The Duran Podcast - Poseidon and Trump nuclear testing

Episode Date: November 2, 2025

Poseidon and Trump nuclear testingThe Duran: Episode 2377

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the Poseidon, the testing of the Poseidon, which comes a couple of days after the announcement of the Budapestnik. And what is Trump's reaction to these tests? He is telling the Pentagon to ramp up nuclear testing from the United States side, their nuclear arsenal and nuclear development ramp it up. Trump said in a truth, social post. So obviously, these tests, these weapons got to Trump. Yes. No doubt about it. And the United States isn't even close to developing anything like the Budapestnik or anything like the Poseidon. Putin said as much. The U.S. is having a difficult time trying to figure out hypersonic missiles, which is pretty.

incredible if you consider the fact that Russia has hypersonics. China has hypersonics. I don't know. Does Iran have hypersonics? I'm not sure. Yeah, I mean, they say they say they do. I think that they're perhaps gilding the lily on some of the technology that they have. China, Russia, definitely. China, definitely. China, Russia. Absolutely. And China says they do as well. So anyway, your thoughts on the Poseidon, on what Putin said about the Poseid and the reaction from the Trump administration? I mean, these are, well, the first thing to say is that these are absolutely terrifying and inherently very destabilizing weapons. We discussed the Burivestnik in a recent program we did. The Poseidon is in some ways even more alarming as a weapon.

It's a big underwater torpedo. It apparently carries an enormous nuclear warhead. It's intended apparently to create massive tidal waves to swamp coastal cities. And remember most of the big cities in the United States, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chisco, they are either on or very close to the coast. I mean, so this is a lot of, if you look at the American population, a lot of the big centers are not all of them, but a fair proportion of them are on the coast. And of course, if you have this kind of tidal wave with the seawater water contaminated by

nuclear waste material, which you would do, well, I mean, you can imagine. imagine what the effect of the destruction of this would be. So this is a terrifying weapon. It's again powered by nuclear reactor. The nuclear reactor means that it has essentially unlimited range, just as was the case with the Bordeauxvesnik. The Russians can launch it and it can loiter and maneuver around and it's difficult for the US to track and the Americans might not know exactly where it is and its deployment would, in a time of crisis, increase the tension to stratospheric levels. And with the Poseidon, which is an underwater torpedo, ultimately impossible to track, that is even more dangerous.

I mean, there is no real existing technology that I'm aware of. that would be able to find these things in the gigantic expanse of the world ocean. I mean, they could be deployed in any part of the ocean. They could move around stealthily. They can apparently approach the US coast. And the way the technology works is that as they get closer to the target, suddenly they put in a burst of speed and, well, we don't want to discuss what will then happen because I mean, it's pretty horrifying.

There is something else about these, both of these weapons. The Norwegians, from what I have heard, tracked the Borevesnik test. And they are saying that there is no radioactive discharge from the Borevessnik test. Now I am absolutely not a technological person, as everybody knows. But to me that suggests that this is some kind of closed cycle reactor, very difficult to understand how that technology works. At least I cannot understand it. Maybe others can.

But there's been comparisons that have been made between the Borevesnik and nuclear-powered cruise missiles that the United States tested in the 1950s and 1960s. It is clear that the Borevestsnik is completely different. It uses entirely different technologies, all parallels between those old American systems of long ago and the Burra Vesnik are wrong. And the same applies to the Poseidon submarine torpedo. They use a completely novel, at least a nuclear technology that I myself have never heard of before, an ability to miniaturize a nuclear reactor in some kind of closed cycle. And that, I would have thought, if this is correct, is a major technological breakthrough. It means if the Russians can serially produce nuclear reactors on this scale, then they have a massive

ability to generate power in all kinds of ways. And that could have all sorts of applications in AI technologies. But Putin talked about space technology. in all sorts of other things. So that's perhaps also something to keep in mind. As far as I know, the United States does not have this technology either. So these are extraordinarily dangerous, destabilizing weapons, and they've been achieved as a result of a technological breakthrough. Now, the logical response in the United States is to negotiate with the Russians, to limit,

or perhaps, if possible, abolish these weapons, in other words, to resume arms control, to give up ideas maybe of deploying nuclear weapons in Europe, intermediate nuclear weapons in Europe, these systems are clearly intended to some extent as a potential counter against those kind of weapons. and to try to restore strategic stability, which is now disintegrating. What Trump is showing us that he and the United States are likely to do instead, is that they're escalating instead of negotiating extensions of the START treaty and perhaps trying to agree limits on these weapons,

and perhaps gain access to this technology that the Russians now have, the United States is now going to resume nuclear testing, which goes against, it means the collapse of further arms control agreements. It's going to undermine the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which is basically now well on the route to collapse. It's propelling us. into a nuclear arms race where we see these very dangerous new weapons starting to appear and where there is now a third major nuclear superpower, China, starting to emerge. So I think the American policy is all wrong. What happens when China develops these types of technologies?

