They in all likelihood, have already started… to some extent…

Given the geopolitical context it’s extremely unlikely that they were willing to make a statement, even as vaguely shaped as the whole, “nato or nukes and we choose nato” thing was… in essence, why mention nukes are a possibility if you don’t think you can realistically build them?

And this makes a lot of sense, because Ukraine was at the heart of a lot of the most sophisticated work done in the Soviet Union, and as befits their legacy as the birthplace of both nuclear weapons and nuclear power in the Soviet Union, they were (prior to the invasion and war) the 7th largest user of Nuclear power in the world by total output at 13 gigawatts, and they are only beaten by France in terms of how much of their national energy production is powered by nuclear at 55%… they have retained a significant nuclear industry and they were even considering starting up domestic nuclear fuel fabrication prior to the war, which is indicative of them being able to do a lot more than just “run a nuclear power plant”, coupled with their domestic uranium reserves and the wartime entrepreneurial spirit they have brought to the entire field of drone warfare… I don’t doubt that someone somewhere in the government had a thought one day cursing about the failure of their allies to follow their obligations under the Budapest Memorandum, and decided to get some pretty smart people to work out just how hard it would be to get back their nuclear capability. With such a significant nuclear industry, getting plutonium and just skipping all the difficult uranium enrichment stuff would be comparatively easy for them.

And from prior published research on the matter of nuclear proliferation, it’s not as hard as a lot of people would likely presume… in 1964, the USA commissioned the “Nth Country Experiment” which can be sort of summed up as “we took 3 brand new phd physicists with no idea how to make a nuclear weapon, and timed how long it took them to work out how to build one without letting them peek at any of the classified info on how the existing nukes were built, they have to do the work from scratch with just public info and their brain smarts” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment … from scratch with, significantly less information than we all have available to us online today, if took the three of them 3 years to do. Ukraine has all the modern public information you or I have access to, likely a not insignificant amount of leftover classified information from the Soviet era, even if it’s just oral history and the spotty memories of long retired experts who were involved in building Soviet era nukes… and as recently demonstrated in the new domestic tactical missile and long range drone development efforts they have the capability to stand up domestic production of complex weapon systems… I think they know exactly how long it would take, they have a timeline, they have a rough idea what it would look like and they probably have a list of potential delivery platforms from their current arsenal… they just probably haven’t started actually, “making anything”

Will it?

Her clear ties to Russia, including Putin, should be of concern to anyone paying attention.

The suspicion isn't even partisan, since once upon a time Republicans were the ones questioning said ties.

If it's all this well known, doesn't she have to pass some sort of security clearance test first to get the job?

What ties to Russia?

She happily echoes the regime's propaganda, but "ties to Russia" has to mean something more concrete than that.

Care to elaborate?

Elena Branson donated to one politician in her time as a Russian asset in the US: Gabbard. We know that Branson was in contact with a Representative as part of her unregistered agent activities, though it was never officially confirmed to be Gabbard.

She met with Assad, who has close ties to Putin

She hired Chris Cooper, who has ties to Russia and has used his company to propagate pro-Russian propaganda, including attempting to smear Sergei Magnitsky's name via articles and funding events to screen propaganda "documentaries"

RT, Sputnik, and Russia Insider all began boosting Gabbard and focusing on her over the rest of the Dem candidates in 2020

That explains her nomination.