Seventy-five years ago, before 5:30 a.m. on July 16, 1945, Los Alamos scientists successfully conducted the world’s first nuclear weapons test. The test, which physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer named "Trinity" after a line from a poem by John Donne, altered the course of World War II, changed the way scientific discoveries are pursued, and cemented the relationship between science and national security.

Siegfried Hecker, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory for over three decades and served as director for nearly 12 of those years. He joined CISAC in 2005 and served as the Center’s Science Co-director from 2007 – 2012.

In a video produced by Los Alamos to commemorate the historic events of 1945, Hecker reflects on the meaning of that moment. Here, Hecker answers questions to place those events into context of today’s national security landscape and his current work.

As you say in the video, the Trinity project brought scientists from all over the world to Los Alamos and asked them to collaborate on the most sensitive project for the American government. At the time, that must have seemed radical, but did multidisciplinary, international collaboration become the norm?

 It may seem odd, but it would be more difficult today than it was then. The U.S. was at war and concerned about Hitler’s Germany winning the race to the atomic bomb. It was actually the Brits that tried to convince President Roosevelt to mount a major effort to build the bomb. It was Europe that was the center of great physics at the time and it was Hitler who caused many of the best scientists to flee Europe and come to the United States – we welcomed them with open arms. We had the industrial capacity to mount such an enormous enterprise and did not have the enemy at our doorstep. But we needed their scientific skills and could not have developed the bomb in 27 months without them. Unfortunately, today we have retreated to more of a bunker mentality and are not as welcoming as we were then. For that matter, we’re not as welcoming as we were in 1956, when America allowed me to immigrate from Austria.  

The scientists involved in this project had the agility to switch designs as they made new discoveries. Could you describe the type of talent and skills that allowed them to pursue new ideas so quickly?

Success of the Manhattan Project is typically viewed as the work of physicists. But it was really an incredible array of talent – spanning physics, chemistry, mathematics, computing, engineering, materials and others, that allowed it to deal with surprises like the gun-assembly not working with plutonium. That collaboration also allowed the team to redirect its energy when they found out that although plutonium may have been the physicist’s dream, it was an engineering nightmare. The metallurgists found a fix by adding a bit of gallium as I explain in the video. Understanding why that’s so occupied a good part of my scientific life at Los Alamos.

How does your time at Los Alamos National Laboratory relate to the work you do now with students and pre- and post-doctoral fellows at CISAC?

Once the Soviet Union dissolved at the end of 1991, I turned much of my attention to working with the Russian nuclear establishment to mitigate the new nuclear dangers resulting from the political chaos. My Russian nuclear colleagues and I captured twenty-plus years of collaboration in our book Doomed to Cooperate. It turned out that CISAC became a great place for me to continue this work in 2005 and to expand it to the other nuclear countries around the world. Once at Stanford, I found that one of the most rewarding things I could do was to teach and work with students and post-docs. That’s what I continue to do today in what we call Young Professionals Nuclear Forums. We bring together around a dozen young Americans to work with their counterparts in Russia on nuclear challenges. We do the same with Chinese and American young professionals.

Since its founding, CISAC has always had two directors—one with a science background and the other from the social sciences. As both a former director of CISAC and Los Alamos, can you explain how an academic center like CISAC, with that kind of combined leadership, can help to prepare the next generation of thinkers in international security?

That’s one of the things that attracted me to CISAC. From CISAC’s founding days of John Lewis (political science) and Sid Drell (physics), the Center has tackled problems at the intersection of the natural and social sciences. And, that’s where the hard problems lie. By focusing on the challenges that arise at this intersection, CISAC can help to educate the next generation of national security specialists to tackle the world’s difficult problems. It’s a great place to be if you are interested in international security.

Watch The Science of Trinity 

President Donald Trump’s chief arms control envoy last week acknowledged the possibility that the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) could be extended, but he added, “only under select circumstances.”  He then put down conditions that, if adhered to, will ensure the Trump administration does not extend the treaty.

