A new nuke wave washes over the world

Driving the news: The Federation of American Scientists warned in its latest accounting that Beijing has "significantly expanded" its program by "fielding more types and greater numbers of nuclear weapons than ever before."

• The effort includes continued development of missile silo fields and bases for road-mobile launchers as well as reassignment of bombers with an air-launched ballistic missile that "might have nuclear capability."

Meanwhile, weapon whispers are heard in:

• France, where President Emmanuel Macron is mulling the reach of his nuclear umbrella.
• Germany, where Friedrich Merz, the soon-to-be chancellor, welcomed discussions about shared arsenals while also acknowledging the heft of U.S. arms.
• Poland, where President Andrzej Duda called on Washington to send some of its weapons into his country — a move that would abbreviate flight times and anger Russia.
• South Korea, where a cocktail of concerns, namely its neighbors, spur repeat conversations. (Gideon Rose, an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Japan would likely follow Seoul in a piece titled "Get Ready for the Next Nuclear Age.")

And it's all everyone's talking about, from large organizations like the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Chatham House to the smaller expert blogs like Strategic Simplicity.

What they're saying: "I, personally, didn't have Poland on my bingo card," Jane Vaynman, an assistant professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University, said at an event when asked by Axios for a global temperature check.

• "There's a really big connection that's been studied in the academic literature ... between U.S. nuclear guarantees and the nonproliferation agenda."

Yes, but: Nuclear aspirants need heaps of time, money and willpower — resources in demand everywhere else.

• The world's most destructive weapons don't accidentally materialize; they are the product of scientific expertise, coveted materials, manufacturing-and-test footprints and means of delivery.
• "The rule of thumb in the 1990s, when I started in this field, was: Any country can go nuclear. It takes, at a minimum, 10 years and $10 billion," Jon Wolfsthal, the federation's director of global risk, told me.
• "You could buy a lot of conventional deterrence with $10 billion."

Reality check: The Chinese inventory, hundreds of warheads, is dwarfed by American and Russian collections, thousands each.

• Whether Beijing is a nuclear peer to Washington — or ever will be — depends on who you ask. Government assessments clash with those made by outside analysts.
• The Federation of American Scientists notebook, for example, says there is "no evidence that China's ongoing nuclear expansion will result" in parity.

What we're watching: How, amid this chaotic juggle, the U.S. deals with its own aging weapons and crumbling infrastructure, including sites managed by the National Nuclear Security Administration.

Go deeper: As costs soar, Air Force says it "neglected" Sentinel infrastructure