Well, they will. And they won't, I mean, they might not even have to develop them because my guess is the Russians are going to share them. What happens there? What, exactly. That is the question. If Russia can produce these things, what's China going to do? Well, of course it is.

Of course it is. So the United States, again, as I said, needs to actually take a realistic view and try to negotiate its way out of this mess. It's doing the opposite. Now, Trump talks all the time about the United States having the best weapons. the best submarines, the best missiles. Alexander, I have to have to cut you off there. The most.

In his social post, he says, and it's not the first time he said it. I know. He continues to believe that the United States has the most nuclear weapons. Yes, which isn't true. Russia is the country with the most nuclear weapons. But he has this narrative, which perhaps he himself believes, that the US is far ahead of China and Russia on everything, submarines, missiles, numbers of weapons. And he seems to think that the US can overtake and surpass and exceed whatever they do,

and that this is the way that America should proceed. This is wrong, and it is very dangerous. And it is bad enough that Trump thinks this. It's even worse than nobody else in Washington, as far as I can see, is really pushing back against him. No, a large part of the MAGA crowd actually is buying it to Trump's narrative. Yes. Right?

And they've bought into the whole piece through strength a thing as well. And it's false. It is false. The United States does not have the most nuclear weapons, nor do they have the most powerful weapons. This is also false. And when you go to the Poseidon, in a way, Trump brought this onto the United States because he was the one that was running his mouth months ago about how U.S. subs are right off the coast of Russia, he was saying, right? We've got all our subs right there.

Our nuclear subs are right there. And don't you dare do anything, Putin or else we're going to nukew. That was what he was implying, right? when he was talking about that. This was months ago. Yes. And how does Russia counter? Okay, you're nuclear subs. Well, you've got nuclear subs too, but we also have this thing called the Poseidon now. What's Trump's answer to that? Nothing.

Nothing. He has no answer to it. His answer is Pete, Pete Egsteth, I want you to start, you know, get our nuclear weapons cranking now. That's his answer to this. Yes. Yes. And he posts it on truth social. Yes. It's weakness. It's not true. This is weakness. It's weakness.

That is exactly what it is, but it's also folly. Because you're playing a poker game with weapons that are of unimaginable power. Okay. So what is preventing Trump, the great negotiator, from just sitting down and negotiating a new start? Putin has even told him many times, which the media will never report on. Yes. They will never report on it. Putin has said many times, let's extend start for one year and let's sit down and hammer this thing out. Forget about Ukraine. Forget about the fact that the U.S. is at war with Ukraine. Forget about the fact that the U.S. is sanctioning Russia and trying

to destroy Russia's economy. Forget about all that stuff. I'm willing to sit down with you and we can just talk about nuclear proliferation and a new start treaty. I would have thought, I mean, for me, this is such a straightforward thing, such a straightforwardly, obviously, correct thing to do. As you correctly said, the Russians are not making negotiations on nuclear weapons, conditional on progress in Ukraine or lifting of sanctions. I mean, they are not doing what the Americans always do, which is trying to use, try to find leverage with, weapons deployments of this kind. Perhaps Trump thinks they are, and that's probably why he's moving to resume nuclear testing, because the Russians have now deployed these new systems,

he thinks that the United States was somehow balanced that out by resuming nuclear testing. It doesn't. I mean, that is a childish way to approach this problem. I'm wondering if Trump's advisors are telling him to ramp up the nuclear arms race because they believe that this will be the way to sink Russia's economy in much the same way that they say Reagan by ramping up the nuclear arms race actually bankrupted Russia. And Trump likes to see himself as not only a Reagan type of figure, but even better, even bigger and better and smarter than Reagan. I wonder if there are people whispering to Trump and telling him, you know, look, this is what Reagan did. So what you need to do is crank it up even more. And that way, we'll bankrupt Russia's economy, just like we did to the Soviet Union back

when Reagan was president. And then you can make a speech, Trump saying, tear down that wall, Mr. Putin or something. I mean, I wonder if they're filling Trump's head with all of this nonsense, just like he uses the peace through strength motto of Reagan. And he's basically taken that narrative and he's incorporated it. So I'm just trying to figure out what is going through the minds of these people in D.C. And what is Trump thinking? What's his inner circle thinking?

