Trump is going Nuclear.

potentially reigniting a global arms

race that had, at least until recently,

seemed to have faded into history. He

did not explain the goal of the new

testing, instead arguing that it was

simply a response to what other

countries have been doing.

>> They seem to all be nuclear testing.

>> We have more nuclear weapons than

anybody. We don't do testing. You know,

we've halted it years, many years ago,

but with others doing testing, I think

it's appropriate that we do also.

>> America's last confirmed nuclear test

was in 1992, and the last time China did

it, as far as we know,

>> was 1996. And while Russia has not

tested a bomb in recent years, Vladimir

Putin touted the successful test of a

new nuclearpowered cruise missile

earlier this month. While similar to

threatening to revoke Russia's

ratification of a global treaty banning

nuclear tests,

>> MSNBC senior White House correspondent

Von Hillyard is in South Korea.

>> Well, also I want I want you to see the

torpedo. Uh you could see this the

images of it. They call it the Poseidon

Doomsday Torpedo. Look at this.

Poseidon, Russia's doomsday nuclear

torpedo. Underwater drone launched from

the world's largest nuclear sub. 65- ft

doomsday. That's a sixstory

nuke torpedo which could be guided to a

coastal target at 115 mph with a 100

megaton warhead detonating triggering a

1600 ft tsunami of radioactive seawater.

Uh okay, this this is actually I mean

that's the pitch on this document.

Typically, tsunamis are going to be in

the range of 40 to 60 feet. Uh, and then

smaller tsunamis are going to be like

your your 20 to 40 foot waves. Uh you

have seen a thousand foot tsunamis

before, but I think the only time you've

seen thousand foot tsunamis are when you

have an asteroid that takes out all of

the uh dinosaurs or you have some crazy

event like I believe there are lakebased

scenarios where you have massive

mudslides that create these insane uh

surges of water. But uh not very typical

to see that large. So I think a little

bit of that might be overblown but still

you could see this escalating of

hostilities here and it's a sign of

greater problems in negotiations. A

society that has honored not

proliferating nuclear weapons which

means expanding the manufacturing and

testing of nuclear weapons for decades.

You know we've had nuclear

non-prololiferation treaties and

otherwise. But now, President Trump said

the US is going to match its rivals in

testing nuclear weapons after Russia in

recent days announced trials of a

nuclearpowered underwater drone, nuclear

capable cruise missile. Yeah. Russia

also had this uh uh torpedo that they

revealed that can essentially create

smaller tsunamis that could devastate

coastal areas. So a torpedo that

essentially creates such a seismic shock

that it creates a a tsunami at a coastal

region. So a lot of this seems to be an

increase of aggression against

specifically Russia because we're really

losing that fight against Russia. Part

of me believes that one of the reasons

we're losing the fight against Russia is

because China is saying, "Russia, you

have to keep fighting America." like

China wants this because the more Russia

fights America and creates this sort of

distraction geopolitically, the more

frustrated Trump gets, the weaker Trump

appears against Putin. If Trump appears

weak against Putin, then China can

appear strong towards the Europeans or

South Americans or otherwise to cozy up

to them and build better trade relations

with them. This is why we're getting not

a trade deal, but a kick down the road.

And it's a 12 month kick down the road,

which basically takes us right up to

midterms, which essentially means it's

just going to get kicked down the road

even more.

I because of other countries testing

programs, I have instructed the

Department of War to increase our

nuclear weapons testing on an equal

basis. That process will begin

immediately. And I get it. You know,

it's very tit for that. Well, like, oh

well, if they're doing it, we should do

it, too. It's just a reversal from what

we've historically seen the United

States do. Uh, okay. So, then we have,

uh, wow, I just got a message here. Uh,

looks like, wow, jeez. Yes. Uh, I'm just

looking at some of the fundraising

amounts here. A lot of fundraising

amounts just coming in here uh, for

house and reinvest. Great. Great for um,

I guess people are looking to diversify,

huh? But anyway, Trump appeared to be

reacting to Russia's accelerated testing

of nuclear capable super weapons in

recent weeks. Yeah, here it is. Russia

said it had tested an atomic powered

torpedo drone capable of carrying

nuclear weapons days after its military

hailed a trial of a longd distanceance

cruise missile. This is exactly how

we're seeing escalation and not

deescalation. Part of this is Putin

wanting to send a signal to Trump. Don't

even think about sending, you know, old

school tomahawk missiles. Why would you

send tomahawk missiles when this is what

you're now up against? This is saber

rattling. It's very common. It's what

we've seen historically with countries

like North Korea. The problem is Russia

is so in bed with uh China that it makes

this a lot harder. Now, Foreign Affairs

has a piece on the uh America and China

relationship, which is interesting. They

say in repeated cycles of confrontation,

uh there's basically been a dete so like

it's almost like an agreement to

disagree, right? Uh and and so it does

imply that to some extent we don't want

to fully decouple from China, which is

great, but it still suggests we have

problems that need to be solved. And

China is setting us up as America versus

everyone else. This is what I mean.

