No Way! China Wants to Visit U.S. Nuclear Weapons Labs

Gordon G. Chang

• Whatever the number [of nuclear weapons], everyone agrees that the Chinese regime is rapidly building its arsenal.
• [The risks] are especially real because China has almost certainly detonated fissile material secretly—and then sought to deceive the international community.
• Beijing says it stopped testing nuclear weapons in 1996, but it has almost certainly been conducting secret detonations.
• “After consultations with Director [John] Ratcliffe and his team, they have confirmed to me that the CIA assesses that both Russia and China have conducted super-critical nuclear weapons tests in excess of the U.S. zero-yield standard.” — US Senator Tom Cotton, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, X, November 3, 2025.
• Until China comes clean on its detonations of fissile material, there is no point in talking. Beijing is brazenly lying and therefore refusing to engage with America in good faith.

China’s proposal to the Trump administration of reciprocal visits to nuclear sites looks suspect, and talks should not proceed until Beijing is ready to engage the United States meaningfully. Pictured: An entrance gate at Los Alamos National Lab Technical Area 18, photographed on June 14, 1999, in New Mexico. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

China’s officials this year proposed to the Trump administration reciprocal visits to nuclear sites.

Specifically, the Chinese discussed visits to U.S. Department of Energy national labs. The U.S., a source told CNN, “would be open to discussing visits to nuclear testing sites.”

Unfortunately, China’s initiative looks suspect, and talks should not proceed until Beijing is ready to engage the United States meaningfully.

Washington has already begun “informal and preliminary” discussions with Beijing. President Donald Trump and Xi Jinping reportedly did not discuss the visits during their talks in Washington last month, but “further lower-level discussions” are expected before the two leaders meet again next month on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in China’s Shenzhen.

China’s proposal raised hopes in American policy circles for a broader agreement with Beijing about these weapons. As CNN reported, “The concept of allowing nuclear site visits could move the needle on the U.S. efforts to engage China on issues related to strategic stability and potentially serve as a building block for a trilateral agreement.”

A “trilateral agreement” — a deal among the U.S., China, and Russia — was a goal of the first Trump administration and remains a goal to this day. Trump on October 19 publicly said a meeting among the three countries would be “a very positive thing for the world.” He also hinted that such a meeting would occur next month in China.

China, at least up to this year, has also refused to discuss transparency measures and has never publicly confirmed the number of its weapons.

Beijing’s secrecy has forced others to guess the size of its arsenal. The Pentagon in a November 2022 report forecast that China would quadruple nukes from about 400 then to 1,500 by 2035.

The 2035 estimate looks far too low. Whatever the number, everyone agrees that the Chinese regime is rapidly building its arsenal. As Adm. Charles Richard, then commander of U.S. Strategic Command, said in 2021, “We are witnessing a strategic breakout by China.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen anything more disturbing in my career than the Chinese ongoing expansion of their nuclear force,” said then Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall in House testimony in March 2023.

“China is expanding its nuclear arsenal faster than any other country,” the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute reported this June.

The Chinese regime appears no longer content with a “minimal deterrent” — an arsenal only big enough to prevent an attack. With its rapid build-up, it is developing a “war-fighting” capability. With such a capability, threats to launch first strikes would be credible and Beijing would be able to intimidate adversaries. The ability to annihilate the United States could convince Washington not to defend, for instance, Taiwan. China has made these threats both in the last century and this one.

Is an agreement with China a good idea? “There is a near total lack of transparency in China’s nuclear forces,” noted Peter Huessy of the National Institute for Deterrence Studies and the Gold Institute for International Strategy in comments to Gatestone this month. “If the Trump administration can make progress here, that will help America’s security.”

Almost everybody would also like to see progress with China limiting nukes. “This is a very dangerous time, and there are very few guardrails in place on the U.S.-China nuclear relationship,” Paul Dean, a former acting assistant secretary of state overseeing arms control, told CNN. “We don’t need to wait for a crisis to start reducing nuclear risks.”

