As I write this, I am disheartened by the fact that over 50 years of treaties that reduced nuclear weapons and significantly enhanced global security have come to an end. Headlines worldwide report the demise:
NPR: “For the first time in decades, the U.S. and Russia have no limits on nuclear weapons.”
BBC: “Fears of new arms race as US-Russia nuclear weapons treaty expires”
Al Jazeera: “Last US-Russia nuclear treaty is expiring: Does it really matter?”
At midnight on Thursday, February 5, 2026, the 15-year-old nuclear arms treaty, New START (New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), expired. As of Friday, the world's two largest nuclear powers, Russia and the United States, no longer have any limits on their nuclear arsenals.
Signed in 2010 under the Obama administration, President Putin replaced the previous START I treaty signed by President George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991.)
The Principal Terms of New Start included:
Deploying no more than 1,550 strategic nuclear warheads and a maximum of 700 long-range missiles and bombers.
Limiting intercontinental ballistic missiles in deployment to 800.
Allowing up to 18 inspections of strategic nuclear weapons sites yearly by the other side to ensure the other has not breached the treaty’s limits.
The treaty did not address tactical nuclear weapons, which over time have become a critical issue between Russia and the US. Russia now possesses over 2000 tactical nuclear weapons compared to just 200 for the US.
The end of New START may be for the best. I know that sounds counterintuitive; however, the strategic situation has drastically changed over the last few years. As reported by The Economist, China’s nuclear weapons deployments are upsetting the strategic balance. Within 10 years, China will have deployed a nuclear weapons arsenal equal to that of the US or Russia, and in line with the New START limits of ~1500 warheads deployed, as shown in the following graphic.
Nuclear Weapons, Deployed and Reserve by Country (How The Hell Did We Get Here? - P Struhsaker)
Historically, China has refused to join in 3-way talks with Russia and the US to limit nuclear weapons. In the past decade, China’s nuclear arsenal has grown from 240 strategic weapons to approximately 600 nuclear weapons today. China is projected have 1000 deployed nuclear warheads in 2030 and nearly 1500 by 2035. The combined threat of Russia and China will essentially be double that of the US by 2035. China's surge in Nuclear weapons is already compromising the US strategic balance between the US, Russia, and China.
“It’s impossible to do something [in terms of nuclear arms reduction] that doesn’t include China.”
- US Secretary of State Marco Rubio
While Russia has asked the US to extend New Start for a year, there is a serious issue with inspection and verification. In 2022, largely due to the U.S. supporting Ukraine’s defense following the Russian invasion that year, Russia suspended the New START inspection regime. Unless Russ agrees to restore inspections extension of New START is pointless.
Robert Peters of the Heritage Foundation believes that extending the New START Treaty is not in the national interest. He considers Putin’s proposal a trap for the US.
The US State Department already believes that Russia has violated the New START limits, which explains why Secretary of State Rubio is dubious of extending New START.
New START does not address the fundamental nuclear challenges facing the U.S. or its allies in Europe or the Indo-Pacific. China and its nuclear forces must be factored into any treaty. As previously noted, Russia currently fields 2,000 tactical nonstrategic nuclear weapons that are not part of the New START warhead limits.
Peter’s advocates extending the New START treaty with Russia if the following conditions are met:
The New Start extension does not exceed 12 months
Full reinstatement of weapons inspection and verification protocols
Earnest trilateral negotiations between China, Russia, and the US are conducted to include all nuclear weapons including tactical (non-strategic) and strategic weapons
Alternatively, if trilateral talks do not materialize or simply fail, the US will likely need to double its deployed nuclear weapons by 2050, as Heritage Foundation calls for in Its’ position paper, The U.S. Nuclear Arsenal of 2050: A Proposal for American Survival. The Heritage Foundation proposes expanding the US nuclear arsenal as follows:
[ Increasing the US arsenal to] 3,500 operationally deployed strategic nuclear weapons and roughly an additional 925 operationally deployed non-strategic nuclear weapons from the current rough total of 200 gravity bombs, for a rough total of 4,625 operationally deployed weapons by 2050.
A more detailed view of the Heritage Foundation’s proposed US nuclear weapons expansion can be found in the following graphic, which covers both strategic and non-strategic (tactical) weapons and delivery platforms. The delivery platforms include a mix of land and sea-based ballistic missiles, long and intermediate-range cruise missiles, and gravity bombs.
Heritage Foundation proposed expansion of US Nuclear arsenal (Heritage Foundation)
What the Heritage Foundation fails to note is the massive expense their proposal would put on the US taxpayer and economy.
There is an alternative strategy: Rearming. In the short term, the US could restore its existing strategic weapons system to full capacity by rearming its currently deployed missile arsenal. Here are the specifics:
600 Minuteman III ICBMS, limited by treaty to a single nuclear warhead but designed to carry 3. Rearming would result in the addition of 1200 warheads (600 Minuteman III ICBMS with an additional 2 warheads each)
240 Trident II SLBM (Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles), limited to 4 nuclear warheads but designed carry 8. Rearming would result in the addition of 960 warheads (240 Trident II SLBMs with an additional 4 warheads each)
Rearming our existing systems with reserve warheads from the US strategic warhead inventory would more than double US strike capacity, from ~1550 warheads to nearly 3,700, in as little as 2 to 4 years.
You would hope that “cooler heads would prevail” and that our leaders would be rational actors. Rather than taxing their respective economies with a new nuclear arms race, Russia, China, and the US could sit down at the bargaining table and reduce rather than expand their nuclear arsenals.
