Oppenheimer is expected to win big at the Oscars this year – and no wonder, since the film brought to life the power and horror of the 20th century’s most destructive weapon. This history gave birth to our organization – Federation of American Scientists – and last year, FAS awarded Christopher Nolan a FAS Public Service Award for his work bringing the nuclear issue back into mainstream conversation. And yet…
Nuclear weapons aren’t history.
We stand with our friends at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) who have launched an Oscar-related awareness campaign, For Your Consideration: Make Nukes History. This installation of banners in and around the Dolby Theater and online resources remind us that nuclear weapons are still an existential threat.
Here, briefly, is the work FAS is doing to address the nuclear threat still active today, and we invite you to learn more and get involved:
Nuclear Information Project
The Nuclear Information Project, called “one of the most widely sourced resources for nuclear warhead counts” by The Washington Post, is the best available unclassified estimates of the status and trends of nuclear weapons worldwide.
Through this work we remain committed to informing the public and holding our government to account. Recent examples:
- We tell the public when new nuclear capabilities are being added to our military bases (Barksdale Air Force Base) and when taxpayers foot the nuclear weapons bill exceeding estimates by billions of dollars without oversight (Sentinel ICBM program).
- We notify the public when we discover changes that could impact national defense (nuclear-capable Russian submarine fleet) and when our government wants to increase the number of nuclear weapons (Strategic Posture Report).
- We remind Americans that their vote is crucial because the U.S. President is the sole decision maker to launch a nuclear weapon!
Nuclear Notebook
We produce the Nuclear Notebook, in conjunction with The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, on a monthly basis. Coming soon: this year’s tally of Russian weapons (March 7th).
New Voices Nuclear Weapons
Additionally, FAS is committed to supporting the next generation of nuclear weapon studies. Learn more about this fellowship.
We wish Oppenheimer success at the awards. But more importantly, we wish humanity the ability to see this issue with clarity and take action to reduce this ongoing global threat.
Get involved. Follow FAS’s work on our website and in our monthly newsletter. Contact me press@fas.org to learn more or speak with any of our nuclear weapons experts.
A military depot in central Belarus has recently been upgraded with additional security perimeters and an access point that indicate it could be intended for housing Russian nuclear warheads for Belarus’ Russia-supplied Iskander missile launchers.
The Indian government announced yesterday that it had conducted the first flight test of its Agni-5 ballistic missile “with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-Entry Vehicle (MIRV) technology.
While many are rightly concerned about Russia’s development of new nuclear-capable systems, fears of substantial nuclear increase may be overblown.
Despite modernization of Russian nuclear forces and warnings about an increase of especially shorter-range non-strategic warheads, we do not yet see such an increase as far as open sources indicate.