D360’s International Security at the Nuclear Nexus series examines cross-cutting strategic security challenges at the intersection of nuclear weapons and other domains, including cyber, space, and conventional war.
The expansion of dual-capable delivery systems and the diversification of strategic forms of warfare to include cyber, space, and advanced high precision conventional strike capabilities have sharply eroded structural conventional-nuclear firebreaks.
Artificial intelligence may be used in ways that do not directly involve or are not immediately recognizable to senior decisionmakers. These areas of AI application are far left of an operational decision or decision to launch and include four priority sectors: (1) security and defense; (2) intelligence activities and indications and warning; (3) modeling and simulation, optimization, and data analytics; and (4) logistics and maintenance.
In the nuclear realm, the challenge of civilian control is solved with presidential authority. Understanding and addressing the concessions that presidents might make to military expertise surfaces the precarious nature of civilian nuclear command and control.
The U.S. nuclear enterprise is going through a cycle of modernization that touches practically every system in the arsenal. This modernization push requires the nuclear enterprise to engage deeply with the defense acquisition system in a way it has not since its last major modernization cycle in the 1980s.
Conventional hypersonic strike weapons may undermine deterrence by complicating early-warning and increasing the vulnerability of forward-based forces to surprise attack below the nuclear threshold. Nevertheless, history shows that adaptation to strategically disruptive technologies is possible.
How would new norms for testing space weapons affect nuclear stability and traditional deterrence? Would a direct-ascent ASAT limit or ban create stability or further destabilize the space and nuclear domains?
Today, traditional nuclear missions increasingly intersect with emerging technical domains such as space and cyber. How can policymakers mitigate the risks that bureaucratic competition can pose to the shared mission of defending the nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) system?
What would detailed conventional nuclear integration in doctrine, concepts, and large-scale exercises look like? Joint concepts inform high-level military doctrine, which in turn provides guidance on what the military should aim to achieve through planning and training in large-scale exercises.
Understanding international security issues at the “nuclear nexus” is critical for managing a contemporary security environment characterized by rapid technological innovation, increased strategic competition, and a looming nuclear shadow.