The Terse End to Cooperative Threat Reduction

Aaron Stein 0:00

Hey, Aaron. Yeah. The children are our future. That's right.

Jeffrey Lewis 0:07

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control disarmament and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis. I'm a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog.

Aaron 0:22

And I'm Aaron Stein. I'm a contributor to the Arms Control Wonk blog. I'm also an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London and a doctoral fellow at the Geneva Center for Security Policy.

Jeffrey 0:32

Today we're going to talk about Russia's decision to end cooperation between Rosatom and the Department of Energy on nuclear security cooperation. Aaron, it's a bummer.

Aaron 0:43

Yeah, things went bad recently, described as terse by the Boston Globe after a meeting in Moscow.

Jeffrey 0:51

Yeah, that was a good bit of reporting by Brian Bender. He managed to get a hold of a three-page memoranda for the record that describes this meeting in Moscow where the US and Russia decided that they would not be signing any new contracts for nuclear security cooperation in Russia. So as a practical matter, that's basically the end.

Aaron 1:20

Right. And it comes at a difficult time for the relationship. And I think in spring 2013, the cancellation of DOD Russian cooperation on nuclear security matters. So it's the end of an era, wouldn't you say?

Jeffrey 1:35

I would. You know, I wrote a column when it became clear that the Russians weren't going to extend the liability agreement that enabled the Defense Department cooperative threat reduction programs to continue. And the writing was on the wall in sort of October of 2012, and it did expire in 2013, which basically ended all of the program of U.S. assistance to help the Russians comply with their arms control agreements.

But we had hope because even though the defense side ended, the Department of Energy and Rosatom were still doing cooperation on peaceful uses of nuclear power and doing all the nuclear security cooperation. And then when Ukraine really went to hell in a handbasket, DOE suspended all the peaceful cooperation, which I wasn't totally sad about because there was that crazy asteroids cooperation that I thought was nutty.

Aaron 2:29

Yeah, asteroid defense. Some people care a lot about that, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey 2:33

Yes, I'm not one of them. But there was hope that the security cooperation was going to continue, and then sort of around August that started to look really bad because the Russians – basically that work is done on a contract basis, and the Russians indicated that in addition to skipping – For the Nuclear Security Summit, which is not exactly the same as saying they're going to skip the Nuclear Security Summit, but you can put two and two together.

They said they're not going to participate in planning for the Security Summit, and they're not going to sign any new contracts to do work in Russia. And so it was pretty clear, I think as early as August, that that was going to basically be it for the agenda of cooperation that we had put in place collectively after the end of the Cold War.

Aaron 3:24

Right. I mean there are arguments in favor that these things should have come to an end because these things were put in place, these two agreements, to help Russia get back on its feet, particularly in maintaining one to carry out its treaty obligations on the DOD side and the other one to secure nuclear materials on the DOE side.

And this was put in place to help them after the end of the Cold War when they were facing economic difficulties. Now they're not facing as many economic difficulties anymore. As they were then, so maybe these programs should have been canceled to save us some money.

Jeffrey 3:55

I discussed that objection in a column I wrote for Foreign Policy. It's like half true. It's certainly true that it was a little odd that the Russians suddenly – You know, the Russians were – you know, the Russians are now pretty rich. I think I joke in the column, right? We've all seen like really obnoxious rich Russian tourists running around Europe.

Aaron 4:18

Yeah, well, they were rich.

Jeffrey 4:19

They were rich. Really hard to like look at those people and think like, oh, you know – Here's a little assistance to take care of your nuclear weapons. It's like, no, you should do that yourself. And it's also true that I think not every program was worth it. The Obama administration was going to cut back funds for second line of defense, which was a program that sort of built on an initiative in Russia and then kind of expanded it globally.

And there was a It was a pretty big argument that maybe the data wasn't really there to support it. So yeah, it was hard to imagine giving the Russians a handout. And like any government – like any suite of government programs, some of them were better than others.

Aaron 4:59

But, you know, I still think there was a lot of value to them.

Jeffrey 5:05

And maybe a handout isn't necessarily the right way to think about it. I mean, one thing you could obviously say is that, you know, the Russians haven't always made security a priority. And it was a priority for us. And if their material goes missing and ends up in a terrorist's bomb, that bomb goes off here, probably not there.

And so... You know, rather than thinking of it as a handout, you know, we shared this interest and this is something we wanted them to do. And there was a price to having a seat at the table.

