SUMMARY

This week’s episode of The Fourth Leg, “Targeting Communications and Escalation,” features the return of one of the “NC3 originals,” Paul Bracken from Yale University. We dive deep into the substance of his paper, “Communication Disruption Attacks on NC3,” which argues that states must do more to delineate intentions in attacking communications systems in order to avoid inadvertent nuclear conflict. Dr. Bracken also shares insight into the beginnings of his career and how he came to work for Herman Kahn for a decade at the Hudson Institute.

This podcast is accompanied by Paul Bracken’s report “Communication Disruption Attacks on NC3.”

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.
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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.