Report Launch: Project Atom 2024

This transcript is from a CSIS event hosted on November 20, 2024. Watch the full video here.

Heather Williams: Welcome back from lunch. Thanks everybody for being here this morning, for continuing the conversation. I’m really excited about this keynote. We asked Rear Admiral Buchanan to speak about intra-war deterrence challenges in a two-peer environment. Before turning the stage over to him and reading his bio, though, I did want to just briefly provide a little bit of context for the focus of his remarks, and why we asked him.

As I think everyone heard and knows, the U.S. faces an unprecedented challenge, which is the potential for nuclear weapons use in regional conflicts by multiple peers simultaneously. Elaine had a really great quote, I think, in the previous panel, where she said: Nuclear weapons use is no longer not imaginable. And Kari picked up on that theme in her chairing as well. And the Project Atom Study definitely has forced us within PONI, and the authors and the reviewers, to talk about a really hard topic and to confront some really challenging questions. And so that is the context that we’re coming to this discussion with.

Some specific challenges, include the potential use of nuclear weapons that I mentioned, Russia’s escalate to de-escalate concept, China’s expanding nuclear arsenal, North Korea’s nuclear threats that have created a deterrence landscape that demands fresh thinking and really fresh approaches. And when I first saw Admiral Buchanan this morning the first thing he said to me was, the timing of this is pretty fortuitous. I don’t think he said fortuitous. It was a good timing, just because of news, obviously, yesterday, about Russia’s nuclear doctrine. And so this shifting landscape is really complicated as well by the balances of regional and strategic deterrence requirements for allies and adversaries alike.

As director of plans and policy at the J-5 at U.S. Strategic Command, Admiral Buchanan is closely familiar with all of these evolving challenges and lead STRATCOM’s efforts to mitigate them. Admiral Thomas R. “TR” Buchanan currently serves as director for the Plans and Policy Directorate at U.S. STRATCOM and started in June of 2024. He has a long and distinguished Navy resume, including stints as commander of Submarine Group 10, Submarine Squadron 20 in Kings Bay, Georgia, and USS Albany in Norfolk, Virginia. And staff assignments as commandant of midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy, executive assistant to the director of the joint staff leadership building program analyst. He is a native of Vallejo, California, and a 1992 graduate at the U.S. Naval Academy. And holds a master’s of science and info technology management from George Washington University. Please join me in welcoming Admiral Buchanan. (Applause.)

Rear Admiral Thomas R. Buchanan: Well, it’s great to be with you here in northwest Washington and with our assembled crowd online. And I do have some prepared remarks. I think the real richness of this conversation will be in your questions. So I look forward to those. But to Heather’s point, really, the timing is impeccable. Not only am I the sidecar show to General Cotton who was here yesterday, I will hopefully paint an unclassified landscape for you that we can – we can chat about in a – in a realistic way. But both the threats and the challenges that we face as a nation are very real and present, and, to some degree, not uniformly understood throughout our country. And so this is part of that conversation. There will be – there will be certainly others and more of this conversation moving forward, I think.

So thanks, Heather, for the kind invitation to speak today about intra-war deterrence in the in the two-peer environment. And that’s two nuclear peers. Certainly always good to get back to the D.C. area. My mom lives here locally, so since I’m living in Omaha now the opportunity to see her is very important as she ages. And I am privileged to represent General Cotton and the United States Strategic Command in this forum. As I previously said, I look forward to the conversation, but I also want to acknowledge the fact that this Russia doctrine proclamation, which we’ve been tracking for some time, I just – I figured that President Putin decided he was going to release it when General Cotton and I came back to the D.C. area. So it was really perfect timing in that regard.

But STRATCOM’s mission remains core and essential to the Department of Defense at our headquarters and, more importantly, down to our service components. And think of those as the Air Force service component, which is Air Force Global Strike Command and U.S. Fleet Forces Command on the Navy side. We aim to deter strategic attack through maintaining a safe, secure, effective, incredible global combat capability. If and when directed by the president, we are ready to prevail in conflict. And make no bones about it, that’s what – that’s what our forces, your forces, the Air Force, Navy forces that make up the three legs of triad do every day – prepare for that potential eventuality. But we know that that’s not what we would like to do on a day in and day basis. But we have to be ready.

General Cotton has designated 2024 as the year of action, and 2025 now becomes the year of acceleration. And we are moving out to that end. His vision remains that STRATCOM is this global war fighting command, committed as a part of a team of allies and partners to maintain strategic deterrence across the spectrum of competition and conflict. And he has set some specific tasks for our team, some of which are to recruit exceptional talent to the mission, take care of our people, increase the readiness of our forces, improve our capabilities, and enhance nuclear command and control and communications. Above all else, the command is charged to continue to provide strategic deterrence for United States, our allies, and our partners.

But if deterrence fails, with our resilient, trained and properly equipped, combat ready force, our forces and the commanders who lead those forces are ready and prepared to respond decisively every minute of every day, and effectively, to win our nation’s wars. That’s why our armed forces exist. And that’s why our nuclear force exists. There is an imperative, however, to maintain strategic deterrence, especially as the strategic environment becomes more complicated, more dangerous, and, dare I say, more challenging. And Secretary of Defense Austin outlined the threat we’re facing when he said: These next few years will set the terms of our competition with the People’s Republic of China. And they will shape the future of security in Europe. And I think we’ve seen that played out since he made those remarks.

And they will determine whether our children and grandchildren inherit an open world of rules and rights, or whether they face emboldened autocrats who seek to dominate by force and fear. And preserving a stable and open international system is key to this effort. But we know – we in the military know that we are just one of the many instruments of power. Where you place us in terms of the priority amongst those other diplomatic, economic, information, we understand that that’s a decision for our civilian leadership. But we know that we can’t go it alone. And, as President Biden has said, we have entered a decisive decade. And for the first time in our history we’re facing two nuclear peers who are actively refusing to comply with international law.

And our challenges is compounded by being at least a generation removed from experiencing great-power competition with merely a single peer, let alone two. The 2022 national defense strategy identified the PRC as the department’s pacing challenge. The PRC continues a substantial and startling expansion of its strategic and nuclear forces, resulting in a large, diverse force that appears to be counter to its long-standing self-proclaimed minimum deterrence nuclear doctrine. Indeed, they are expanding every leg of their force, including the addition of about 1,000 medium- and intermediate-range dual-capable conventional or nuclear ballistic missiles, adding a layer of uncertainty and potential for miscalculation.

Furthermore, as General Cotton reported in his testimony last spring, the PRC’s arsenal of land-based intercontinental ballistic missile launchers currently exceeds that of the United States. This includes three new ICBM fields with at least 300 missile silos and a number of – a number of transport erector launchers. The pace of PRC’s nuclear expansion is really unprecedented. If it continues as we expect it will, they could have more than 1,000 nuclear warheads by the end of the decade. And while the pace of China’s expansion is concerning, the statement from their leadership that goes with this expansion is equally alarming.

Last month during a speech to the PLA rocket force, the branch of the PLA that operates its nuclear deterrent, President Xi Jinping urged them to comprehensively strengthen training and preparation for war, while also stating the soldiers must enhance their strategic deterrent and combat capability. Xi’s statements, combined with its nuclear modernization program and continued advances in its conventional capabilities, will, quote, “pose a complex but not insurmountable challenge to U.S. strategic deterrence.”

While the PRC is the pacing challenge, the NDS also identifies Russia as an acute threat. Russia’s unprovoked war with Ukraine as well into its third year. I think two days ago reached the day 1,000. This is the largest conflict on the European continent since World War II. And as our previous panel members talked about, the importance of that continent in their eyes. This was brought into sharp relief as we commemorated the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy earlier this year. In the last few years, President Putin has demonstrated growing willingness to employ nuclear rhetoric to coerce the United States and our NATO allies to accept his attempt to change borders and rewrite history.

This week, notwithstanding, was another one of those efforts. Putin has validated and updated his doctrine such that – Russia has revised it to include the provision that nuclear retaliation against non-nuclear states would be considered if the state that supported it was supported by a nuclear state. This has serious implications for Ukraine and our NATO allies. Russia has modernized all aspects of their nuclear triad but they’re also investing in new and novel nuclear capabilities, including hypersonics, that complement over 2,000 theater nuclear weapons that are not accountable under New START treaty essential limits.

And DPRK, in lockstep with the PRC and Russian advances, continues to develop its nuclear arsenal as a means to ensure its regime survival. It is fielding a diverse range of ballistic missiles that can place regional allies and our partners at risk and directly threaten the U.S. homeland. As DPRK fields this capability, it continues to act in a provocative manner. North Korea fired more missiles in 2022 than any other year on record, advancing its capabilities to threaten the U.S., our allies, and our partners. And while we cannot clearly discount North Korea or even Iran from seeing an opportunity to escalate and achieve their arms while the U.S. is potentially distracted with the other two nuclear peers.

Taken individually, these developments are concerning. But with the real and increased cooperation between Russia, the PRC, and the DPRK, there is a growing threat of simultaneous crises, with the potential that our adversaries are coordinating their actions. And we can no longer compartmentalize the threats individually, but we must be prepared to deter and confront them in chorus across the spectrum of conflict. And during STRATCOM’s change of command ceremony 19 months ago, Secretary Austin stated, “Nuclear powers have a profound responsibility to avoid provocative behavior, and to lower the risk of proliferation, and to prevent escalation and nuclear war.” Those words said then are still present today.

Our adversaries are not meeting this standard. These challenges are why we need to advance our integrated deterrence strategy. And Secretary Austin describes integrated deterrence as simply integrating our efforts across domains and across the spectrum of conflict to ensure that the U.S. military, in close cooperation with the rest of the U.S. government and our allies and partners, makes the folly and costs of aggression very clear. This is important because deterrence is about influencing perceptions of adversary leaders so that when an adversary faces an escalation decision they choose restraint over aggression. But doing so successfully requires more than threats of force or threats of defeats where the military dominates. Deterrence requires using all levers of national power. This is integrated deterrence.

This framework seeks to enable shared deterrence approaches for the interagency to combine diplomatic, economic, information, and military actions to comprehensively influence adversary decision making. Integrated deterrence also enhances – sorry – requires enhancing our collaboration with our allies and partners, especially those under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Our allies face the increasing threat of our adversaries in their backyards. And as the threat increases, our allies look to the U.S. to enhance assurances that our extended deterrence commitments remain solid. Our extended deterrence commitments have served us and them as a cornerstone for preventing proliferation of nuclear weapons for decades, but that is no guarantee. We must continue to work with them to assure them and assure them of our commitment to our extended deterrence guarantees, but also to continue to strengthen the alliances.

The bedrock of extended and integrated deterrence continues to be our nuclear deterrent. While this current deterrent remains more than sound, we must ensure its future viability through robust modernization efforts. Earlier this year, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Cotton said the United States is undertaking a multigeneration, decades-long modernization of our entire nuclear deterrent, including all three legs of the triad, as well as command control and communications capabilities. To put this in perspective, we have not undertaken such a comprehensive modernization program since the 1980s. And then, we didn’t do it at all three legs at a time.

The current program of record was established over a decade ago under a much different security environment. This begs the question, is it sufficient? Secretary Austin addressed this in testimony before Congress this year, stating the program of record is necessary but may not be sufficient. He advocated that our modernization program be agile to not only keep pace but maintain a competitive edge. In the next decade, Sentinel ICBM, Columbia-class SSBN, and B-21 Raider will enter service to the force. But this modernization program will continue through the 2040s and beyond, which is why General Cotton refers to the National Nuclear Security Administration and our service partners as essential partners for integrated deterrence.

Now, PONI invited me here to talk about intra-war deterrence in the two-peer environment. And you may be asking why I’ve spent so much time discussing integrated deterrence. Because foundationally, deterrence does not fail all at once. It fails in stages. Integrated deterrence will not be suddenly set aside in the intra-war period, but rather becomes progressively more important due to the increased pressure on deterrence during the conflict. Why is deterrence in the intra-war period so difficult? Because you’re trying to achieve two separate and often conflicting objectives.

First, we are trying to deter that next adversary decision to escalate, potentially to the strategic level. Simultaneous with that, we are trying to compel the cessation of a conflict, in short to win. But the very actions we take to win could potentially undermine our deterrence. We could restrain ourselves or fight differently to ensure that deterrence holds, but that can undermine our ability to compel the end of the conflict. This is a tightrope that we must walk in what will be a period of high stress and high consequence, with incomplete information and the presence of a thick fogbank of war. This is a difficult challenge with just one adversary. Adding a second peer adversary can and likely will complicate this challenge exponentially.

Understanding the relationship between both adversaries becomes essential. And the concept of opportunistic aggression has been discussed at length over the past few years, the idea of one adversary taking advantage of a conflict to achieve their own objectives. But how do our deterrent strategies adapt to collaboration between adversaries to achieve each nation’s objectives, or cooperation between adversaries to achieve an advantage on a shared objective? Our strategies need to account for the many ways our adversaries may work with each other, and flexible to change as the circumstances change.