Aaron 5:38

Yeah, I mean, I think there's two things to this. I mean, one, I thought the programs were worth it. I think everybody who looks at those programs said they were both very good ideas, and you got a lot of bang for your buck. So you made a minimal investment, and what you got out of it was, hey, the Russians are doing a much better job of protecting sensitive nuclear material.

I agree with you that some of the programs could have been cut or at least curtailed back. What I think it really did was it – I'm going to make up a new word. That's what I do on the podcast. Collectivize this idea that we had to work together to share data and at least share best practices on how to protect loose nuclear material because we had a shared interest in doing so.

By canceling the program sort of in the way that it happened, I almost feel like it brings the rivalry back. And that this has fallen by the wayside in favor of, oh, you know, nuclear weapons are now back to like a more salient tool, at least on the Russian side, to use against the United States to like either coerce them over Ukraine or NATO in sort of coercive ways.

Does that make sense? Do you understand that?

Jeffrey 6:47

Yeah, that's actually pretty similar to the argument that I made in the column, which I made this argument using science fiction. Yep. Okay, so you read the column because we talked about that. But have you ever seen the original version of The Day the Earth Stood Still?

Aaron 7:04

I have not, so you're going to have to fill me in.

Jeffrey 7:06

So the quick version is it's the 1950s, and we and the Russians are about to nuke the heck out of each other just because it's the 1950s, and a spaceship lands on the National Mall, and out comes this really super scary robot, and then eventually this sort of human-looking alien comes out, and he sort of lives among us.

And the reason he's here on Earth Is to make an ultimatum, that basically that there is this galactic force of killer robots. And so when we were just kind of barbarians hanging out, On our own planet, you know, killing each other with, you know, sticks or guns. The universe, like, took no notice of us. But now that we had, like, nuclear weapons and space travel, he was here to give us this ultimatum that, you know, if our violence ever looked like it was going to, like, go off Earth, like, these killer robots would totally destroy us, right?

And so his, like, strong advice to us was... We needed to change the way we think about our own international relations so that we don't get like annihilated by these robots. And what was so great about that movie is it's a cinematic interpretation of this idea that nuclear weapons are the shared danger that compels us to cooperate even if we don't like each other.

And one of the things I mentioned in the column is who really loved this argument was Ronald Reagan. So Ronald Reagan, to the terror and horror of his advisors, would say, I can imagine how our differences would melt away if we were ever confronted with aliens. And he's like thinking of the day the earth stood still.

Aaron 8:58

He gets influenced a lot by movies when it comes to nuclear weapons. It influences policy decisions a little bit.

Jeffrey 9:05

He was pretty good on nuclear weapons. Yeah, he was. But I have often argued that that's why – I think that's the real function of nuclear terrorism in our debates. I mean, yes, there is a non-trivial chance that's worth defending against that terrorists might acquire fissile material and try to make a bomb. So it's not that I think that it's a – It's not that I think that it's a total fiction, but it's kind of a polite fiction that does the same thing that the science fiction does, which is it helps us think about our shared interests with the Russians, whether that's preventing an accident or a miscalculation or a terrorist getting a bomb instead of just focusing on arms racing.

So I would have argued, you know, we didn't get very far there. But those programs were a step toward reorganizing our respective nuclear bureaucracies around the idea of advancing our shared interests rather than just arms racing. And so, you know,

Aaron 10:00

Yeah, and it goes back to something you were saying earlier. It's like dark clouds on the horizon. The Obama administration's Nuclear Security Summit gets at this, whether you think that they're worthwhile or not. And the Russians are signaling that they're not going to attend that either. So Chile inters, sort of like the way in which our relations are being handled and the way in which we talk to each other.

And it's impacting nuclear weapons again.

Jeffrey 10:24

Well, and I think that's exactly it. I mean, I'm no particular fan of the Nuclear Security Summit process. But there, I think, was huge value to saying, as the administration did in its nuclear posture review, The biggest threats from nuclear weapons are terrorists, accidents, those kinds of things. Not that we would ever wake up in the morning and think that it was useful or wise to start a nuclear war.

And so what is so distressing about the Russian refusal to participate in the planning for the summit and the end of cooperation is – You know, I mean, the joke that I use in the column is, right, they're saying, like, you know, get your ass back in the spaceship, Mork. We got an arms race to run here.

Aaron 11:09

Right. I mean, you compare this with sort of their actions over the Baltic, you know, some of the things that they've been doing, flying bombers with their transponders off, I think, over Sweden and near the UK. It's just, you know, I worry about where this is headed. And I agree with you. The... The cancellation of these two programs, the Russians can probably do it on their own.