New START and Extension

New START limits the United States and Russia each to no more than 700 deployed strategic missiles and bombers and no more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads.  It expires by its terms on February 5, 2021 but can be extended for up to five years.  The Trump administration has adamantly refused to do that.

From the perspective of U.S. national security interests, extending New START is a no-brainer.  As confirmed by the State Department’s annual report, Russia is complying with the treaty’s limits.  Extension would keep Russian strategic forces constrained until 2026.  It would also ensure the continued flow of information about those forces produced by the treaty’s data exchanges, notifications, on-site inspections and other verification measures.

And extension would not force a single change in U.S. plans to modernize its strategic forces, as those plans were designed to fit within New START’s limits.

Russian officials, including Vladimir Putin, have raised New START extension since the first days of the Trump administration.  In 2017, Trump administration officials deferred on the issue, saying they would consider extension after (1) completion of a nuclear posture review and (2) seeing whether Russia met the treaty’s limits, which took full effect in February 2018.

Russia fully met the limits in February 2018.  At about the same time, the administration issued its nuclear posture review.  Yet, more than two years later, New START extension remains an open question.

On June 24, Amb. Marshall Billingslea, the president arms control envoy, briefed the press on his meeting with his Russian counterpart two days before in Vienna.  Asked about extending New START, Amb. Billingslea—never a fan of the treaty or, it seems, any arms control treaty—left the option open.  However, he described three conditions that will block extension.

China

Amb. Billingslea’s first condition focused on China, which he claimed had “an obligation to negotiate with [the United States] and Russia.”  Beijing certainly does not see it that way—saying no, no and again no—citing the huge disparity between the size of the Chinese nuclear arsenal and those of the United States and Russia.  China has less than one-tenth the number of nuclear warheads of each of the two nuclear superpowers.

To be sure, including China in the nuclear arms control process is desirable.  But Beijing will not join a negotiation aimed at a trilateral agreement.  What would such an agreement look like?  Neither Washington nor Moscow would agree to reduce to China’s level (about 300 nuclear warheads).  Nothing suggests either would agree to legitimize a Chinese build-up to match their levels (about 4,000 each).  Beijing presumably would not be interested in unequal limits.

This perhaps explains why, well more than one year after it began calling for China’s inclusion, the Trump administration appears to have no proposal or outline or even principles for a trilateral agreement.

For its part, Moscow would welcome China limiting its nuclear arms.  The Russians, however, choose not press the question, raising instead Britain and France.  Amb. Billingslea pooh-poohed the notion, but France has as many nuclear weapons as China, and Britain has two-thirds the Chinese number.  The logic for bringing in one but not the other two is unclear.  The question raises yet another hinderance to including China.

A more nuanced approach might prove more successful.  It would entail a new U.S.-Russian agreement providing for reductions beyond those mandated by New START.  Washington and Moscow could then ask the Chinese (and British and French) to provide transparency on their nuclear weapons numbers and agree not to increase their total weapons or exceed a specified number.  Much like his president, however, the arms control envoy does not appear to be into nuance.

Non-Strategic Nuclear Weapons

Amb. Billingslea’s second condition dealt with including in a new negotiation nuclear arms not constrained by New START, especially Russia’s large number of non-strategic nuclear weapons.  Again, this is laudable goal, but getting there will require much time and unpalatable decisions that the Trump administration will not want to face.

Russian officials have regularly tied their readiness to discuss non-strategic nuclear arms to issues of concern to them, particularly missile defense.  The Trump administration,  however, has made clear that it has zero interest in negotiating missile defense.

Even if Moscow severed that linkage, negotiating limits on non-strategic nuclear weapons would take time.  New START limits deployed strategic warheads by virtue of their association with deployed strategic missiles and bombers.  The only warheads directly counted are those on deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

By contrast, most if not all non-strategic warheads are not mounted on their delivery systems.  Monitoring any agreed limits would require new procedures, including for conducting on-site inspections within storage facilities.  This does not pose an insoluble challenge, but it represents new territory for both Washington and Moscow.  Working out limits, counting rules and verification measures will prove neither quick nor easy.

