In January 2017, Democratic Senator Ed Markey and Representative Ted Lieu introduced the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act 2017 in both houses of Congress. Should the UK follow suit?
Arms control
30 Ways The UK Must Lead In Multilateral Disarmament
Executive Director of BASIC, Paul Ingram, recently authored a piece in the Huffington Post during the launch of BASIC’s new report with UNA-UK, Meaningful Multilateralism: 30 Nuclear Disarmament Proposals for the Next UK Government.
Zero Days, Millions in damage: A scientist’s review of the RAND report Zero Days, thousands of nights.
A recent RAND report, released just two days after Wikileaks opened its Vault 7 that detailed the CIA’s entire stockpile of vulnerabilities and their suite of cyber tools (also referred as exploits), seeks to establish a protocol and the advantages of state intelligence agencies maintaining classified vulnerability stockpiles.
The First Trends of Trump’s Nuclear Policy Emerge: 27 March 2017
As the Senior Director for Weapons of Mass Destruction and Counter-Proliferation of the National Security Council, Chris Ford plays perhaps the most important role in the US Government for defining the Trump Administration’s upcoming Nuclear Posture Review.
Trump’s Nuclear Rhetoric and its implications for European Security: 27 Feb 2017
Trump’s Nuclear Rhetoric and its implications for European Security
Further questions were raised over the direction of US nuclear posture review last week. In an exclusive interview with Reuters, Trump opined that the US has 'fallen behind on nuclear weapon capacity' and pledged the US to be 'top of the pack' when it comes to nuclear weapons.
Non-state actors & WMD: Does ISIS have a pathway to a nuclear weapon?
On March 2014, during the Nuclear Security Summit held in the Netherlands, President Obama identified his number one concern as being the prospect of a nuclear weapon going off in Manhattan. UK Home Secretary Theresa May pinpointed her particular fear of the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) acquisition of “chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons” in the “world’s first truly terrorist state”. Fortunately, there has not yet been a nuclear or radiological terrorist attack, but the smuggling of nuclear material remains a pivotal threat to nuclear security.
UK Disagrees With EU Saudi Trade Embargo
Alexander Mosesov from Sputnik News featured a story about the UK’s disagreement with the EU-Saudi trade embargo. The article argues that the reaction by the UK to the decision was predictable. Paul Ingram was quoted in the article saying,
“This response [to oppose the embargo] from the British government is absolutely predictable. There is a strong belief in Whitehall [the British civil service] that the British defense industry depends upon exports to Saudi Arabia, and the strategic support the UK gives to Riyadh benefits UK influence in the region”
The OEWG is taking multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations forward
The new Open-ended Working Group (OEWG), established in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 70/33 adopted in December 2015, opened on 22 February in Geneva. It will meet over the course of 15 working days in February, May and August of 2016 and submit a final report in October.