As Dean, now at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, said, “the risks are very real right now.”

They are especially real because China has almost certainly detonated fissile material secretly— and then sought to deceive the international community.

Beijing says it stopped testing nuclear weapons in 1996, but it has almost certainly been conducting secret detonations.

“Commercial surveillance satellites between 2020 and 2024 observed China dramatically expanding its nuclear weapons testing site at Lop Nur, to include the apparent drilling of new tunnels for the testing of nuclear devices underground,” Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center told this author in late 2025. “In addition to preparing to resume underground nuclear testing, it is also very likely that China has proceeded with ‘sub critical’ nuclear testing and the testing of components of nuclear weapons that included fissile material that produced very low-yield explosions.”

Fisher is not the only analyst who thinks the Chinese have been surreptitiously setting off nuclear devices. Huessy also assesses that both Russia and China have been conducting tests with fissile material for decades.

The U.S. intelligence community concurs. “After consultations with Director Ratcliffe and his team, they have confirmed to me that the CIA assesses that both Russia and China have conducted super-critical nuclear weapons tests in excess of the U.S. zero-yield standard,” Tom Cotton, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, stated in comments posted on X in November 2025.

Christopher Yeaw, U.S. assistant secretary of state for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, in a speech in June stated that there was “undeniable evidence” of Chinese yield-producing tests and that China has been “obfuscating nuclear explosions.” He said that perhaps in the future China will be testing fissile material in the 100-kiloton range. The Trump administration reports that China detonated fissile material on June 22, 2020 at Lop Nor.

The U.S. charges that China used the “decoupling” technique — detonating a device in an underground chamber instead of solid rock — to disguise and muffle an explosion of fissile material. The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration conducted a decoupling test to mimic the Chinese effort.

There is concern that, in light of the Chinese deception, Beijing’s proposed reciprocal visits are little more than a public relations ploy.

As CNN reported, “skeptics noted that the Chinese may have floated the idea in an effort to create a positive atmosphere or to appear serious on the topic of nuclear arsenals.” The skeptics include U.S. officials.

Until China comes clean on its detonations of fissile material, there is no point in talking. Beijing is brazenly lying and therefore refusing to engage with America in good faith.

Gordon G. Chang is the author of Plan Red: China’s Project to Destroy America, a Gatestone Institute distinguished senior fellow, and a member of its Advisory Board.

Sally Rooney’s Publisher Stops UK Distribution Over Author’s Support for Designated Terror Group Palestine Action

Shiryn Ghermezian

Author Sally Rooney poses for a photograph ahead of the announcement of the winner of the Costa Book Awards 2018 in London, Britain, Jan. 29, 2019. Photo: REUTERS/Henry Nicholls

Czaszka ludzka z 1645 roku. Fot. Władysław Zahorski (1858-1927)/Polona

Makabryczne „gadżety” sprzed wieków to m.in. sznury wisielców i elementy ich ciał

jwo/ aszw/

Używane podczas zabaw helloweenowych gadżety wydają się dziecięcą igraszką w porównaniu z tym, jakich przedmiotów używano przed wiekami. W cenie były m.in. wisielcze sznury i części ciał powieszonych na szubienicach skazańców.

Netanyahu is a realist about Israel’s foes, not a fear-monger

Jonathan S. Tobin

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accompanied by his security detail, speaking with members of the public in the city of Beit Shemesh, west of Jerusalem, just hours before polls close on Israel’s general election day, Oct. 27, 2026. Photo by Yaakov Lederman/Flash90.

The final tally of the election for Israel’s 26th Knesset is in, and neither those who support Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor those who backed the “anybody-but-Bibi” alliance of parties are happy about it. Both blocs of parties fell short of winning a majority of seats. And while anything is possible once the negotiations begin to form a new government, there is no easy path to power for either the prime minister or his main opponent, former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, retired Gen. Gadi Eisenkot. The prospect of an ongoing stalemate and ultimately new elections looms as a very real possibility.

