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International efforts to prevent nuclear terrorism have entered a new era of uncertainty. Terrorist threats are evolving, and it is increasingly unclear if nuclear security protections against them will keep pace. If improvements to nuclear security do not adapt to these threats, the risk of nuclear terrorism will grow.

Revitalizing Nuclear Security in an Era of Uncertainty, a new report from the Project on Managing the Atom (MTA), highlights this alarming reality and outlines steps the global community must take to improve security for weapons-usable nuclear material. 

As the 70th anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) approaches in early April, the world’s oldest and most successful military alliance of democratic nations faces serious and complex challenges to its purpose, effectiveness, and unity.

In a Belfer Center report released at the Munich Security Conference in February, former U.S. Ambassadors to NATO Douglas Lute and Nicholas Burns underscore 10 major challenges and offer recommendations to bolster this critically important alliance.

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 that a clandestine Israeli intelligence operation spirited out of Iran in early 2018. The Belfer team’s forthcoming report will explore both the conclusions that can be drawn and the mysteries that remain.

Ten years ago, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed up on Vice President Joe Biden’s proposed “reset” in relations with Moscow by giving her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, a symbolic red button marked “RESET.” However, within a few years, the “reset” had already failed. 

Following the breakdown of February’s Trump-Kim Summit in Hanoi, Belfer Center experts discussed the impact of the shortened summit. 

Born and raised in Israel, Ben Shitrit describes “identity” experiences like this as “powerful and good” because they compelled her to ensure that her own beliefs not interfere with her research. During two years of fieldwork in Israel and the West Bank, she focused on the Jewish settler movement, the ultra-Orthodox Shas, the Islamic Movement in Israel, and the Palestinian Hamas. Her resulting book was Righteous Transgressions: Women’s Activism on the Israeli and Palestinian Religious Right.