Virtual Library

Our research repositories present a collection of open-source resources that showcase research and analysis that has directly influenced our initiatives. Non-IST publications are copyrighted by external authors not affiliated with IST.

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Reports

Mapping Threat Actor Behavior in the Ransomware Payment Ecosystem: A Mini-Pilot

Zoë Brammer

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Reports

May 2023 Progress Report: Ransomware Task Force: Gaining Ground

Ransomware Task Force

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Reports

Castles Built on Sand: Towards Securing the Open-Source Software Ecosystem

Zoë Brammer, Silas Cutler, Marc Rogers, Megan Stifel

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Reports

Cyber Incident Reporting Framework: Global Edition

Cyber Threat Alliance, Institute for Security and Technology

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Reports

AI-NC3 Integration in an Adversarial Context: Strategic Stability Risks and Confidence Building Measures

Alexa Wehsener, Andrew W. Reddie, Leah Walker, Philip Reiner

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Op-ed

The Nuclear Risk Reduction Approach: A Useful Path Forward for Crisis Mitigation

Sylvia Mishra

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Reports

Nuclear Crisis Communications: Mapping Risk Reduction Implementation Pathways

Sylvia Mishra

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We also welcome additional suggestions from readers, and will consider adding further resources as so much of our work has come through crowd-sourced collaboration already. If, for any chance you are an author whose work is listed here and you do not wish it to be listed in our repository, please, let us know.

SUBMIT CONTENT

Starting From The Beginning

Philip Reiner and Peter Hayes with Paul Davis

SUMMARY

In this segment Paul Davis suggest that U.S. NC3 modernization “should place increased emphasis on assuring control, avoiding accidents, and avoiding ill-informed or unwise employment of nuclear weapons.” The segment conceptualizes desirable attributes of nuclear command, control, and communications. Much of what is ordinarily front and center in such discussions has been omitted within this report. In particular, Paul does not address the myriad of structural and technical issues associated with modernizing the system’s personnel, procedures, facilities, equipment, and communications. Instead, this report asks what core functionality should be demanded, and how those demands should differ from those of the Cold War. Doing so raises provocative issues of which readers, and practitioners, may disagree, but that point back to critical first-order questions that must be asked at the outset of reconstituting the aging NC3 architecture.

This podcast is accompanied by Paul Davis’s paper “What Do We Want From the Nuclear and Control System.”


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.