with the U.S. The North Korean representative said North Korea wanted a good, normal relationship with the U.S., promising to be a good partner. with the U.S.

North Korea has consistently been told that the U.S. would never accept North Korea as a nuclear weapons state. But with complete and verifiable denuclearization, North Korea would receive security assurances, sanctions relief, economic development assistance, to include the provision of Light Water Reactors for civilian purposes and eventual normalization of relations with the U.S. Mr. Kim’s father, Kim Jong il, seemingly accepted this U.S. offer and in September 2005, North Korea did agree to a Joint Statement committing North Korea to complete and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

That was 2005. The situation has changed profoundly over the past twenty years. North Korea now has a formidable arsenal of nuclear weapons; some estimates are between 50 and 60 nuclear warheads, reportedly with sufficient fissile material to annually produce 15 to 20 nuclear warheads that can be miniaturized and mated to ballistic missiles.

North Korea’s sixth nuclear test in 2017 was assessed to be a test of a thermonuclear weapon. And in 2024, North Korea successfully launched the Hwasong/19, a mobile, solid fuel ballistic missile capable of targeting the whole of the U.S. In addition to advances in nuclear weaponization and ballistic missiles, North Korea has made significant progress with Hypersonic and cruise missiles and advances with its nuclear submarine program.

Of note is North Korea’s new mutual defense treaty with the Russian Federation and the 12,000 combat troops North Korea sent to Russia for its war with Ukraine. In addition to the troops, North Korea has provided Russia with large quantities of artillery shells and ballistic missiles. In exchange, Russia has provided North Korea with considerable technical support for its satellite and nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

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We are now dealing with a different North Korea. Mr. Kim is more self-confident, given his new relationship with Russia and his continued close allied relationship with China. Having two of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council ensures that North Korea no longer must be concerned with UN sanctions. And the pictures of Mr. Kim at the parade marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two in Beijing, standing next to China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin, gave Mr. Kim significant international credibility, especially with the Global South.

A meeting of President Trump with Chairman Kim could develop into a series of meetings that could result in North Korea halting the further production of fissile material for nuclear weapons, with no additional nuclear tests and a moratorium on ballistic missile launches. This would be a major success for Mr. Trump and the U.S. It would also lessen tension with South Korea and Japan.

The “eventual” U.S. goal should continue to be complete and verifiable denuclearization. However, this doesn’t have to be up front. It’s an eventual goal that should be pursued as relations with North Korea improve, with an action-for action process: As North Korea halts the production of fissile material and stops producing more nuclear weapons and refrains from ballistic missile launches, UN sanctions imposed subsequent to 2016 could be lifted with security assurances and economic development assistance and a discussion of liaison offices in our respective capitals. North Korea should be encouraged to rejoin the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of nuclear weapons (NPT).

Mr. Trump entering talks with Mr. Kim could develop into a relationship with North Korea that could prove beneficial for the U.S. and its allies and partners.

This column by Cipher Brief Expert Joseph Detrani was first published in The Washington Times.

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OPINION — It’s time to resume talks with North Korea. During the past five years, when we didn’t talk to North Korea, they built more nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to deliver nuclear bombs as far as the U.S. During this time, North Korea also established a close allied relationship with Russia, with a mutual defense treaty that resulted in North Korea sending over 12,000 combat troops to Russia’s Kursk region to join Russian forces in its war of aggression in Ukraine. North Korea is also providing Russia with significant quantities of artillery shells, ballistic missiles and drones. In short, North Korea is now Russia’s principal ally and supplier of weaponry for its war with Ukraine.

Logically, this should not have happened. No doubt, North Korea remembers the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of their 1961 Peace and Friendship Treaty with the Soviet Union. This Treaty was replaced with a watered-down friendship treaty that made no mention of “mutual defense”. Russia ceased viewing North Korea as an ally. Russia’s focus at that time was on improving economic relations with South Korea.