Verification

Amb. Billingslea earlier suggested some dissatisfaction with New START’s verification measures, though he did not articulate any particular flaw, and, as noted, the State Department’s annual compliance report says Russia is meeting the treaty’s terms.  Last week, he made verification measures for his desired U.S.-Russia-China agreement the third condition for New START extension. 

Verification measures are critical.  Treaty parties have to have confidence that all sides are observing the agreement’s limits or, at a minimum, that any militarily significant violation would be detected in time to take countervailing measures.  Working out agreement on those measures will prove a long process, even in just a bilateral negotiation, especially if it addresses issues such as stored nuclear weapons.  That is not just because of Russian reluctance to accept intrusive verification measures such as on-site inspection; the U.S. military also wants verification measures that do not greatly impact its normal operations.

Russian officials have reiterated their readiness to extend New START now.  Amb. Billingslea’s conditions will thwart extension for the foreseeable future.  That’s unfortunate.  By not extending New START, the Trump administration forgoes a simple action that would strengthen U.S. national security and make Americans safer.

From the CISAC Co-Directors

June 9, 2020

Today, CISAC scholars have released a statement of solidarity with all those who suffer from, and peacefully protest against, police brutality and systemic racism. We are all profoundly affected by the painful last minutes of George Floyd’s life. His death was racism in its most blatant form, but it is not an isolated event. Rather, it is part of a wider pattern and deeper stain on our national experience. As jarring as George Floyd’s death was to watch, countless other people of color suffer structural violence and a slower death over the course of their lives as a consequence of deeply ingrained inequality and discrimination. For too long, too many have been deprived of the simple expectation of the opportunity to live, work, and raise their families in safety. Black and brown communities, as well as other minority communities, continue to be systematically denied equal access to their most basic rights, as well as to financial opportunity, education, and medical care—circumstances that have been all brought into even sharper relief by the COVID-19 pandemic. Their lived experiences are unfathomable, and too often ignored, by many who are sheltered by their own privilege. As hundreds of thousands peacefully march to end this injustice, following in the best traditions of our democracy, we stand with them.

The statement below was initiated by CISAC Fellows. We thank the Fellows for their initiative at a time when everyone should rise to the occasion and act. At the same time, we realize that statements of solidarity are insufficient. As co-directors, we accept that our responsibility is to lead CISAC in a manner that helps combat racism and other forms of injustice so that true equality is actually attained. Our power and position of privilege as a policy center at a renowned university extends well beyond the relevance of our scholarship. Every decision, no matter how small, should reduce privilege and increase access to resources at Stanford. The road forward will not be easy. Since each of us is a product of unique circumstance with a different perspective, there will not always be agreement. But, by taking action beyond our scholarship, by expanding the voices at our table, by carefully and thoughtfully listening to those voices, and by committing to concrete steps—small and large—we can together make the world safer and more just. This is a burden we all must bear, and we will.

As the co-directors of CISAC, we commit to publicly releasing an action plan outlining specific additional steps we will take as an institution—in coordination with the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies—no later than the beginning of the fall quarter of 2020.

If you are part of the Stanford community and would like to add your signature to the statement below, please do so at this link.

Rod Ewing and Colin Kahl

Co-Directors

Center for International Security and Cooperation

Stanford University

Statement of Solidarity from CISAC

We the undersigned scholars at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) express our anguish and outrage at the brutal killing of George Floyd—and the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Nina Pop, David McAtee, and countless other black Americans who have lost, and continue to lose their lives, as a consequence of police brutality and racism. These recent injustices are only the tip of an iceberg of systemic racism and the violence stemming from it.

To all those in the Stanford community and beyond experiencing hardship and pain in these difficult times, we stand with you. We express our solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and all minority groups that face the indignity and violence of structural inequality every day.  