But the main thing roiling the liberal and leftist media in both Israel and elsewhere is not Eisenkot’s failure to win as they hoped and expected he would. What they really can’t fathom is the ability of Netanyahu, despite losing ground since his 2022 victory in the last election, to emerge with a plurality as the leader of Likud, the largest party and bloc in the new Knesset.

Are Israelis naive?

To his many detractors, and indeed, the not-inconsiderable number of journalists and pundits suffering from Netanyahu derangement syndrome, his survival isn’t just frustrating. For them, it’s almost inexplicable that so many Israelis were still willing to rally around him after all these years in power. That’s especially true of the first election held since the catastrophe of Oct. 7, 2023, which happened on his watch but for which the country’s entire military, intelligence and political establishments also bear responsibility.

Rather than ponder whether their own assumptions about Netanyahu and the Israeli electorate are incorrect, they prefer to put it down to the prime minister’s bad character and the gullibility, if not the mental and moral weaknesses of the voters.

This attitude was summed up in an article in The New York Times, published in the aftermath of the vote, by its Jerusalem bureau chief, David M. Halbfinger, headlined: “How Netanyahu Used Fear, Again, to Win More Votes Than Anyone Else.”

Halbfinger conceded that Netanyahu “outperformed expectations”—which is to say that he showed, as his supporters assumed all along, that the polls published in liberal Israeli outlets were not merely inaccurate but deliberately skewed.

But for the Times and many other publications, such as Haaretz and Britain’s The Guardian, which published similar pieces, the only explanation is that Netanyahu’s fear-mongering worked again to manipulate feeble-minded voters into casting their ballots for his Likud Party and its allies.

This analysis of the results isn’t based solely on dismissing the prime minister’s focus on the ongoing threat from the Islamist regime in Iran and its terrorist proxies—Hamas in Gaza as well as Judea and Samaria, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen—as overblown and unjustified. It is also intended as a way to delegitimize arguments against Eisenkot and his bloc allying themselves with the two Israeli Arab political parties that won a record number of seats—19—in the Oct. 27 election.

The truth about the Arab parties

For them, the opposition bloc’s reluctance to make common cause with either Ra’am or the Joint List isn’t just racist. It’s also the result of hyperbolic and unrealistic fear-mongering about the two parties.

Despite efforts to make itself acceptable to Israelis with a Jewish Knesset member and its willingness to prop up the only government not led by Netanyahu since 2009, Ra’am is an Islamist party with origins in the Muslim Brotherhood. The Joint List is a coalition of secular Arab nationalists. Both have failed to condemn the Oct. 7 attacks. They’re also opposed to the idea of a Jewish state altogether.

Yet to those who are trying to define Netanyahu as a rabid alarmist rather than a shrewd politician or even one of his country’s greatest statesmen, none of that matters.

They’re also eager to simply tune out the concerns about Qatar injecting money into the election and the possibility that such fraudulent and illegal activity influenced the outcome. As for that, Dean Livne, the Acting Central Elections Committee director general, dismissed claims of widespread fraud. But Noam Sohlberg, the Israeli Supreme Court deputy president who chairs the country’s Central Elections Committee, instructed David Zini, the head of the Israeli Security Agency (Shin Bet), to investigate suspected foreign funding.

The truth of the allegations about illegal donations or the purchase of votes is yet to be determined. But to dismiss out of hand the notion that Qatar would be spending large amounts of money to impact Israeli opinion is ludicrous. The emirate has spent billions seeking to purchase influence in American academia and many other sectors of U.S. society. It would be surprising if it wasn’t also trying to influence Israelis and their elections.

No matter what that investigation produces, it’s unlikely to invalidate the election results. But it will play a part, as it should, in the discussion about whether the Arab parties should be part of a new government.

