Trump Announces Immediate Resumption of Nuclear Testing

President Trump announced the United States would "immediately" resume nuclear weapons testing, posting the directive just before a summit with China’s Xi Jinping and saying he does not want the U.S. to be the only country that doesn’t test. He asserted that countries including Russia, China, Pakistan and North Korea have been conducting secret underground tests. The directive was ambiguous about whether it envisioned full-scale explosive detonations — last conducted by the U.S. in 1992 — or other forms of testing, prompting confusion among reporters, analysts and nuclear policy experts. Critics warned the move risks undermining a three-decade moratorium and could spur a new global arms race, with some citing recent Russian demonstrations of novel delivery systems and China’s expanding arsenal as context. Policy groups, experts and survivors of past test programs decried the announcement as provocative and potentially harmful to public health and nonproliferation norms and called for clarity from the Pentagon before any return to explosive testing. Observers noted the decision could affect regional doctrines — prompting debate in India over its "No First Use" stance — and that restarting physical detonations would be costly and complex given atrophied experience and facilities.