“Other countries are testing [nuclear weapons], so we should resume testing too.”

60 Minutes interview with Norah O'Donnell, justifying instruction to Pentagon to begin nuclear weapons testing

No nuclear power has detonated a nuclear test explosion since North Korea in 2017, and North Korea is the only country to have conducted one this century. The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization's global monitoring system "has successfully detected all six declared nuclear tests conducted this century," all by North Korea, its executive secretary said on October 30, 2025. No other nuclear state has tested since India and Pakistan in 1998.

What Russia recently tested were a nuclear-capable cruise missile and a nuclear-capable underwater drone: delivery systems, not nuclear explosions. Russia has not conducted a nuclear test explosion since 1990, and the United States not since 1992. Conflating delivery-system tests with warhead detonations is the central distortion behind Trump's justification.

Trump's own administration contradicted him. The Energy Department already verifies U.S. warheads through subcritical experiments without explosions, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on November 2 that the planned tests "are not nuclear explosions" but "noncritical explosions" of other weapon components.

"The CTBTO's International Monitoring System has successfully detected all six declared nuclear tests conducted this century." — Robert Floyd, Executive Secretary, Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization, Oct. 30, 2025 (all six were North Korean)