Further, the role of our allies and partners has never been more important. We do not address these challenges alone, but many – but with many likeminded nations. And we have entered a period of transformation. Our national intellectual capacity has been focused necessarily on the insurgents fight of the last two decades. But this environment has changed rather dramatically. It is now time to bring that capacity to bear on addressing the deterrent challenges of facing two nuclear peers, not only in the joint force but across the national security enterprise. Which is why PONI’s continued effort to grow the cadre of strategic thinkers over the years is so tremendously important.

And we need this continued effort to raise the nuclear IQ of not only our military leaders but our policymakers, our leadership, Capitol Hill, and the public. We need the debate. Dissenting opinions are absolutely necessary. They help us refine our thinking. They clarify and help us understand risk. They make our strategy better. They make the arguments more persuasive. General Cotton established his analytic agenda research questions as part of U.S. STRATCOM’s academic alliance to help further advocate for deterrence research and contribute to this stimulation of this intellectual debate.

This series of focus areas and questions posted on our public-facing website encourages researchers, such as many in this room, to help us tackle these tough questions. And PONI’s Project Atom has been leaning forward to aggressively attack these issues. Honestly, PONI helped keep the lights on for nuclear deterrence strategy and thinking since you were first established in 2003, when few were focused on this issue. Thank you for continuing to lead in this space as we exit the wilderness in deterrence thinking and continue to address these new challenges.

So in closing, strategic deterrence for the next decade will be – will be, obviously challenging. We’re facing a strategic environment changing in ways we cannot prevent, so we must equip ourselves to confront it. But this transformational challenge also presents us with new opportunities to expand our strategic thinking, grow our partnerships, enhance our alliances, and build the connectivity within our government that is necessary to achieve integrated deterrence. I expect that we will continue to discuss strategic deterrence for the next decade at STRATCOM’s Annual Deterrence Symposium, which I hope you can join us, this next year scheduled for 3 to 4 September in Omaha at the CHI Center. September is – I’ll confess, September is a wonderful month in Omaha. Come join us to continue the conversation.

But we are not going to wait until September to have the conversation that needs to be had each day. So thank you for the work that you do within this community. It really does never stop. And every force – every day, our force is ready to execute the tasking of the U.S. military and our government. And as I wrap up today, I’d like to leave you with this one quote from President Reagan. “We desire peace, but peace is not a goal.” I’m sorry. “Peace is a goal, not a policy. Lasting peace is what we hope for at the end of our journey. It doesn’t describe the steps we must take nor the paths we should follow to reach that goal.” I look forward to your questions, and thank you very much for listening. (Applause.)

Dr. Williams: Thank you very much for the remarks. Thank you for the very nice things you said about PONI. Last year PONI had its 20th anniversary. So been 21 years now since Dr. Hamre stood it up, along with some other giants in the field. And there – as I’ve talked to some of the folks who’ve been involved in PONI much longer than I have, and who were involved in its establishment, a few of them said, you know, there were so many periods when nuclear weapons just really weren’t – they weren’t in the news. They weren’t in the public consciousness. And now that they’re back, quite a few people have said, you know, I’m really glad that PONI is still there and can provide this. So thank you very much for that.

I have a couple questions to get us started. I would just encourage everyone, please use the QR code or submit your questions online. We have about 30 minutes for a bit of discussion. This might be a little controversial. I want to start with the election. I’m not going to ask for your views on politics, fear not. (Laughs.) But it’s really hard not to talk about the election, especially in this town. And you talked a lot about the enterprise, the program of record, STRATCOM’s role in all of this. And this might seem obvious to a lot of us in this room and people who work on these issues. I actually think it would be helpful to just kind of spell out how the program of record continues, nuclear modernization continues, STRATCOM’s mission continues, despite political change. And so if you could maybe just say a little bit about that and the endurance of the deterrence mission.

Rear Adm. Buchanan: Yeah. So in terms of being ready every day, that doesn’t – that doesn’t change with an election cycle. So we are – the forces are ready to execute the orders through a normal transition of power. That will be held by commanders in the field. Submarines continue to get underway. ICBMs continue to remain alert. Bombers continue to do their maintenance. So the nuclear force is ready on January 19th, just like it will be ready on January 20th. And so we look forward to the transition because it just means that some of the – some of the other things that go along with transition are able to be – so we get some additional direction, and we move out in a purposeful way.

And so, from that perspective, you know, U.S. STRATCOM remains ready to work with our newly inducted leaders and those that are assigned to the Defense Department to have civilian control of the military, just like every day since our nation was founded. So the nuclear deterrent is a ready force. It’s always ready. And we have – whether it’s the submarines, which I’m most familiar with, our op tempo is very high. The platform is exceptional. And we have people that that care about maintaining that platform, ad infinitum. And so how that modernization goes between as we – as we move from Ohio into Columbia, as Minuteman 3 into Sentinel, we’re managing very carefully the ages of those weapon systems to make sure they remain ready to go. Very resilient force.

Dr. Williams: Thank you for that. I wanted to pick up – I want to pick up on a couple of your points. One was your remarks about the importance of leveraging all levers of national power as part of deterrence. And this might feed in nicely to our next panel, in which we’ll have Alex Bell from the State Department, Richard Johnson from DOD, and Grant Schneider from the Joint Staff. But I’m always really impressed and a little surprised that it’s usually the folks at STRATCOM who say, like, the State Department has a really essential role to play in deterrence and in integrated deterrence.

And oftentimes it seems STRATCOM is one of the last – is more reluctant than everyone else to say, oh, well, here’s the military component to it. And I’m just always really impressed by that, and really trying to highlight the role that other parts of the interagency in government play. So I was hoping you could expand on that just a little bit and say what do you see as the role of diplomacy, of State, Commerce, Treasury, all the rest of it in, that integrated, whole-of-government approach that we are really trying to get after?

Rear Adm. Buchanan: Yeah. So I think there’s two basic – well, there’s probably more. Our government is a complex organization. It is – you know, we have a military. We have – obviously, we have a very strong defense department that’s resourced, in some people’s eyes, very well, right? We still have – we still have gaps, even in the great resourcing that we do get. The State Department plays an essential role in terms of their ability to be interlocutors with our allies, to gain an appreciation of where the world is sitting. So they have no – they have a sensing component associated with their – so to better understand the geostrategic environment, State Department plays a(n) absolutely huge role to understand where the winds are blowing and shifting.

And so understanding the problem is – think Einstein said once that if he had an hour to solve a problem, right, he’d spend 55 minutes defining the problem, and then five minutes solving it. And the issue with that is, I see the State Department as our – as a really good – really good sensing agency to be able to – but they also are – have to be effective communicators. And so this idea of deterrence, particularly in the nuclear realm, is really about – there’s a lot of – there’s a lot of messaging associated with it. But in order to back up messaging, you have to have a credible force. And so you can’t – you can’t say something that isn’t credible.

And so the integration of the message with the – with the credibility of our force. So STRATCOM is very – is very interested in the credibility of the force, and making sure it’s a professional force that does things – does the right things and does those things right. And so we take a – we take a very hard line on making sure we adhere to a high standard of performance, right? And so that that goes to the credibility piece. And then those in the other – I’m less – I’m less familiar with the – with the levers of Treasury. Of course, we saw, with respect to the Ukraine event, many of the economic levers that were – that were used to help shape the environment.

But Commerce, and where that all nests, is at every embassy that we have in the world, right? So, you have representatives from Treasury, Commerce, certainly, the State Department runs the embassies. We have a – you know, we have a military arm in those embassies that engage with our allies and partners. So it’s really important. You know, STRATCOM is one of many in that space, right? And we can provide a lot of insight to what we’re thinking about the nuclear deterrent force, and where we think that has – where that plugs into the broader levers of – instruments of power.

Dr. Williams: That’s great. Thank you. And I wanted to tease out a little bit more about your framing of the intra-war deterrence problem. I really liked this, where you said we’re facing two different and conflicting objectives – deterring the next adversary attack while also compelling a cessation of hostilities to win. And one thing from the Project Atom study that the authors debated quite a bit is how are we defining winning here? And on an earlier panel today, somebody said, let’s be clear, there is no winning here. Nobody wins. You know, the U.S. has signed up to that language. Nuclear war cannot be won, must never be fought, et cetera.

And so how do you think about “winning”? I want to put air quotes around it, because I do think that’s right. If we’re in a scenario where nuclear weapons have been used in theater, against allies, that – it’s really hard to reconcile that with an idea of winning. So how do you think about that?

Rear Adm. Buchanan: Yeah. So it’s certainly a complex – because we go down a lot of different – lot of different avenues to talk about what is the condition of the United States in a post-nuclear exchange environment. And that is a place that – that’s a place we’d like to avoid, right? And so when we talk about non-nuclear and nuclear capabilities, we certainly don’t want to have an exchange, right? I think that – I think everybody would agree, if we – if we have to have an exchange, then we want to do it on – then we want to do it in terms that are most acceptable to the United States. So it’s terms that are most acceptable to the United States, that puts us in a position to continue to lead the world, right?

So we’re largely viewed as the world leader. And do we lead the world in an area where we’ve considered loss? And the answer is no, right? And so it would – it would be to a point where we would maintain sufficient – we’d have to have sufficient capability. We’d have to have reserve capacity. You wouldn’t – you wouldn’t expend all of your resources to gain winning, right, because then you have nothing to deter from at that point. So very complex problem, of course. And as I think many people understand, nuclear weapons are political weapons. I think Susan Rice said that at one point.

Dr. Williams: Mmm hmm. Your response is hitting on a lot of the other debates within Project Atom, with regards to does the U.S. want to maintain global leadership in these types of scenarios? If so, how can it – what does that look like? Does it involve bringing the allies along? But I think that was – that was really helpful response. We do have quite a few questions coming in from the audience, so I’m going to – I’m going to turn to one here.

The first one comes from Reja Younis who is a Ph.D. student at Johns Hopkins SAIS and also an Associate Fellow here with PONI.

And Reja’s question was, beyond the study of intra-war deterrence, what research areas would provide the most valuable insights for advancing the mission of STRATCOM? So this kind of gets to the policy, academia, think tank space where what are the studies that that you wish that you – the studies that you wish existed that you could pull on in your work?

Rear Adm. Buchanan: Yeah. So I think that one that would be – how do we make things quicker, right? (Laughter.) I mean, this idea of how do we accelerate, foundationally – solutions on how to – how to accelerate the ability for the U.S. to move quicker in its defense industrial base? And so why do I – why do I say that with STRATCOM? Well, every aspect of the modernization, every aspect of – and that’s really – that’s a really hard one, right? So you have to go back and study our run-up to World War II in terms of what was the industrial capacity like then?

And if you just did a broad-based comparison to what it is today and what it is in the run-up to World War II, you’ll find that there are stark differences between the two elements – or, the two time periods. And so there are a lot of folks that are thinking about the – so that’s one. That’s one piece of it, I think, that would be real – if there’s some really good thought in that. Lots of folks are really – are really working hard to try to hire sufficient blue-collar workers, right? All sorts of – all sorts of recruiting campaigns to get more welders, pipe fitters, artisans that do aircraft work. So that’s one piece of it.

Another piece of it is – on the nuclear IQ piece – is how do – what are the types of things that resonate with the American people to help us understand more broadly the problem that we face? And why is there – is there – is there an element of that we’re missing in terms of capturing the nation’s attention in this space? Is it because the talk of nuclear weapons is verboten? Is it because we don’t want to – we don’t want to consider the possible outcomes? Is it because – so I would say, is it not worthy of the conversation because it’s – because we don’t want to – we don’t want to think about it? Because it’s either the elephant in the room or maybe that dust bunny in the corner of your of your closet that you don’t want to go clean.

So I think those are – those are two pieces. And then – and then just this idea of collaboration, coordination between adversaries in broader terms, and the impact that that could – or what kind of things should we be considering, given those types of relationships?

Dr. Williams: Mmm hmm. If you can – if I can follow up on that a bit, on this adversary collaboration. Is there any particular angle that you think is most worthy of – the thread that you most want to see pulled, and where outside research might be able to help?

Rear Adm. Buchanan: Where the – probably in the – in terms of where the cultural differences between the countries in question would or would not – and where the cultural differences, the sort of outcomes – the potential outcomes they seek, how are the cultural differences going to either impede those outcomes or make them even more frictionless, I guess you could say. Does that make sense?

Dr. Williams: It does, because it is actually worth remembering those are four very different cultures. And historically, some of those cultures and countries have not gotten along with each other particularly well.

Rear Adm. Buchanan: Right. And so is it – is the relationship between each of those countries – and to some degree, what aspects would potentially ease their coordination. And what are the – what are the pitfalls that we should be looking for?

Dr. Williams: That’s great. Another question from online. The Strategic Posture Commission recommended more and/or different nuclear options. NNSA is now working towards modernizing the stockpile with seven simultaneous weapons programs. As you lead on STRATCOM’s planning do you feel – do you have the options that you need? I’m going to pair – I’m going to pivot on this a little bit, because I’m guessing you’re going to say right now you have the options that you need. But looking ahead, yeah.

