Ernest Moniz, former energy secretary and head of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, said in an interview with Christiane Amanpour returning to explosive nuclear testing would have a “quite terrible” impact “on multiple dimensions.”
When asked about President Donald Trump’s announcement that the U.S. would return to nuclear testing “on an equal basis” with other countries, Moniz, who served during President Barack Obama’s administration, said the announcement “has created a tremendous amount of confusion.”
“While the president seems to like ambiguity, the nuclear weapons business is not the best place for ambiguity,” Moniz said. “We’ve always liked clarity there to avoid miscalculation.”
Moniz ventured that “what the president said would suggest to many that he was talking not about nuclear explosives but about delivery systems, that’s what Russia tested.” Current Energy Secretary Chris Wright said as much on Fox News when he clarified the tests would be “noncritical,” or would not generate a nuclear reaction. But “the president then doubled down,” Moniz said.
“It could be that he is referring to a longstanding ambiguity in the intelligence which has suggested that Russia and China have done so called supercritical tests, little teeny nuclear explosions below the level of detection” Moniz said. “I should certainly hope that is not the motivation for this,” he added, saying he hopes Trump was in fact referring to delivery systems, something “we have always tested.”
When Amanpour later asked what would happen if Trump did mean explosive nuclear testing, Moniz said “the impact would be quite terrible on multiple dimensions” as it would encourage other countries to abandon testing bans and “India and Pakistan would probably start testing.”
“They [India and Pakistan] would gain more and it would risk triggering a nuclear arms race again,” Moniz said.