In 2017, two people unknowingly working as proxies for North Korean intelligence approached Kim Jong Nam at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. In what they thought was a practical joke for a television program, the women took turns wiping Kim’s face with a cloth, which was later determined to be laced with a deadly chemical weapon, VX nerve agent. Kim’s nervous system began to shut down, and within minutes he was dead. North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, had successfully deployed a dangerous chemical weapon on foreign soil and assassinated his half-brother, deemed by the regime as a political threat. The assassination of Kim Jong Nam confirmed that Pyongyang had weaponized the covert delivery of chemical agents and had no hesitation in using them.

While significant focus is placed on Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs, and rightly so, there is inadequate attention to the threat from the regime’s chemical and biological weapons programs. North Korea reportedly possesses a variety of chemical and biological agents. Despite decades of sanctions, the regime has proven adept at building and leveraging dual use industrial infrastructure to produce chemical and biological weapons. This infrastructure allows North Korea to maintain deniability while producing at scale. North Korea can deliver chemical and biological weapons in a variety of ways. Biological weapons can be introduced covertly into vulnerable supply chains. The regime has made plans to send special forces infected with biological agents into enemy territory. Moreover, conventional weapon systems, such as artillery and rockets, could deliver chemical and biological agents over large areas.

North Korea has multiple pathways to accelerate its biological and chemical weapons programs. Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) is one such pathway. CRISPR is a gene-editing technology that modifies DNA sequences to achieve various objectives. For example, an existing biological weapon could be modified to target specific animal, food, or human populations. Another pathway includes leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to augment gaps in scientific research. AI could both expand the threat from CRISPR or help North Korea develop entirely new weapons. North Korea’s deepening relationship with Russia is a third pathway. Russia has decades of experience developing and testing biological weapons going back to the Cold War, and has demonstrated its willingness to use chemical weapons for assassination and allegedly on the battlefield in Ukraine. A lack of consequences has undoubtedly given Moscow and Pyongyang the confidence to further develop these capabilities. Moreover, it is concerning that Russia appears to have few constraints on what knowledge and technology it transfers to North Korea. If Moscow decides to share its vast knowledge of chemical and biological weapons with Pyongyang, there is little Washington can do.

Beyond ethical considerations, Western military and political observers have long questioned the utility of these weapons on the battlefield. Chemical and biological weapons are sensitive to moisture, temperature, and other environmental factors. Does any of this matter to decisionmakers in Pyongyang? Consider that North Korea would not succeed in causing mass

casualties. It is plausible that the regime would be satisfied with causing mass disruption to military logistics, terrifying civilian populations, and complicating allied calculations and possible responses. In this scenario, Washington’s limited theater nuclear options may not credibly deter Pyongyang.

Furthermore, it is questionable whether a President would escalate to nuclear weapons, thereby risking North Korean retaliation against the homeland or elsewhere in the Pacific. This emboldens the regime, giving it confidence to engage in lesser forms of aggression with minimal risk. Kim’s confidence is likely to increase as his military capabilities modernize, his nuclear program becomes more sophisticated, and his relationship with Russia expands. Policy analysts and decisionmakers should avoid mirror-imaging and evaluate these issues from Pyongyang’s perspective.

North Korea has options. These options provide the regime with coercive leverage and mechanisms to escalate during a crisis or conflict. The evolving relationship between Moscow and Pyongyang, and Moscow’s potential role in a future conflict on the Korean Peninsula, is amplifying the danger. Given the rapidly evolving security situation, the United States should reevaluate its theater nuclear posture in the Pacific. However, to address the growing threat from North Korea’s chemical and biological weapons, Washington must consider a range of options. These include covert action, including cyber operations, against North Korean industry; strengthening preparedness and response infrastructure at home and abroad; and developing deeper insights into the regime’s strategic thinking on these issues through a comprehensive partnership between academia and government. Now is the time for Washington to think about the unthinkable.

Nathan A. Heard is an independent researcher and doctoral student in the Defense and Strategic Studies Program at Missouri State University, focused on deterrence issues and emerging threats. He holds a master’s degree in defense and strategic studies and a graduate certificate in countering weapons of mass destruction from Missouri State. Heard is the author of the graduate thesis “A Novel Deterrence Strategy: Denial Through Space and Cyberspace” (2025) and the article “The Coming Crisis with North Korea” (2026). The views expressed are his own.

