“Russia and China are both testing, but they don’t say it. I don’t want the U.S. to be the only country doing nothing,” Trump said in an interview on November 2, responding to a question about his directive for the U.S. Department of Defense to immediately resume nuclear weapons testing.
Trump added that North Korea and Pakistan were also conducting nuclear tests, defending his stance that the U.S. must act similarly. “We have to test to see how they work,” he emphasized.
Currently, North Korea is the only country known to have carried out nuclear test explosions in recent decades. Public data indicates that Russia and China have not conducted such tests since 1990 and 1996, respectively. When asked about this, Trump said, “They just don’t announce it.”
“No matter how strong the explosions are, this is a big world. You don’t necessarily know where they’re testing. They do it deep underground, where people can’t tell exactly what’s happening. You only feel a slight tremor,” he added.
Neither Beijing nor Moscow has yet responded to Trump’s accusations. The U.S., Russia, and China are all nuclear-armed nations. Contrary to Trump’s claims, there is no public evidence suggesting that Russia or China has recently conducted nuclear tests.
During a congressional hearing last week, the nominee Trump selected to head the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) — which oversees America’s nuclear forces — stated that both Russia and China have not resumed nuclear testing.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on October 30 that Russia is not conducting nuclear tests but would consider doing so if Washington resumes them. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun urged the U.S. to “strictly abide by” the global nuclear test ban treaty.
The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), signed by the U.S. in 1996, prohibits all nuclear test explosions for both military and civilian purposes.
The U.S. nuclear arsenal, managed by the Department of Energy rather than the Department of Defense, contained 3,748 warheads as of September 2023, with 2,170 in active deployment.
In an interview on November 4, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said any future nuclear weapons tests ordered by President Trump would focus on equipment verification, not actual detonations.
In recent years, both the U.S. and Russia have regularly tested systems capable of carrying nuclear warheads — such as intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and fighter jets — but these tests involved non-nuclear payloads or mock devices, primarily to assess readiness and reliability.