They're back on their feet economically, but it portends something gloomier that maybe we really need to unpack. I think we need to unpack and really account for as we move forward.

Jeffrey 11:47

But I don't want this to be a gloomy conversation.

Aaron 11:49

No, we're going to move to a happy note.

Jeffrey 11:52

Yeah.

Aaron 11:53

So you want to call Bethany? Yeah. Bethany will cheer us up.

Jeffrey 11:56

Okay. We're going to call Bethany Goldblum, who is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who runs something called the Nuclear Policy Working Group. And she's going to talk to us about training the next generation of technical specialists in arms control.

Aaron 12:12

Hey, Aaron. Yeah. The children are our future. That's right. Let's go, Bethany.

Jeffrey 12:18

Okay, we're joined by Dr. Bethany Goldblum. Bethany's at Berkeley. She's the Associate Director of the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium, the Director of the Nuclear Policy Working Group, and the Director of the PPNT Boot Camp. How are you doing, Bethany?

Bethany Goldblum 12:31

I'm doing great. How are you?

Jeffrey 12:33

We're bummed because there's no U.S.-Russia Nuclear Security Cooperation anymore, and we're hoping you're going to cheer us up and tell us about all the cool things you're doing to train the next generation of nuclear security experts.

Bethany 12:44

Yeah, so I'd love to tell you about the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium at Berkeley.

Jeffrey 12:49

Okay. So first of all, how did it come about? What is it?

Bethany 12:56

So the NSSC was established by a $25 million award from the National Nuclear Security Administration. And the goal of the program is to train the next generation of nuclear security experts.

Jeffrey 13:13

So how do you, I mean, is it mostly graduate students, undergraduates? What's the breakdown?

Bethany 13:21

So we work with undergraduate and graduate students, as well as postdoctoral scholars from seven different academic institutions. Oh, wow. Yeah, we partner them with labs for primary laboratory partners, Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Sandia National Laboratories, and Lawrence Berkeley Lab. And we also engage with some of the other national labs as well.

Aaron 13:47

So the purpose of the program is to place people in national laboratories once they're finished to sort of take over the role that's being administered by the older generation now? What is the end goal or the end game of once you finish training these people?

Bethany 14:04

So the goal is to feed the pipeline of experts, not just to the national laboratories, but broadly within the National Nuclear Security Administration's architecture. So other positions within DOE, some of these people may become practitioners within government. And so we want them broadly trained.

Jeffrey 14:26

And how did you, what's the relationship between the consortium and the Nuclear Policy Working Group?

Bethany 14:34

So the Nuclear Policy Working Group started as a very small campus educational programming activity where we were just going to train students at Berkeley on nuclear security policy issues. And we started with one meeting. We were surprised to have over 25 people at our first meeting from Berkeley. The technical and non-technical departments across campus who were really just interested in learning more about nuclear security policy.

And so then we grew and we started having weekly meetings and we started expanding to other NSSC academic institutions. And it really became a kind of thriving component of the nuclear security policy program within the NSSC.

Aaron 15:22

It sounds like your graduates will compete with those of us who went to the nonproliferation program at the Middlebury Institute. I think I should be upset with this.

Jeffrey 15:33

Aaron, your experience has now been totally devalued.

Aaron 15:37

I know. No, it sounds really good because that's a similar program to what we do over at Monterey, wouldn't you say, Jeffrey?

Jeffrey 15:43

Well, so we have a nice collaboration that we've started, right? So we just taught Melissa Hanham, who actually I've had on the podcast, and I just did a workshop on open source analysis. How did we do, Bethany? Did we totally humiliate ourselves? Yeah.

Bethany 16:00

I think that it went really well. I guess I see the programs pretty differently. So as far as the graduate program at Middlebury, it's more of a formal program, right? And you're really targeting policy students or non-technical students. And then whereas we're dealing primarily with technical students, students trained in Nuclear physics, radiochemistry, radiation detection and instrumentation. And then we are exposing them to the policy aspect of their work.

And it's really informal. These students just kind of get together, eat cookies and talk about nuclear security policy.

Jeffrey 16:44

Yeah, Aaron, that was the best part about going up and visiting is we got to do a walkthrough of the lab spaces.

Aaron 16:50

Yeah.

Jeffrey 16:51

And it's really amazing, right? Because they, they really are. I mean, all the kidding aside about you being useless, not, you know, not that you aren't useless. Yeah, I know. But all the kidding aside, like it was really cool that you could see these people who were, were participating on the policy side, but then they were going back and they were doing like really amazing lab work.