China gets to cozy up to everyone,

right? The possibility of an inflection

point seems to stem in part from changes

in US foreign policies. From Beijing's

perspective, Trump's first term marked

the onset of a period of strategic

competition with the United States,

viewing China as the most serious

adversary. It was, in other words, the

US versus China. Under Biden, Washington

maintained the same goals, but sought to

do so in concert. So, it was really

under Biden, you had Biden's adviserss

and the West versus China. Now, it's

just the US versus essentially all in

part because of Liberation Day. That's

exactly why China is now cozying up to

build foundations with other countries

and why I think China is pressuring

Russia to keep this going. And I think

China is supporting and supplying Russia

with the advanced chip hardware and

technology, the military hardware that

they need uh to keep these wars going.

We already know they're sending

munitions to Russia. This is no

surprise. It's just the there are more

reasons as to why China wants to build

out their own uh you know Nvidia style

chip technology than just artificial

intelligence. It all has to do with like

the AI drone armies that are being

talked about

being built. And who wants drones the

most? Russia right now. Take a look at

this. You've got articles here. China's

This is in Tom's Hardware. China's

autonomous military combat drone

uh powered by Deep Seek highlights

Nvidia Reliance for now. Right. China's

uh North Industries uh corporation, a

state-owned defense firm, unveiled the

P60, an autonomous military vehicle that

can travel 50 km an hour. That's 31

miles uh an hour. Uh featuring

autonomous uh combat support

capabilities. According to Reuters, the

drone is powered by Deepseek, but

details remain a secret and suggest that

they continue to use Nvidia GPUs. So,

this is where through, you know, their

skirting by buying these through

Singapore or otherwise. Uh, they're

still using our hardware, but China

wants to do everything they can to

decouple.

And this is understandable. If they

could use Blackwell for now, fine. But

understand these movements have military

implications which is also kind of

scary. Uh and so this is why this this

truth of buying time great one-year

truths but it just buys China more time

to decouple from the United States as

well which isn't great. Uh so going back

to uh what we have with uh this uh uh

this piece about Russia, uh I I I just

want to think about

this escalation here from Trump is

really a sign that we're kind of losing

in some of these negotiations. I'm not

trying to be anti-Trump. I'm just saying

for us to have to prop up our nuclear

tests as a way to sort of try to gain

leverage over Russia and China is to me

indicative of a failure not a success.

And I get it. It's going to be branded

as well if they're doing it. We should

do it too, right? But this is like

Gandhi, an eye for an eye makes the

world go blind, right? This is the

opposite of what has been done for

decades. Remarks later on a flight back

from uh South Korea, Trump provided no

further clarity. Uh but says, "We don't

do testing. We halted it many, many

years ago." Well, let's be clear, we're

still secretly doing But anyway, the US

last nuclear explosive test was in 1992,

but we test delivery system. Exactly.

This is my reference, right? We could I

mean, we regularly test the delivery

systems. ICBM, submarines, bombers, mock

weapons. Russia is the only other nation

with a nuclear arsenal. Trump's social

media post came hours before a meeting

with Xiinping. Trump has previous See,

Exactly. Because it's leverage building.

Exactly. It's Donald Trump revealed what

he was going to negotiate with Putin two

with uh Xiinping two days before on

purpose because they're trying to build

leverage before the meeting because the

meetings are really just a you know

they're a facade. They're really not

much of a meeting. Much of the work has

already been done by negotiators and

sort of pre-public negotiating and then

they do their photo op. Trump has

previously expressed interest in

brokering a nuclear treaty with China to

reduce nuclear stockpiles, though China

has resisted. Well, of course, because

China has 300 nuclear warheads. Russia's

got like 5,800. I think we've got

somewhere around 5,800 to 6,000 as well.

Uh, you know what? This is a problem.

And then this is where people then say

like, "Oh, well Kevin, if you were the

president, what would you do?" Well,

first of all, I'm not the president and

I'm not saying I have the answers. But I

do think that

this this sort of lash out from Trump

with, you know, some taco but some more

tariffs, then we're going to do nuclear

tests. Those sort of aggressions are

signs that the Trump method might not

work in the long term. It might work in

the short term. And so I typically think

what's better is working in conjunction

with Democratic allies. And I'm not

saying democrats like left. I mean

democratic countries. So the United

Kingdom, France, uh Italy, Germany, uh

Poland,

you know, these these are countries that

we could Japan, South Korea, right?

