Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday.
Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said.
Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely to be reversed in the coming years.
Photo: Reuters
“What we see now, first of all, is that the number of operational nuclear warheads is beginning to increase,” SIPRI director Dan Smith said.
This was especially the case with China, which SIPRI said had about 600 nuclear warheads and had added 100 new warheads in 2023 and last year.
“China is increasing its nuclear force steadily,” Smith said, adding that the country could reach 1,000 warheads in seven or eight years.
While that would still be well short of Russian and US arsenals, it would make China “a much bigger player,” Smith said.
He said the world faced new threats “at a particularly dangerous and unstable moment” for geopolitics, adding: “We see the warning signs of a new nuclear arms race coming.”
SIPRI counted a total of 12,241 warheads in January, of which 9,614 were in stockpiles for potential use.
The institute noted in its report that both Russia and the US had “extensive programs under way to modernize and replace their nuclear warheads.”
The UK was not believed to have increased its number of warheads last year, but given its 2021 decision to raise its limit on the number of warheads from 225 to 260, it was likely to increase in the future, the institute said.
Similarly, while France’s arsenal was believed to have remained steady at about 290, “its nuclear modernization program progressed during 2024.”
India and Pakistan both “continued to develop new types of nuclear weapon delivery systems in 2024.”
India had a “growing stockpile” of about 180 nuclear weapons at the start of this year, the institute said, while Pakistan’s arsenal remained steady at about 170 warheads.
SIPRI said that North Korea’s nuclear weapons program remained “central to its national security strategy,” estimating that it had about 50 warheads and was believed to possess “enough fissile material to reach a total of up to 90 warheads.”
Israel — which does not acknowledge its nuclear weapons — is also believed to be modernizing its arsenal, which SIPRI estimated was about 90 warheads at the start of the year.
Smith said that the looming nuclear arms race would not just be about “the numbers of warheads.”
“It’s an arms race which is going to be highly technological,” he said.
He added that it would be both in “outer space and in cyberspace,” as the software directing and guiding nuclear weapons would be an area of competition.
The rapid development of artificial intelligence will also likely begin to play a part, at first as a complement to humans.
“The next step would be moving towards full automation. That is a step that must never be taken,” Smith said.
“If our prospects of being free of the danger of nuclear war were to be left in the hands of an artificial intelligence, I think that then we would be close to the doomsday scenarios,” he said.
Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg was deported from Israel yesterday, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, the day after the Israeli navy prevented her and a group of fellow pro-Palestinian activists from sailing to Gaza. Thunberg, 22, was put on a flight to France, the ministry said, adding that she would travel on to Sweden from there. Three other people who had been aboard the charity vessel also agreed to immediate repatriation. Eight other crew members are contesting their deportation order, Israeli rights group Adalah, which advised them, said in a statement. They are being held at a detention center ahead of a
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
RSS