2022 Speakers

Recent Missile Defense Reviews (MDRs), including the Biden administrations' 2022 MDR, point to a shift in the role of missile defense with respect to the large nuclear powers – Russia and China.

The UN Climate Change Conference 2022, Conference of Parties (COP27), convened November 6th to 20th in Egypt.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has placed into sharp focus questions related to the future of deterrence.

Even as the world has focused managing the troublesome nuclear weapons programs in North Korea and Iran, the nuclear arsenals in Southern Asia—in China, India, and Pakistan—have undergone a profound transformation.

Debates in the United States about hypersonic weapons today revolve around acquiring hypersonic missiles and pursuing arms control initiatives, but concern about a hypersonic gap is misplaced and indicates a misunderstanding about the strategic trade-offs and benefits associated with hypersonic technology.

Microchips are the new oil—the scarce resource on which the modern world depends. Until recently, America designed and built the fastest chips and maintained its lead as the #1 superpower.

COVID-19 has revealed serious gaps in public health preparedness. Gigi Gronvall will focus on some that need to be addressed immediately, including in diagnostic testing, medical countermeasure development, attribution of biological disease events, and One Health, and will discuss the research laboratory oversight needed for security and safety.

The purposeful manipulation of genomes is now possible. Such manipulation has great promise and broad strategic implications; it is creating useful molecules of various sorts and, over time, it could eliminate genetic disease.

Later this year, China will hold its 20th Party Congress—a major political event occurring every five years where leaders in the Chinese Communist Party (CPP) announce senior leadership changes and policy priorities.

Following the release of a China–Russia joint statement in February 2022, analysts have argued that the two countries have become strategically aligned.

Pakistan was once considered a threshold nuclear power because of it had accumulated the material conditions and technical capacity to quickly transform an ostensibly peaceful nuclear program into a weapons program.

While much of the world is focused on Russia's war in Ukraine, North Korea continues to advance its nuclear weapons and missile programs. It shows no signs of slowing down.

Nations rise and fall, succeed or fail in rivalries, and enjoy stability or descend into chaos because of a complex web of factors. One critical component of any such recipe is the package of essential social characteristics of a nation.

While Russia lags behind the United States and China in artificial intelligence development and integration, in both commercial and military applications, the Russian leadership has identified AI as a strategic technology, directing resources to shore up AI research, improve data management, buttress computing capabilities, and invest in tech talent.

How are governments adapting to emerging technologies that leave states with fewer national security secrets?

This briefing summarizes findings from wargames and related analyses that examine the operational challenges posed by the nation's principal state adversaries—China and Russia.

Through multiple international initiatives, including the creation of the Arctic Council at the end of the Cold War in 1996, the Arctic appeared to be one of the last areas of peaceful cooperation in the world till February 2022.

Clean energy technologies—like solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles (EV)—require more mineral inputs than fossil-fuel energy for selected mineral resources, according to the International Energy Agency.

Mr. Weaver will provide insights into how the recently completed Nuclear Posture Review addresses the worsening security environment, what remains to be done to prepare for a world in which we face two nuclear peer adversaries, and the implications of both for the DoE nuclear enterprise.

In the last two years, whenever the topic of biodefense and readiness comes up, a discussion of COVID-19, its origin and its impact, often takes center stage, and while this certainly provides a valuable case study in evaluating biodefense capabilities and maintaining operations, there is so much more to biodefense.

This paper focuses on the negotiating, policy, legal, and technical issues that the U.S and allies will likely have to address to reach and implement an agreement with Russia on non-strategic nuclear warheads at the point when Washington and Moscow decide to return to negotiations.

Abstract: A partial "decoupling" of U.S. and Chinese technology ecosystems is well underway

Abstract: How Russia's war on Ukraine ends will affect European and international security for decades.

The current threat landscape is challenging and testing the U.S. nuclear deterrence in ways not seen since the Cold War era.

Abstract: Russia's invasion of Ukraine has brought energy security issues to the forefront.

Abstract: As western nations adapt to the events in Ukraine, a key question they will face is how to constrain a rival that they do not wish to directly fight.

Abstract: Tyrants on Twitter is the first detailed analysis of how Chinese and Russian agents weaponize Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube to subvert the liberal international order.

Abstract: On February 24, Vladimir Putin launched a large-scale invasion of Ukraine, and since then has waged a brutal war against Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.

Abstract: Despite an examination of U.S.-China strategic competition from a variety of perspectives, there has been relative neglect of how intense and how interactive the competition is likely to be.

Abstract: Last year NATO Allies agreed on an ambitious Climate Change and Security Action Plan, which seeks to mainstream climate considerations across the entire NATO enterprise.

Abstract: The United States is entering an era of great-power competition with China and Russia.

Abstract: On the precipice of a new National Defense Strategy and over a decade into DOD cyber institutionalization, it is time to take stock on US cyber capabilities.

Abstract: Hypersonic weapons combine the speed of ballistic missiles with the maneuverability and detectability challenges of cruise missiles, leaving little time to react.

Abstract: Much of the work on nuclear proliferation has focused on why states pursue nuclear weapons, while the question of how has received little attention.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its alerting of its nuclear forces bring a host of difficult questions for the United States and its allies.

Abstract: When the Soviet Union collapsed, Kazakhstan was left with more than a thousand nuclear warheads, tons of nuclear material, and sensitive nuclear infrastructure.

Abstract: At the end of the Cold War, the United States decided that NATO should continue to maintain the primary role for European security, and in 1999, NATO took in new members from the East and went to war against Serbia.

Abstract: Russia is threatening to invade Ukraine. It has massed troops and equipment on Ukraine's northern, eastern, and southern borders in an apparent attempt to intimidate Ukraine and the United States. While overmatched, the Ukrainian military is ready to defend against an attack.

Abstract: The governments of the United States, China, and Russia all express support for arms control. They disagree profoundly, however, about its purposes and preconditions.

Abstract: In September 2021 Chatham House published 'What Deters Russia', a study extracting core principles and recommendations from decades of success and failure in countering Russian hostile ambition.