Christine Wormuth

Thank you.

It's great to be here.

And I did those drills under my desk as well.

Yeah, probably would not have done as much good.

Definitely would not have helped us.

The current moment is quite dangerous.

We are now without any kind of a treaty putting limits on strategic nuclear weapons for the first time since 1972.

China is rapidly building up its nuclear arsenal.

They are expected to have a thousand nuclear weapons by 2030.

So it's a pretty dangerous time, I think.

Well I think it was a bit of a missed opportunity but I'm heartened because as I understand it we were in Abu Dhabi with the Russians just recently talking to them about perhaps some sort of continued limits on our strategic nuke.

So I hope that those talks continue because I think it would be very important to try to keep some limits at least in place even if it's not through a formal treaty.

No, it's not toothless.

I think the idea of a three-way treaty is a bridge too far.

I think, frankly, the Chinese want to establish parity with Russia and the United States.

But I think the possibility of an agreement with Russia

each country separately is something to potentially pursue.

I think it's very important that the administration communicate clearly to the Europeans that they can rely on our nuclear umbrella because the last thing we need is what is called friendly proliferation.

The last thing we want to see is a country like Poland or even Germany thinking about getting its own nuclear weapons.

That's not going to be in the interests of the United States.