Under the Nuclear Shadow: Situational Awareness Technology and Crisis Decisionmaking

About

Click here to view a recording of this seminar.

Improvements to strategic situational awareness (SA)—the ability to characterize the operating environment, detect and respond to threats, and discern actual attacks from false alarms across the spectrum of conflict—have long been assumed to reduce the risk of conflict and help manage crises more successfully when they occur. However, with the development of increasingly capable strategic SA-related technology, growing comingling of conventional and nuclear SA requirements and capabilities, and the increasing risk of conventional conflict between nuclear-armed adversaries, this may no longer be the case. With the support of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Project on Nuclear Issues (PONI) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the University of California, Berkeley’s Nuclear Policy Working Group undertook a two year study to examine the implications of emerging situational awareness technologies for managing crises between nuclear armed adversaries. Informed by research and eight tabletop exercises conducted with 150 participants overall, the report presented in this seminar lays out the implications of the emerging SA environment, potential escalation pathways, and the way ahead—one that will require new perspectives on the values and risks associated with information dominance.

Read the full report here: https://ontheradar.csis.org/analysis/final-report/

Read the key takeaways here: https://ontheradar.csis.org/analysis/key-takeaways-from-under-the-nuclear-shadow-situational-awareness-technology-and-crisis-decisionmaking/

Speaker

Rebecca Hersman is the director of the Project on Nuclear Issues and senior advisor for the International Security Program at CSIS. Ms. Hersman joined CSIS in April 2015 from the Department of Defense (DOD), where she served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for countering weapons of mass destruction (WMD) since 2009. In this capacity, she led DOD policy and strategy to prevent WMD proliferation and use, reduce and eliminate WMD risks, and respond to WMD dangers. She was a key leader on issues ranging from the nuclear security summit to the elimination of Syria’s chemical weapons to the global health security agenda. She served as DOD’s principal policy advocate on issues pertaining to the Biological Weapons Convention, Chemical Weapons Convention, Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. Prior to joining DOD, Ms. Hersman was a senior research fellow with the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction at the National Defense University. Ms. Hersman previously held positions as an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a special assistant to the undersecretary of defense for policy, and a member of the House Armed Services Committee professional staff. She holds an M.A. in Arab studies from Georgetown University and a B.A. from Duke University.