We condemn the use of violence against peaceful protesters. As experts in national and international security, we are deeply concerned with threats to deploy military forces to suppress constitutional rights—actions that endanger the very core of our democracy. 

We reaffirm our commitment to diversity, social justice, and basic human dignity. We also recognize our position of privilege in this deeply unequal society, and find it important to reflect, learn, act, and recommit to these basic values as a community. 

As an academic and policy community, CISAC’s mission is to generate knowledge to build a safer world. But we recognize that mission is impossible to achieve without addressing the structural inequalities that put true safety and security for so many people around the world out of reach. CISAC is committed to diversity, drawing on scholars from a range of disciplines, experience, and racial and cultural backgrounds. CISAC is also committed to civil discourse and constructive dialogue. As a community, we reject hate, intolerance, and discrimination in all its forms. But at this moment of national reflection, we know there is much more we must do to build a more inclusive institution and disrupt the structures of racism and inequality that we knowingly and unknowingly perpetuate. Moving forward, we will redouble our commitment to diversity and inclusion in our events, curriculum, fellowship program, and recruiting and hiring practices. We will do more to include Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latinx, and LGBTQI scholars and voices, as well as those from other underrepresented minorities, in our conversations. As scholars, we also commit to widening the aperture of national and international security conversations to include a fuller appreciation for the role of discrimination and inequality in all its forms.  

List of Signatories (institutional affiliations provided for identification purposes only)

Shazeda Ahmed, Pre-doctoral Fellow, CISAC/Human-Centered AI Institute

Nandita Balakrishnan, Pre-doctoral Fellow, CISAC

Jody Berger, Communications Manager, CISAC

Lauren J. Borja, Post-doctoral Fellow, CISAC 

Daniel Bush, Post-doctoral Fellow, CISAC/Stanford Internet Observatory

Melissa Carlson, Pre-doctoral Fellow, CISAC 

Alicia R. Chen, MIP Student and TA, CISAC

Kevin Chen, Research Assistant, CISAC

Martha Crenshaw, Senior Fellow, CISAC

Elena Crespo, Honors Student '20, CISAC

Christophe Crombez, Senior Research Scholar, The Europe Center, FSI

Debak Das, Pre-doctoral Fellow, CISAC

Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow, CDDRL

François Diaz-Maurin, Affiliate, CISAC

Paul N. Edwards, Senior Research Scholar, CISAC and Director, Program in Science, Technology & Society

Lisa Einstein, MIP Master's Student and TA, CISAC 

Rodney C. Ewing, CISAC Co-Director, Senior Fellow at FSI and Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security, Professor of Geological Sciences

James D. Fearon, Senior Fellow at FSI and Geballe Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences

Thomas Fingar, Shorenstein APARC Fellow at FSI

Colin Garvey, Postdoctoral Fellow, CISAC & Institute for Human-Centered AI

Jonah Glick-Unterman, CISAC Honors '20, Political Science

Megan Gorman, Associate Director for Administration and Finance at FSI

Rose Gottemoeller, Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Distinguished Lecturer, CISAC

Andrea Gray, Associate Director, CISAC

Daniel Greene, Post-doctoral Fellow, CISAC

Melissa Griffith, Pre-doctoral Fellow, CISAC 

Anna Grzymala-Busse, Professor of Political Science and Senior Fellow, FSI

Rosanna Guadagno, Director, Information Warfare Working Group, CISAC

Amr Hamzawy, Senior Research Scholar, CDDRL, FSI

David Havasy, Associate Director of Operations, Cyber Policy Center

Gabrielle Hecht, Senior Fellow at FSI, and Frank Stanton Professor of Nuclear Security, CISAC, Professor, History

Siegfried S. Hecker, Senior Fellow at FSI, Emeritus, CISAC

Martin Hellman, Professor, Electrical Engineering, Emeritus

Connor Hoffmann, Research and Programs Assistant, CISAC

David Holloway, Senior Fellow at FSI, and Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, CISAC

