Please find below a gallery of photographs of the Citizen’s Summit, taken in Saint Petersburg, Russia and Kingston, New York.

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The Problem

On February 4, 2026, the last remaining strategic arms control treaty between the United States and Russia, New START, will expire. Void of an extension of this treaty, or the activization of an alternative arms control mechanism that replicates/improves on the existing treaty, there will be an extremely high risk of both the US and Russia feeling compelled to enter an expensive and potentially catastrophic nuclear arms race.

This danger is further magnified by the Trump administration’s pursuit of a new national ballistic missile defense scheme, known as the Golden Dome, which even as a concept is destabilizing from an arms control and disarmament perspective.

The Trump administration has not articulated a clear vision when it comes to resolving the need to extend New START prior to its expiration or the complications raised in this regard by the pursuit of the Golden Dome initiative.

The Solution

Project 38 is a campaign that seeks to promote effective arms control and disarmament policy and, in doing so, avoid the dangers of a new nuclear arms race.

Project 38 has one objective: to gain access to President Trump and/or his senior national security and foreign policy advisors for the purpose of making a 38-minute “elevator pitch” on the need for an alternative policy approach toward arms control and disarmament between the United States and Russia.

This pitch will emphasize

(a) the political importance of arms control in so far as it fulfills the core campaign promise made by Trump of seeking peace and stability while avoiding nuclear war.

(b) the increasing danger of inadvertent nuclear conflict between the US and Russia;

(c) the importance of arms control in stabilizing relations between the United States and Russia and decreasing the threat of nuclear conflict; and

(d) the destabilizing impact that missile defense has on achieving meaningful disarmament and facilitating a nuclear arms race, together with the fiscal and technical challenges faced by the Golden Dome concept which impact its viability as a concept.

The goal of this briefing is to get President Trump to consider policy initiatives to

(a) engage meaningfully on extending New START as a means of sustaining strategic stability between the United States and Russia regarding nuclear weapons;

(b) to begin negotiations with Russia to craft a replacement arms control treaty with Russia that avoided a new arms race which promoting further cuts in the nuclear arsenals of both the United States and Russia; and

(c) to delay efforts to deploy the Golden Dome shield while these arms control talks are underway, with the understanding that a successful negotiation would preclude the need for the Golden Dome system.

Implementation

Project 38 is grounded in the events of January 13, 2018, when the citizens of Hawaii were informed that there was a ballistic missile inbound to their location, that they needed to seek shelter, and this was not a drill.

For the next 38 minutes the citizens of Hawaii believed that they were living their last moments on earth, and they collectively had to deal with the emotional and psychological consequences of that reality.

Fortunately, the alert was a false alarm. But for 38 minutes those who received the notification believed that they and their loved ones were about to die. For them, those 38 minutes were as real as it could get.

Project 38 asks, and answers, two questions that are derived from this 38-minute experience:

(1) If you could go back in time, six months prior to the missile that would take your life and those of your loved ones being launched, what would you be willing to do to prevent that launch?

(2) Why aren’t you doing it now?

Project 38 seeks to answer these questions by seeking out meaningful engagement with the Trump administration at the highest possible level to affect the kind of policy formulation and implementation which would create the conditions necessary to prevent the kind of event hypothesized during the Hawaiian false alarm event.

Project 38 is operating on a very aggressive schedule intended to achieve results prior to the expiration of the New START treaty on February 4, 2026.

Project 38 is, in many ways, a straight up business proposition: in exchange for the 38 minutes of terror induced by the lack of meaningful arms control policy during his first term, President Trump will provide 38 minutes of access to a team of specialists seeking to make sure there are no failures of arms control policy going forward that could induce a similar event.

Project 38 will comprise two primary tracks—access and content.