Rear Adm. Buchanan: So we – so I’ll answer the question with maybe not a direct answer. But, so STRATCOM is responsible for operational war plans. And we developed those plans in concert with the broad range of stakeholders within the department and in the White House. And those are – those are worked as a result of both planning guidance we get from the president and for employment guidance we also get from the president.

And so we – our plans are sufficient in terms of the actions they seek to hold the adversary to. And we are in – we are in a study of sufficiency, right? I mentioned in my remarks about the secretary talking about the current program of record is sufficient today but may not be – may not be sufficient for the future. That’s not the exact quote. And so that study is – that study is underway now, and will work well into the next administration, and we look forward to continuing that work. And articulating how the future program could help provide the president additional options should he need them.

Dr. Williams: Great. Thank you. Next question comes from Zoey Young, who’s one of our interns at PONI, a real rising star in the field.

How do we balance addressing China as an adversary, while also trying to encourage open communication and moving towards diplomacy to better address some of their aggressive behavior and to address challenges like Russia and North Korea?

Rear Adm. Buchanan: Yeah. So it’s a good question. I think we all should breathe through our nose, certainly. And I think that the State Department should – and others, and the whole of government approach – should continue to – should continue to engage our competitors in real and substantive dialog. And they shouldn’t – they shouldn’t stop until – right? We shouldn’t just give up hope and say – but we should always be – we should always be ready to have a conversation, because in large measure conversations, bringing people to a table to talk about common values – nobody wants a nuclear war, right? And so this – common values, common frames of reference, these opportunities to have discussion about humanity, I think is important.

Dr. Williams: It would seem like that would be a good starting point for the discussion. Another question that we have from Chase Harward, which I think is a good follow up to Reja’s question about research and what research would be most useful. And this is about how you and folks at STRATCOM consume research, I think. So can you say a bit about what it looks like for new research to have an impact on your work? I’m going to have a slightly cheekier follow up to that, which is what makes a really – when an article comes in, what makes it be something really good that you take around with you, or that you share with your staff, and the ideas really land with you?

Rear Adm. Buchanan: Yeah. I think there’s – I think, first and foremost, the arguments that are presented in papers have to start with a common frame of reference. So when we’re – so if we’re – so the more things that we can sense tangibly in the moment will have greater impact on the near-term stuff that we’re doing, of course. But we cover the breadth of, you know, requirements today, future requirements we cover. And so the ability for kind of us to think deeply about some research that we – that we’ve gotten, really is the substantive depth of the – of the particular research, right?

So the sources that you’ve drawn from that make it compelling, tying together some things that we don’t necessarily – part of the research projects that are so effective are the ones that we, ourselves, may not have the time. I do have – I do have lots of folks that have the intellectual capacity, but we may not have the time to do the in-depth research to tie together some thoughts across the spectrum of intellectual thinkers in the space. So being able to distill that. So using plain language, using the abilities for us to comprehensive – simplify a very complex problem, which it’s not easy to do, right?

So I think those are the ones that we gravitate towards. But I know that – I know that all – you know, all research isn’t created equal, right? And so leveraging some of that – some of the depth of the understanding of the luminaries in this field, and pulling out where we might make connections that we haven’t made before, or for retooling the same stuff over again. I think the geostrategic environment has changed substantially where new thoughts in this space are needed.

Dr. Williams: Your response to an earlier question about the need to go faster has solicited a lot of follow-on questions. (Laughs.) And so I’m going to pull one of them.

Ben Poole from the Stimson Center asks: Do we need to look at a trade-off in capability versus capacity, but not at the cost of mission success, in order to go faster in acquisition?

Rear Adm. Buchanan:

 Restate the question.

Dr. Williams: Do we need to look at a trade-off in capability versus capacity?

Rear Adm. Buchanan: Yeah. So I would say that depends. So there are – there are certain capabilities, when executed quickly, can give us outsized impact. And so I think it requires absolute further study. But I know that there’s – I know the DepSecDef has been working hard to accelerate inside the department on some conventional capability that provides the adversary with some additional challenges, right? I’ll leave it at that. And so I think, from the standpoint of the industrial base, it really is about getting more people in positions to be able to do the work that’s required. And in the space where I’m most comfortable is the idea of, you know, building submarines faster.

Certainly, we all have – we all have an appreciation for the limitations of that, because of the number of – and I know that – and I know the broader submarine team – submarine industrial base team is working exceptionally hard and looking at different ways to attack that problem. And so there, there may come a time where you have to dial back. I mean, sometimes we’re our own worst enemy in that regard when it comes to additional requirements, and we levy additional requirements, or we haven’t fully scoped the initial plan. And so that causes delays in the way and which and manner we head out in a productive direction to build certain capabilities for the – and so that was a – that was a non-specific answer to the to the specifics.

So I think – I think there are some trade-offs. And I think capability and capacity are some of the trade space that actually is part of the solution, right? And if you just go back to World War II and our ability to build things then, as opposed to now, I mean, there’s a lot of – there’s tremendous amount of differences, so.

Dr. Williams: A follow on to that, that that we also got from online, is that you did get a SLCM-N question. This comes from Colby Badhwar at the Defense Archives media who asked: If the new administration put the priority on SLCM-N, how soon could that be fielded? As the Navy is currently asking for prototypes within three years, can that not be expedited by modifying existing TLAMs?

Rear Adm. Buchanan: Yeah. So I would say that I don’t have – that’s not my space to comment on. And the acquisition authorities, the acquisition executives will work diligently to produce a program to fulfill the required milestones inside of the program of record. To say that the commander of U.S. STRATCOM or others want a different trajectory weapon faster, sooner, better, probably. I think it’s – I think we – I think we need to be able to build faster in whatever capability we’re talking about, not the least of which is – you know, SLCM-N is part of that – is part of that effort, for sure. And, yeah. So I’ll kind of leave it at that.

Dr. Williams: Last question is something General Cotton said yesterday, that a few of us have been quoting and thinking about a lot in his remarks here. And that event was on NC3 modernization, but he went a bit broader in some remarks. And one thing he said was, we can’t think about this as another version of the Cold War. This is not Cold War 2.0. This is different, and these are a different set of challenges. So I wanted to ask you to reflect a bit on what do you think is – in the current security environment, and you spend a good amount of time giving us that picture and getting into some detail – for addressing the current challenges, what do you think is one lesson that we can take from the Cold War that would be useful right now? But also, what is one lesson that you think we’re still learning and that would be useful in this environment?

Rear Adm. Buchanan: Yeah. So I think one lesson from the Cold War that would be useful to remember is that we don’t see the nation at war right now. And so I’m not – I’m not – right? Because we have – we have said that we’re not – I mean, technically we’re not at – we’re not at war. We haven’t – the Congress hasn’t declared war, right, nor did we declare war when we were in the Cold War. And so I think the – not to be – not to be alarmist, but I would – I would think that it would be – it’s really under the auspices of just having an appreciation that we are in a different strategic environment. So that would just be kind of – that’d be the blanket.

And I agree wholeheartedly with General Cotton’s characterization that we’re not in a 2.0. We tend to ascribe 2.0 to some – to another version – like, just an advanced version of it. And it’s much different. And so, you know, war on the European continent is certainly concerning. The reports of Ukraine power supplies down to, you know, somewhere between 50 and 30 percent, as reported in the open press, right, those are concerning. And thinking of humanity in terms of what the Ukrainians are going through is something that that we in the United States have the luxury of – luxury of thinking about, right, because we have an exceptional geography to our benefit, right?

And so – and the second part of it was how would?

Dr. Williams: What lesson do we need – what lessons should we be learning now to address the security challenges going forward?

Rear Adm. Buchanan: Yeah. I just think that we need to be ready. And by ready, I mean our services need to be ready. Our ability for – we’re seeing an uptick in natural disasters. So just being more ready for something bad to happen. And I’m not saying it’s going to happen, right? And I’m not saying that we need to strike fear in the minds and hearts of Americans nationwide. Not the – not even a little bit. But thinking about – thinking about just how do you be ready and in an environment that is not – it’s not the environment that we’ve lived in over the last 30 years. So hopefully that’s helpful.

Dr. Williams: It is. And I also think it nicely ties back to the Project Atom study and the intra-war deterrence question. Earlier today Chris Ford had said, deterrence failure is a cumulative problem. And that resonates, I think, with some of your remarks about how deterrence failure isn’t something that just happens. There are steps leading up to it. And so readiness now, not just waiting for the crisis, is an important lesson to take away from that.

So with that, we are at time. Admiral Buchanan, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for these really helpful remarks. And thank you, everyone, for being part of the discussion.

Rear Adm. Buchanan: Thank you. (Applause.)

(Break.)

Charlie Goetz: Well, welcome everybody, both in person and online. Thank you for being here for the third panel of the day, where we’re going to tie up kind of all of the themes that we’ve done in the report, and then hopefully explore a couple of additional themes about integrated deterrence challenges, strategic challenges, and policy challenges. But, first, let me thank the PONI team for putting on an incredible event. Lachlan, Catherine, Heather, thank you so much for allowing us the space to do this, and keeping it running so smoothly. And now, let me introduce our panelists.

First, to my left, we have DASD Richard Johnson, deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and countering weapons of mass destruction policy. He’s also served as the senior director for fuel cycle and verification at the Nuclear Threat Initiative at the Department of State, and on the National Security Council for the Obama and administration. Next, we have DAS Alexandra Bell, deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence, and Stability. Senior policy director – before that, was the senior policy director at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation and the Council for a Livable World, the senior advisor in the Office of the Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security and worked nuclear policy issues at both The Plowshare and its Center for American Progress.

And finally, Grant Schneider, the vice deputy director for strategic stability in the Joint Staff J-5 Strategy, Plans, and Policy at the U.S. Department of Defense. Grant was the director for AUKUS implementation at the United – at the U.S. National Security Council staff before that. And then during his time at the NSC he also served as the director for legislative affairs, covering all defense, export control, and arms control issues. Grant also served on the House Armed Services Committee professional staff, where he led oversight of U.S. Strategic Command. And Grant worked at the Department of Homeland Security, Cybersecurity Infrastructure, and Department of State.

The panel will go at the same fashion that the previous panels have gone. Each panelist will have 10 minutes to make opening remarks, and then we’ll take an hour to field questions, both from myself, from online, and then from the audience. If you have a question, please submit via the QR code, and I’ll receive it up here, and then we will have a discussion about it. Without further ado, we’ll start with Richard Johnson.

Richard Johnson: Great. Very much – thank you very much. And thanks again to CSIS for hosting us today. It’s really great to be with all of you. And really appreciate all the work that’s been done on your report, which I’m starting to plow through, but read some of the executive summaries. Very interesting. And, of course, great to be with my colleagues and my very good friends, Alex and Grant.

So with the topic today you’ve asked us to talk about, you know, what is the current and future challenges facing U.S. nuclear policy. And I’ll start with some things that everybody in this room basically knows, and certainly probably folks online as well. But we are living in a very different security environment than we were even a few years ago, and certainly than we were in previous administrations. And folks who are more distinguished and more important than I, ranging from my former boss Acting Assistant Secretary Dr. Vipin Narang, here at CSIS a few weeks ago or a few months ago, Pranay Vaddi, over at the NSC, and even the National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, have all made this point that we are now in a world where we’re facing multiple nuclear competitors, multiple states that are growing, diversifying, and modernizing their nuclear arsenals, and also, unfortunately, prioritizing the role that nuclear weapons play in their national security strategies.

And we recognized when we worked on the Nuclear Posture Review in the Biden administration in 2022 that that was not going to be just a static document, that there would be the need to continuously look at the security environment and, if necessary, make adjustments. And I’ll quote, the document says, as the security environment evolves, changes in U.S. strategy and force posture may be required to sustain the ability to achieve deterrence, assurance, and employment objectives for both Russia and for the People’s Republic of China. So, to that point, we have been engaged in an interagency U.S. government process for some time, looking at the changing strategic environment and its implications for current and future U.S. nuclear policy. And at DOD, we’ve been assessing the implications for the future threat posed by two nuclear-armed peer adversaries.

The review that we conducted considers that changing environment, looking at particularly things like the growth in PRC nuclear forces, as well as the unfortunate potential that we may have no nuclear arms control agreements in place after February of 2026. So our work is not static. It continues. But we have had some initial conclusions that have emerged. First, the underlying logic of deterrence remains sound. Second, we remain committed to a safe, secure, and reliable nuclear deterrent. And the modernization program of record is necessary, but it may be insufficient moving forward.

So while we remain confident today in current U.S. forces and posture if – and I will say if – nuclear force adjustments are required to maintain deterrence, we have to be prepared to execute them in a sufficient time to avoid any sort of deterrence shortfall. We also have to be prepared to adjust the near term and the midterm modernization program of record and the posture readiness or composition of our nuclear forces, if needed and if directed, to sustain deterrence, assure our allies, and achieve U.S. objectives if deterrence were to fail.

