Science, Technology, and Public Policy

Speaker: Alexander K. Bollfrass, Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom

Fears of a West German bomb sharpened Cold War tensions, making the country's nuclear program an intelligence priority for all concerned states. Based on original archival and newly declassified files, this presentation evaluates the accuracy of U.S., UK, and East German intelligence assessments of the Federal Republic's proliferation risk. Despite spectacular collection successes, the Stasi's analysts were required to view the world through thick ideological lenses. The result was a distorted picture of West German ambition to arm itself with nuclear weapons.

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

Speaker: Aaron Arnold, Associate Project on Managing the Atom; Assistant Professor at Curry College

Over the past two decades, the United States has increasingly turned to targeted sanctions and export restrictions, such as those imposed against Iran and North Korea, in order to curb the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). One vexing problem, however, is how to contend with jurisdictional hurdles when the violations occur overseas, in countries that are unable or unwilling to assist US enforcement efforts. To solve this problem, US prosecutors are turning to strategies with significant extraterritorial implications— that is, exercising legal authority beyond national borders. One such tool is to use civil legal procedures to seize assets linked to sanctions or export control violations in jurisdictions that lack cooperative arrangement with US enforcement agencies. While this may be an attractive strategy to bolster enforcement efforts against overseas illicit procurement such tools are not without consequence.

The Arctic Initiative will host a seminar with Tero Vauraste, Chair of the Arctic Economic Council and CEO of the Finnish specialized icebreaker company, Arctia Group. Mr. Vauraste will discuss the linkages between free trade, the environment, and security. The discussion will be moderated by Halla Hrund Logadóttir, Co-Founder of the Arctic Initiative. 

Lunch will be served. RSVP required.

Speaker: Mahsa Rouhi, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom

Theories of grand strategy tend to focus on major powers. This seminar sheds light on the grand strategy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, a regional power. It explores the principles of Iranian grand strategy, whether explicitly stated or implicit in its national policies. The speaker will provide an analysis that lays out the grand strategy, its elements, and how it provides a framework to guide all Iranian foreign policy. 

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

Co-sponsored by Project on Managing the Atom

Speaker: AMB Laura S. H. Holgate

Advanced nuclear reactors offer enormous promise as carbon-free solutions for a range of energy and development challenges due to their potentially lower cost, flexibility, and enhanced safety. To meaningfully influence climate change, these reactors will need to be widely deployed, including in countries without extensive nuclear experience and in designs using novel fuel cycles. And policymakers, regulators, and civil society will need to have confidence that these reactors are designed not only with safety and cost in mind but also with due consideration to whether terrorists, insiders, or even governments can sabotage a facility or acquire or divert nuclear material that could be used for weapons. Meeting these challenges requires more than a slogan of “proliferation resistance” and relates to security- and safeguards-by-design as well as fuel cycle characteristics. Reactors that incorporate security- and safeguards-by-design could become more attractive exports, maximizing economic and national security benefits for the United States.

Speaker: Charles F. McMillan, Los Alamos Director, Retired

The National Security Labs (Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories) are essential to the care of the US nuclear deterrent as well as an understanding of what is happening globally in the nuclear domain.  Whether one looks at the 2010 or the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, the requirements that the labs must address are very similar.  What can be done to enable effective coordination between the Department of Energy and the Labs to ensure that, as partners, they meet the nation's needs?  What drives the complexity of lab operations?  How can it be managed?   Charles McMillan brings leadership experience from two of these laboratories to a dialog on these topics.

The Arctic Initiative will host a seminar, "Is sustainable management of marine resources sufficient to meet increasing global demand for fish? The Icelandic story of relying on scientific policymaking to ensure sustainable fish stocks" with Mr. Jóhann Sigurjónsson, Iceland's Special Envoy on Ocean Affairs and a former Director General of Iceland's Marine Research Institute, discussing Icelandic resource management and science-based policy.

The seminar will be held in the Marc Heng and Family Conference Room (Wex 102).  Lunch will be served.  RSVP is required as space is limited.

Speaker: Daniel Salisbury, Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom

Individuals and entities from the private sector have long contributed to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), acting as middlemen and suppliers. Over the past decades, trade in WMD-related goods has become increasingly regulated, and illicit trade increasingly criminalized. Despite the clear role that these actors have played in recent proliferation cases, supplying North Korea and Iran among others, the conceptual literature on proliferation behavior has largely continued to focus on the state level. This seminar will draw on concepts from criminology, and particularly the study of white collar crime, to provide insights into the behavior of these non-state suppliers and middlemen, and to generate more effective means of countering their activities.
 

Speaker: Hassan Abbas, Ph.D; Professor of International Security Studies Chair of the Department of Regional and Analytical Studies

Speaker: Reid Pauly, Research Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom

Is there a normative prohibition on the use of nuclear weapons? Recent scholarship has cast doubt on the existence of a norm of nuclear non-use among the American people. But the public does not make decisions about using nuclear weapons. In this presentation, Pauly investigates the willingness of American policymakers to use nuclear weapons through the history of political-military wargaming. He tests competing theories about the use and non-use of nuclear weapons by examining both whether strategic elites were willing to use nuclear weapons in different scenarios and how they explained those decisions.