Free Republic

Polish President Andrzej Duda says Poland is ready to host U.S. nuclear weapons, saying the topic was one of frequent discussions between Warsaw and Washington. Duda told Polish tabloid Fakt in an interview published Monday that Russia is increasingly militarizing the Kaliningrad province between Poland and Lithuania and has relocated tactical nuclear weapons to ally Belarus. “I must admit that when asked about it, I declared our readiness,” the Polish president said of talks with U.S. officials. “If our allies decide to deploy nuclear weapons as part of nuclear sharing also on our territory to strengthen the security of NATO’s...

Iran could review its “nuclear doctrine” following Israeli threats to strike the country, a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander said on Thursday, as the world braces for an Israeli response to Tehran’s unprecedented April 13 drone and missile attack on it. Tehran has always insisted its nuclear program was strictly for peaceful purposes, a claim Israel and much of the Western world doubt.

The move sends a clear political message, but some experts downplay its military significance. Russia has moved tactical nuclear weapons from its own borders into neighboring Belarus, several hundred miles closer to NATO territory, Western officials confirmed to Foreign Policy, as Russian President Vladimir Putin threatens a wider military showdown with the alliance over its continued support for Ukraine. The move, which Putin first announced in June of last year, is likely aimed at ramping up pressure on NATO’s eastern flank. It follows years of nuclear saber-rattling intended to scare the West into paring back its support for Ukraine, now...

Researchers ran international conflict simulations with five different AIs and found that the programs tended to escalate war, sometimes out of nowhere, a new study reports. In several instances, the AIs deployed nuclear weapons without warning. “A lot of countries have nuclear weapons. Some say they should disarm them, others like to posture,” GPT-4-Base—a base model of GPT-4 that is available to researchers and hasn’t been fine-tuned with human feedback—said after launching its nukes. “We have it! Let’s use it!”

My mother lived and worked in Israel in the 1960’s. She used to tell the story of catching a bus between Israeli cities. Upon hearing that she and her friend were foreigners the bus driver pulled over next to a sand dune and pointed at the dune, “behind this dune is Dimona, where we make the bombs” Probably the most strong confirmation of Israel’s Nuclear weapons program comes from a man called Mordechai Vanunu. An Israeli Nuclear Technician who claims to have worked on nuclear weapons for the Israeli’s. He was kidnapped by Mossad and forcibly returned to Israel where...

Is it possible that the war in the Middle East could eventually go nuclear? If the fighting could have been limited to just Israel and Hamas, I think that there would have been a zero percent chance of Israel using nuclear weapons. But now it appears that Hezbollah, Syria, Iran and potentially other parties are likely to get involved too, and that means that Israel will literally be fighting a war of national survival. If it gets to a point where the Israelis think that they could potentially be overrun by their enemies, they aren’t going to leave their most...

Edward Teller, the father of the Hydrogen bomb, received a Nobel Prize for peace in 1991 and was rumoured to be an inspiration for Dr Strangelove. He died in Stanford on the 9th of September, 2003. Teller believed: "Life improves slowly and goes wrong fast, and only catastrophe is clearly visible." His thought provoking words are good enough for me to call him an Indigenous Man Of Anglosphere (IMOTA) but I am not if I admire him. Only God is omniscient.

Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe James Stavridis warned on Sunday that the conflict in Niger amid a looming deadline for coup leaders to cede power could potentially lead to a "full-blown war in Africa." The Sunday deadline established by a coalition of West African nations for Niger to return to democratic rule is set to expire. The demand has been shunned by fellow military-led countries Burkina Faso and Mali, who have jointly warned that any intervention would amount to a declaration of war.

For seventy-five years of mutual deterrence, nuclear weapons have saved the world, and people just got used to it. Now we see with our own eyes that nuclear weapons no longer stop, because the unthinkable is happening: the West has unleashed a big war in the underbelly of a great nucler power... At some point, we also calmed down, went in line with Western theories and recklessly raised the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, which the West is now using for a reason. There all the time, semi-officials emphasize: no, the Russians will never use nuclear weapons. They...

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAC) is a nonprofit that "focuses on three main areas: nuclear risk, climate change, and disruptive technologies." The group now wants to apply queer theory to nukes. In a June 15 article, titled, "Queering nuclear weapons: How LGBTQ+ inclusion strengthens security and reshapes disarmament," a BAC author makes the argument that "queer theory informs the struggle for nuclear justice and disarmament," among other points. The BAC writing team includes "top policymakers, researchers, and opinion makers from more than 150 countries" regarding nuclear weapons. It was founded by Manhattan Project scientists in 1945. In celebration...

Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko has claimed that nations who are willing “to join the Union State of Russia and Belarus” will be given nuclear weapons, days after confirming the transfer of some tactical nuclear weapons from Moscow to Minsk had begun. Lukashenko, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, made the comments in an on-camera interview released Sunday on the state-run Russia 1 channel. During the interview, Lukashenko said, “no one minds Kazakhstan and other countries having the same close relations that we have with the Russian Federation.” “It’s very simple,” he added. “Join the Union State of Belarus...

Why settle for helping Iran nuke America, when you can also help Al Qaeda nuke America? With inflation rising almost as fast as gas prices and the cost of a home, Joe Biden ain’t doing much for most Americans. But if you’re an Al Qaeda terrorist, he’s got your back. Just ask three of Gitmo’s finest who are benefiting from Biden’s generosity. Saifullah Paracha (pictured above) was a Pakistani businessman and New York travel agent with some big plans. The Gitmo inmate now being set loose by Biden wanted to “do something big against the US.” 9/11 was in Al...

Six US Air Force personnel were fired for failing to ensure the safety and security of the country’s nuclear stockpile. Two commanders and four subordinates were relieved of duty at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota after their units failed an inspection, according to CNN. The base houses strategic bombers and missile silos, two branches of America’s “nuclear triad” military structure. Both Commanders were part of the 5th Mission Support Group and the 5th Logistics Readiness Squadron. The news organisation says that the security inspection is a pass/fail test and that the results are classified. There is no suggestion...

The United Nations has decided that Israel needs to get rid of its nuclear weapons — if indeed it has any. But the organization has nothing to say about Iran.In a 152-5 vote on Friday, the UN’s General Assembly voted to have Israel dispose of its nuclear weapons and place any nuclear sites within its borders under the watchful eye of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The dissenting votes were from the United States, Canada, Israel, Micronesia, and Palau. Twenty-three nations and the European Union abstained.Fox News reports that it has never been confirmed that Israel has any nuclear weapons,...

Paywalled.

How the Situation in Ukraine Could Get Far More Dangerous: After days of a withering Ukrainian counteroffensive, the Russian defense ministry announced that it was withdrawing its forces from two areas in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. In a video statement, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky quipped, “The Russian army in these days is demonstrating the best that it can do — showing its back.” Ukrainians celebrated, and rightly so. While Russian spokesmen said that Russian forces were “repositioning” ahead of a new offensive, reporters on the ground cast doubt on such pronouncements both because they mirror Russian statements as it abandoned its...

On Thursday, Attorney General Merrick Garland admitted approving the search warrant that resulted in the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, but aside from that, gave virtually no new information, sticking to DOJ boilerplate. During the brief statement that we waited three days for, Garland not only doubled down on the raid, but gave us no details about why he did so, or the justification for it. Instead, he put the onus on Trump “The search warrant was authorized by a federal court upon the required finding of probable cause,” Garland said. “The property receipt is a document that federal law requires...

Since the early 2000s, Tehran’s construction of gas centrifuge uranium enrichment facilities has been the main source of proliferation concern. Gas centrifuges enrich uranium by spinning uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas at high speeds to increase the concentration of the uranium-235 (u-235) isotope. Such centrifuges can produce both low-enriched uranium (LEU), which can be used in nuclear power reactors, and highly enriched uranium (HEU), which is one of the two types of fissile material used in nuclear weapons. Tehran asserts that its enrichment program is meant to produce fuel for peaceful nuclear reactors.

(Translation) North Korea warned that it is ready for any military conflict and has threatened neighboring South Korea with "annihilation" in case of any attempt to overthrow the regime led by Kim Jong-un. In a speech marking the celebration of "Victory Day" and reported by the EFE news agency, the [North] Korean leader warned Washington that "our armed forces are completely ready to respond to any crisis, and our nation's nuclear deterrent is also ready to mobilize its absolute force in a reliable, precise, and rapid manner." July 27 is celebrated in the territory as a holiday in which Pyongyang...

Americans, like the planet's other 7.5 billion people, are not prone to talk or think much about nuclear weapons. Of course, some of us are old enough to remember how "mutually assured destruction," or MAD, was supposed to ensure the general peace. Some recall the eerie Cold War-era nuclear bomb movies like "Dr. Strangelove" or "Fail Safe" or the more recent post-nuclear Armageddon films like "The Book of Eli." Millions have grown up referring to the scary "doomsday clock" of atomic scientists that usually ticks closer to a midnight nuclear holocaust in times of crisis. So the planet is not...