Students of nuclear deterrence could learn something from the financial crisis. (So I’ve argued before.) One reason to think so appears in a review of Justin Fox’s new book, The Myth of the Rational Market. In Paul Krugman’s telling, Fox describes how the efficient markets hypothesis, which is the basis of modern financial risk assessment, …
Hibbs on the BOB
Mark Hibbs finds further evidence that the BOB is not a reactor, but a giant industrial facility: Beginning two weeks ago, some private researchers have posted photographs on the Internet that they speculated might show a secret reactor being constructed in Myanmar. The photos show a square, box-like structure about 80 meters, roughly 262 feet, …
NPR Fact Sheets
Yesterday, I attended a meeting on the Nuclear Posture Review at the Pentagon. The ground-rules weren’t super clear, so I won’t say anything about the meeting itself. The Pentagon did, however, use the occasion to release two fact sheets: Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) Background The NPR, Arms Control and Deterrence The fact that they are …
PCS: The How of Proliferation, Part 2
Yesterday, I started to present a framework to think about how proliferators get the know-how and industrial infrastructure necessary to make weapons of mass destruction. This framework has proved very helpful to me in understanding various WMD programs. It becomes more predictive when combined with two competitive forces: the need for proliferators to minimize risk …