I have absolutely no doubt that that is exactly what many people in his inner circle are telling Trump. If you go to places like National Review, for example, you see that very thing said, The very thing that you said said out there, you know, that the Soviet Union was broken by the United States because they got the Saudis to lower oil prices and increased oil production. And that supposedly cut off oil, you know, the flow of money to the Kremlin. And at the same time, Reagan cranked up production at nuclear weapons and launched this massive space defense initiative, which all of these things cumulatively bankrupted the Kremlin. None of that is true, by the way.

I mean, I know lots and lots of people believe this story, for example, about oil. And it isn't true. I mean, I've gone into this in massive detail in the past. Oil prices collapsed in the 1980s for completely unrelated reasons to the ones that many people think it was not part of a policy to break the Soviet Union. And it didn't break, it wasn't what caused the Soviet Union to break. The Soviet Union broke as a result of massive internal problems that had been accumulating and which were aggravated, intensified by certain policy decisions that Gorbachev and his team made during the 1980s. But I am not going to repeat that

history now. As I said, I know many people who watch these programs believe it, but it isn't true. And as for the military arms race, it didn't change the dial on nuclear weapons because the Soviet Union was outproducing the US nuclear weapons, both before Reagan came along. And whilst Reagan was there, In fact, their production barely shifted because it was already higher than that of the United States. They didn't respond in the way that people imagine. And Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative by the times that Kofferchov and Reagan were negotiating with each other had basically collapsed.

I mean, nobody believed in it. And the Senate, which in those days was led by very different people, basically opposed it. So anyway, I don't want to go over this whole history, which is very interesting and perhaps needs to be discussed properly at some time. But you're absolutely right. That narrative exists. It is believed by many people, many, many people. And it's going to be pushed very hard. It's undoubtedly being pushed very hard. And it is being told. to Trump now. It was wrong in the 1980s, but it is much more wrong today when the world system is completely different anyway. Russia's financial and internal economic situation is profoundly

different, completely different from what it was in the 1980s. And of course, the United States has to face the fact also that there is a massive new, kid on the block, which is China, which in purchasing power parity terms, has a bigger economy than that of the United States itself and which is Russia's friend. Yeah. Yeah, I do get the sense that the Trump administration is formulating their policy towards Russia based on how Reagan acted with Russia back when he was president. And the perceived success of Reagan at the time, which Trump wants to also incorporated to his foreign policy agenda.

Which is very real, by the way. I mean, I should say Reagan did achieve a breakthrough in relations with the Soviets. But this is partly a product of internal changes within the Soviet Union that had been building up for decades. I mean, you know, the rise within the Soviet Union of people who wanted to end the Cold War and wanted to escape the shackles of what the Soviet Union was and Reagan's ability to understand that and to seize the moment. But that's not at all I would see today. Yeah, I agree. Okay, so let's just discuss Belgium real quickly. The defense minister of Belgium, he gave an interview and he said that,

that if Russia uses any type of missile, nuclear or non-nuclear, then NATO, Belgium, NATO would level Moscow. So Putin would never dare to send a missile into Belgium or any NATO capital. That's pretty much what the Dutch defense minister said. The interesting part that not many people are talking about in that interview is where the defense minister of Belgium said that. that we shouldn't take Russia's red lines seriously. And he said, let's not worry about what Putin says,

especially with regards to long-range missile strikes deep inside of Russia, with regards to Tomahawk missile strikes deep inside of Russia. Don't worry about Russia's warnings because they gave us warnings about other missile strikes. They gave us warnings about Finland and Sweden joining NATO. And you see nothing happened. So let's not concern ourselves is what the Belgium defense minister said. Let's not concern ourselves with what the Kremlin says about their red lines. They're bluffing.

