There are nine nuclear-host states in the world and almost all of them continued in intensive nuclear modernization programs in 2024, upgrading existing weapons and adding new versions.
It is one of the major conclusions of Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Armaments, Disarmament and Annual Evaluation of International Security.
In the mid -1980s, nuclear warheads, bombs and shells around the world were around 64,000. Today, the figure stands at the estimated 12.241. According to the latest assessment, this trend is now reversed.
Sipri director Dan Smith told DW, “The most worrying single thing in the nuclear arsenal at this time is that the long -term decrease in the number of nuclear warheads is ending.”
End of nuclear disarmament after the war of cold
Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the end of the Cold War, retired Warheads removed from atomic stockpiles – the disintegration of Warheads has been out of the deployment of new people.
However, it is common to modernize and upgrade its nuclear capabilities for nuclear-headed states, Smith says that in the last term of former US President Barack Obama, there is a deepening of this process late, with more investment in new generations of missiles and carriers.
Smith said, “For many years already, the security horizon was darkened around the world and the nuclear-headed states were already starting to present these procedures, which we call this process of modernization ‘what’ what ‘what, so not only a little tampering, but some real standing changes.”
Researchers at SIPRI have concluded that in January 2025, the world’s estimated 12,241 nuclear warheads were in around 9.614 military stockpiles: placed on missiles or with operating forces or located on bases with central storage.
The estimated 3.912 missiles and aircraft of Warheads were deployed with approximately 2.100 ballistic missiles in high -operating warnings. According to the evaluation, almost all of Russia or America were from Russia, but China can now place some warheads on missiles.
The United States, Russia, United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel-Russia and America have all nuclear weapons among the world’s nuclear-skilled states.
The SIPRI analyst has now warned that more and more states are considering hosting development or nuclear weapons, with a revived national debate about nuclear status and strategy.
It included new nuclear sharing arrangements: Russia claims to deploy nuclear weapons on the Belarusian region, while many European NATO member states have indicated to host American nuclear weapons.
International security deteriorates for more than a decade
In 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a speech at the Munich Security Conference, in which he participated against the US -dominated world system, east of NATO and disarmament.
But just two years later in 2009, Obama announced the target of total nuclear disarmament in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. “The existence of thousands of nuclear weapons is the most dangerous heritage of the Cold War,” he said.
He said that the US “would take concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons” and would interact with Russia on a new strategic weapons lacking treaty (new beginning). The treaty was signed, and came into force in 2011.
But in view of Russia’s full -scale invasion in Ukraine in February 2022, the Biden administration published its 2022 nuclear posture review, which recognized the modernization of the American nuclear arsenal as a top priority.
In February 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a bill to prevent Russia’s participation in the new beginning treaty.
Smith said, “The tide of insecurity has been slowly constructing through 2007-08 through 2014, at this time when the waves begin to crash in February 2022,” Smith said. “I think maybe many common citizens woke up to this determination, which was more than a decade older by that time.”
The bottom line is: The world’s nuclear arsenal legs are increased and advanced. Sipri estimates that China now has at least 600 nuclear warheads and this nuclear arsenal is growing faster than any other country.
Therefore, it is believed that India has slightly expanded its nuclear arsenal in 2024, while Pakistan continued to develop a new delivery system and continue to accumulate a major component of nuclear weapons.
Israel, who launched a strike targeting Iranian nuclear facilities on 13 June, killed military leaders and nuclear scientists, intentionally maintains a policy of ambiguity on their nuclear capabilities. However, it is believed that it is in the process of modernizing its own nuclear arsenal, as well as upgrading a plutonium production reactor site in Negev Desert.
AI and space technologies increase the risk of nuclear war
In her introduction of Sipri Yearbook 2025, Smith has warned of the possibility of a new nuclear weapons running, which bears “too much risk and uncertainty” during the Cold War era – massive causes and space property.
Smith said, “The upcoming nuclear weapons race is going as much about AI, cyberspace and external space as in bunkers or in submarines about missiles or bombs on aircraft. It will be as much about software about hardware.”
This complicates the question of how to control and monitor nuclear weapons and stockpiles when there was less or less about competition number between nuclear-host states.
Typically called “Killer Robot” (malignant autonomous arms system), and automated and semi-automatic drones are long-term discussions about AI about the use of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but not so much in relation to nuclear weapons.
Artificial intelligence allows large amounts of information to be processed very quickly and decision makers should help react more quickly. However, if something goes wrong within the software or perfectly depends on a system on LLM, machine learning and AI, a small technical mess can potentially move the nuclear strike.
Smith pointed to the example of Soviet Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, saying, “I think there is a red line that perhaps all political leaders and military leaders would be aged with Artificial Intelligence on the nuclear launch,” Smith said that Smith pointed out on the example of Soviet Lieutenant Colonel Stannislav Petrov.
In 1983, Petrov was on duty at the Soviet Early Warning System Command Center, 62 miles south of Moscow, when the system reported the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile from the US with four more.
Fortunately, Petrov suspected that the warning was a false alarm and the chain of command-e-decisions was waiting for immediate information instead of relaying the information, which probably stopped a ventilative nuclear strike, and in the worst position, in full-scale atoms.
“I think the big question is that in the world of artificial intelligence, which plays the role of Lieutenant Colonel Petrov?” Smith asked.
