US, China, Russia lead record $119 billion nuclear arms surge: Where does India stand?

In a big revelation, the latest report by International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) stated that nuclear-armed countries increased their spending on atomic weapons by a fifth last year to a record high of nearly $119 billion. It also claimed that these nations have planned to ramp up those investments in the coming decades. According to the report, the world's nine nuclear-armed states jointly increased their spending on their arsenals by nearly $17 billion last year, with US, China and Russia leading in terms of numbers.

Which countries spent the most on nuclear arsenals?

According to the report, the US spent $69.2 billion on nuclear weapons in 2025 – which is more than all the other countries combined,. This is an increase of $12.4 billion from what Washington spent an year ago. China came second in terms of nuclear spending with $13.5 billion spent last year, then Britain at $12.6 billion and Russia at $9.5 billion. And over the past five years, ICAN, which won the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, found that the nine countries had spent over $470 billion on their arsenals. The study showed that all of the nuclear-armed states -- Britain, China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, and the United States – increased their spending last year.

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France allocated $7.7 billion in 2025 which was 8 per cent up from the previous year. Among the other nuclear powers, India spent $2.8 billion - a whopping 12 per cent increase, Pakistan spent $1.5 billion - a massive 18 per cent increase, Israel allocated $1.2 billion (+2 per cent), and North Korea spent an estimated $656 million, reflecting a 4 per cent rise.

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Warnings from ICAN

The researchers said that the huge sums being spent were particularly jarring at a time when the global humanitarian system was reeling from dramatic funding cuts. "What these countries spent in 2025 could have paid 32 years of the UN operating budget," Snyder pointed out, adding that a single day of nuclear weapons spending last year could have provided food security to more than two million people. The ICAN report warned that at a time of growing geopolitical tensions, “a new nuclear arms race is upon us.” Susi Snyder, ICAN's director of programmes and co-author of that report, said the scale-up, coupled with fears that artificial intelligence could increase the risk of nuclear weapons use, was deeply alarming. "To be perfectly honest, I'm terrified," she told AFP.