Bethany, what was that experiment? It was an apparatus that it was a It was a Compton camera that was connected to some mapping software or

Bethany 17:24

Gosh, I don't know. I wasn't at the tour, but there is this really cool radiation detection setup down there where they've hacked a Kinect, which is some kind of video game unit.

Jeffrey 17:36

Yeah, that's what this is. Yes, yes, yes. Go ahead.

Bethany 17:39

Yeah, and they use that to track the movement of sources. It's pretty amazing. And so you have a visual of the radioactive source moving using the Kinect software.

Jeffrey 17:51

Yeah, that was really pretty fantastic. So – oh, go ahead, Eric.

Aaron 17:56

No, it just sounds like you're trying to bridge the gap. We always talk about how scientists can't talk to policy people and policy people can't talk to scientists. So, I mean, is that the intention here is to try and get more technical people involved with policy and vice versa?

Bethany 18:09

It really is. I mean, we started by just putting these people in the same room because at Berkeley, the technical sciences are located on one side of the campus and the humanities and social sciences are on the other side of the campus. These people don't even really share a lunch space. And so bringing them together in the same room, it was an effort.

And then once you brought them together, you found that they really wanted to talk to each other. And it was really nice to be able to draw on the different expertise from the different people in the room. And so there are policy people there as well, and we do expose them to some basic nuclear science concepts. In addition to the workshop that we recently held with Jeffrey, we also had a one-day workshop on nuclear science for future policymakers.

And so we are trying to kind of provide foundational content for both groups so that they have a basis for conversation, right?

Jeffrey 19:09

Do you want to say a few words about the PPNT boot camp? I just got a note from Linton, and it sounds like it's going to be a little different this year.

Bethany 19:19

Right. So the Public Policy and Nuclear Threats Boot Camp is a decade-old program that's hosted out of the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. It was established by Herb York. And Linton Brooks, Ambassador Linton Brooks, serves as the scholar in residence for the program, and we absolutely love working with him.

Aaron 19:41

Everybody loves Linton. Yeah, I've never met anybody who doesn't say, I love working with him. Yeah.

Bethany 19:47

Yeah, he is really great. So it's going to be different this year in the sense that the audience, the participants, are going to have more of a technical background. So in the past, it's typically been about half policy or humanities people and half technical people. And this year, it's going to be overwhelmingly technical people, though we do fund a number of Policy, political science students through the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium as well, and they will be there.

So, but the program is going to be the same, in the same spirit of the PP&T boot camp that's been going on for many years, which is really addressing nuclear security policy issues from a practitioner's perspective.

Jeffrey 20:38

And is the registration for that open, or is it by invitation, or what's the arrangement?

Bethany 20:48

So this year, it's going to be just NSSC students, postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduates. The IGCC has considered offering a self-pay option, which has been really great because we get people from think tanks in the D.C. area, and they really provide a different kind of expertise than us. Than what you might see from some of the other participants.

But I don't know if the registration for self-paid participants is yet available.

Jeffrey 21:21

All right. Well, if it does become available, we'll put something up on the website. So what's your general takeaway from all of this? I mean, you're seeing folks who have a technical background who are getting involved, and so are they – Are people getting inspired and they're sticking with it? Is it something that they're just going to do as part of what will be a career on the research side?

What's your sort of general impression of how people are responding to the opportunities you're giving them?

Bethany 22:00

I think for the technical students, for many of them, this is their first exposure to thinking about the problems that they approach in their laboratory from a perspective other than a really quantitative mathematical perspective. And so they're excited, but in a way, they're almost shocked by the bigger picture of And so it does take time to bring people in and to be able to integrate them into putting their technical work within the context of the larger issues in nuclear security policy.

But they're excited and they're inspired. And we see we meet students who show up one day and then, you know, the next month they're working in a lab or they're working on a research project with technical students. And so it's really great to see these students inspired and then also continuing their education journey. Seeing undergraduates moving into graduate programs in this field or seeing graduate students go on to get postdocs at the national labs.

And we've also seen the scientists warm up to this idea as well. I think that mentorship, Of students can be seen as a burden by some. And so once you can show that really there's a benefit to both the student and the scientist by having this exchange of ideas and technology and this training, then the scientists get excited about it as well.

And so it's really about exciting the entire community to get this momentum towards creating a better situation really for the global nuclear security climate.

Jeffrey 23:47

I can't believe I didn't ask you this, but I wanted to ask, so how did you get bitten by the policy bug since you've got a technical background? What's wrong with you? Yeah, go ahead.