North Korea Has Options was originally published on Global Security Review.

Russia’s January 2026 use of a hypersonic Oreshnik missile was not primarily about destroying a target. It was a strategic message delivered through speed and proximity rather than words. Western reporting confirms the strike occurred near Ukraine’s western border during a broader missile and drone attack and was widely interpreted as a deliberate signal toward NATO rather than a battlefield necessity.

This is how the conversation begins. Russia speaks first, not with a declaration, but with a capability demonstration. Hypersonic systems like Oreshnik reportedly exceed Mach 10, compressing detection and decision timelines and complicating interception by existing missile defense architectures. The message is implicit. If this can reach here, it can reach farther. Geography does the rest of the work.

From a battlefield perspective, the strike changed little. Ukraine has endured far heavier damage from conventional missile campaigns. Infrastructure effects were limited relative to scale. That is precisely why the strike matters. Hypersonic weapons derive much of their value not from explosive yield but from psychological and strategic effects that shape decision-making under uncertainty.

Hypersonic systems sit in an uneasy space between conventional and nuclear deterrence. Their speed and maneuverability reduce warning time, while their dual-use potential introduces ambiguity about intent and escalation thresholds. This ambiguity is destabilizing by design. It forces worst-case assumptions and heightens coercive leverage without crossing overt nuclear red lines.

The timing of the strike matters. It occurred amid active European debates about long-term security guarantees for Ukraine. Russia has consistently opposed deeper Western involvement, and analysts note that demonstrations of advanced strike capabilities often coincide with diplomatic inflection points to influence allied decision-making. Poland was not targeted, yet proximity alone conveyed risk. That was sufficient.

This brings the conversation directly to deterrence and national strategy. The most recent United States National Defense Strategy identifies Russia as an acute threat and emphasizes integrated deterrence across domains, allies, and instruments of national power. The document explicitly recognizes the challenge posed by advanced missile threats and highlights the need for resilient command and control, integrated air and missile defense, and close coordination with allies.

However, the Oreshnik strike exposes a gap between strategic acknowledgment and operational specificity. The National Defense Strategy speaks clearly about the importance of integrated deterrence, yet it remains largely high-level in addressing how compressed decision timelines created by hypersonic weapons affect escalation management in Europe. While the strategy calls for investments in missile defense and sensing, it does not fully grapple with the psychological and political effects of hypersonic ambiguity on alliance cohesion crises.

Deterrence by denial becomes harder to sustain when allies know that some threats may penetrate defenses regardless of investment. Hypersonic systems challenge assumptions that reassurance can rest on interception alone. NATO and U.S. strategies increasingly emphasize deterrence by punishment and resilience, yet the National Defense Strategy stops short of articulating how allies should respond politically and militarily when warning time collapses, and attribution is immediate, but intent remains unclear.

This does not mean the strategy is wrong. It means it is incomplete. Integrated deterrence remains the correct framework, but hypersonic weapons demand greater emphasis on crisis decision-making, distributed command structures, and alliance-level exercises that assume ambiguity rather than clarity. Analysts have long warned that hypersonic systems stress deterrence not by making war more likely, but by increasing the risk of miscalculation during moments of political tension.

Russia’s hypersonic signal near NATO’s border, therefore, becomes a practical test of whether strategic documents translate into a credible posture. The National Defense Strategy acknowledges the problem. The question is whether implementation moves fast enough to match the physics involved. Deterrence must function even when seconds replace minutes, and ambiguity replaces certainty.

The Oreshnik launch did not redraw Europe’s security map overnight. It changed the tone of the room. It reminded policymakers that deterrence is not static, and that technology can erode comfortable assumptions faster than doctrine adapts. Hypersonic weapons are not the end of deterrence. They are a stress test of whether national strategies and alliances can remain credible when clarity disappears.

When the screens go dark in that briefing room, the real discussion begins. Not about panic or retaliation, but about adaptation. Deterrence endures not because threats are fast, but because responses remain coherent under pressure. Russia spoke in velocity. The enduring question is whether strategy, alliance resolve, and execution can keep pace.

Brandon Toliver is a Senior Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies. Views expressed are the author’s own. 

The Conversation Europe Never Wanted: Hypersonic Tensions and U.S. Defense Strategy was originally published on Global Security Review.