Global Analyses

Surface Story

A drone strike sparked a fire at the Barakah nuclear power plant in the United Arab Emirates. The plant, the Arab world's first operational nuclear facility, was struck in an attack that authorities are investigating. Details about the origin of the strike and the extent of damage remain limited. The incident received limited coverage relative to other news events of the day.

Underneath the Story

The entire architecture of nuclear security was designed around a world in which attacking a nuclear facility required significant state resources: aircraft, missiles, or ground forces that could be detected, attributed, and deterred. Cheap commercial drones, modified or purpose-built, require none of those resources. A nuclear plant is a fixed target with a known location. The deterrence calculus that has kept nuclear facilities off-limits as targets for 70 years assumed that attacking one was hard. It is no longer hard. The strategic implications of that change have not been absorbed by any government or international body.