The longer version: The title of Bryan Early and Togzhan Kassenova’s forthcoming book on the financing and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is evocative: Banks and The Bomb. The bomb. As in, the atomic bomb. But wait… Is that something we’re still worried about? Is the spread of nuclear weapons still the biggest threat to global peace and security in 2026? Certainly, it’s been in the news a lot following the June 2025 U.S. military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and, more recently, the lapse of a major arms-control treaty between the U.S. and Russia that, among other things, capped the number of nuclear warheads in circulation. The answer is complicated, and Bryan did a great job explaining why in a part of our conversation that didn’t make the final edit. We also asked him if the rise of cryptocurrencies is interfering with the ability of governments and banks to use the financial system to police illicit weapons transactions. Here’s what he had to say. Without being alarmist, what concerns you most about the technology that's trying to get out and that people are trying to jailbreak these days? BE: I would say nuclear weapons are the technology we're most concerned about because they have the greatest potential destructive impact. Chemical weapons have kind of the lowest threshold for use because there are a lot of dual-use chemicals. I don't know if you've watched Breaking Bad, but he makes phosgene [a poison gas] through his meth-making process. He also — well, I don't want to give away the plot — but he also develops a biological weapon and uses it at the end of the series through his knowledge of chemistry. You can use chemistry to build weapons, but developing sophisticated, dedicated chemical weapons is much harder to do. What I would say I'm more worried about right now from a proliferation perspective are some of these unmanned aerial vehicles or unmanned underwater vehicles. There are a lot of ways that unmanned systems are being weaponized and used in warfare in places like the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, where we've gained a greater appreciation that civilians using off-the-shelf technology can build pretty dangerous conventional weapons. And you can put a chemical weapon on it; if you have a biological agent, you can put that on it. A nuclear warhead's going to take something bigger. But you can get some pretty dangerous off-the-shelf capabilities that aren't really being regulated very well — or really at all for some of the lower-range aerial systems. And so that's one where if a non-state actor wants to use that and wants to acquire these capabilities, the threshold is pretty low. Are they going to be able to carry off a severe attack directly? No. But if you attack a vulnerable piece of infrastructure at the right place or at the right time, you can do a lot of damage. What happens when transactions move outside the banking system? Does crypto’s existence, and the way it is used, undermine the ability of the financial system to be a watchdog? BE: Crypto has been an amazing boon for countries subject to economic sanctions, like North Korea, because it has provided them with a way to operate outside of the traditional financial system and to engage in large-scale financial transactions that are by design meant to make it harder for governments to track the parties involved. What's been interesting about North Korea from our case research is that crypto is not only a way to move money, it’s a target of fundraising. The North Koreans are able to steal and hack crypto wallets or the virtual asset service providers that are facilitating transactions. And so North Korea is able to raise millions, and even billions, of dollars through these thefts. Once they have the money, they use the crypto ecosystem to launder those funds. They could take their funds to mixer sites or decentralized exchanges. The decentralized exchanges turn it from Ethereum into Bitcoin. Once it's changed into Bitcoin, they can then take it to a mixer site that mixes the funds through a bunch of different accounts, and then they're transferred on to other wallets. So they're able to steal funds within this ecosystem, then launder the funds. There are ways at the other side of the system, when they actually try to cash out, that you can use financial systems that are being regulated, or crypto asset providers that are being regulated similar to financial institutions, to employ due diligence to scrutinize transactions. But this has been one of the real big challenges over the last five- to 10 years — that proliferators are able to use these channels to raise funds and move funds. Go deeper Learn more the Project on International Security, Commerce, and Economic Statecraft. Read about its work across the globe. Bryan’s previous book, Busted Sanctions: Explaining Why Economic Sanctions Fail, was published in 2015. Episode credits Research by Maggie Hartley Audio editing and production by Scott Freedman Photos by Mario Sotomayor Written and hosted by Jordan Carleo-Evangelist The Short Version is produced by the Office of Communications and Marketing at the University at Albany, which is part of the State University of New York. Comments, ideas, suggestions? Send them to mediarelations@albany.edu and be sure to put The Short Version in the subject line.