Debating a Palestinian state

The issue here isn’t so much about fraud or how people feel about a prime minister who’s been a national figure for decades and has accumulated many political enemies as well as loyalists. It’s whether there’s something wrong with Netanyahu warning Israel’s voters that they live in a very dangerous world with threats arrayed against them outside their borders as well as inside them.

What sort of threats? One is the possibility of a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria being imposed on Israelis.

According to Halbfinger, the entire discussion of a Palestinian state is “a transparently bogus argument.” He says even to raise the possibility is out of bounds since his opponents weren’t campaigning in favor of one.

It is true that, as the Times noted, even the most left-wing of the Zionist parties running for the Knesset—the Democrats (HaDemokratim), whose members are composed of the remnants of the once-dominant Labor Party and its even more radical ally, Meretz, who have combined forces to survive—said the time wasn’t right to discuss the possibility. And Eisenkot’s Yashar Party and its other allies said they were opposed to it.

Still, it’s rich for a newspaper that continuously publishes articles demanding such a state to say it’s wrong for someone to speak of opposing the idea. The Democratic Party in the United States and its liberal cheerleaders in the press are adamant that the “two-state solution,” which the Palestinian Arabs never wanted and which has been proven to be a chimera by the events of the last 33 years since the Oslo Accords were signed, must be imposed on Israel.

Leaders break their promises

Moreover, Netanyahu is on firm ground in reminding Israeli voters that leaders and parties that campaign on pledges never to allow a Palestinian state or to accede to demands for concessions, including territorial withdrawals, often break their word.

That’s exactly what happened with Yitzhak Rabin when he was elected prime minister in 1992 and reassured voters that he would not negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization and its terrorist leader Yasser Arafat, let alone empower them in the territories. But then, he did exactly that.

In 2003, Ariel Sharon was re-elected as prime minister by ridiculing his Labor Party opponent for proposing to withdraw from Gaza. Then Sharon, too, carried out the same policy himself in the summer of 2005 by pulling every Israeli soldier, settler and settlement out of Gaza, thus setting in motion the train of events that led to the creation of a Hamas terror state there and the tragedy of Oct. 7.

Moreover, as Haaretz consoled its left-wing readership over the summer, Eisenkot may have declared that he won’t accept a Palestinian state largely in order to curry favor with the voters. But in doing so, he was, the newspaper said, “running away from what everyone knows he believes.” That is probably true. The former general’s statements while he was chief of staff and those made by his advisers all point to acceptance of the Oslo mindset about the imperative of Israeli territorial withdrawals and the creation of a Palestinian state.

Under the circumstances, it’s far from unreasonable for Netanyahu to point this out and to speculate about whether a government led by Eisenkot would resist the inevitable pressure from foreign governments—possibly including the United States once President Donald Trump leaves office in January 2029—for a Palestinian state.

Nor is it fear-mongering to point out that a repetition of Sharon’s catastrophic blunder of withdrawing from Gaza in the far larger and more strategic Judea and Samaria would raise the likelihood of more Oct. 7-style attacks on Israel. Hamas, which would be certain to seize control of a state from its corrupt and feeble Fatah Party rivals who currently control the Palestinian Authority, has promised as much.

Nor is Netanyahu conjuring up imaginary threats when he speaks of the need to finish the process of eliminating Hamas in Gaza and defeating the Islamist regime in Tehran. Israelis know all too well that their enemies are not figments of their imagination on which an unscrupulous prime minister is preying.

And he isn’t making things up when he describes the radicalism of both the Arab parties that did so well in this week’s vote.

Halbfinger is correct that Ra’am has worked hard to sell itself to Jewish voters as a reasonable partner that can be trusted to be loyal to the state while standing up for the interests of Arab voters. Israelis may be proud to live in a country where the Arab minority enjoys equal rights under the law. But even if he served in the government led by Naftali Bennet and Yair Lapid in 2021 and 2022, many, if not most Israelis know that its leader Mansour Abbas’s Islamists beliefs make it impossible to truly accept the legitimacy and permanence of a Jewish state. What’s more, they also know the larger Joint List won’t even pretend to give up their dreams of Israel’s eradication. That’s true even if they are willing, for the moment, to prop up a minority government that would end Netanyahu’s career, due to the fact that he is the greatest foe of those who wish for Israel’s destruction.