They're not going to act on it. And let's continue to push forward with long-range missile strikes into Russia and with Tomahawk missile strikes into Russia. That was pretty much what he was saying. What are your thoughts on that? Because this war escalation. fever that the collective West has is very dangerous. And Trump has this as well. The leaders of the collective West definitely have this. It seems as if they really do believe that they are invincible,

that Russia is bluffing, that Russia is losing, and they can continue to escalate without any kind of retaliation from the Russian side. Indeed. And it is a very, there's a very, very interesting statement. And there's an awful lot of about it actually. And I'm very glad you brought it up if I may say. So a number of things. I think some of the context for this statement is needed because what has been happening over the last couple of weeks is that Belgium itself, which has been an ardent supporter of Ukraine, by the way, the Belgian government has been one of the, absolutely fully on board with every support Ukraine up to now. It's provided F-16s. It's done everything that every one of the other

countries in NATO and the EU have done to support Ukraine. Anyway, Belgium hit the limit about two, three weeks ago. And this was with Ursula's plan, well, I should say the Ursula Maltz plan to supposedly flow to loan, 140 billion euro loan secured its unbursed. complicated way against the Russian frozen assets in Euroclear. And, well, we've talked about this in many programs. And the Belgian said no, Euroclear is based in Belgium. The Belgians obviously have obtained legal advice. And they all have obtained legal advice.

They know that if there was a court case, And court cases could be brought about this, brought against Euroclear, not just in European jurisdictions, because Euroclear is a global operation, but in jurisdictions in Asia, for example. If there is a claim brought, Euroclear will lose. Euroclear could go bust. Euroclear would then come and say these guarantees that we have been given. must now be honored because otherwise we will go down. And the country which would be on the hook would be Belgium because Euroclear is based in Belgium.

And what the Belgians are saying, we're absolutely not prepared to do that because because 140 billion euros would be more than our budget, our annual budget. I mean, we, it would, but Belgium always has very strained budgets anyway. I mean, this would crash it. So the Belgian said, no, we can't do this. We cannot agree to this.

We have to get guarantees from the other European states, everybody, including by the way the Americans, must give, share the liability on this. We're either in this all together or we're not going there at all because, you know, Belgium can't be left on the hook. And very interestingly, the Europeans and the Americans have all said, no, they're not prepared to share liability, which shows, again, that they all understand the profound illegality of this thing. Anyway, there's been, as a result, all the usual people have been coming out and have been criticizing Belgian. And they've been saying that Belgium is instructing things and Belgium isn't supporting Ukraine and Belgium is responsible for the fact that Ukraine is likely to run out of money in March or April or whenever it is and all of that.

So the Belgians are saying, look, this is the wrong way. This is what this interview really is all about. This is the wrong way to support Ukraine. The way we should support Ukraine is. is by going back to the idea of long-range missile strikes. Bring in the tomahawks, bring in the tourist missiles, hit deep inside Russia. And that's the way that we're going to force the Russians to the table, not by coming up with these dangerous financial schemes.

And of course, they're seizing on the points that you've been making in program after program, I'm absolutely correctly, that back in November of last year, Putin and the Russians did not enforce their red lines when missile strikes were carried out against Russia. So the Belgians say the Russians are bluffing, and we should pay no attention to that. Take the heat off us, put the heat back on the Russians again, start hitting them in the way that it will really hurt them by conducting deep strikes, missile strikes, against the Russians. And the Russians have brought this on themselves, as we've discussed in many programs, because they didn't really enforce their red lines over the missile strikes on themselves

that took place last year. Now, I ought to say that, as always happens, when Westerners talk about red lines and Russian red lines, they talk about some red lines, that the Russians never made. The Russians never said that NATO membership for Belgium, for Finland and Sweden was a red line. They never ever said that, if only because until 2022, the topic was not even up the discussion, but the Russians have never made that a red line. They've always made NATO membership for Ukraine a red line, but they never extended that to Finland and Sweden. But, well, you talk about red lines that the Russians made, which they didn't enforce in November last year, and you talk about red lines that the Russians never made, never set

out at all. It really doesn't matter. You can see that Belgium, again, is advocating and advocating hard. Another type of even more dangerous escalation, which is missile strikes against Russia. Because this is, I think, a point which people in the West perhaps won't understand. I think that Putin's restraint, it's not just that it's exhausted, I think that Putin is in no position now not to respond to missile strikes. I think feeling inside Russia, and I think Putin, by the way, shares it, was that the restraint that, the restraint that was shown last November in anticipation of Trump coming in and reversing the policy and conducting negotiations to end the war. That restraint was a serious mistake, and they're not

going to do that again. Yeah, agreed. Belgium wants everyone to forget about Euroclear and focus on long-range missile strikes, which is even worse. Right. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, all right, we will end it there. The Brandtlocals.com. We are on RumbleX telegram and also on substack as well. So check us out there. The link is in description box down below. Take care.