Aaron 23:58

Yeah, let me jump in there too. Like somebody has a technical background who has gotten involved in policy. I'm also curious what sort of the technical people's perspective is on some of the debates that go on like say about how to verify a nuclear deal. The policy issues and the way in which things are framed, perhaps in op-eds in the Washington Post, whereas how they're discussed among scientific people may be around your roundtable.

Bethany 24:25

Okay, so two questions.

Jeffrey 24:27

Two totally different questions. Right.

Bethany 24:31

So let me start with the last one. How do they approach these issues? I think technical people tend to approach the problem from a technical perspective. And so it's very challenging for them when they see – You know, there's a very clear technical solution, like, for example, with radioactive waste management. But then there are the policy issues and the political issues associated with it, which makes problem solving and implementation of action much more difficult.

And so I think that Scientists can become frustrated by that climate and they just want to be able to solve the problem in the most technically feasible way. And sometimes that just doesn't play out in practice. And so that's why it's good to be able to have that conversation because then by engaging with these social scientists, they're able to have a more broader perspective on the scenario.

Okay. To Jeffrey's question, to be honest, as a graduate student, I came across a fellowship opportunity that was the highest paid fellowship that I could find.

Jeffrey 25:46

That's fantastic. That will never happen again in this field.

Bethany 25:52

And so I thought you know I don't know anything about nuclear security policy but I certainly want this very high paid fellowship and so I'm just gonna apply and see what happens and I got the award and so I went to the PP&T boot camp I was in the second cohort and at that time it was A three week program.

And so it was really intense. And after, you know, as I, when I went in, I thought that I wanted to be a weapons designer and that's what I was going to do with my career. And by the end of the program, I realized that I really wanted to work on nuclear security and non-proliferation issues.

Aaron 26:35

Yeah. You got bit by the bug. Yeah. From weapons to non-proliferation. That's a fascinating trajectory. Yeah.

Bethany 26:43

Yeah, it was eye-opening for me to be able to see the problem from a different perspective.

Jeffrey 26:50

Does this mean that this is going to be what you do for a long, long time? Or do you think you're going to end up back on the pure research side? Yeah.

Bethany 27:04

Well, so I continue to do both and I want to do both. I definitely don't want to stop doing science. I love doing fundamental physics. I'm really interested in fundamental nuclear reaction science. And so I want to do that. But I also like the application side. I like being able to make these measurements that inform detector development or that inform science.

Kind of quantitative assessments for nuclear materials. And then I want to do policy as well. There's so many different exciting topics, and it's really fun to be able to engage with the students within the academic community, as well as with the national laboratories, because then you can really have targeted mission-driven research.

Jeffrey 27:54

Well, we're really happy to have you in the community. Hey, before we go, we always do this thing, and normally we warn our guests, but in my case, I totally forgot. We always do a book recommendation or an article recommendation or sort of what you're reading. I'm going to throw it at Aaron first, and that will give you a second to think about anything interesting you've been reading.

Aaron, what do you got for us?

Aaron 28:19

I am rereading David Frumkin's Peace to End All Peace. Oh, that's a good book. Yeah, I really enjoy it. And yeah, I'm just rereading it. It's my second time through.

Jeffrey 28:31

Oh, that's fantastic. Bethany, did we give you enough time to come up with anything at all?

Bethany 28:36

Oh, gosh. You know, I read a lot of things here and there. Most recently, I was reading about the report from a workshop on the use of and implementation of alternative neutron detection technologies for IAEA safeguards.

Jeffrey 28:55

Ooh.

Bethany 28:56

Yeah, so right now, apparently the IAEA for neutron detection relies very heavily on helium-3 based detection systems. And so there's consideration of adopting alternative technologies to diversify the detector fleet.

Jeffrey 29:12

That's cool. I am reading Red China's Capitalist Bomb inside the Chinese Neutron Bomb Program, which is a monograph by my former student, Jonathan Ray, that he completed for the National Defense University. And it's a wonderful reconstruction of the history of Chinese decision-making, both to pursue an enhanced radiation warhead and then the ultimate decision after testing it not to deploy it.

So that's what I've got. Bethany, thanks so much for coming on and cheering us up after we discussed the dreadful state of U.S.-Russian relations.

Aaron 29:48

Yeah, I'm excited.

Bethany 29:50

Yeah, thank you so much for inviting me. And I feel like that with the NSSC and really the excitement of the students, the interest and the excitement of the students, that we do have some things to look forward to as well.

Jeffrey 30:06

Great. Well, thank you for coming on. Aaron, thanks for co-hosting with me today. And as always, for everybody who downloaded the podcast, thanks for listening.