Should Eisenkot rely on them to keep a minority government in power outside of the cabinet or ask them to join it outright, he would be giving them an effective veto over future military action to defend Israel against Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. Some on the left may think that’s a good idea. But in rejecting such a scenario, Netanyahu would not be exploiting fears as much as pointing out to Israelis that Eisenkot would be doing what the overwhelming majority of Israelis, regardless of who they voted for on Oct. 27, oppose.

The specter of the genocidal intent of Hamas and Iran, for which the atrocities of Oct. 7 were just the trailer for what they want to do to all of Israel, is no boogeyman that Netanyahu pulls out of his bag of tricks to scare Israelis. It is a clear and present danger that must be addressed by any government of Israel, no matter who is at its head, if it is not to betray the trust of its people.

A still dangerous neighborhood

If Israelis understand—their victories in the post-Oct. 7 war and the survival of the Abraham Accords, notwithstanding the global surge of antisemitism—that they still live in a dangerous neighborhood, it’s not because they are fearful. It’s because they have been paying attention to events and are able to judge what happens when their leaders succumb to the temptation of earning the respect of the Times and liberal pundits, and seek to trade “land for peace.” In each case, such policies were not only a betrayal of campaign promises but also wound up doing nothing more than trading territory for terror that led to the loss of thousands of Israeli lives.

If Netanyahu retains a large amount of support, despite the understandable fatigue with a prime minister who has held power for so long and the impulse to make him the sole scapegoat for Oct. 7, it is because Israelis respect and value his realism. For all of his faults and mistakes, he is still the only major Israeli leader of his era who did not fall prey to the magical thinking that led to Oslo and the Gaza withdrawal, and its betrayed promises of gaining peace in exchange for a Palestinian state that the Palestinians don’t want. Pointing this out isn’t scare tactics. It’s realism.

The prime minister’s critics should consider whether their desire to ignore or downplay the real threats to Israel is something worse than speaking to the fears of Israelis: a deliberate attempt to disarm and weaken them in the face of very real genocidal threats.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, a senior contributor for The Federalist, a columnist for Newsweek and a contributor to many other publications. He covers the American political scene, foreign policy, the U.S.-Israel relationship, Middle East diplomacy, the Jewish world and the arts. He hosts the JNS “Think Twice” podcast, both the weekly video program and the “Jonathan Tobin Daily” program, which are available on all major audio platforms and YouTube. Previously, he was executive editor, then senior online editor and chief political blogger, for Commentary magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia and editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger. He has won more than 60 awards for commentary, art criticism and other writing. He appears regularly on television, commenting on politics and foreign policy. Born in New York City, he studied history at Columbia University.

Thailand Strips Country’s Chief Rabbi of Citizenship for Using US Passport

Shiryn Ghermezian

Thailand’s Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul in Bangkok, Thailand, Sept. 2, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Valeria Mongelli

Thailand’s Prime Minister and Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul signed an order this week stripping Rabbi Yosef Chaim Kantor, the country’s chief rabbi, of his Thai citizenship because of his continued use of his American passport for international travel.

Kantor established the Chabad of Thailand in 1993 and became a Thai citizen in April 2013. He is also a leading figure in the Jewish Association of Thailand.

Thailand’s Interior Ministry said in a statement that findings by the Department of Special Investigation, which operates under the Justice Ministry, revealed the head of the Jewish community in the country used his American nationality to enter and leave Australia 16 times, most recently in January. Authorities said that his actions were in violation of Thailand’s Nationality Act of 1965 and that they are allowed to revoke citizenship obtained through naturalization when continued use of a previous nationality is established.

The order also stated that Kantor could adversely affect national security, the economy, and society because of his continued use of his previous American nationality.