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Comment by tristanj | Hacker News Reader

START and New START have both expired. New START effectively ended in 2023 after Russia stopped complying due to US materiel support for Ukraine. It formally expired earlier this year.

Regardless, the treaties are strategically irrelevant since China is a non-signatory and it has refused to sign on to a joint arms control agreement.

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Sure, but the legal techniques of subterfuge developed under those treaties were designed to be effective against satellite and other intelligence in combination with treaty inspections. That those inspections have at least temporarily stopped is no reason to stop playing three-card monte with the missiles. These are big missiles, on which decades of information was collected by Russia, treaty-directed and otherwise.

> China is a non-signatory and it has refused to sign on to a joint arms control agreement

China has expressed interest in atms control if it includes a reduction in the arms race around Taiwan as well.

Isn't China's nuclear arsenal a tiny fraction of that of Russia and the US?

Why is its non-involvement relevant, but the non-involvement of Israel, Pakistan, India isn't?

how would we know? The US built 10,000s nuclear weapons on the assumption the USSR had the same back in the 70s and 80s, but they were wrong

Presumably because the CIA isn't spending its entire budget on hookers and blow, and is doing its job... Of making its job to know.

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