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On 5 February 2026, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) — the last remaining arms-control pact between the United States and Russia — is set to expire. Moscow offered to Washington to voluntarily extend it for a year, but Trump recently shrugged it off and told the NYT, “If it expires, it expires.” POTUS has also recently been in the headlines for saying that he doesn’t believe he is required to follow any laws except his own morality, accountable to no one.

I often think about the pre-election livestreamed conversation between Trump and Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX is now in charge of orbital dominance for the U.S. Space Force over planet Earth. When Trump expressed fear of nuclear disasters like Fukushima, Musk responded by defending nuclear energy, despite the fact that a country that has the ability to create and maintain nuclear-power facilities is technically capable of creating nuclear weapons, and despite the fact that we still do not have the technology to remediate (detoxify) nuclear waste.

Musk went even further, minimizing the danger of nuclear weapons themselves. During the conversation which took place August 11th, 2025 (just three days after the 80th anniversary of the nuclear attack on Nagasaki), at an hour and 17 minutes Musk said, “It’s like, you know, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, but now they’re like full cities again. So it’s really not something that, you know, it’s not as scary as people think, basically. But let’s see.”

No. We do not ever want to see nuclear weapons used again. The basis of any valid moral system means doing everything you can to minimize the harm you cause to others, and making amends for the harm you do cause. Nuclear weapons are designed to destroy entire cities.

Those who survive the initial blast endure slow, excruciating deaths from radiation sickness, burns, cancers, and generational........

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