Taiwan, that's going to piss China off.

But working with these nations makes us

much more powerful against the rise of a

communistdirected state or a dictatorial

state like Putin. That's how you fight

them. But alienating our allies to then

try to go fight China and Russia with

fire, right? Fight fire with fire while

alienating our friends is probably the

the scariest and most short-termism

method you could use relative to

long-termism approaches. Uh which you're

much better off negotiating through like

proper trade, not this tariff stuff. You

know, I don't like tariffs. We don't

have to go deep into the economics of

tariffs. people get mad at me. Uh but

but proper trade resilience with your

allies. Anyway, that that's my take. So

I I see this nuclear stuff as actually a

sign of a failure. In 2019, the US

withdrew from a also under Trump

landmark uh disarmament treaty with

Russia because it said Moscow had

violated a treaty. That was just a ruse

to try to you know uh uh again fight

fire with fire against Russia. Uh, China

tested a nuclear bomb in 96 but

continues to test nuclear capable, you

know, missiles. We test missiles all the

time. Of course, this is this is not a

big deal. Uh, that's why I clarified as

well that, you know, Trump says, "Oh, we

haven't done tests in a while." It's

like, "No, we test all the time." But

anyway, just a little bit of color. When

you see this stuff about the nukes, I

think it's it's worth paying attention.

How China enables Russia's military.

This is a going to be really interesting

because you've got this opinion ed from

uh the editorial board of the Wall

Street Journal. Uh and they really

highlight this relationship between

China and Russia that a lot of people

don't really pay attention to. And so

let's look at it together. The latest

evidence comes in new reports on China's

help for Russia's military. We already

know this, right? China again like I've

said they want

uh weakness of the US to be distracted

in fighting Russia because it just makes

China appear stronger and the US appear

weaker. We know we are the strongest

military but the fact that we're not

winning against Russia is an

embarrassment to the US at least that's

the point of view that China is going to

take and they're going to weaponize that

against us.

China said that they don't provide

lethal weapons to Moscow. But in

non-public reports prepared by the State

Department and European governments, we

cast basically doubts mostly because we

can track supply chains of not only

bullets but also drones going to China.

Right? They don't seem to mention the

bullets parts here, but there are plenty

of other talks about lethal munitions

going from China uh directly to Russia.

But anyway, uh first-person point of

view, drones going to Russia. We know

that engineers can also have

non-military uses such as Washington

machines, pumps, or electric uh scooters

or for the engines for FPVs. But the

report says the final recipient is a or

Russia or Moscow based company

identified by Ukrainian intelligence as

a drone maker. Well, yeah. I mean, none

of this is a surprise. Uh and so reports

just find this link over and over again.

Ukraine has also identified uh Russian

company Morgan LLC, which is not under

US sanctions, as a supplier of long

range drone components uh for their

facilities. This isn't a surprise

either. They also they have uh you know,

a lot of their manufacturing facilities

are located uh in ways that they can

directly ship uh to Iran. So they could

get pieces through Iran from China uh

through rivers that just basically

connect Russia and Iran. I mean if you

go over here, you could actually see uh

Iran up here. We see uh obviously the

Caspian Sea here. Here's Thrron, the

capital. Uh, and we can follow rivers uh

that go from uh the sea all the way deep

into Russia. Uh, and they will

manufacture their drone facilities uh

deep inside of Russia. Uh, which you

know are decently far away from Ukraine.

Uh, and and they have all the supply

chains they need to connect Russia to

Iran and to China. Uh so this isn't none

of this is a surprise. Uh in fact I have

a uh a whole piece on this where I sort

of broke down uh the drone facility uh

one of the drone facilities that you

could see. You could see it here. Take a

look at this. Uh here is an example

where I sort of map out some of the

distances of these. But here you have

the camel river which is the upper

portion of this which provides access to

the Caspian Sea. And you could see a lot

of the uh you know a lot of transport

ships even in the the facilities is

you've got leaked documents of these

drone manufacturing plants being built

in Russia uh and how they're directly

connected to Iran. These are Iranian

drone facilities deep inside of Russia

uh and they're shipping directly to uh

Iran and then of course you know in

conjunction with China. So anyway, uh

these drones are just examples, but they

add the case for imposing secondary

sanctions on China and Russia, but we're

just not going to end up seeing them.

>> Why not advertise these things that you

told us here? I feel like nobody else

knows about this.

>> We'll we'll try a little advertising and

see how it goes.

>> Congratulations, man. You have done so

much. People love you. People look up to

you.

>> Kevin Praath there, financial analyst

and YouTuber. Meet Kevin. Always great

to get your take.