[sparsely]

This is likely a pretty big win for China/Russia if he follows through with it - USA has advanced nuclear weapon simulation capabilities which almost certainly outstrip theirs, so has a reduced need to conduct non sub-critical tests.

[ironyman]

It doesn't really matter how advanced your supercomputing infrastructure is .... the simulation is as good as the input and data from actual tests.

The big question is whether China is confident enough with the data they have from 47 tests.

Any non-subcritical testing is a gift to China as they are severely lagging behind US on number of tests conducted and therefore amount of data collected about warhead design.

Resumption of tests would add fresh data to verify new warhead designs over the decades since the last test. US would have a lesser need for new data given the amount of testing done during the cold war.

If US does conduct a nuclear test I bet a whole slew of test from China would come very shortly after that. Work has already been noticed in recent years in the test tunnel.

https://asia.nikkei.com/static/vdata/infographics/satellite-...

[mamonster]

It's also pretty bad since the USA inarguably benefits from non-proliferation much more than either China or Russia. The whole point of nuclear is that it bypasses conventional capabilities, and USA has the best conventional capabilities, so it loses the most in terms of relative power.