153 Items

Report - CNA's Center for Naval Analyses

Russia and the Global Nuclear Order

| March 2024

Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine illuminated the long profound shadow of nuclear weapons over international security. Russia's nuclear threats have rightfully garnered significant attention because of the unfathomable lethality of nuclear weapons. However, the use of such weapons in Ukraine is only one way—albeit the gravest— that Russia could challenge the global nuclear order. Russia's influence extends deep into the very fabric of this order—a system to which it is inextricably bound by Moscow's position in cornerstone institutions such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). From withdrawing from key treaties to stymieing resolutions critical of misconduct, Moscow has demonstrated its ability to challenge the legitimacy, relevance, and interpretations of numerous standards and principles espoused by the West.

U.S. and Iranian negotiators sit around a cured table as media with cameras and microphones crowd the foreground.

Joe Klamar/Pool Photo via AP

Paper - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Nuclear About-Face: Examining the Role of Collective Face Concerns in Iran's Nuclear Decision-Making

| July 2023

By looking beyond solely Iran’s security motivations, this paper by Sahar Nowrouzzadeh seeks to inform more holistic negotiation strategies that can potentially influence Iran’s nuclear decision-making in a manner more favorable to U.S. interests.

guns and missiles burst forth from a laptop screen

Adobe Stock

Paper - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Guns, Incels, and Algorithms: Where We Are on Managing Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content Online

| June 12, 2023

Technology companies and governments have spent the past decade trying to better address the evolving threat of terrorist and violent extremist content online (TVEC). This paper examines how effective these efforts have been, where we are today in managing the problem, and wherein lie gaps for improvement.

U.S. Secretary of Defense William J. Perry (right) Ukraine Minister of Defense Valeriy Shmarov (center) and Russian Federation Minister of Defense General of the Army Pavel Grachev (left)

Public Domain/Petty Officer 1st Class Todd P. Cichonowicz, U.S. Navy

Paper - Hague Centre for Strategic Studies

Hard Times for Arms Control: What Can Be Done?

| February 2022

The world has grown more dangerous but also less open to arms control measures that could limit some of the dangers. What can be done? Steven E. Miller offers a tour de force overview of both dismal and hopeful trends within arms control over the past decades, in this first paper of a new HCSS series on Arms Control.

A car parked next to a hydrogen fuel pump in Japan with the text "hydrogen 35" vertically on the side.

Shizuo Kambayashi/AP

Report - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Mission Hydrogen: Accelerating the Transition to a Low Carbon Economy

To accelerate the global transition to a low-carbon economy, all energy systems must be actively decarbonized. While hydrogen has been a staple in the energy and chemical industries for decades, clean hydrogen – defined as hydrogen produced from water electrolysis with zero-carbon electricity – has captured increasing political and business momentum as a versatile and sustainable energy carrier in the future carbon-free energy puzzle.

Report - Atlantic Council

The Reverse Cascade: Enforcing Security on the Global IoT Supply Chain

| June 2020

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to the increasing convergence of the physical and digital worlds and it affects us all. Hundreds of "things" are being connected to the Internet and each other, with more than fifty billion devices expected to be connected by 2030. Many IoT devices are manufactured abroad at low cost with little consideration for security. How can we secure these devices, especially those manufactured outside the United States?

The nuclear archive warehouse outside Tehran (Satellite image via Google).

Satellite image via Google

Report - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

The Iran Nuclear Archive: Impressions and Implications

In mid-January, a team of scholars from the Belfer Center’s Intelligence and Managing the Atom Projects traveled to Tel Aviv, Israel to examine samples of, and receive briefings on, an archive of documents related to Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The large cache includes some 55,000 pages of documents and a further 55,000 files on CDs that included photos and videos. A clandestine Israeli intelligence operation spirited the materials out of Iran in early 2018.

The documents that the Belfer group were shown confirm that senior Iranian officials had decided in the late 1990s to actually manufacture nuclear weapons and carry out an underground nuclear test; that Iran’s program to do so made more technical progress than had previously been understood; and that Iran had help from quite a number of foreign scientists, and access to several foreign nuclear weapon designs. The archive also leaves open a wide range of questions, including what plan, if any, Iran has had with respect to nuclear weapons in the nearly 16 years since Iran’s government ordered a halt to most of the program in late 2003. 

This brief report summarizes the group’s conclusions about what the archive reveals about Iran’s program and questions that remain open.

Paper - Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy

Stabilizing Sino-Indian Security Relations: Managing the Strategic Rivalry After Doklam

| June 21, 2018

The paper provides a detailed analysis of the contemporary Sino-Indian conventional ground and nuclear force balances and carefully reconstructs how mutual developments in these areas are perceived by both New Delhi and Beijing.

Paper - Cyber Security Project, Belfer Center

A Legislator's Guide to Reauthorizing Section 702

    Author:
  • Anne Boustead
| Aug. 20, 2017

Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act of 2008, a powerful surveillance tool that allows U.S. government agencies to spy on foreign persons to collect counter-terrorism intelligence, will expire on December 31, 2017 without Congressional reauthorization. This paper has two goals: to concisely describe how agencies obtain information under Section 702, and to provide guidance to legislators and their staffers by examining the core issues they will confront as they consider reauthorizing this legislation.

Paper - Cyber Security Project, Belfer Center

Too Connected to Fail

| May 2017

This paper argues that threats to core internet infrastructure and services can, in fact, rise to the level of a serious national security threat to the United States and will explore scenarios where this may be the case. The paper will discuss several kinds of core internet services and infrastructure and explore the challenges with understanding interdependencies between the internet and critical infrastructure; review recent attack techniques that can cause systemic risk to the internet; discuss various nation state capabilities, intentions and recent activities in this area; and describe how these attacks could be used against the United States to deter the U.S., control escalation, or potentially degrade U.S. warfighting capabilities in a conflict. Finally, the paper concludes with recommendations for what the United States and other governments can do to build defenses and resiliency against systemic threats to the internet.