• Alexey Arbatov warns that nukes will end up in hands of terrorists sooner or later.
• Belfer Center experts build timeline for Nunn-Lugar in former Soviet Union.
• Graham Allison calls for U.S.-Russian cooperation on counter-proliferation.
• U.S. and Russian experts weigh in on nuclear threats posed by North Korea.
• Hecker and White call for revival of U.S.-Russian lab-to-lab cooperation.

People from Los Angeles and San Francisco are calling me and asking: “Should we be getting our families out of the city? Are we about to be nuked?” The short answer is no. Despite North Korean missile tests and President Donald Trump’s warnings about “fire and fury,” the missiles are not about to fly. All parties have overwhelming interests in avoiding an actual shooting war. That said, there are steps that can and should be taken to reduce the danger of deadly accidents.

Department of Energy (DOE) nonproliferation programs are critical to U.S. national security, and have played central roles in initiatives ranging from securing high-risk nuclear weapons and materials around the globe to constraining Iran’s nuclear program. But nuclear proliferation and terrorism threats are constantly evolving, requiring new approaches to address them.

Cooperation between U.S. and Russian nuclear scientists and engineers represents an important opportunity for rebuilding U.S.-Russian relations. The United States and Russia possess more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons, the world’s largest stocks of weapons-usable nuclear material, and the world’s largest nuclear complexes, giving them a special responsibility for nuclear security and preventing nuclear terrorism.

Elbe Group is meeting tackles nuclear terrorism.

William Tobey weighs in on U.S. policy toward Russia.

Siegfried Hecker’s Doomed to Cooperate wins a U.S. national award.

Rolf Mowatt-Larssen assesses U.S.-Russian interaction on terrorism.

Olli Heinonen warns that the nuclear terrorist threat is getting increasingly sophisticated.

In April, a Belfer Center delegation met with former Pakistani nuclear officials in Istanbul, marking the start of a track 1.5 dialogue. 

This week, I was joined by Professor Matthew Bunn, professor of practice at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and co-principal investigator of the Belfer Center for International Affairs’ Project on Managing the Atom. We discuss insider threats in both the private and national security sectors, the topic of Professor Bunn’s recent book, Insider Threats (co-edited with Scott Sagan). Bunn also shares insights from his invaluable dissertation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Guardians at the Gates of Hell: Estimating the Risk of Nuclear Theft and Terrorism—and Identifying the Highest-Priority Risks of Nuclear Theft, and talks about how nuclear security has evolved over the past quarter-century.

A summary of recent books by members of the Belfer Center community.

High-security organizations around the world face devastating threats from insiders—trusted employees with access to sensitive information, facilities, and materials. From Edward Snowden to the Fort Hood shooter to the theft of nuclear materials, the threat from insiders is on the front page and at the top of the policy agenda. The talk will outline key insights from the new book Insider Threats (https://www.belfercenter.org/publicat...), which was co-edited with Scott Sagan of Stanford University. The book offers detailed case studies of insider disasters across a range of different types of institutions, from biological research laboratories, to nuclear power plants, to the US Army. It also includes an unprecedented analysis of terrorist thinking about using insiders to get fissile material or sabotage nuclear facilities. The talk will discuss cognitive and organizational biases that lead organizations to downplay the insider threat, and “worst practices” from these past mistakes, offering lessons that will be valuable for any organization with high security and a lot to lose.
 

Graham Allison’s new book urges U.S, China and Russia to cooperate in preventing nuclear terrorism.

Olli Heinonen and William Tobey weigh in on IAEA’s nuclear security conference.

Siegfried S. Hecker calls for rekindling of U.S.-Russian nuclear security cooperation.

Matthew Bunn co-edits a volume on insider threats.