Science, Technology, and Public Policy

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. Insider Threats 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 U.S. Army. Matthew Bunn and Scott D. Sagan outline cognitive and organizational biases that lead organizations to downplay the insider threat, and they synthesize "worst practices" from these past mistakes, offering lessons that will be valuable for any organization with high security and a lot to lose.

Laura Rockwood is Executive Director of the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non‑Proliferation (VCDNP) and is an associate of the Belfer Center's Project on Managing Atom. Ms. Rockwood retired in November 2013 from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as the Section Head for Non-Proliferation and Policy Making in the Office of Legal Affairs, where she had served since 1985. Prior to her departure she was the senior legal adviser on safeguards to the IAEA Director General. Earlier in her career, Ms Rockwood was employed by the U.S. Department of Energy as a trial attorney in radiation injury cases, and as counsel in general legal matters.

Speakers: David Sanger, Dr. Fiona Hill, Dr. Michael Sulmeyer, Dr. Ben Buchanan.

Cyber Security Project Director Dr. Michael Sulmeyer will lead a discussion on the future of Russian Cyber Operations with New York Times National Security Correspondent David Sanger, Director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution Dr. Fiona Hill, and Cyber Security Project Fellow Dr. Ben Buchanan.

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

Although the United States and Russia claim to have eliminated tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, neither side has verified these claims. Arms control treaties like New Start provide verification only at the level of delivery vehicles, the nuclear warheads are exempt from verification.  The problem is secrecy. Despite fifty years of research, no country has developed a way to test whether a purported warhead is real without putting classified design information at risk. Professor Scott Kemp of MIT will present what may be the first solution to this longstanding problem, drawing on new developments in mathematics, information theory, and experimental nuclear physics.  The history of the challenge, and a description of the new method, will be presented at a level suitable for a policy audience.  

In this seminar, the speaker will discuss how the concept of nuclear transparency in safeguards and nonproliferation has evolved, how to frame it appropriately for better practice in the non-nuclear-weapon states, fairer assessment by the nuclear-weapon states, more effective safeguards by the IAEA, and how to measure it, qualitatively and quantitatively with the help of a nuclear transparency dataset.

Please join us! Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first come–first served basis.

This talk will focus on the technical aspects of the THAAD missile defense system that are relevant to the domestic and foreign policy debates in South Korea and the United States over the deployment of this missile defense. It will be shown that the THAAD missile defense will be very susceptible to simple countermeasures that are well within the technical capacity of North Korea to implement.

The speaker will explore the nature of the risks such climate engineering challenges would pose, how these are likely to interact with characteristics of the proposed intervention technologies in shaping the interests of major states, and potential interactions with other components of climate policy.

There is a lingering disagreement among scholars on how the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) affects nonproliferation and disarmament outcomes, in particular the political motivations of states to acquire or renounce nuclear weapons. Drawing on constructivist scholarship, this research project conceptualizes a range of normative mechanisms through which international norms and regimes could affect domestic political deliberations and proceeds to examine them in the cases of nuclear disarmament of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine.

Please join us! Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first come–first served basis.

A talk with the former CEO of Symantec, Michael Brown

The research presents a model of Iran’s decision-making behaviour and the development of its nuclear program during its negotiations with p5+1 over the past decade.