Articles

Ryan Snyder and Benoît Pelopidas respond to Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press's spring 2017 article, “The New Era of Counterforce: Technological Change and the Future of Nuclear Deterrence.”

The arc of innovative progress has reached an inflection point, writes Ash Carter in The Atlantic. "Recent technological change that has brought immeasurable improvements to billions around the globe now threatens to overwhelm us. Making this disruption positive for all is the chief challenge of our time. We ourselves—not only market forces—should bend the arc of change toward human good. To do so, we must reinvigorate an ethos of public purpose that has become dangerously decoupled from many of today’s leading tech endeavors."

Through structured interviews and a literature review, we assess which approaches to protection against insider thefts in the casino and pharmaceutical industries could be usefully applied to strengthen protections against insider theft in the nuclear industry, where insider thefts could have very high consequences.

William O'Neil replies to Caitlin Talmadge's Summer 2008 International Security article, "Closing Time: Assessing the Iranian Threat to the Strait of Hormuz."

Hui Zhang re-examines the North Korean explosion on October 9, 2006. His research suggests that the test was likely not a failure if Pyongyang had planned for a yield of 4 kt, as it told Beijing prior to the event.

Hui Zhang provides a path-breaking technical assessment of the Korean nuclear test, publishing a comment (with co-authors Jungmin Kang and Frank von Hippel) on the test and the limits of nuclear forensics in Arms Control Today.

Based on an examination of nine case studies, the author concludes that the federal government has not only improved its capability to develop and execute technology and industrial policy measures, but has done so for the specific purpose of enhancing U.S. economic competitiveness.

"To speak of the community of science and the search for peace at this moment of history may seem anachronistic, if not actually pretentious. To many people, external suspicions and internal doubts seem to have robbed science of the self-confidence and sense of purpose that have given it the coherence of a community. To all who have for years striven to end the Vietnam War, the suggestion that peace requires only a search may seem empty and superficial," writes Paul Doty, founder of the Belfer Center, a biological scientist and proponent of international peace and security, "To contest these points and give substance to this title requires our stepping back into a larger frame of time and freeing ourselves from some of these moods of the moment"