The 2009/2010 College Debate Topic is about nuclear weapons. The United States should decrease its reliance on nuclear weapons. I was asked for reading suggestions. Mine are: (1) John Steinbruner, Managing Deterrent Operations, Chapter 2 of Principles of Global Security (Brookings, 2000), and (2) Ivo Daalder and Jan Lodal, The Logic of Zero: Toward a …
Chilton Repeats the Vacuum Tube Myth
by | 2009-05-14 | 7 Comments
Global Security Newswire’s Elaine Grossman asked STRATCOM Command General Kevin Chilton about the Bulletin article in which Kingston Reif and I called him out for his misleading claim that the RRW program is needed to remove vacuum tubes from the US nuclear stockpile. (It isn’t.) Rather than correcting the record, he doubled down on the …
North Korea's Next Steps
by | 2009-05-14 | 1 Comment
I was struggling with what to say about the increasingly dire situation in North Korea, when I discovered that Sig Hecker did it for me in the Bulletin: In summary, North Korea is capable of carrying out its threat to restart the Yongbyon plutonium production facilities; however, it is limited to adding roughly one bomb …
NCPC Site & 721 Report
by | 2009-05-13 | 6 Comments
The DNI National Counterproliferation Center (NPC) has a spiffy new website with several documents including — drumroll — the 2008 721 Report.
