Virtual Library

Our virtual library is an online repository of all of the reports, papers, and briefings that IST has produced, as well as works that have influenced our thinking.

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Reports

Nuclear Command, Control, and Communications (NC3): A Primer on Strategic Warning, Decision Support, and Adaptive Targeting Subsystems 

Alice Saltini, Sylvia Mishra, Philip Reiner

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Reports

Securing the Signal: Mitigation Strategies to Strengthen Crisis Communication Channels

Christian Steins

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Reports

Strengthening Nuclear Crisis Communications: Steps to Implement Mesh Networks to Enhance Resilience & Security

Christian Steins

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Reports

Enhancing Cyber Resilience through Insurance: Revisiting Anti-Bundling Regulation

Sophia Mauro and Taylor Grossman

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Op-ed

ROOST Reminds Us Why Open Source Tools Matter

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Reports

Navigating AI Compliance, Part 2: Risk Mitigation Strategies for Safeguarding Against Future Failures

Mariami Tkeshelashvili, Tiffany Saade

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Reports

Deterring the Abuse of U.S. IaaS Products: Recommendations for a Consortium Approach

Steve Kelly, Tiffany Saade

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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

U.S. Nuclear Command and Control for the 21st Century

John Harvey

SUMMARY

In this essay, Dr. John Harvey asserts that the US NC3 system “must seek vastly improved senior leader conferencing capabilities to support decisions that go beyond what some of us call the Cold War’s “multiple choice test”—that is, which major attack option to execute. To support consultations among allies, partners and potentially adversaries, in addition to senior military and advisors in complex conflict scenarios involving, say, combined offense and defense, nuclear and conventional operations—that is, the “essay test”—will require global, secure, high-quality voice, video and data transmissions that are resilient in stressed nuclear environments and go well beyond what was required for the Cold War mission.”

By addressing the sustainment and modernization of the NC2 system, it identifies the key functions of the system and the specific system elements that enable those functions. It describes how the system that was developed and fielded during the Cold War, and designed to meet Cold War security needs, must change to address new thinking about how conventional conflict in the 21st century, and escalation to nuclear use, will evolve. A specific focus is the information and decision support needs of the President in responding to 21st-century conflict scenarios and how those needs are much more varied and extensive than during the Cold War. In light of this discussion, two priorities are advanced for NC2 modernization:

Fix the legacy NC2 system, including the so-called “thin line” architecture, to address the nuclear scenarios we focused on during the Cold War and which have not yet gone away.

Develop an NC2 concept and associated architecture to address “modern” nuclear conflict, and generate a plan to field it over the next 10-15 years. This includes a robust and provocative discussion of the cyber elements inherent to such an architecture – food for much further discussion.​

This report is accompanied by a Fourth Leg podcast: The System Can’t Be Perfect.

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