In order to understand the effect of economic interdependence on conflict and on deterrents to conflict, and to assess the viability of online games as experiments to perform research, an online serious game was used to gather data on economic, political, and military factors in the game setting. These data were operationalized in forms analogous to variables from the real-world Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs) dataset. A set of economic predictor variables was analyzed using linear mixed effects regression models in an attempt to discover relationships between the predictor variables and conflict outcomes. Differences between the online game results and results from the real world are discussed.
Suppose Tom is working to develop a rocket. Susan is very interested in knowing what Tom is doing but cannot directly observe his testing of the rocket propulsion system. Specifically, she would like to know if Tom has the ability to launch a heavy rocket or a light rocket. She thinks she can learn about Tom’s capability by learning about what type of rocket engine Tom is using, and the number of rockets in the design. She is considering buying a special sensor that can observe flashes from the rocket firing up during the tests and indicate if the rockets fire in a sufficiently narrow window of time such that they would successfully lift a heavy rocket.
The doctrine of nuclear deterrence and a belief in its importance underpins many aspects of United States policy; it informs strategic force structures within the military, incentivizes multi-billion-dollar weapon-modernization programs within the Department of Energy, and impacts international alliances with the 29 member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The doctrine originally evolved under the stewardship of some of the most impressive minds of the twentieth century, including the physicist and H-bomb designer Herman Kahn, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling, and the preeminent political scientist and diplomat Henry Kissinger.
Safety-focused risk analysis and assessment approaches struggle to adequately include malicious, deliberate acts against the nuclear power industry's fissile and waste material, infrastructure, and facilities. Further, existing methods do not adequately address non- proliferation issues. Treating safety, security, and safeguards concerns independently is inefficient because, at best, it may not take explicit advantage of measures that provide benefits against multiple risk domains, and, at worst, it may lead to implementations that increase overall risk due to incompatibilities. What is needed is an integrated safety, security and safeguards risk (or "3SR") framework for describing and assessing nuclear power risks that can enable direct trade-offs and interactions in order to inform risk management processes -- a potential paradigm shift in risk analysis and management. These proceedings of the Sandia ePRA Workshop (held August 22-23, 2017) are an attempt to begin the discussions and deliberations to extend and augment safety focused risk assessment approaches to include security concerns and begin moving towards a 3S Risk approach. Safeguards concerns were not included in this initial workshop and are left to future efforts. This workshop focused on four themes in order to begin building out a the safety and security portions of the 3S Risk toolkit: 1. Historical Approaches and Tools 2. Current Challenges 3. Modern Approaches 4. Paths Forward and Next Steps This report is organized along the four areas described above, and concludes with a summary of key points. 2 Contact: rforres@sandia.gov; +1 (925) 294-2728
The Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation engaged several Chinese nuclear organizations in cooperative research that focused on responses to radiological and nuclear terrorism. The objective was to identify joint research initiatives to reduce the global dangers of such threats and to pursue initial technical collaborations in several high priority areas. Initiatives were identified in three primary research areas: 1) detection and interdiction of smuggled nuclear materials; 2) nuclear forensics; and 3) radiological (“dirty bomb”) threats and countermeasures. Initial work emphasized the application of systems and risk analysis tools, which proved effective in structuring the collaborations. The extensive engagements between national security nuclear experts in China and the U.S. during the research strengthened professional relationships between these important communities.