Deterrence
Iran’s Nuclear Tightrope: Between Power and Peril
The article discussed is “What Good Is a Nuclear Threshold Capability? Lessons from Iran’s Nuclear Program and Recent Regional Conflict.” YouTube · Apple Podcasts · Amazon Music Hosts: Sheena Chestnut Greitens and Ryan Vest Producer:…
When Our Minds Go Nuclear: Rethinking Nuclear Strategy Through the Psychology of Risk and Decision-Making
Cognitive biases can systematically distort judgments about the use of nuclear weapons, potentially undermining nuclear stability and increasing the risk of nuclear war. In survey experiments with nearly 3,000 US participants, we show how psychological…
What Good Is a Nuclear Threshold Capability? Lessons from Iran’s Nuclear Program and Recent Regional Conflict
The 2023–25 conflict in the Middle East was the first regional conflagration in which Iran was a nuclear threshold state. In theory, nuclear latency can confer strategic benefits, as Iran’s adversaries could be deterred from escalation or pressure by the…
The Balance of Control and Vulnerability: Cyber and Nuclear Risks
Dr. Jackie Schneider moves beyond Hollywood analogies and pop-culture fears, and argues that common understandings of how cyber operations impact nuclear stability are often misguided. She unpacks three specific pathways to escalation—deliberate,…
Challenges and Opportunities for AI in Military Systems
Michael Horowitz discusses his recent TNSR article tackling misconceptions about AI, how militaries have long used algorithms, and why use cases and data matter—especially when nuclear applications rely on simulated data. He examines human-machine teaming,…
Psychological Biases in the Era of Nuclear Weapons and AI
Rose McDermott explains how common judgment biases can undermine nuclear deterrence and strategic stability, especially under time pressure and with emerging technologies like AI, using Kahneman’s Type 1 (fast, intuitive) and Type 2 (slow, analytic) thinking…
Understanding Schelling’s Nuclear Paradigms with Francis J. Gavin
Francis J. Gavin explains why Thomas Schelling remains foundational to nuclear strategy despite being an economist, and argues that “strategic stability” is often invoked without clear definition. He highlights tensions between mutual vulnerability and US…
Strategic Stability in a Rapidly Changing World
Harold Trinkunas previews our special issue on strategic stability by explaining how Cold War deterrence assumptions rooted in a bilateral US–Soviet relationship no longer hold amid more nuclear-armed actors, wider access to AI, cyber, hypersonics, and the…
The (Elusive) Search for Strategic Stability
The combination of technological and geopolitical change puts pressure on the search for strategic stability in the contemporary international environment.
Ensuring US Military Readiness in the Indo-Pacific
Eyck Freymann and Harry Halem argue that the United States can sustain conventional deterrence against China into the 2030s through targeted investments in logistics and the industrial base. They join our editors to discuss why a holistic view of the military…
Conventional Options Theory in the New Nuclear Era
Tyler Bowen from the US Naval War College joins us to discuss the logic of conventional coercion in nuclear crises. As the US faces nuclear-armed adversaries like Russia and China, understanding how to "thread the needle" between defense and escalation is…
The Arsenal of Democracy: Keeping China Deterred in an Age of Hard Choices
The margin of deterrence against China is rapidly shrinking, driven not by a failure of US technological innovation, but by the American and allied defense industrial base’s inability to field and sustain cutting-edge capabilities at scale, at speed, and…