Ankit Panda

Folks, I'm taking another stab at a newsletter: introducing Nukesletter (a revamp of my old newsletter from a couple years ago). Brief takes (longer form than what I'll share here) on my work, thinking, and interests. Take a look and subscribe here: panda.substack.com/p/introducin...

CNN, citing a DIA assessment: "The US military strikes on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities last weekend did not destroy the core components of the country’s nuclear program and likely only set it back by months" www.cnn.com/2025/06/24/p...

This assessment is about to be heavily politicized, as we see in the story below.

An underexplored angle in the MOP discourse is that we've given every future potential proliferator with reasonably mountainous terrain pretty good data on designing passive defenses robust to the most capable non-nuclear munitions that exist.

Can't see any sunsets when you're deep in a tunnel in Isfahan, at least.

'TACO' and 'the adversary gets a vote' are concepts in conflict, by the way.

New Nukesletter: on recent revelations from ONI on the JL-4 (China's next-gen, longer-range SLBM) and on China's all-nuclear-propulsion future submarine force. panda.substack.com/p/a-glimpse-...

"One week into President Trump’s war on Iran, the most severe shock to energy markets since the 1970s is cascading through the world economy." www.wsj.com/world/middle...

Had to look what a "boffin" is. "France’s unfolding nuclear umbrella" www.ft.com/content/e9c2...

Good post on the practical SOF challenges of securing Iran's HEU stocks. Doesn't mean Israel and the US won't try it.

'Qatar’s energy minister has warned that war in the Middle East could “bring down the economies of the world”, predicting that all Gulf energy exporters would shut down production within days and drive oil to $150 a barrel.' www.ft.com/content/be12...

www.wsj.com/world/middle...

www.wsj.com/world/middle...

* insert year-of-the-Linux-desktop joke *