So let me speak a little bit to some of the steps that we’ve already taken in this emerging environment, many of which you are probably already tracking. DOD, in partnership with the National Nuclear Security Administration, has already taken steps to field capabilities, to enhance deterrence and flexibility, and to reduce risk to our modernization program. These include the B61-13 gravity bomb and the Navy’s decision to investigate what we would call pre-activation availability for the Ohio-class submarines. The president’s fiscal year 2025 budget submission also included a number of proposals to enhance future flexibility.

Most recently, and some of you were tracking this – and it was happening in real time when I was here at another event last week – the president issued new nuclear employment guidance earlier this year, and following our requirements under the law, the secretary of defense submitted an unclassified report on that new guidance, what we colloquially call the 491 Report, which describes changes that have been made from previous guidance and accounts for the new deterrence challenges that are posed by the growth, modernization, and increasing diversity of potential adversaries’ nuclear arsenals.

The employment guidance builds on the findings in our 2022 National Defense Strategy and the Nuclear Posture Review. And, importantly, it directly informs the development of nuclear employment options for consideration by the president in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States and its allies and partners. It recognizes that the United States faces multiple peer – excuse me – multiple nuclear competitors, with each adversary presenting unique deterrence challenges for the United States to confront, and stressing strategic stability in a diverse number of ways.

U.S. nuclear strategy continues to focus on tailored approaches to potential adversaries and flexible capabilities that enable these tailored responses. The guidance reinforces, though, that deterrence alone will not address strategic dangers. It recognizes that arms control, risk reduction, and nuclear nonproliferation play indispensable roles as well. More broadly, we continue to assess potential adjustments to posture through careful consideration of the implications for strategic stability, the capacity of our defense-industrial base and the nuclear weapons production enterprise, costs, competing priorities, the need to deliver modernized nuclear forces, and potential countervailing adversary responses.

We’ve moved a number of these potential options into our budget process, and that process is still underway. And we have not yet gotten a top line from the Hill on DOD’s budget. And so that will also inform this process. Let me quickly also note how we’ve been doing work to enhance our work on extended deterrence, particularly in NATO and in the Indo-Pacific. I will briefly note that in the case of the Republic of Korea, folks are very aware of the work that was done related to the Washington Declaration and the establishment of the Nuclear Consultative Group. We’ve had three NCG meetings and a number of active work streams in this area, including joint and combined planning, conventional nuclear integration, exercises, simulations and trainings, dedicated secure communication systems, and risk reduction measures, strategic messaging, and info sharing.

You’ll also note that we established a guidelines document, a shared policy understanding of our ambitious agenda for extended deterrence cooperation, and a clear vision for how to move forward together. We also continue extensive work with our Japanese allies through the Extended Deterrence Dialog, that I’m very pleased to co-chair with DAS Bell. And we’ll continue to do that work moving forward. And I think we’ve made a lot of progress in similar areas across a number of the same kinds of work streams. And there’s a lot of good work being done there and will continue to be done there with our Japanese colleagues. And we are also continuing to mature dialog with the Australians. And there is also a 2+2-style dialog between DOD and State in that area.

And then, finally – and I’m going quickly here. There’s a lot more I could say. But in NATO – in the NATO context we have really updated and modernized the work we’re doing on NATO nuclear issues across the board, from planning, from increasing our understanding of the threat, strategic foresight, modernizing our nuclear deterrent – including the B61-12 gravity bomb and fifth-generation aircraft. And the Washington summit, in that case for NATO, noted that we are continuing to review our strategic approach to Russia. So there’s more work to do.

The next administration will have to contend with growing coordination or cooperation amongst a new set of nuclear-armed competitors. There will be many questions to answer in that environment. And just to offer a few examples, what kinds of cooperation and coordination could occur among nuclear-armed competitors, and what does that mean for allies and participation in extended deterrence? How do we balance competing priorities as we look at the stresses under our nuclear enterprise, particularly as we deal with multiple competitors? How do we increase the dialog that we have in our society about nuclear issues when this is going to become more of a factor, including in defense budgets and in our industrial base? And how does that industrial base adjust to be competitive in this age?

I’m going to stop there, because I have probably gone over here. But I think there’s a lot more to delve into. But I know we’ll have two great presentations from my colleagues and lots of questions. So thank you, again, and look forward to really engaging discussion.

Mr. Goetz: Thank you.

Alexandra Bell: Me? OK. Thanks so much for having me here today, and to Heather and PONI for fostering this really timely and necessary discussion. As DASD Johnson just said, that this is the time for the broader community to be reengaging in a conversation they might have left at the end of the Cold War, thinking, ugh, glad that’s done. Turns out, no. It wasn’t done. And in fact, it’s more complex and, in fact, probably more dangerous now. So we need the kind of intellectual capital that a new generation can bring to this conversation. So I’ll talk a little bit about how arms control and deterrence are mutually reinforcing, as outlined in the 2022 Nuclear Posture Review.

So the idea behind that is, looking ahead, we’re going to need to identify and promote arms control approaches that reinforce deterrence and help reduce the likelihood of conflict, while simultaneously protecting the vital interests of the United States, our allies, and our partners. So there are these four general ways in which arms control can complement deterrence now and into the future. So first, by constraining adversary military capabilities. Second, by avoiding forms of military competition that divert defense resources without improving security. Third, by reducing the risk of inadvertent escalation. And fourth, by maintaining global support for the nonproliferation regime.

So, first, verifiable arms control can complement deterrence by constraining adversary military capabilities that might otherwise weaken deterrence. And I’ll outline how. So arms control can limit the overall size and threat of potential adversary forces by, for example, nuclear arms control agreements, like New START, have helped to maintain rough parity between the United States and Russian strategic forces. While effective deterrence does not necessarily and generally require parity in all respects, some forms of parity can make it less likely that the adversary perceives a strategic advantage and can thereby contribute to the U.S. ability to – sorry – deter attack.

Arms control can also constrain force posture in ways that limits adversary threat potential and makes aggressive intent easier to detect. So, for example, arms control instruments that restrict conventional force concentrations can make it easier to deter invasion if the other side is prohibited from building up an invasion force on a border, for example, or required to provide advanced notification of certain concentrations. Even if an adversary violates its commitments, which we have seen, such measures can serve to reveal adversary malign intent and lengthen the time with which an invasion can materialize. So this can provide more time for the defending side to respond and prepare, which we’ve also seen.

Arms control can also include focus on particular capabilities that undermine deterrence. So this could include limits or bans on capabilities that may be relevant to a disarming first strike, like fractional orbital bombardment systems, or FOBS, which might weaken deterrence by contributing to an adversary’s perceived capability to conduct a first strike, or MERV silo-based ICBMs that might increase the risk of deterrence failure by contributing to an adversary’s perceived vulnerability to a first strike, and therefore create an incentive for an adversary’s early use.

This category also includes the Outer Space Treaty’s prohibition against placing nuclear weapons in orbit. You know, such placement could be – would be destabilizing and create pressures for escalation early in a crisis or a conflict. So avoiding incentives for early use is an essential part of sustaining effective deterrence. Other agreements, like the BWC and the CWC, ban entire classes of weapons that can pose asymmetric threats and associated unique challenges to U.S. deterrence strategies.

Second, verifiable arms control can help the United States avoid forms of military competition that could complicate deterrence strategy by diverting, again, defense resources, without improving security. For example, New START helps maintain – or, has helped maintain – U.S.-Russian strategic balance at nuclear force levels far lower than what both sides possessed during the Cold War. That strategic balance, and the ability for each side to deter each other from undertaking a large-scale nuclear attack, might be largely unchanged following an arms race back up to higher levels. But the financial cost would be substantially higher, and the defense trade-offs would be unavoidable.

So we note often that the cost of the ongoing U.S. modernization cycle is only about half the relative cost of previous modernization cycles, and therefore should be affordable. But the argument also has implications in the other direction. The 1980s modernization cycle was much more expensive in large part because the nuclear force itself was much larger and more diverse. Returning to those levels of spending on nuclear forces would almost certainly require diverting funding that DOD is currently planning for critical conventional deterrence needs, including for capabilities where we closely cooperate with allies on development, procurement, and deployment.

So arms control can help avoid diversions that might otherwise be necessary to maintain the strategic balance without materially improving it, potentially at a net loss for overall deterrence strategy. So as nuclear escalation or conflict would most likely evolve out of a non-nuclear crisis or conflict, we also need to be mindful of ensuring our capabilities and deterrence across domains remain credible to prevent adversaries from misperceiving possible advantages from non-nuclear aggression.

Third, arms control can complement deterrence by reducing the risk of inadvertent escalation. The objective of U.S. deterrence strategy is to prevent conflict without compromising the security interests of the United States, its allies, and its partners. While deterrence focuses on deliberate escalation, inadvertent escalation could similarly undermine this objective, since it too can lead to conflict and greater damage in conflict if deterrence fails. Therefore, limiting risk of inadvertent escalation increases the viability of U.S. deterrence strategy. For example, advanced notification of ballistic missile launches reduces the risk of escalation due to misinterpreting a test launch as an attack.

The objectives of U.S. strategy for deterring a premeditated attack would be undermined if the adversary instead attacks due to misinterpreting routine testing of the very forces that underwrite U.S. deterrent strategy. So transparency over time can build predictability as potential adversaries see what constitutes routine actions by other parties to such arrangements. This can affect both what capabilities we might need for deterrence and also avoid miscalculation over misinterpreted action. Similarly, crisis communication channels can provide means to clarify intent during a crisis or a conflict, and therefore, again, reduce the likelihood of miscalculation.

Ocean open targeting supports the objectives of deterrence strategy by ensuring that, in the unlikely event of an accidental launch of an ICBM or SLBM, the missile will approach and fall into the ocean, rather than into the territory of a potential adversary. And in a general sense, strategic dialog among potential adversaries can complicate – can contribute – I’m sorry – directly to deterrence by providing ways to deliver and clarify deterrence messaging. And can be complimentary to, again, avoiding escalation – you can sense a theme here – and misunderstandings.

This can include discussions on improving understanding of threat perceptions, strategic intent, clarifying nuclear doctrine, asking questions about each other’s nuclear doctrine and posture, and identifying and resolving different interpretations of policy, operations, or even terminology. I’ve often said that if the five nuclear weapons states recognized under the NPT were asked to define deterrence right now, you would see five separate definitions of deterrence.

Fourth, arms control can complement deterrence by maintaining global support for the nonproliferation regime and help prevent emergence of new and acute deterrence challenges. Non-nuclear weapons states see the NPT as a compact under which they forswear acquisition or development of nuclear weapons, while nuclear weapons states engage in arms control and work in good faith towards nuclear disarmament. The success of nonproliferation ultimately requires adherence by individual states, but often relies on the cooperation of many states when a rogue state challenges the regime.

Sincere, good faith engagement in arms control by the United States helps us to maintain broad international support for the global nuclear nonproliferation regime, which can help avoid emergence, again, of new deterrence challenges. For example, a nuclear armed Ukraine could significantly change the nature of deterrence challenges for the United States, our allies, and partners. So the emergence of such challenges could make it more difficult to sustain an effective deterrence strategy.

So as we prepare for future deterrence challenges, which we must, we also have to have that balanced security strategy that incorporates both deterrence and arms control as mutually reinforcing elements. So, in that way, arms control and deterrence will help mutually prevent aggression towards the United States, our allies and partners, and more generally reduce the risk of conflict. And that’s the nature of the conversation that needs to be sustained, as the president has said, not in spite of the security conditions but really because of them.

So that was a lot, but happy to go into specifics. And I know I’ve named some specific examples that might have raised some questions, and happy to go into that too during this discussion.

Mr. Goetz: Thank you, Alex. Grant.

Grant Schneider: Thanks. Good afternoon. First off, I want to thank Heather and the Project on Nuclear Issues for inviting me and my panelists as well to be here today. I’d like to take a minute of personal privilege and just say that I’ve benefited enormously from the Project on Nuclear Issues here at CSIS throughout the course of my career. And so I wanted to say thank you to not only the current team but the institution itself. I’m likely preaching to the choir, but I can’t recommend enough for those who haven’t gotten involved, either in the room or online, to get involved with PONI if you’re at all interested in these issues. You will find that it’s a valuable effort, and really something that I think certainly enriched my career.

I also want to commend the overall Project Atom initiative and the report that came out yesterday. I had a moment to read through a bit of the report. I won’t claim to have digested all 80-some pages. But I applaud the exercise. And I think the report wrestles with one of the fundamental challenges that we have regarding the multiple adversary – multiple nuclear-peer adversary challenge that the U.S. and its allies face. The focus of the report, intra-war deterrence in the two peer environment is a critical topic that requires not only thinking inside government, but also outside government as well. And it’s timely, as Richard noted, with the release of the 491 Report, the report on the U.S. strategy regarding nuclear employment. Which also has a very similar theme, looking at this generational challenge of multiple peer adversaries. Something we, as you’ve heard already, haven’t faced in our history before.