The access track is designed to bring Project 38 to the attention of President Trump and/or his senior arms control decision making advisors. To accomplish this, Project 38 will undertake the following:

Produce a 38-minute documentary film. This film, 38 Minutes, will describe the threat of nuclear war through the narrative of Hawaii’s 2018 missile alert and introduces the principal Project 38 partners and the essence of their message for President Trump. Project 38 will promote and disseminate the 38 Minutes film in a manner which maximizes exposure while focusing on gaining the attention of the desired audience.

This can include:

(a) Standard distribution techniques such as film festivals and online streaming;

(b) Showing the documentary to a live audience in Lafayette Park in Washington, DC in a manner where the screen is visible to the White House;

(c) Getting the movie shown to influential persons; and

(d) Direct outreach to the White House once sufficient attention has been drawn to the film and its mission.

The content track is the responsibility of a contemporary Team B, the competitive analysis group of outside experts commissioned by the CIA in 1976 to evaluate the existing analysis about Soviet strategic nuclear forces.

The new Team B would consist of top level individuals possessing expertise in the following areas of specialization:

(a) Policy and Politics

(b) Nuclear Threat

(c) Arms Control

(d) Missile Defense

(e) Presidential Briefing Techniques.

Team B would be responsible for preparing a 38 minute “elevator pitch” for President Trump and/or his senior policy advisors. A suggested breakdown for this briefing is provided below:

(a) Introductory remarks/political and policy issues

(b) Nuclear war threats

(c) Arms control solutions

(d) Missile defense fallacies

(e) Conclusion/closing comments

Team B would provide interview-based content for the 38 Minute film derived from the respective presentations of the constituent members.

Team B would prepare a “deliverable” in the form of a briefing book that would “stay behind” in the case of a formal presentation to the White House.

Team B would be prepared to carry out follow-on tasks if required to further the Project 38 mission objectives, especially if requested to do so by the White House.

Project 38 Execution Timeline

The 38 Minutes film should be ready for dissemination by mid-September 2025.

A Team B briefing complete with “deliverable” should be ready for delivery by October 1, 2025.

Access influence operations will commence once the film and Team B briefing are completed. The focus of geographical effort will be the Washington, DC area. Various venue options will be explored.

Outreach to targeted audiences will take place concurrently with access influence efforts.

The goal is to achieve White House access before the end of the 2025 calendar year.

Funding and Support

Project 38 represents a very aggressive solution to a very pressing issue operating on a extremely limited timetable.

To successfully implement the goals and objectives, Project 38 will require funding sufficient to the task. As such, the Project 38 team is soliciting donations that would enable work to begin starting at the end of this month, and carry the project through the end of the year.

Concluding thought:

A missile is inbound to your home. This is not a drill, and there is no escape.

If you could go back in time six months, what would you be willing to do to make sure that missile would never be launched?

And why aren’t you doing that now?

Project 38 gives you a chance to participate in an effort designed to prevent the kind of missile launch threat that terrorized the citizens of Hawaii back on January 13, 2018, and which, if nothing is done to prevent it, could terrorize you and your family in the not so distant future.

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Trump Watch is a new weekly “report card” on all things Trump hosted by Scott Ritter for paid subscribers only. Scott interviews one guest on one topic in each episode. In Episode Seven, Prof. Rachel VanLandingham critiques President Trump’s relationship with the military in general, particularly the propriety and legality of activating the National Gua…

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I posted this video—a conversation between Pavel Balobanov, the organizer of the Russian side of the US-Russia Citizens’ Summit taking place on June 18th—last week,

YouTube has taken the video down for “violating terms of service.”

There is no violation—simply a conversation about the possibility of peace between the US and Russia.

YouTube doesn’t want this meeting to take place.

Neither does the US government, which just suspended negotiations with Russia over the normalization of relations between the US and Russia.

But we’re going to go forward with the summit none the less.

Someone has to be the adult in the room.

I’m reposting this video on Substack.

Share it far and wide.

Let YouTube and the US government know that peace through dialogue is the only option if humanity is to be saved.