Between 2004 and 2010, Dr. Siegfried Hecker made seven trips to North Korea to explore ways to reduce the danger posed by Pyongyang’s advancing nuclear weapons program.
North Korean officials, including Kim Jong Un, have made several statements in recent months that begin to bring clarity to the country’s evolving nuclear doctrine. Within those statements, there has been a notable emphasis on the role of tactical nuclear weapons (TNWs) in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (or, North Korea’s) larger nuclear strategy and the potential for early nuclear use should conflict break out on the Korean Peninsula.
Longtime Corporation grantee Siegfried Hecker, one of the world’s foremost nuclear security and policy experts, offers his perspective on how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is as momentous for nuclear affairs as the dissolution of the Soviet Union
One of the world’s foremost nuclear security and policy experts, Sig Hecker has spent much of an illustrious career working to enhance cooperation among US and Russian scientists and their governments in hopes of reducing nuclear risk.
Facts are difficult to come by, myths are deeply ingrained, and uncertainties lurk everywhere — that, in short, is the nature of North Korea’s nuclear program.
A conversation on what could and should be done to restore and extend an arms control regime that has deteriorated in the last few years, as the United States and Russia have withdrawn from major arms control agreements and let New START come to the brink of expiration.
President Donald Trump missed a "golden" chance to end North Korea's nuclear program by walking out of his Hanoi summit with Kim Jong-un empty-handed when the North Korean leader had, in effect, offered to give up a key nuclear facility, CISAC Senior Fellow Siegfried Hecker said.
Young American and Russian professionals examined three major nuclear accidents to assess the causes, responses and consequences. They worked across cultural and disciplinary divides and arrived at a common assessment: international cooperation is essential to ensure nuclear safety because one country’s nuclear accident is everyone’s.
Siegfried Hecker, former director of both Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Center for International Cooperation and Security, reflects on the meaning of the Trinity nuclear weapons test and its implications for national security today.