One aspect of the report that I would just highlight for this discussion is the introduction where it goes through potential scenarios that the United States and its allies might have to deal with in a conflict or crisis. And I think those scenarios highlight the increasingly complex military planning that’s required in this environment that, you know, in the past we didn’t have to deal with in the same manner. And we’re certainly on our way to wrestling with these issues but, of course, the outside efforts are also helpful. And it’s not just about deterrence, of course. It’s also about the potential to provide options to respond in the event of actual conflict, should the decision be made to do so by civilian leadership.

Another part of the report, which Greg Weaver notes in his chapter, is the significant intellectual and analytical work required to identify the range of scenarios and strategic circumstances that the U.S. might face alongside its allies going into the 2030s. While that work is going on, as I mentioned, internally, you know, more work needs to be done. More people need to be involved in this effort. It’s not a nuclear-specific question, by any means. And certainly, more discussion is required. And it’s something that I think will continue sort of as a theme as we go forward.

It’ll also, I think, really underpin a lot of the work that Richard sort of alluded to in deciding as we move forward what additional augmentations or changes in the program record regarding nuclear modernization might be required to get after sort of new and different challenges as the threat landscape changes. This is a constant, iterative a process that I think is going to be required, which this current – the current administration certainly has been pushing toward.

In the interest of time, I won’t go into all the different scenarios. But wanted to offer just a few specifics. A little bit of this will be repetitive, so I apologize. But I’ll try to try to move through it quickly so we can get to questions. At the most fundamental level, I think the answer to the question that the panel proposes, you know, to be prepared for the 2030s we have to modernize our nuclear forces, the nuclear command and control, and the associated infrastructure required to do that. And that associated infrastructure will allow us to be flexible and adjust over time as new challenges arise, whether that’s new threats or potential changes or delays in our modernization.

So that – I think that is sort of the obvious but really important message, I think, to state up front as we look at this challenge. But I also think we need – you know, we’ve done it in the past and we need to continue to do it in the future. We’ve also made adjustments already. We’ve taken creativity from within the system on two separate life extension programs, one the 76-1 life extension program to build out the capability – limited capability of the 76-2. We did the same, as Richard mentioned, with the B61-12 life extension program to get after yet another effort in order to sort of maintain and bolster our deterrent. I think these are illustrative efforts that should serve as a point of departure for more and deeper, creative and innovative thinking.

And hopefully, you know, we won’t – we’ll look to many more adjustments and augmentations as we move forward to be flexible in responding to the dynamic security environment that we face. The sea launch cruise missile – the nuclear, excuse me, sea launch cruise missile is another capability that will support really the threats that we’re discussing in this – that is discussed in the Project Atom report. The capability is directly relevant to the discussion of inter-war – intra-war – excuse me – deterrence. As well on the operational side of the house, the expiration of the New START treaty will provide additional options to potentially increase the size of the deployed nuclear force, should a decision be made to do that in the coming years.

There are a range of additional measures, again, we’re short for time here, so can’t get into all of them, which are outlined, I think, best in the Strategic Posture Commission report. I’d also commend an article that came out by two of those commissioners, Madelyn Creedon and Frank Miller, today in Foreign Affairs that is a – sort of a convincing overview of sort of some of the challenges as well as decisions that we face in the years ahead. And I think those enhancements discussed in that article are clear options to enhance not only nuclear but also conventional capabilities that would enhance deterrence and war fighting as well.

On the planning side, Richard, I think, kind of went over this as well. But we have to increase our collaboration, consultation, and planning with all of our allies. Each alliance has sort of a different context that it sits within, so that doesn’t – is not a one-size-fits-all effort, nor should it be. But it’s – that effort – those efforts are directly related to our ability to provide the necessary flexibility to respond in both – not only peace time, but also crisis and conflict. On a related issue, the joint force is also working to further integrate conventional and nuclear planning in order to prepare for the types of scenarios dealt with in the Project Atom report, as examples.

There’s certainly a unilateral component of this for the United States to sort of work through itself, but there’s also an allied component of this. And it’s part and parcel of some of the work that was mentioned earlier with our range of allies. You know, kind of to the point that that Alex made earlier about sort of the change in the environment and the way in which we approached nuclear issues after the end of the Cold War, as the seam over time between conventional and nuclear policies, plans and strategies grew, over the past 30 or so years, we need to work to reverse that trend, which has already, again, started. But doing so will, I think, enhance flexibility in both crisis and conflict, and get at some of the issues raised in the Project Atom report.

Two last issues. On arms control, we have to be ready to engage, as mentioned, Russia and China, should they decide to change their current approach. Arms control is an important tool to provide stability and reduce the likelihood of conflict, as well as other benefits that were outlined by Alex earlier. However, you know, preparations for arms control discussions, should they begin in earnest, also have to be informed by this broader discussion that’s happening across the spectrum of issues discussed, not just in the Project Atom report but that, I think, is certainly central to it. And we have to make sure that we both modernize and augment the deterrent in parallel to working to engage in arms control with our peer competitors, should they find that be something that they’re interested in doing.

Last, but certainly not least, to kind of end where we started, we have to invest in the next generation. It’s kind of funny to stand up here and say that – sit up here and say that, having, you know, heard those words said to me many a time at PONI events when I started out my career and moved through my career. But I think there’s no doubt here that there’s new intellectual challenges, new writing, new thinking that needs to be done in order to solve some of these problems. And so I’d encourage all of you who are interested in doing so to engage in whatever manner, you know, you find most useful and most interesting, because we have to at least meet the same level of engagement on these issues that we did during the Cold War in order to solve the challenges that we have going forward. And on that, I look forward to the questions.

Mr. Goetz: Thank you.

One of the themes that’s endured through all three panels, and through all three speakers on this panel, is modernization. So we’re going to stick on that for just a minute. Richard, you mentioned that each of our adversaries requires a tailored approach to deterrence. But you also mentioned that our adversaries are now cooperating together. How does that change what the tailored approaches should look like, or does it? And what can we do to respond to that change?

Mr. Johnson: I think it matters to a certain extent not so much in the specific capabilities, though obviously there’s a relevance there. But I think it particularly is when we’re thinking about issues like force sizing and force posture we have to think about how, as the report talks about, potential scenarios may evolve that could be simultaneous in nature. They could be, you know, one happens and then another one subsequently occurs. Or they could be overlapping, right? You could have staggered, you could have overlapping, you could have, you know, sequential. And those – you know, without getting into the details of war planning – those things matter in terms of what forces you have available and what forces you might need to be able to, ideally, deter and, if necessary, respond and restore deterrence.

And the example that I give here is that, you know, we – I think Grant maybe was one that said that, you know, that the scene between conventional and nuclear planning has sort of ripped open, you know, over the last many years. And part of that is because we haven’t had to think about these issues as much, thankfully. But they never really went away. It felt like they did, but they never really went away. But what now we have to also make sure that we’re thinking about them in the way that’s most relevant to the current situation.

In the Cold War, there was much more of a focus on kind of bolt from the blue, mutually assured destruction, major exchanges of strategic warheads across oceans. Obviously, that’s something that we worry about day to day, and that’s what STRATCOM does, and that’s what other folks think about as well. But the most likely scenario that we have today is a conventional conflict that then reaches a nuclear threshold. And in that sort of a conflict, you will have already had military assets attrited across the board, whether that’s, you know, airplanes, whether that’s missiles, whether that’s integrated air and missile defense, all those sorts of things. And so that really drives, you know, kind of if you’re in that sort of scenario, what do you need to be able to do? And some of these things are dual capable in context, like aircraft, and some of these things, you know, have supporting components to them, like, say, tankers for air-to-air refueling.

So to answer your question, it is modern – we do need modern – we need to make sure that the program of record and the capabilities that we have are modernized so that they’re safe, secure, and effective, and that we can rely on them. But I think the concern about potential either collaboration or even just sort of, wink-wink, nod-nod, maybe not a true alliance but just, say, you know, kind of opportunistic aggression, requires us to also modernize our planning and modernize our approaches. And that’s kind of what the nuclear employment guidance and the 491 Report talks a little bit about, is we need to now think about these things. Not just about a single nuclear adversary, but multiple nuclear adversaries. And then that drives force posture, force size, and force structure.

Mr. Goetz: Any add-ons?

Mr. Schneider: The only thing I would add is the allied dimension. I agree with everything Richard said. You know, I think one of the things we’re finding is there’s increasing amount of conversation with our allies about how crisis or conflict in one region may affect another. And that the capabilities of our allies are relevant sort of globally, in that sense. And so we have to, not just, as Richard said, do the planning and the thinking around U.S. capability, and U.S. plans, U.S. strategies, but also how we further integrate our allies across both regions, you know, given the – given the constraints that we have. Thanks.

Mr. Goetz: So, Alex, given what we just talked about, with sizing and posture as being part of the answer to the new challenges that we’re facing, and posture being one of the primary portions of what you were talking about with arms control, how do we blend those two together? How do we modernize in a smart way and update our posture, while simultaneously being cognizant of that portion of arms control?

Ms. Bell: Well, I talked about that a little bit in terms of an arms race in which we simply, you know, increase the numbers, but our adversaries do too, is not an actual improved security condition. Fact, you can make the case that’s a worse security condition because increased chances for miscalculation, misperception. So I think as we’re – you know, the process that we’ve been on has been deliberative and purposeful. A one-for-one replacement and adjustments where necessary to respond to the threats that we’re facing, is the process that we’ve been on. And it’s been very transparent and very open. And the United States is very welcoming of insights, both from civil society but also our allies and partners. We also talk to our adversaries about it, and why we are pursuing the steps that we’re pursuing.

And I think, you know, that’s the sort of way you do it. You’re mindful of not trying to, you know, provoke a reaction that the action itself was meant to prevent. And so in the same way that Richard talked about modernizing, you know, the arsenal, we also sort of have to modernize our approach to how we’re dealing with these threats from a diplomatic perspective. You know, having two peer competitors. You know, having structures that we’ve spent the last 50 years creating to help maintain stability, you know, being, you know, sort of wobbly, if not fraying or collapsing. And how does that affect the choices that we’re making?

And I think, you know, not, you know, sort of assuming that every step that we took in the past will produce the same result now. And we need to be informed by our past but not shackled to it, because we can’t – I’ve often heard people just sort of casually throw dual track around, and sort of point to the 1980s process of both pursuing INF-range missiles but also an INF Treaty at the same time. And while that does provide us a lot of content and discussion points, it’s not the same situation. You know, we have different leaders in both countries. We have a different public perception of threats. You know, it’s sort of – you know, you just can’t repeat a play and assume it’s going to work totally the same.

And I think in terms of, you know, what we’re aiming for in terms of our modernization efforts, and how that’s attached to our arms control efforts, is we’re looking for a modern deterrent that’s fit for purpose, that can meet the challenges that we see, while at the same time trying to find new ways to create stability and predictability for the purpose of, one, not provoking the wrong response. And two, not taking money, funds, resources away from what – from what we need on an overall deterrent basis. That, you know, conventional deterrence – and in particular – and I think the Strategic Posture Commission talked a little bit about this – understanding, you know, the influx of emerging and disruptive technologies into this realm, and their effect on strategic stability, is going to require us, you know, playing a little bit more three-dimensional chess than we may have had to during the Cold War.

Mr. Goetz: We’re going to turn online for a couple of questions here. From a deterrence perspective and security perspective, is it possible to have arms control with Russia, without China? And how might we incentivize or compel both to engage in future arms control?

Ms. Bell: I’ll start. You know, there are always going to be different, like, sort of tactical approaches to how you want to deal with these challenges. But they are different challenges. And the NPR really went into this in particular, that Russia presents an existential threat. They, and we, still possess over 90 percent of the nuclear weapons in the world. That is a fact. China is also the pacing threat with, you know, both conventional and nuclear capabilities on the rise. But also a different, you know, sort of even threat environment, just from a geographic perspective. (Laughs.) And how we take on that challenge. So both need to be dealt with, but I think we should shy away from the idea that there’s going to be a single, elegant solution to all these problems. That we can just get them in a treaty, and it’ll be fine. We’re going to have to approach these problems in different ways.

We have different relationships with those two countries, different histories with those two countries. As hard as Russia is to deal with, we’ve been doing this with them for 60 years. We haven’t had that kind of approach, we don’t even have, you know, I think, the requisite number of Mandarin speakers here that we really need to kind of dig in, in the way that we need to, from a theoretical perspective of how we deal with the – you know, the competition with China. So I think both need to be dealt with. Each has to be dealt with, with the other problem in mind. But it doesn’t mean that there’s some sort of, you know, oh, this will fix everything at once. And I think we need to give ourselves the flexibility and the license to deal with these challenges in a step-by-step approach, make progress where we can, and not take steps to destabilize the other problem.

Mr. Johnson: Yeah. Fully agree with everything that you said. And the only thing that I would just add – and we’ve said this – we have a little road show occasionally.

Ms. Bell: We do. We do have a roadshow. (Laughs.)

Mr. Johnson: So we’ve probably said this before to some of the folks in the audience. But as DAS Bell said, the situations are different, the geographies are different, the histories are different. You know, I like to joke that the Russians know arms control almost too well, because they kind of always come back to, to your point earlier about using sort of previous context, well, this is how you do it and this is not how you do it. And it’s, like, well, things may have changed.