Edward Ifft, Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution

Colin Kahl, CISAC Co-Director, Steven C. Házy Senior Fellow 

Bronte Kass, Program Manager, FSI

Alla Kassianova, Research Scholar, CISAC

David Kennedy, Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History, Emeritus

Lindsay Krall, Post-doctoral Fellow, CISAC 

David Laitin, James. T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science

John Lee, Finance and Research Administration Manager, CISAC

Gabriela Levikow, Research Assistant, CISAC

Herb Lin, Senior Research Scholar, CISAC

Steve Luby, Senior Fellow FSI and Professor of Medicine, Infectious Diseases

Xinru Ma, Post-doctoral Fellow, CISAC

Robert J. MacCoun, James & Patricia Kowal Professor of Law, Stanford University

Beatriz Magaloni, Senior Fellow at FSI and Professor, Political Science

Iris Malone, Post-doctoral Fellow, CISAC

Michael May, Professor Emeritus, Engineering-Economic Systems and Operations Research, CISAC

Michael McFaul, Director, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies

Brett McGurk, Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Distinguished Lecturer, CISAC

Katie McKinney, Research Assistant, CISAC 

Taylor McLamb, Research Assistant, CISAC

 Bryan Metzger, CISAC Honors '20, CISAC

John C Mitchell, Mary and Gordon Crary Family Professor, Computer Science

Asfandyar Mir, Post-doctoral Fellow, CISAC

Gary Mukai, Director, Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education

Norman M. Naimark, Senior Fellow at FSI and Professor, History

Scott K. Nelson, Development Associate, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies

Anna Nguyen Thuy An,  Master's in International Policy, Asia Pacific Fellow, FSI

Megan Palmer, Executive Director, Bio Policy & Leadership Initiatives, Bioengineering

Reid Pauly, Post-doctoral Fellow, CISAC

Steven Pifer, William Perry Research Fellow, CISAC 

Eric H. Phillips, MD, MPH, Alumni-Class of 1975

William M. Phillips III, Affiliate, CISAC

Maxime Polleri, Post-doctoral Fellow, CISAC

Michelle Pualuan, Program Administrator, Cyber Policy Center

David Relman, Senior Fellow at FSI, and Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor Stanford School of Medicine

Scott Sagan, Senior Fellow at FSI, and Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, CISAC

Kenneth A. Schultz, Professor, Political Science

Rylan Sekiguchi, Manager of Curriculum and Instructional Design, Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education

Elliot Serbin, Research Analyst, CISAC

Gi-Wook Shin, Director, Shorenstein APARC

Tim Stearns, Professor, Biology, Professor, Genetics 

Kathryn Stoner, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director at FSI

Michael R. Tomz, Professor of Political Science

Julien de Troullioud de Lanversin, Post-doctoral Fellow, CISAC

Harold Trinkunas, Deputy Director, CISAC 

Gil-li Vardi, Lecturer in History, CISAC

Amelie-Sophie Vavrovsky, Student and Researcher, International Policy

Debbie Warren, Events & Bechtel Conference Center Manager, FSI

Allen S. Weiner, Director, Program in International and Comparative Law, Stanford Law School

Jeremy Weinstein, Professor of Political Science, CISAC

Leonard Weiss, Visiting Scholar and Network Affiliate, CISAC

Katherine Welsh, Administrative Associate, FSI/CDDRL

Alice Wenner, Communications Associate, FSI

Tara Wright, Communications, Cyber Policy Center

Amy Zegart, Senior Fellow at FSI and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, CISAC

Fred Cohen was the first person to introduce the term “computer virus.” In a 1984 paper, he defined it as “a program that can ‘infect’ other programs by modifying them to include a possibly evolved copy of itself. With the infection property, a virus can spread throughout a computer system or network using the authorizations of every user using it to infect their programs. Every program that gets infected may also act as a virus and thus the infection grows.” (The original 1984 paper was eventually published in 1987.) Since then, the security company Kaspersky claims, rightly so, that “when it comes to cybersecurity, there are few terms with more name recognition than ‘computer viruses.’”