That may be too much to ask. Statesmen of the caliber of Reagan and Gorbachev, the architects of strategic weapons reduction in the late 1980s, do not exist today. We are all the poorer and endangered for the lack of true statemen today … but I digress.
I have barely touched the surface of the broad concept of deterrence and the role of the US Nuclear Triad as one component of an extensive deterrence regime in this article. I specifically wrote:
How The Hell Did We Get Here? A Citizen's Guide to The New Cold War and Rebuilding of Deterrence
The book is a comprehensive overview and primer on the subject
If you’d like to learn more, the book is Available on Amazon USA HERE, Amazon Internationally (on your local Amazon page), or through Barnes & Noble and other major retailers online
Manufacturing Employment is Falling – Are Tariffs to Blame or are AI, Automation, and Robotics the Cause?
"U.S. Manufacturing Is in Retreat, and Trump’s Tariffs Aren’t Helping"
The article criticized the Trump administration's policies, making the following points:
Since the Trump Tariffs the US has lost manufacturing jobs every month
A total of 200,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost since 2023
Tariff-induced price increases for raw materials are a significant factor in job losses
I think the Wall Street Journal completely missed the big picture issue:
Manufacturing in the US is increasing. However, AI, robotics, and automation are replacing humans in new and updated manufacturing facilities
The trend of increasing manufacturing output while reducing human labor began in 2020. In 2016, a report AEI, the American Enterprise Institute, trumpeted:
“The US Produces 40% More Factory Output Today Vs. 20 Years Ago with 5M Fewer Workers. Technology Job Theft?”
American Enterprise Institute manufacturing output vs employment
The trend toward human replacement is only accelerating. Humanoid robots capable of directly replacing human labor at less than half the cost will enter the market in the next few years. I wrote a three-part series of articles entitled “The Machine Age” to provide an in-depth view of the technology and impacts of Physical AI and Humanoid Robotics. Here are links to the entire series:
Data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics makes clear the growing cost disparity between human labor and automation/robotics. It is only possible to reshore manufacturing to the US and remain price-competitive through advanced automation. There is no alternate path.
Costs Trends of Human Labor vs Robotics (US Bureau of Labor Statistics)
Leaving aside human robotics for a moment, automation is impacting nearly every manufacturing industry. As an example, let’s take a look at oil and gas production.
Thanks to automated drilling, a once-dangerous, very laborious task now requires fewer people to complete. Automation of oil rigs means that one rig can do more with fewer workers. In fact, it’s expected that what once took a crew of 20 will soon take a crew of 5. The application of new technologies to oil drilling means that, of the 440,000 jobs lost in the global downturn, as many as 220,000 may never return.
Oil & Gas Employment (Red) vs Rig Count (green)- the impact of automation (ODSCAI)
While the Wall Street Journal can argue that tariffs are affecting manufacturing employment, the truth is that AI, Automation, and Robotics are the real driving forces.
We can only expect the automation trend to accelerate. At some point in the near future, other than a few maintenance technicians, there will be no human labor on the floor of a typical factory.
Production without People...
The New Machine Age
In Other News …
The World: The Trump Administration carried out negotiations this week with Iran, Russia & Ukraine, and began to pressure Cuba with regime change. Unfortunately, little, if any, progress was made in any of these talks. The threat of military escalation with Iran or, in the case of Ukraine, increased weapons sales and further sanctions on Russia remain options.
Bio Terrorism: The most disturbing news this week involved thet discovery of a second unauthorized bio lab connected to Chinese National, Jia Bei Zhu, in Las Vegas. CBS reports that Zhu was arrested in October 2023 after it was discovered he was running an unauthorized bio lab in his home in Fresno County, California, a suburb of Reedly. Last Saturday (January 30, 2026), the FBI raided a second lab in a home in Las Vegas, NV, which appeared to be connected to Zhu.
Zhu was charged with distributing adulterated and misbranded medical items, including coronavirus tests, and remains behind bars. He is set to appear in court in April.
The illegal biolab was run by a PRC citizen who is a wanted fugitive from Canada with a $330 million Canadian dollar judgment against him for stealing American intellectual property.
This PRC citizen [Zhu] was a top official at a PRC-state-controlled company and had links to military-civil fusion entities.
The illegal biolab received millions of dollars in unexplained payments from PRC banks while running the illegal biolab.
The illegal biolab contained thousands of samples of labeled, unlabeled, and encoded potential pathogens, including HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, and Covid.
The illegal biolab also contained a freezer labeled “Ebola,” which contained unlabeled, sealed silver bags consistent with how the lab stored high-risk biological materials. Ebola is a Select Agent with a lethality rate between 25-90%.
The biolab contained nearly a thousand transgenic mice, genetically engineered to mimic the human immune system. Lab workers said that the mice were designed “to catch and carry the COVID-19 virus.”
After local officials who discovered the lab sought help from the CDC and others, the CDC refused to test any of the samples.
This all begs the question: Why would the CDC in 2023 under the Biden administration refuse to test?
To avoid bad press in an election year?
Needless to say, this has all the earmarking of a bioterrorism sleeper cell put in place by the PRC. Instead of being front-page news, thet media more or less suppressed this story. Imagine if the Ebola samples found at both Reedly, CA, and Las Vegas, NV, were released? Ebola has a lethality rate of nearly 90%… Chilling!
That’s a wrap for this week …
Dystopic- The Technology Behind Today's News
Thank you for your readership and support. Please recommend Dystopic to friends and family who are interested, or just share this email.
Not on the Dystopic mail list? New Readers can sign up for Dystopic HERE
If you have missed a Dystopic News letter, you can find select back copies HERE