What we said in the NPR, and what we’ve said consistently, is you have to take into account the growth of PRC forces in negotiating a future arms control treaty, or other arrangements, with Russia. So it makes things more complicated than it did in START and in New START, when it was truly just, you know, we didn’t – the PRC was kind of a lesser included kind of a function. And now we can’t really think of it that way. That doesn’t mean that you can’t still try to pursue bilateral arms control between the United States and the Russian Federation.

And to take that to another further point, I would say that where we are in terms of what we would want to do with the PRC is a very different set of sorts of things. We would want – we are still very focused on keeping the guardrails in this relationship, the sort of the essence of risk reduction, and basic sort of foundational elements of what eventually could become arms control. But that’s different than what we have and have been doing with Russia for many years. I do think it’s positive that recently the PRC provided an advanced notification for their ICBM launch. Not to all of the parties in the region, but they did to the United States.

And, as I think it was reported, the United States reciprocated that on a one-time basis, to them for our regularly scheduled test of a Minuteman III. Yes, it did happen to be scheduled on election day, but it was regularly scheduled. And we did provide very good advanced notice for that. But what would be better would be to have an actual agreement in some format to do that on a regularized basis, not a one-off here or a one-off there. That’s the kind of thing that would be good in terms of risk reduction. DAS Bell also mentioned things like crisis communications. Again, would be very, very useful in that regard.

And so, you know, I think it’s easy to co-locate these issues. And it will be challenging moving forward, but they are somewhat different in nature. And I hope that our PRC counterparts will see – I think, in the Chinese system concepts like transparency are seen in a very negative light. But as their force grows, frankly, there – it’s actually more stabilizing, I think, to have more understanding and more stability in the relationship to know what is their doctrine, what is driving these things? Because right now we have a PRC stated doctrine that doesn’t seem to match up with where they’re going in their forces. And Tong Zhao over at Carnegie has done some really interesting reporting on this. That’s just that’s just my own personal view, not a U.S. government endorsement. But it’s a really interesting piece.

But I do worry that the doctrinal elements of the PRC system are not aligned with where they’re actually going in their system. And so I think it’s not actually a negative for the PRC to provide us with more information and more transparency. I think it’s actually a positive for them, because right now the major thing that is driving potential changes in our force posture and structure, as was discussed in my remarks and as was discussed by others including in the Nuclear Employment Guidance released, is the growth in PRC forces. So, exactly to the point about arms racing, if there’s a misunderstanding as to what the PRC is doing on their side, that could actually help us. But that requires more information and more understanding.

Ms. Bell: Yeah. I’ve actually told Chinese counterparts, if I’m wrong tell me I’m wrong. But I can see those silos in commercially available satellite imagery. I know they’re not windmills. I can see the expansion of your facilities, whether it’s missile or nuclear production facilities, fissile material production facilities. I can see all sorts of movement at Lop Nur. And I can do this all with readily available commercial imagery. So if I am wrong, explain to me how I’m wrong. But you can’t just keep saying I’m not seeing what I’m seeing. And I think, you know, more opportunities to say those kind of blunt things.

But I will say, in addition to the launch notification – which I think is a clear indication that the PLA understood that launching an ICBM – you know, for testing purposes – into the Pacific for the first time in 40 years was probably going to get noticed. And they didn’t want it misinterpreted. So I was, like, see? You fundamentally agree with the underlying principle that we’re trying to push. And now can come maybe some mechanical discussions about how that would work. But they did also just recently, when President Biden and Xi were just down at APEC, agree to something that we and the Brits and the French have already said, which is that we will not have AI make the determining, you know, choice in terms of launch authority.

That’s something that we’ve been trying to work as a P5. The Russians rejected that. I think the fact that the Chinese stepped out in front of the Russians and made a commitment, that I think was a necessary commitment and a stabilizing commitment, shows us that there may be a room for conversations about how EDTs affect strategic stability that the Chinese may be ready to have, and the Russians are not. So I think, again, they’re separate problems, but they need to be dealt with simultaneously. And progress in one doesn’t necessarily mean that, you know, that’s a bad thing for the other case. We’ve got to work both problems together.

Mr. Goetz: We’re going to pivot just a little bit. This is for the entire panel, but, Grant, we’re going to begin with you. What coordination challenges exist between the DOD, the Joint Staff, and the Department of State in planning, executing, and communicating the United States’ nuclear mission? And what advice would you give to the next administration for finding solutions to these challenges?

Mr. Schneider: Oof.

Mr. Johnson: The answer is everything’s great.

Ms. Bell: Everything’s perfect.

Mr. Schneider: There are none. (Laughter.)

Ms. Bell: Perfect coordination.

Mr. Johnson: Next question.

Mr. Goetz: Great. Smooth. (Laughter.)

Mr. Schneider: I mean, I don’t think there are coordination challenges. I think, you know, I hate to fight the assumption in the question, but I wouldn’t necessarily say that there are real challenges there. I think, you know, looking toward the future and potential future changes, decisions, updates to current policies, I think we’ve essentially laid out across all three panelists future decisions that might be – need to be made in the next administration.

But yeah, not so much a hard question, I just – there aren’t really challenges on coordination. That doesn’t mean that, you know, every agency and everyone within each agency agrees on everything. And that’s actually, I think, a good thing. I mean, we don’t want group think to reign within the executive branch, by any means. And how could there really be any challenges? That’s what we have, you know, the National Security Council for. (Laughter.) They do such a good job of making sure that all the cats are herded correctly. Thanks.

Ms. Bell: I would say, you know, it’s a human process, coordinating anything. You know, I remember some of the most painful coordination I ever had to do was, like, part of, like, a high school group assignment. (Laughter.) Like, you know, working together can be hard.

Mr. Johnson: It’s kind of like that. (Laughter.)

Ms. Bell: But we do have processes inside the coordinate us. And it’s OK, I think, that we don’t always agree on everything. Everyone’s bringing their own perspective from their particular vantage point and what they were asked to work on. The point is to have a robust discussion inside, to be civil, to have that, you know, good conversation inside, where we make sure we’re avoiding groupthink. And then, when you go outside, have your messaging coordinated, clear, understandable, that there’s no, you know, sort of, oh, I heard something a little bit differently. And we’re always working on that.

But I think this administration has been really good about having that coordinated interagency approach. The team we just brought to U.N. First Committee, I think we’re the only country that brings Joint Staff and the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense with us, because we want it to be clear to our foreign interlocutors up at the U.N. that we’re speaking with one voice, and we’ve got the whole team here. And in terms of little pieces of advice, pick up the phone. Just call each other. When misunderstandings arise, and they always do, smooth it out. Don’t let things fester. Don’t assume the worst. Don’t blame on malfeasance what probably is just an oversight, sometimes incompetence – (laughter) – you know, of just not covering all our bases.

And I think, you know, just don’t be a jerk, I think is a good principle in any organization and anything in life. And I think that’s probably the way to deal with it. The sort of process can be, you know, contentious at times, but that’s sort of by design. And then when you take it out and you present it to allies or adversaries, they know that we’ve thought through it. And, you know, during the NPR process, when people have asked me questions about, well, what about this, what about this? I was, like, we spent a year, you know, eight hours a week, like, in a room meeting, and then work on top of that, to make sure that we had a fully coordinated approach. It takes time and effort, but it is possible. And you come out with a really good product that, as Richard likes to say, restored balance to the forest.

Mr. Johnson: That’s right. (Laughs.) Thank you. I’m going to stick with that one until I’m out of this job. (Laughter.)

Just really quick, number one, fully endorse the pick-up-the-phone approach. At the end of the day, this is both a very small community but also very unwieldy community at the same time, right? But the senior leaders, I mean, we all kind of know each other. And that’s across partisan lines. That’s across international lines. And so, I mean, Alex and I talk, like, at least once a week.

Ms. Bell: I know his SEI number by heart. I know, like, three numbers in my whole life by heart. But that one –

Mr. Johnson: Yeah, it’s kind of – it’s kind of sad, actually, you have my direct secret line. But we do. And sometimes it is that piece, where it just, look, we work – we work in three really large organizations. And sometimes there’s just confusion and there’s processes. And you kind of go, oh, that’s not what we meant. Oh, that’s not what you meant? Oh, OK. You’re fine. But at the same time, there are also legitimate disagreements. And those are good too, as has been said. And sometimes those disagreements lead to really good conversations that lead to compromise, and new insights, and people listening to each other and understanding things.

I guess the only other thing I would say, as someone who’s now worked at the State Department for, like, 12 years and at the DOD for four years, and on the outside for a little while, is we all speak very different languages sometimes. And I really think that we need to be – to try our best – I always say, if I had a recording of me today that I could hear myself saying four years ago I would go, who is that guy? Because the acronyms, the way we talk, I always sort of joke that at DOD, you know, that sometimes everything sounds like we’re about to go out to war. You know, like, our schedule is the battle rhythm, you know? I mean, you know, which is literally just like, oh, we’re going to have coffee at 5:15. OK, great.

You know, there are differences in our way of speaking, in our way of communicating. And that’s OK. But what I would like to see – and this is something that is – I’m passionate about for my next role, I guess – is breaking down the silos, pardon the pun, between the whole I’m a deterrence person, and I’m an arms control person, and I’m a disarmament person, and I’m a non-pro person. Well, no, actually, we have to be all of those things. We have to understand them. You might have more of an expertise in one or the other, or more of a preference for certain issues, but the fact that we sort of unnecessarily bucket ourselves into these things is a problem, I think. Because then it actually does create a sort of a mini – like a miniature groupthink within each of these sectors, and we can’t talk to each other.

And so that, to me, is the biggest challenges. I would say, for the folks coming in, pick up the phone, get to know your colleagues. Also, try to do things in person, if you can, because while video calls and things can be very convenient I’ve noticed that in video meetings people tend to be much more stuck to their talking points, whereas if you have an in-person meeting and you have a disagreement, you can always pull somebody aside at the end and say, is that what you meant? And you go, no, that’s not what I meant. Oh, OK, we’re good.

Mr. Goetz: Great. I’m going to pull together – I’m going to attempt to pull together several questions and several panels. Everybody seems to be wondering about the same thing. So on panel two today, both the French and U.K. partners reiterated that a nuclear response is certainly not required by a nuclear – an adversary – or, to a nuclear adversary after we’ve received a nuclear strike, in the scenario that was given, to assure them. And they certainly don’t want to undermine our credibility by constraining our activities.

We’ve also talked a lot about the nuclear modernization. And some of the – some of the authors of the report said that they had varied responses when they looked at the scenario. Ankit Panda presented that he did not wrestle with the response options that he had. He felt like he was totally unconstrained with the capabilities that we have today to respond to the environment. Chris answered the question a little bit more constrained and said, hey, I think that I could have more options at my disposal, and I really wish I would have across the range of escalatory potentials.

So my question to you is – each of you – do you think that we have, not necessarily in the arsenal today but in the program of record, all of the modernization plans that you guys have already discussed, what we need to give the president of the United States a full and complete range of options for the threats that we face in the future? And if we don’t, what can we do to create the environment, both within policy and industry, to procure it?

Mr. Johnson: OK, I’ll start. I mean, I will give, perhaps, a not totally satisfactory answer. But I will say, you know, I think today we feel very confident in the level of capabilities and the deterrence that we can provide across the board. I think the areas that we’ve talked about is we need to make sure that we can sustain that into the future, not only for strategic deterrence – sort of the big – you know, kind of those big picture issues, the major conflicts, the potential for major exchanges – but those regional conflicts as well. And including the ones that probably the French and British counterparts were thinking of.

And that’s where I think the work that we’re doing right now, to go back to my earlier comment about this is not static, is relevant. Is to say, do we have the things that we think that we need? And if not, what would those look like? As was noted, you know, in the NPR, we chose to retain the W76-2, in part because we thought that was a helpful option that was available, that was that was prompt, that was available, and that could be useful in certain regional contexts. We ultimately decided to develop the B61-13 for a specific set of targets. You know, hard and large area targets that we thought, hey, we think that we need to be able to do this. And, you know, Congress has also had a say and said, you know, we think you need to do a SLCM-N. And so we’re doing a SLCM-N. And that will provide an additional option for the president and for planners, if that is – if that is needed.

And so I can’t say to you today, you know, I know for 100 percent certainty into the future that there is nothing else that we need than what we have. But what we need is to be able to have a flexible enough and a responsive enough infrastructure and enterprise so that if there is a decision that, you know, what, we do need something different – and it doesn’t necessarily have to be more. It could be something different. I think oftentimes when we hear this we sort of think, like, OK, that’s a number increase in the stockpile, or a number increase in the types of systems. Well, maybe we make a different type of adjustment. I don’t want to constrain ourselves and our folks that do this in labs, plants, and sites at NNSA, and the folks that do this on the delivery system side.

