What Lies Ahead for Nuclear Technology and Security in 2026

https://www.justsecurity.org/130607/emerging-trends-nuclear-2026/

Publish Date: 2026-02-04 09:11:00

Following more than half a century of arms control treaties that provided at least some guardrails on nuclear competition, today’s expiration of New START confirms that this architecture has largely unraveled. Over the coming year, nuclear weapons policy is likely to be shaped less by dramatic doctrinal shifts than by the cumulative effects of institutional strain, new proliferation risks, and the challenges posed by integrating emerging technologies into the nuclear domain.

Rather than a single inflection point, policymakers are likely to confront a series of pressures that together are reshaping the strategic environment. The erosion of arms control frameworks, the widening of proliferation risk beyond the traditional countries of concern, and the growing entanglement of nuclear forces with cyber, space, and artificial intelligence systems each pose distinct challenges.

Taken together, they point to a nuclear order that is becoming more fragmented, less predictable, and increasingly difficult to govern through existing institutions.

The End of Arms Control, For Now

New START’s expiration this week marks the first time since the early 1970s that the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals are unconstrained by a formal, verifiable agreement. With nuclear relations between the United States and Russia at their lowest ebb in decades, and Moscow having suspended treaty inspections and data exchanges well before expiration, there is little prospect of either an extension or a successor framework in the near term (despite recent efforts by Moscow to rekindle discussions). Efforts to bring China into a trilateral arms control arrangement—long a U.S. objective—are likewise stalled, as Beijing continues to reject participation in formal numerical limits while quantitatively increasing and qualitatively broadening its nuclear forces.

In broader terms, arms control is unlikely to disappear entirely, but it will take on a thinner, more fragmented form. Limited…

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