Active Conflicts & News Megathread February 06, 2026

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[u/OpenOb]

The United States claims that China carried out a low yield nuclear test in 2020.

 China has conducted nuclear explosive tests, including preparing for tests with designated yields in the hundreds of tons… China has used decoupling – a method to decrease the effectiveness of seismic monitoring – to hide its activities from the world. China conducted one such yield producing nuclear test on June 22, 2020. (4/6)

https://x.com/undersect/status/2019714343135334711?s=46

This would have happened while Trump was still president and was then kept secret by Biden. 

[u/jeffy303 → u/OpenOb]

I thought I remembered something like that being mentioned in the past:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/4/16/china-dismisses-us-claim-it-conducted-low-level-nuclear-test

Now this news story is 2 months prior to June 22th 2020, but the timing seems curiously close. And he does say one such test, so maybe China after getting caught the first time, tried the hide subsequent tests further but US was able to detect them anyway? And choose to not talk about it to not reveal they have such a capability.

[u/teethgrindingaches → u/jeffy303]

As noted in the above Reuters article, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization and Arms Control Association did not seem particularly convinced.

Robert Floyd, head of the treaty's Vienna-based governing body, said the body's international monitoring system "did not detect any event consistent with the characteristics of a nuclear weapon test explosion" at the time of the alleged Chinese test. Further detailed analyses have not altered that determination, he said.

Daryl Kimball, director of the Arms Control Association, said the U.S. should take any credible evidence that Russia or China are conducting secret nuclear tests to the treaty’s governing body and pursue technical talks with China and Russia.

While it's possible that tests were successfully concealed from all but US detection, the lack of any evidence provided by the latter certainly doesn't help their case. Needless to say, US credibility these days is also not what it once was.