Science, Technology, and Public Policy

Senior Advisor to the Cyber Security Project Melissa Hathaway discusses what ought to be the top priorities for the Trump Administration when it comes to cybersecurity.

The disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the world's largest nuclear arsenal of some 29,000 nuclear weapons, under the sovereign power of four new states: the Russian Federation, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. While Russia succeeded the Soviet Union as a recognized nuclear power, the status of nuclear weapons in the three non-Russian states was more ambiguous. Whose weapons were they, what claims could these new states convincingly and legitimately make in relation to the nuclear weapons on their territory, and who would carry out Soviet Union’s arms control obligations under START I and NPT? The presentation explores how the deliberations and decisions made during and immediately after the Soviet collapse framed much of the ensuring negotiations over the fate of Soviet nuclear legacy, leading, in the end, to the denuclearization of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. 

We develop a model of cooperation on trade and of voluntary cooperation on climate change, and ask whether it is better to keep these issues separate or to link them, by making cooperation on trade conditional on supplying the global public good of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Cyber Security Project Director Dr. Michael Sulmeyer will lead a discussion with Co-Founder and Investing Partner of _Underscore.VC, Michael Skok on "The Business Side of Cybersecurity."

This event is open to the public, but seating and lunch will be available on a first come, first served basis.

This seminar will analyze Pakistan's existing and projected nuclear fuel cycle capabilities and their effect on the country’s nuclear posture. Pakistan has been producing HEU since the mid-1980s and following the commissioning of the first production reactor in 1998, the country has expanded its plutonium production and reprocessing capabilities to meet the needs of a credible deterrent, comprising twelve types of ballistic and cruise missiles—which now form a strategic triad. While these capabilities have been progressively built over four decades and are modest in comparison to emerging capabilities in the region, Pakistan is viewed as having the world’s fastest growing nuclear arsenal. Resource constraints and the requirements of maintaining a credible conventional deterrence, coupled with the evolving threat spectrum will determine the future direction and scope of its strategic force posture.

Please join us for a panel discussion with Command Historian Dr. Michael Warner and Historian of GCHQ Professor Richard Aldrich, moderated by the International Security Program's Dr. Calder Walton and the Cyber Security Project's Director Dr. Michael Sulmeyer. This event is open to the public, but seating and admittance will be offered on a first come, first served basis.

Please join us for a talk with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher attorney Amer S. Ahmed on how courts are delineating the permissible bounds of digital searches and clarifying who has the right to challenge them. 

Please join us for a conversation with Director of the Military and Security Studies Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy Mr. Michael Eisenstadt, on "Iran's Approach to Cyber." Mr. Eisenstadt served for twenty-six years as an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve, which included stints in Iraq, Israel, The West Bank, Jordan, and Turkey, as well as deployments to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff and U.S. Central Command headquarters.

This event is open to the public, but seating and lunch will be available on a first come, first served basis.

Does civil nuclear assistance increase the risk of nuclear proliferation? Previous scholarship that suggests a positive correlation between civil nuclear assistance and nuclear weapons proliferation explains only the first half of the nuclear era, roughly until the mid-1970s, and does not reflect significant changes made to the world’s nuclear export environment. After India carried out a nuclear test in 1974, the international community established the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a multilateral nuclear export control regime, to regulate civil nuclear assistance. Since then, the NSG has been effective in curbing sensitive nuclear assistance (the transfer of uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing technologies), which allows recipients to acquire “nuclear latency.” Kim argues that civil nuclear assistance does not increase nuclear proliferation as long as sensitive nuclear assistance that contributes to nuclear latency is prevented.  By facilitating cooperation among states in curbing such assistance, the NSG has successfully promoted benign nuclear assistance. 

Cyber Security Project Director Dr. Michael Sulmeyer will lead a discussion with CEO and Co-Founder of Conjur, Inc. Elizabeth Lawler on "A Public Health Approach to Cybersecurity." Conjur, Inc., is a security company focusing on security for next generation infrastructure.

This event is open to the public, but seating and lunch will be offered on a first come, first served basis.