What's being tested today is an outgrowth of the decades-old Emergency Alert System (née Emergency Broadcast System), which was originally established so that the President could send a short message to the nation in the event of sudden nuclear attack. [2]

Yes yes made the move over! bsky.app/profile/acf.bs…

The US Air Force's new budget documents state that they are building a "surety dormitory" at RAF Lakenheath. "Surety" is a military term often associated with nuclear weapons. After 15 years, the US Air Force's nuclear mission may be returning to UK soil. fas.org/publication/in…

OTD 60 yrs ago, the Washington-Moscow “hotline” became operational. While commonly pictured as a red telephone, the Direct Communications Link was originally an encrypted set of teletypes in the National Military Command Center at the Pentagon and at Communist Party HQ in Moscow.

Today is the 60th anniversary of the original Washington-Moscow "hotline" Check out a visual round-up of which states have modern crisis communications options—at least, on paper:

Thread 📜 OTD in 1963, the US and Soviet Union established the "Washington–Moscow Direct Communications Link" or hotline. At the time, the @Guardian reported that this step would be a "small, but useful, measure of arms control" especially in light of the #CubanMissileCrisis.

This kind of smart, mixed-use urbanism is illegal to build in most American cities

Regular reminder that it doesn't have to be the actual start of world war 3 for folks to get confused about a thing and accidentally start world war 3

“America needs to beat china in chips and tech and blah blah blah but oops actually we need to stop everything and halt like half of the research that happens in this country surely that will give us an edge”

Oh word?

Just published: Why the US fixation on increased nuclear capability won’t deter China but could lead to instability and nuclear war By Andrew Facini (acf@bsky) In Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists thebulletin.org/2023/10/why-th… #nuclearweapons

“The approach in Washington thus far has been badly constrained to the force-meets-force thinking which, if taken alone, will only multiply risks and add untested variables for the United States and its allies.” ⁦Andrew Facini (acf@bsky)⁩ thebulletin.org/2023/10/why-th…

“A stronger US strategy for responding to the challenge posed by China’s growing arsenal should be for the United States to…. [build] multiple levels of mutual understanding and routes toward risk reduction,” writes Andrew Facini (acf@bsky). thebulletin.org/2023/10/why-th…

THREAD: Given China’s resistance to risk reduction so far under Biden after feeling badly burned by Trump’s approach to arms control & three false starts under Clinton/Bush/Obama, hopefully this (indeed rare) meeting will be a durable enabling step to sustained, structured talks.

(I'm not really here anymore! Come find me and a lot of good folks in the blue place!)

What do you find if you examine the *types* of nuclear weapons, rather than just their numbers? 🚀 CSR's Nolan Center is thrilled to launch the Nuclear Weapon Systems Project, a dataset and tracker of every nuclear weapon ever deployed by 🇺🇸🇷🇺🇬🇧🇫🇷🇨🇳. ➡️councilonstrategicrisks.org/nolan/nuclear-…

Over the last few months I have had the privilege of contributing towards CSR's Nuclear Weapon Systems Project — an ambitious effort to list every single nuke ever deployed by the P5. Today we launched that project: here is the 🧵