This bit of history has taken on new meaning now that the world is in the midst of a global pandemic caused by a biological virus, the novel coronavirus, that induces an unusual and novel disease, COVID-19.

Read the rest at Lawfare Blog

The New START Treaty has come under fire in recent weeks. Marshall Billingslea, President Trump’s new special envoy for arms control, said the Obama administration negotiated a very weak verification regime, which is odd because Trump administration officials have repeatedly acknowledged the security benefits of New START.

Read full article at Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

Ending the moratorium would not advance U.S. security interests.  The United States has conducted about as many nuclear weapons tests as the rest of the world combined (and 30 percent more than the number conducted by the Soviet Union/Russia).  U.S. weapons scientists learned more from testing.  When I served as a diplomat at the American Embassy in Moscow in 1988, I accompanied a U.S. team to the Soviet nuclear test site at Semipalatinsk (in what is now Kazakhstan).  Our Soviet hosts showed us a vertical shaft for an upcoming underground test; it was about three feet in diameter.  A U.S. team member from the test site in Nevada, which the Soviets would visit the following month, commented that U.S.-drilled vertical shafts for nuclear tests typically were nine to eleven feet in diameter.  That maximized the area above the weapon for instruments that would gather a burst of data in the nanosecond before they vaporized.

The testing moratorium and the CTBT, if ratified and entered into force, would seem to lock in an area of U.S. advantage regarding nuclear weapons and nuclear effects.  Why would we want others to test and erode that advantage?

Up until the idea of gaining leverage with Beijing and Moscow arose, the primary possible reason for a return to testing was if it became necessary to confirm the reliability of a weapons type in the stockpile.  However, the National Nuclear Security Administration has overseen for 25 years the Stockpile Stewardship Program, intended to confirm that U.S. nuclear weapons are safe, secure and reliable without having to test them in a manner that produces a nuclear yield. To do so, the program uses supercomputers, modeling and tools such as the Dual Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamic Test Facility (think of the world’s most powerful X-ray device).

Each year, the commander of Strategic Command and the directors of the national nuclear laboratories at Los Alamos, Sandia and Lawrence Livermore certify the safety and reliability of the nuclear stockpile.  When I visited Los Alamos several years ago, the director told me that, as long as the Stockpile Stewardship Program was funded, he was confident that nuclear testing was not needed.  He added that, as a result of the program, weapons scientists had learned things about how nuclear weapons work that they did not and could not learn from testing nuclear weapons underground.

The smart thing for U.S. national interests is to continue the moratorium, ratify the CTBT, and press others to ratify so that the treaty can be brought into force.  The Senate failed to give consent to ratification in 1999, due to concerns about how to maintain the stockpile’s reliability without nuclear testing and about monitoring the treaty.  The Stockpile Stewardship Program, just in its beginning stage then, can now answer the first concern and has been doing so.

As for monitoring a test ban, U.S. national technical means have improved over the past two decades, and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization has established the International Monitoring System with some 300 stations around the world.  It can detect underground nuclear explosions down to below one kiloton (the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima had a yield of 15 kilotons) as well as detecting tests in the atmosphere or ocean, both of which are banned by the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty.  Once in force, the CTBT also provides for an inspection mechanism.

As former Secretary of State George Shultz said in 2013, senators might have been correct not to consent to ratification in 1999, but given the Stockpile Stewardship Program’s development and enhanced monitoring systems, they would be right to vote for ratification now.

Conducting a nuclear test to bring China and Russia to the negotiating table will not work.  It will instead open the door for others to resume testing and close a nuclear weapons knowledge gap that favors the United States.  That will not make us safer or more secure.  It is an unwise idea that hopefully will continue to meet resistance within the U.S. government.