Sept. 23, 2024

China's Theater-Range, Dual-Capable Delivery Systems: Integrated Deterrence and Risk Reduction Approaches to Counter a Growing Threat

China has engaged in a dramatic buildup of its nuclear forces over the past decade. While much of the attention on China’s new nuclear arsenal has focused on its development and expansion of its strategic nuclear triad, this growth has also included significant numbers of theater-range, dual-capable delivery systems. These forces are not capable of reaching the U.S. mainland but can range U.S. and allied forces and bases across strategically significant swathes of the Indo-Pacific.

July 8, 2024

Bolstering Biosecurity Amid the Biotechnology Revolution

The rapid pace of novel technological change, referred to as “emerging technologies,” is challenging our ability to devise policy and governance apace. This is particularly true in the life sciences and biotechnology, where the current tools used for promoting biosecurity via policy and governance are becoming outdated.

June 28, 2024

Implementing the Chairman's Guidance on Experiential Learning in PME Classrooms

In 2020, the CJCS called for more "experiential learning" in Joint Professional Military Education (JPME) classrooms. Within this April 2024 Joint Force Quarterly article, Dr Justin Anderson and Dr Paige Price provide an example of a simulated arms control negotiation for use in courses addressing major power competition, deterrence, adversary strategic objectives, and other related topics.

June 12, 2024

Arms Control Monitoring Regimes

The successful negotiation of arms control agreements generally requires each participant’s

Feb. 6, 2024

Presentation: “Russian and Other (Dis)information Undermining WMD Arms Control: Considerations for NATO”

DOPSR Cleared talking points of presentation "Russian and Other (Dis)information Undermining WMD Arms Control: Considerations for NATO” given to the NATO Committe by Sarah Jacobs Gamberini & Justin Anderson on Proliferation at NATO Headquarters, Brussels, Belgium.

Sept. 13, 2023

The Role of Special Operations Forces in Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction

With their global presence, reach, and capabilities, U.S. special operations forces (SOF) are critical for competing and winning in the WMD-infected security environment. Core SOF capabilities work to shape the operating environment in the current “steady state” landscape in a manner that serves to deter, dissuade, and frustrate adversaries from pursuing or acquiring WMD.

Aug. 18, 2023

2023 Biodefense Posture Review

The Biodefense Posture Review was a whole of DOD effort to develop guidance to achieve National Defense Strategy priorities and address biological threats - especially those with strategic consequences for the U.S. military.

April 30, 2023

How Emerging Technologies Become Emerging Threats: Workshop Report

Identifying how emerging technologies contribute to, or constitute emerging threats can better prepare society to take the appropriate actions to mitigate risks and possibly lead to measures that ensure better governance. The participants of a workshop devoted to examining this question found that social, cultural, political, economic, and other factors contribute to how emerging technologies may become emerging threats. This paper summarizes these discussions and conclusions.

March 15, 2023

Designating North Korean Nuclear Weapons as Proliferation Risks: A Proposal for Forestalling Major Power Conflicts in the Event of North Korea's Internal Collapse

A potential North Korean internal collapse would pose enormous challenges to South Korea, to include the risk of catalyzing a major U.S.-China crisis. Creative diplomacy by Seoul, however, could lay the groundwork for all three states to designate North Korea's nuclear weapons as "proliferation risks" within a notional future crisis, providing common ground for Washington and Beijing--who have worked together on key nonproliferation initiatives in the past--to tacitly cooperate on (or at least de-conflict) efforts to address the security threats posed by Pyongyang's nuclear arsenal within a dynamic internal conflict environment.

Feb. 16, 2023

Private-sector research could pose a pandemic risk. Here’s what to do about it

Despite the increasing amounts of privately funded life science research, there is very little government regulation over private sector activities that might generate enhanced potential pandemic pathogens – germs that might not only trigger a pandemic, but that have been engineered to make them more virulent or more transmissible. This article discusses mechanisms, both legally binding and voluntary, that can broaden the reach of these oversight policies to cover all relevant work, not just the government-funded part of it.