But what we really need is to be able to be flexible and responsive. Grant pointed out that we proved that we can do that in certain cases. We did that with the 76-2. We did that with the 61-13. We need to be able to do that in other circumstances as well. And that’s why – we don’t have anybody here from NNSA on the panel, but I will promote the work that they’re doing in their enterprise blueprint and their work to try to make sure that they have the facilities, the people, the technology so that if somebody from DOD or the White House were to call and say, I need a thing, that the answer doesn’t have to be, I can’t give you that thing right now because it costs too much, I don’t have the facility, I don’t have the fissile material, I don’t have that. And that, to me, is the ultimate answer to that question in terms of sufficiency.

Ms. Bell: I would say, perfect. Everything Richard said is absolutely perfect.

Mr. Johnson: (Laughs.) Don’t do that to my ego.

Ms. Bell: But it’s – I mean, it’s as simple as this. You approach the problem as, what do we need to do to protect and defend the United States, our allies, and our partners? What are the – what are the steps necessary to do that? And then you make a clear and definitive pitch on what we need, why we need it, how will it improve security, and how is it in line with our values, principles, and international commitments? And you make the decision that way. You have the discussion.

You look at all the tools available to you – and I mean all the tools available to you, you know, from dialog straight through, you know, military hardware – and you make the assessment. And you don’t assume that once you’ve made that assessment that that will stand and hold up, and you won’t have to do anything else. And I think that’s the problem we’ve had with some of these arms control agreements, is that we’ve completed them, put them up on a shelf, patted ourselves on the back, sometimes people get a Nobel Prize – (laughter) – and then we go about our business. And the problem is, these are – these are living entities that need to be tended and, at times, augmented or changed to deal with the challenges that we face.

And the same thing with, you know, modernization. You know, after the Cold War we didn’t look at it at all for a long time. And we were sort of, you know, behind the curve in getting started in this process because we just weren’t looking at that. So that’s why it’s a full-spectrum approach that needs to be constantly updated. And it needs to be a whole of government conversation, and a good conversation, as Richard said, with the Hill and with the public about what is it that we’re trying to do, why are we trying to do it? And, you know, and we want to keep getting input as we go.

Mr. Schneider: The only – I’d just add, kind of to repeat what’s been said but maybe put it a slightly different way – I think, you know, over the last 20 years, I think we were able to kind of look at our nuclear posture sort of every four years or every eight years, and that was good enough. It’s clearly not the case today. You know, Richard used the word static. I think that’s really important. This is dynamic environment. And as part of the multiple peer environment that we’re in, plus, you know, the cooperation that’s going on, not just with our peers but other adversaries as well, we have to be able to constantly reevaluate our assumptions, our decisions, and the opportunities that might exist both based on where we are in the modernization program, or, you know, unfortunately, potential delays that might occur. Does that open up space to do something different and get more out of the program?

So I think that’s the key thing. It’s really, actually just a mind shift – mind shift shift – yes, mind shift shift – that sounded wrong, I guess it probably is – from this once every four years Nuclear Posture Review effort to, yes, you may – you may still do a Nuclear Posture Review every four years, but you really can’t sort of sit and rest on that document as set in stone for the – for the entire time that a president is in office.

Mr. Goetz: We’re going to turn back to Alex here for a moment. How has the current information environment affected diplomacy and our ability to either win or control, or at least combat, the narratives that exist coming out of our adversaries?

Ms. Bell: Yeah. I wouldn’t say it’s just a me question. This is actually a broad-based national security problem, international security problem, that we’re going to have going forward, that that I didn’t necessarily anticipate, you know, all along. Which is, what is real? What is truth? What are the actual facts? And, you know, world rife with weaponized disinformation, we’re going to actually have to build in structures, build in norms and behaviors, that help us account for that. And does require a lot of individual responsibility that we need to be asking of our populations to be discriminating in terms of what they’re – what they’re believing, what they’re sharing, what they’re promoting. And I think, you know, again, a little bit behind the curve in sort of anticipating this.

But there is work that we can do. There are – you know, I think about structures, like Open Skies, which we are not a part of anymore but I think about all the time, the concept of cooperative aerial monitoring. And having information that is collected based on, you know, a legally binding agreement among parties. And that imagery is unassailable, that you cannot dispute it. You cannot say this isn’t – you know, this is a deepfake, et cetera. You know, so it’s something for us to be thinking about in the arms control space. But this is – disinformation, misinformation is a critical security challenge that I don’t think we saw coming in the way that it is now going to affect us going forward. And so I would say it’s very much a whole-of-government problem that we’re going to have to deal with, including how to deal with it from a technical perspective. And as a diplomat, I have no idea. But I’m sure there are technical steps that we could be thinking about pursuing. But that involves us having to bring an entire different group of people into this conversation than we’ve had before.

Mr. Johnson: Yeah, maybe just to add a quick note there. I mean, we have seen this not only in the nuclear space, but perhaps more egregiously in things like the biological space and the chemical space, where Russians and others have put forward just completely false narratives – completely false universes, frankly – about things that have been going on, including, you know, basically, you know, trying to flip the narrative and claim false flag, when, in fact, these were actions that Russia took. Very disappointing to see the PRC repeat these sorts of things. They don’t have to do that, but they apparently are, and doing so more and more.

I personally am particularly concerned because part of my job is to oversee, from a policy perspective, the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program at DOD. And Russia has just put forward completely false narratives about the work that we do there, especially related to Ukraine but also in other locations as well. And one of the things that we’ve had to learn is how do we now be prepared when we do peaceful work to reduce threats, to improve biosafety, biosecurity, bio-surveillance, to reduce the threat of loose nuclear material around the world, to reduce the proliferation of material and technologies for things like ballistic missiles – how do we build into those programs, in advance, the fact that we know that those programs will then be critiqued and mischaracterized by our potential adversaries?

We didn’t have to do that before. And that’s one of the one of the things that my team, as part of the – sort of the refresh we did to CTR a few years ago – said we are now going to have to proactively account for the likelihood of mis and disinformation in these sorts of programs. So that’s a big problem. The other quick thing I would just add is I think this is also a reminder of why it’s so important that we continue to invest in these fantastic multilateral organizations, these sort of independent groups like the IAEA, the CTBTO, the OPCW, that provide that additional information that is scientific based, technically based, to say, did a thing happen? Here’s what happened. And here’s why.

I think it’s actually concerning to me that it still seems like it’s not well known, certainly to the general public but even sometimes amongst our allies and partners, that chemical weapons use is occurring on the battlefield today in Ukraine by Russia. They are using riot control agents and chloropicrin on a daily basis. That is a violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, clearly. And the more that we can get real technical and scientifically based information out there about that, the more that we can reinforce that norm against its use. But it is a struggle that we have. And we’re going to have to deal with it.

Ms. Bell: I would just add, quickly, I think, you know, we have taken steps. The intel that we were able to downgrade and share in advance, the further Russian invasion of Ukraine, I think was helpful in the sense of we weren’t just saying, please believe us. We’re going to show you. And we’ve done that a lot in terms of the Chinese nuclear build up. China, you know, continues to say, oh, no, nothing going on here. So we’ve taken things directly to allies and partners around the world and said: Here is what we’re seeing. And so I think that’s part of it. That takes time and effort. And I think it would be helpful if everyone just believed things when we say it, but I think we have to put our shoulder in a little bit more in showing people sort of the facts. And I would also say, from a selfish perspective of somebody who’s thinking through how we build structures in the future, there’s a lot of need for academic research into attribution and forensics.

Mr. Goetz: Talking about needs for more research and more things in the space, how can we foster a more responsive infrastructure for a mission that spans such long business cycles with such strict requirements, that might discourage our industry partners to contribute?

Mr. Johnson: You really need an NNSA person on this panel. (Laughter.) I’ll take a stab at it, and perhaps Grant might have some views from the Joint Staff, as the folks that help put together requirements there. And I am not an acquisition person, and not an industry person. So I’m happy to be critiqued on this, and anything else I have to say. But I do think that we need to – and I think the department has done a lot of work here in terms of trying to reinvigorate the broader defense industrial base. I think Ukraine has proven why we need to make sure that this is a resilient place, not just – not just in the nuclear space, but in much broader – the submarine base, all of these things that we’re looking at.

But I do think that it’s useful to signal to the industry, and this is why we have budgets, this is why we have strategic guidance documents, that these are areas where we’re going to continue to need investment and research and work into the foreseeable future. One of the reasons, personal view, that I think that we saw we have bigger problems in the nuclear space is that that demand signal was not there. Alex mentioned earlier that after – at the end of the Cold War, you know, the drop off in terms of, you know, spending and investment in the nuclear enterprise was dramatic. And I completely understand why that was. That makes a lot of sense, actually, at the time, at the end of the Cold War.

But I always sort of view it a little bit like – it’s almost sort of like infrastructure. You know, we’ve talked for many administrations about we need an infrastructure bill. And we talk a lot about it, but then we don’t actually get there. And then all of a sudden, the bridges are falling down, right? And then now we’re going to have to spend a lot of money just to get us to where we need to be on basics, much less sort of advanced technologies. And I think that that’s a little bit similar to where we are today in the nuclear space, which is that we need to do a little bit of makeup work in terms of what we probably could have been doing over the last decade or two, but we also need to be looking ahead.

And so I do think that, you know, silver linings here in a dire environment, is the threat is clear. And so there is going to be a demand signal for these sorts of technologies and these sorts of things. But it’s also true that nuclear is – (laughs) – is special. We always say that we’re special. But it is special, right? You’re dealing with fissile material, right? So the requirements that are involved at facilities, just in terms of security, is different than if you’re just building a Tomahawk, right? Or if you’re just building an airplane. And so that does drive costs. And it does drive sort of factors.

I guess the last thing I would say, and to kind of play off of what Grant was alluding to earlier, is I do really think that what’s necessary – and this isn’t a short-term solution but it is a longer-term solution, is we really need to build the workforce of the future to help us to deal with these problems moving forward. We really need – and we – of course, I’m biased and I want all those cool policy people to come and work to us. But what we also really need is we need folks who can do the nuclear work, can do the physics work, can do the engineering work, can do the math and science. We need all of those folks.

And by the way, not all of these jobs are Ph.D. jobs, or even master’s jobs, or even bachelor’s jobs. I mean, a lot of these jobs are just, like, being good, skilled workers. And, like, if you look at some of the technologies and the work that’s being done in places like Tennessee and places like New Mexico and places like South Carolina, we need good skilled workers and good-paying jobs to be able to work in these facilities. And so that is a demand signal we also need. I think it’s one of the – I don’t want to speak for NNSA, but I think it’s one of their biggest challenges, is getting the workforce that they need to be able to do this moving forward.

I don’t know, Grant, you have anything you want to.

Mr. Schneider: Yeah. Sure. Three quick points. I think on the – or, maybe four – on the NNSA point, NNSA released an enterprise blueprint that gets at this question, I think, quite extensively. Publicly available document that’s worth a read. Fundamentally, the issue, which, I think, you know everyone’s familiar with, is we’re building our way out of decades of underinvestment in this infrastructure, right? So that – it just takes time. As Richard said, nuclear is harder and slightly different than other aspects of defense modernization or broader sort of manufacturing.

As Rear Admiral Buchanan spoke about earlier, you know, a sense of urgency, I think, can help. I think we’re already starting to see the benefits of an increased sense of urgency, looking at these, you know, adjustments we’ve made to build out new capability relatively quickly. You can’t sort of adjust your way out of this problem, but I think that is reflective of creative thinking, pretty quick changes both on the policy side and the acquisition side, to produce and soon field new capabilities. So I don’t think it’s totally a bad news story. Obviously, more work, more energy, more urgency is required. And more creativity and innovation is also required. But fundamentally, the solution to this problem is, you know, supporting the nuclear modernization program and sort of moving through that as quickly and robustly as we possibly can.

Final point. I think there’s also a question of how you balance the risk of not delivery versus having everything that you build be absolutely, you know, perfect and exquisite. There are parts of our nuclear arsenal that have to be that, no question. But there are other capabilities that maybe – it doesn’t mean it’s not safe, secure, and effective, and reliable. But instead maybe you can relax some of your requirements in order to field things quicker than you otherwise would be able to. I think that’s a conversation that is going on internally, on what really – what really the options are, now that the threat is more present than it was a decade ago, certainly. So I think it’s going to happen slowly, no question. I think – but I think there is change that’s happening, if you look back just a few years. It certainly feels that way, from my perspective.

Mr. Goetz: Sticking with the workforce of the future, we’re going to field a question from Caroline Ward, one of our PONI rising stars, certainly in the future.

She asks: What are some of the challenges in realizing integrated deterrence within and outside of government? And how can they be resolved, managed or mitigated?

Mr. Johnson: It’s a good question. We have a whole National Defense Strategy that talks about that. So, you know, first, I will say, I do think – and we’ve said this a couple times now – it does require a bit of a change in the mindset, right? We do have to start thinking – and I always joke that every time you say “integrated” in the Department of Defense, an angel gets its wings. (Laughter.) But we do need to be more integrated. We do need to think across domains more. And that’s not just the – I mean, the perfect example for this group is something like conventional and nuclear integration, where we need to think about – and that’s often sometimes misinterpreted on the outside as dual capable things. That’s not what I mean here.