North Korea’s pivot to Russia in 2024 was a smart tactical move. It put North Korea on center stage with the introduction of its troops and weaponry to aid Russia with its war with Ukraine, while messaging the U.S. and China that North Korea is an independent actor, not solely dependent on China and not fixated on a normal relationship with the U.S. North Korea’s message was and is: We can go it alone. And now we have Russia, a nuclear superpower that not only accepts our status as a nuclear weapons state, but provides us with the nuclear, missile and satellite technical support necessary to exponentially increase our nuclear and missile capabilities.

But is this what North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, really wants? Is this what his grandfather, Kim Il-Sung, and father, Kim Jong-Il, really wanted for North Korea? Certainly since 1994, North Korea’s focus was having a normal relationship with the U.S. For thirteen years, ending in October 2016, with my last face-to-face meeting with North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister, I was repeatedly told that North Korea aspired to normal relations with the U.S., asking to be accepted as a nuclear weapons state, promising never to use these weapons offensively; they were a deterrent, to prevent war. And North Korea would be a good friend of the U.S., no longer tethered to China. They cited Pakistan as a model to emulate – “you did it with Pakistan, you can do it with us.”

In the next few weeks, there will be a summit between President Donald Trump and South Korea’s Lee Jae Myung. No doubt trade issues will be discussed, but I think a fair amount of time will be spent on national security issues and developments with North Korea.

A few days ago, Kim Yo-Jong, the powerful sister of Mr. Kim, said Kim Jong-Un’s relationship with Donald Trump wasn’t bad, implying that dialogue with the U.S. was possible. Ms. Kim conditioned such dialogue on the U.S. “accepting North Korea as a nuclear power.” Ms. Kim spoke of the changed reality since the Trump-Kim summits in Singapore (2018) and Hanoi (2019) and the symbolic DMZ meeting in 2019. And that changed reality is North Korea’s mutual defense treaty with Russia and its military assistance to Russia for its war in Ukraine, and the nuclear and missile support Russia is providing to North Korea. This new relationship with Russia has emboldened Mr. Kim, which could incite the North Korean leader to be overly aggressive and optimistic in his relationship with South Korea.

While saying dialogue with the U.S. was possible, Ms. Kim was clear in stating that South Korea was the enemy and the North was not interested in a dialogue with the South. Despite Ms. Kim’s harsh words for South Korea and the new Lee Jae-Myung government – which most South Koreans have become accustomed to hearing – the North recently stopped its harassing broadcasts to the South, apparently in response to the new Lee government halting all its broadcasts to North Korea, to include the National Intelligence Service’s daily broadcast of news, dramas and K-pop music.

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South Korea knows the U.S. position on North Korea retaining nuclear weapons has not changed: Complete and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. This was the language Mr. Kim’s father, Kim Jong-Il, accepted in the September 19, 2005, Joint Statement of the Six Party talks, and the language Mr. Kim personally accepted in the June 2018 Singapore summit – “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

This is the time for President Donald Trump to personally reach out to Kim Jong-un and arrange for senior officials from both countries to meet to arrange for a third summit between the two presidents. No one wants a repeat of the failed Hanoi Summit, so preliminary arrangements must be thorough, with agreement on a deliverable – further meetings of the principals or their senior representatives and agreement on what the U.S. and North Korea are prepared to offer. For North Korea, they can and should halt all nuclear tests, fissile material production, ballistic missile launches, cyber and other illicit activities directed at the U.S. and end their military support to Russia for its war of aggression with Ukraine. For the U.S., the easing and lifting of sanctions imposed on and after 2016, economic development assistance, security assurances, a path to ending the Korean War with a peace treaty and the eventual establishment of liaison offices in our respective capitals.

The issue of denuclearization would initially encompass a statement from both sides as to their ultimate goals. For North Korea: Acceptance as a nuclear power. For the U.S.: Complete and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. This will be a subject further discussed, once we move to the lifting/removal of sanctions and North Korea halts nuclear tests and fissile material production and suspends missile launches. This likely will be a protracted process, requiring considerable time for negotiations.

President Donald Trump has the personal relationship with Kim Jong Un to resume talks with a North Korea that is building more nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them, while embracing a revanchist Russian Federation.

This column by Cipher Brief Expert Ambassador Joseph DeTrani was first published in The Washington Times

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