Science, Technology, and Public Policy

Speaker: Ji Yeon-jung, Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom

This seminar will examine India’s strategy, agenda setting, and coalition-building to gain membership to the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) as well as India’s broad efforts to build a reputation as a major stakeholder in the nuclear nonproliferation regime as a de facto nuclear weapons state. For the last two decades, India has been steadily working to gain international acceptance of its de facto nuclear status. Following the Indo-US nuclear deal in 2008, India concluded eleven civil nuclear agreements creating an unofficial forum for India’s bid for membership in the NSG. Although India’s setback to its NSG bid at the Vienna meeting in November 2016 highlighted the challenges that India must continue to address, Ji Yeon-jung will argue that the number of achievements and engagements that New Delhi addressed in the past few years explicitly demonstrates India’s transitional status in the changing global nuclear order.

Please join us for a discussion with Vice President and Deputy Director of In-Q-Tel (IQT) CosmiQ Works Ryan S. Lewis and Vice President and Deputy Director of IQT Lab41 Todd M. Stavish. IQT Labs and CosmiQ Works are dedicated to helping the U.S. Intelligence Community understand and leverage emerging commercial space capabilities against mission problems.

This event is open to the public*, but will be off the record following Chatham House Rule.

*Seating and lunch will be offered on a first-come, first-served basis.

Please join us for a discussion with Director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project Ben Wizner. This discussion will be moderated by Cyber Security Project Fellow and Lecturer in Public Policy Bruce Schneier.

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

United States law vests the power to control the use of nuclear weapons exclusively in the person of the President or his legal successor. The degree to which this power has been located in a single individual has come into question several times in the history of nuclear weapons, including much more recently. In this talk, I will discuss the somewhat convoluted and unintuitive history of how this system was established during the Cold War, the moments at which it has been previously called into question, and discuss some of the policy questions that seem to face us on this matter in the post-Cold War. 

Please join us for a conversation with MG (ret.) John Davis on the Imperatives for Cybersecurity Success in the Digital Age.

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

Please join the Cyber Security Project for a talk with Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Ben Buchanan on his new book The Cybersecurity Dilemma: Hacking, Trust, and Fear Between Nations.*

*Open to the public; seating and admittance available on a first come, first served basis. Dr. Buchanan will be available following the event for book signing.

Please join us for a discussion with Professor Chris Hoofnagle on the Federal Trade Commission and Cyber. 

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

Nuclear governance at the regional level in Asia-Pacific is alarmingly fragmented and feeble. An array of disparate, small bodies with varying memberships seek to address safety, security, nonproliferation, and disarmament, but without adding much to the global arrangements. Dr. Findlay will examine the future likely trajectory of nuclear energy in the region, the regional drivers of and constraints on strengthened regional governance, and the likelihood of a comprehensive, integrated nuclear governance regime emerging.

Please join us for an off the record conversation with Commander of the Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF), Rear Admiral T.J. White, who will discuss the operating environment of the CNMF at U.S. Cyber Command. 

While this event is open to the public*, it will follow Chatham House Rules.

*Seating and lunch will be provided on a first-come, first-served basis.

Are nuclear weapons useful for coercive diplomacy? Since 1945, most strategic thinking about nuclear weapons has focused on deterrence - using nuclear threats to prevent attacks against the nation's territory and interests. But an often overlooked question is whether nuclear threats can also coerce adversaries to relinquish possessions or change their behavior. Can nuclear weapons be used to blackmail other countries? The prevailing wisdom is that nuclear weapons are useful for coercion, but this book shows that this view is badly misguided. Nuclear weapons are useful mainly for deterrence and self-defense, not for coercion. The authors evaluate the role of nuclear weapons in several foreign policy contexts and present a trove of new quantitative and historical evidence that nuclear weapons do not help countries achieve better results in coercive diplomacy. The evidence is clear: the benefits of possessing nuclear weapons are almost exclusively defensive, not offensive.