What I mean is, you know, if, God forbid, we had to be in some sort of a nuclear fight, what are the conventional capabilities that help you to sustain or operate in that environment? That relates to the international piece because, as I think Grant was alluding to earlier, one of the areas we put a lot of focus here is in NATO, with South Korea, with Japan, with allies, how do their conventional investments potentially support us in those ways? Whether that’s things like intelligence support, integrated air and missile defense, their aircraft, all those sorts of things. Integrated deterrence is bringing together all of those sorts of things across domains, across time frames, across all of the elements of power, frankly – not just military, but diplomatic, informational, and economic.

And so that goes back to another question, which is, like, we have to be much more coordinated across government. And we need to understand each other in a better way. We need to understand the work – we, at DOD, need to understand the work that the State Department is doing and why it’s important when we go up to the U.N. First Committee and make a really, really strong effort to show why it is completely unacceptable to have a nuclear weapon in space. That is a huge deal. We need to understand the work that the Treasury Department is doing when it comes to economic sanctions, or the Commerce Department is doing when it comes to export controls. Making sure that as new, you know, emerging and disruptive technologies get out there, those things can be really fantastic for humanity, but they can also potentially be really catastrophic. And how do we try to balance that? So I do think that role of communication is really essential.

And, you know, it’s kind of an overly simplistic answer, but I do think that this constant level of communication is necessary. And this is where I think it actually gets hardest, because we’re easily to revert to kind of standard tropes or standard concepts. And I have found a term that we use in NATO – I think some people find it offensive, I actually don’t because I need to do it myself – is raising our IQ, raising our nuclear IQ, raising our deterrence IQ. And every day, I learn something new. Just today I was in a meeting talking about some posture issues. And I went, oh, that’s what that memo was for. Oh, good to know. Four years into my job here, I probably should know that. But it’s good to know, like, why we do certain things in certain ways.

And getting the different parts of the system to talk to each other, getting various allies to talk to each other. And, oh, by the way, not just allies to talk to each other as a bilateral of U.S.-fill-in-the-blank, but our other allies are also – it’s good when our other allies talk to each other when we’re not in the room, because that actually sustains this dialog, and multilateral and other formats, you know, minilateral, all those sorts of things are really, really crucial to make this thing forward.

I will just lastly say that things that – you know, things that come up all the time that we often gloss over is words matter. And what we mean by those words – we have to explain ourselves. I don’t want to speak for my French colleagues, but, I mean, one of the interesting debates we have – or discussions we have is just that term, integrated deterrence. In French, the word, “dissuasion” means nuclear deterrence. It doesn’t – and so to say integrated dissuasion sort of almost makes no sense in French, as I understand it. I don’t speak French. (Laughter.) And so we had to overcome – and we’ve had to overcome discussions on, well, what do you mean by integrated deterrence? That does not compute, right? And I think we’ve made progress in that regard, but we do have different approaches. And sometimes just putting the words on paper and saying, well, clearly it’s there, isn’t enough. You have to be able to actually work through those things and get to deeper understandings.

Ms. Bell: The Brits like integrated deterrence.

Mr. Johnson: The Brits do like integrated deterrence. I like integrated deterrence.

Ms. Bell: I got a lot, you know, in the sort of, you know, as we were both briefing on the NPR, and then, you know, sort of the rollout. And, you know, sort of my view of it is this is what we’ve been doing all along, is using all the tools that we can bring to bear for the purpose of defense and stability. But now we’re going to be clear about it, and we’re going to do it better, and use every resource that we have available. And so we’ve put a bright, shiny new name on it, but this was always the approach. And, you know, because of the security conditions, we need to become better at it. So call it whatever you want, but it’s, you know, what are we going to do to maintain deterrence, to maintain stability, and to also seek to reduce the likelihood of conflict at the same time?

Mr. Schneider: All has been said. (Laughter.)

Mr. Goetz: OK. I’ve been saving this one till the end, so hopefully we can have as much of a discussion as possible about it. But what continuities and changes can we anticipate in nuclear strategy with the incoming administration?

Mr. Johnson: I will start with the standard caveat that we have one president at a time, and I only can speak for the Biden-Harris administration. (Laughs.) But what I will say broadly, without speaking on behalf of anybody else, is that what we have seen in this space, if past is prologue, is that there tends to be far more continuity than change in all of these things that we’ve been talking about here, whether that’s on the deterrence side, the arms control side, the nonproliferation side, et cetera. Obviously, the security environment is dynamic and is changing, but we see a lot of continuity and we see, frankly, that even as that environment changes, yes, we have to make adjustments, but the underlying concepts and the underlying principles related to risk reduction, strategic stability, deterrence, they still tend to mostly play out. And if we find some place where that’s not working, then we need to obviously zone in on it and focus on it.

So I – you know, I don’t – I’m not a gambler, and I don’t like to bet, and I don’t like to make predictions. But I’ll go out on a limb and say, I suspect that we will see more continuity than change moving forward. And a lot of this work has been done. Frankly speaking, this area is, you know, primarily – there’s a lot of bipartisan history on this since the beginning of the nuclear era. And I don’t necessarily see that changing. There, of course, are differences on the margins. There are differences here or there. There’s a program somebody likes and somebody doesn’t. There’s an approach, there’s a challenge, there’s a difference. But overall, you see a lot of that moving forward.

So I saw the article that Ms. Creedon and Frank Miller did. They actually argue in there not to do another NPR. So that’s an interesting, perhaps, conversation for a future panel. I won’t opine on that myself, but their argument there, I think, draws back to my point, which is that a lot of work has been done. We have tried not to be static. We’ve tried to actually be dynamic, and such that as the new administration comes in there’s a lot that they will come in that’s already been done that they will have to start with. They have a running start. And they should be able to go forward with that in ways that, you know, likely there’ll be a lot there that they see that they will want to work with. But, again, I will leave it to the incoming folks to speak for themselves on what they like and what they didn’t like that we did.

Ms. Bell: I did note at 4:07 on November 20th, Richard said, more continuity. (Laughter.) From my part of the house, I think, you know, tactics may change but the fundamentals, the goals are going to remain the same, which is to reduce the likelihood of nuclear conflict. You know, crisis communication, notifications, avoiding – you know, avoiding misperceptions, avoiding miscalculation, those are things that, you know, any administration is going to want to pursue. And the methodology may change, but you’re going to see consistency. And every president in the nuclear age has availed themselves of arms control tools in one way or the other, and to varying degrees of success. But I think you’ve seen a throughline of how seriously presidents have taken this particular issue, and the necessity of trying to find ways, you know, to reduce the risk to the American people. So that’s what I would hope to see.

Mr. Schneider: Nice try, Charlie. I won’t be making any predictions. (Laughter.) But I’ll offer sort of two buckets of thoughts. Actually, both at CSIS and elsewhere around town, you know, former Acting Assistant Secretary Vipin Narang spoke about a process that he initiated about a year ago this time looking at what changes the Biden administration might make to our current posture and policy and strategy around nuclear weapons. Not all those decisions have been made, as Richard mentioned. Not even all of those ideas have sort of been shared publicly, right? So I think my sense is there’s – we’re in a slightly unique period, maybe not, maybe my history is not fully there. But I think it feels slightly unique in the sense that a lot of the work to illuminate what options might be available to the next administration, that work began, in a way, a year ago. And that that certainly isn’t always the case when you look back at other transitions.

So does that mean that those are the only options? Certainly not. But I think – I think, you know, that suggests – I agree that, you know, continuity is probably likely to be something that we see. Where the changes come, again, I won’t predict. And then I think, you know, the other part of this is the – there’s an events-based piece of this too. The expiration of New START will change – you know, if – for example, if there is no follow on to New START, at least initially, you know, that will require some decisions to take certain action or not. And so I think – you know, I think the change in administration certainly may change decision making, but I think both the events that have occurred in the last year to get – to fully sort of prepare for this two peer environment plus potential sort of big changes coming, sort of in events, like, New START, also feed potentially some changes less, you know, just oh, we need to change this thing or that thing because we want to do something different.

Mr. Goetz: Well, certainly compared to the first panel of today to this panel was much more encouraging that we do have our arms around some of the difficulties and challenges that are happening, both in the threat environment but also into government and interagency, but that some of those are very human solutions. They’re very focused on communication, better communication, better collaboration. And that we can do that without any advances to technology or the industrial base. But that while we also may need some of those changes, we still have a focus on the next generation. We have a focus on raising the next generation to work in this space and to collaborate as well. And I don’t think anybody focuses on the next generation better than the Project on Nuclear Issues. So if I could have a hand, not only for our panelists, but for the entire team that put this event on. (Applause.)

Dr. Williams: Thank you so much to our final panelists. Some very quick closing remarks and reflections from me.

I did pull out a couple of themes from today that I just want to leave you all with, because some of you are the ones that I’m hoping will go and do this work and take some of it forward. The first theme that really stood out for me, which was also a theme of the Project Atom study and the findings, it was that deterrence failure does not happen quickly. It isn’t something that happens overnight. It depends on things that are done weeks, months, years in advance. And so really, to avoid deterrence failure there’s work that we all need to be doing right now.

Second theme for me, I was really grateful for Reja’s question of Rear Admiral Buchanan about what should be topics that we should all be working on. And so I tried to collect a few of them from the day. And so I’m going to put them out there and hope that somebody here picks up one or two of them and runs with it. But the topics included: How do we move faster? Understanding adversary cooperation, to include cultural differences. How do we engage the American public? How do we advance the next generation? There was also a lot of discussion about the challenges of simultaneous conflicts, and so pulling at some of those threads on simultaneity, the risks of misunderstandings, how allies can contribute to that. And then on this last panel, there was a mention of research on attribution and forensics. And so this really covers the spectrum of whatever discipline you are in. If you do language, culture, science, physics, there is a space for you to make a contribution here.

The last reflections I want to offer is something that came up in this last panel that Richard touched on – I think everyone touched on, but Richard called out. And it’s actually the theme of disagreement, and how to disagree, and how we do that. And I want to flag something that might seem obvious in the context of Project Atom and today’s panels, which is that we need and we can have healthy but professional and thoughtful debate in this field and on these issues. I don’t think that I’m, you know, saying anything too shocking when I point out sometimes debates in this field can get a bit unkind, and we move away from the issues. We can lose sight of our North Star, which is, for every one of us, reducing the risks of nuclear use. That is the North Star. We lose sight of the issues.

As a very wise person and friend said to me earlier today, these challenges are too big for us to be ripping each other apart. And I think anyone who’s been on social media definitely knows this – how it can feel there. And so I would just say, particularly to the next generation, early, mid-career folks in the room and online, I really hope that today’s discussion and this project, writ large, gave you some heart and showed that there is space for debate in the field, but specifically there’s space for you. There’s space for your views. And I would encourage you to get involved. Put yourself out there. I know it’s scary, but really do, please, put yourself out there and talk about the issues. Talk about what you care about. And try to advance these issues, and push us all a little bit to think on them.

And I would also say, you are always welcome in PONI. And PONI will always be a space where you can come and have those debates and be part of that conversation. So would just really encourage all of us to – I learned so much from the Project Atom authors. Don’t get me wrong, there were occasional disagreements within our workshops. (Laughs.) But I really took a lot of inspiration from them and how they engaged in those debates, and was a part of the project that I just really didn’t want to lose sight on and wanted to put out there.

With that in mind, I want to briefly tell you about what’s coming up next for PONI. It’s a debate. (Laughter.) We will be having our annual PONI debate on January 24th here. There will be registration online soon. And it’s going to be on the role of AI and AI integration in NC3. We had a fantastic event on this yesterday that you should be able to find online that was joint with PONI and the Aerospace Security Program. And it included General Cotton, who gave, I thought, a really great set of remarks. And he expanded on some of his previous statements about AI integration into NC3. And got into a bit more detail that I found really useful, and I plan on citing heavily going forward. So that’s the next thing.

And then after that we will be having our winter conference on February 11th. This will be virtual, to try to get a bit more folks involved. The theme of this one is, Strengthening U.S. Alliances and Partnerships. And so, being virtual, we’re hoping to get quite a few allies involved in this as well. If you are interested in submitting an application to present, please check out our website and do just that.

The final thing that I do need to do is one of the most important things, and that is to thank the people who made this all possible. And that includes every one of you. But, first, I want to thank the authors and the reviewers, our panelists and moderators from today’s discussions. I really want to thank Rear Admiral Buchanan for your time and your really thoughtful remarks, and for getting involved in PONI, and for all of STRATCOM’s support for PONI over the years. A really big thank you to everybody here in the audience for turning up, submitting your questions, to the folks online for submitting your questions.

And, last but not least, is a really big thank you to the CSIS AV team that has put this all together and taken care of all of us. And especially to the PONI team that got you all here. And especially to Lachlan and Catherine for all of your hard work in doing that. So that brings today to a close, but thank you again so much, everybody. And look forward to seeing you at another PONI event. (Applause.)

(END.)