NC3, Entanglement, and the Inadvertent Risk of Nuclear War
Philip Reiner with Dr. James Acton
SUMMARY
In this week’s segment, we sat down with Dr. James Acton regarding the paper he wrote for our workshop back in January. Throughout the discussion, James shares with us how he evaluates the risk of inadvertent escalation arising from attacks on dual-use (nuclear and conventional warfare) command, control, communication, and intelligence (C3I) capabilities in a conventional war because such attacks would degrade the target’s nuclear command-and-control system.
This podcast is accompanied by Dr. James Acton’s paper “For Better or for Worse: The Future of C3I Entanglement”
The Fourth Leg is a series of podcasts focused on one of the most complex systems in the world today – nuclear command and control – and its increasingly complicated future. Within this series we go straight to the experts, across multiple sectors, to discuss the modernization of nuclear command and control systems.
Along with colleagues from the Nautilus Institute and the Preventive Defense Project, IST recently hosted over 50 international experts at Stanford University to anticipate technical challenges that will arise from the modernization of complex nuclear command and control systems. We aim to spotlight some of the vulnerabilities within a modernized NC3 system while furthering the conversation with this series.
Keep an eye on IST, as we will begin additional podcast series in the coming months focused on how to fix the internet, AI and global stability, and other critical tech and security issues- for now, we have so much more to talk about, so let’s get started.