Nuclear Weapons, Ukraine, and Great-Power Competition

Sinica Podcast

Kaiser Kuo

Culture, China News, Hangzhou, Chinese, International Relations, Chongqing, Beijing, Sichuan, Currentaffairs, China, Politics, Chengdu, Shanghai, Guangzhou, China Economy, News, China Politics, Business, Film, Shenzhen

4.8 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2025

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Join me for a conversation with four fantastic panelists about nuclear safety and security issues brought on by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and more broadly on the state of nuclear security globally during this era of dramatic change.

This program was made possible by the Ukrainian Platform for Contemporary China and the Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

Nickolas Roth is Senior Director for Nuclear Materials Security at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI). Nickolas works at the intersection of arms control, risk reduction, and institutional resilience, and previously directed nuclear security work at the Stimson Center and contributed to Harvard’s Project on Managing the Atom.
Mariana Budjeryn is a Senior Research Associate with Managing the Atom at Harvard’s Belfer Center and author of Inheriting the Bomb, a definitive study of Ukraine’s post-Soviet disarmament and the limits of the Budapest Memorandum. Her scholarship grounds today’s debates about guarantees, coercion, and nuclear restraint.
Pan Yanliang is a Research Associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS). He studies the Russian and Chinese nuclear industries and the nuclear fuel cycle, and works on CNS engagement with Chinese counterparts—giving him a distinctive cross-regional vantage.
Lily Wojtowicz is a Research Fellow at the Hertie School (Berlin) and a USIP–Minerva Peace & Security Scholar, whose work focuses on extended deterrence credibility, European security, and alliance adaptation under great-power rivalry.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Searching for a romantic summer getaway. Escape with Rich Girl Summer, the new Audible original
0:05.2	from Lily Chew. The exquisitely talented Philippa Sue, returning to narrate her fifth
0:10.2	Lily Chew title. This time, Philippa is joined by her real-life husband, Stephen Pasquale,
0:15.5	set in Toronto's wealthy cottage country, aka the Hamptons of Canada, rich girl Summer follows the story of Valerie,
0:22.1	a down-on-her-luck event planner posing as a socialite's long-lost daughter, while piecing
0:26.5	together the secrets surrounding a mysterious family and falling deeper and deeper in love with the
0:31.7	impossibly hard to read and infuriatingly handsome family assistant, Nico. Caught between pretending to belong
0:38.2	and unexpectedly finding where she truly fits in,
0:41.3	Valerie learns her summer is about to get far more complicated
0:44.0	than she ever planned.
0:45.8	She's in over her head and head over heels.
0:48.5	Listen to Rich Girl Summer, now on Audible.
0:51.2	Go to audible.com slash Rich Girl Summer.
1:07.3	Hey, cynical listeners. I've got something special for you today. I just got back to the States.
1:11.5	And after a couple of days of jet lag recovery, I was asked by Vita Koload, my dear friend, to host an online webinar called Nuclear Weapons, Ukraine, and Great
1:18.2	Power Competition. As you will see, for those of you who are interested in China-related stuff,
1:23.4	there is quite a bit of that in here as well. But I go a little bit out of my, out of my usual wheelhouse. I hope you hang with me. I will introduce the guests in due course. This is an unedited version of the webinar. I hope you enjoy. All right, let's go ahead and get started. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are joining from. I am
1:44.4	Kaiser Guo. I am the host of the Cynica podcast, and I'm joining you from Chapel Hill, North
1:49.5	Carolina in the U.S. It is my privilege to moderate today's discussion, nuclear weapons, Ukraine,
1:55.7	and great power competition. As Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine grinds on, the nuclear dimension has become both
2:03.2	more prominent and more complex. Bosco's persistent nuclear signaling and the forward deployment
2:10.3	of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, moving warheads closer to NATO's eastern flank,
	...

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