The US government and its social media partners are bolstering their defenses against foreign election interference and campaigns to corrode democratic governance. Those efforts are vital but inadequate for the emerging security environment. The United States should also account for the risk that in intense regional crises, adversaries will use information operations (IOs) to coerce US and allied behavior. In particular, opponents will seek to convince US and allied policymakers that unless they back down, their nations will suffer punishment that dwarfs any gains they hope to achieve. If adversaries cannot prevail through IOs alone, they may fulfill their threats and launch increasingly destructive cyberattacks, paired with warnings that further punishment will follow until the US and its allies capitulate.The US military is rapidly improving its ability to conduct coercive operations against US opponents. Yet, the federal government has barely begun to develop strategies and capabilities to defeat equivalent campaigns against us. This study examines the vulnerabilities of the US public and policymaking process to coercive IOs and analyzes Chinese and Russian technologies to exploit these vulnerabilities with unprecedented effectiveness. The study also proposes options to defeat (and, ideally, help deter) future coercive campaigns, in ways that uphold the Constitution and leverage progress already underway against electoral interference and the corrosion of democratic governance.
Jen Dailey Lambert, Michelle Rose, Jeremy Ratcliff, Megan O’Connor, Tara Kedia, Sophia Oluic, Jeff Freeman, and Kaitlin Lovett
Situational awareness during disaster response is critical as it enables the response community to rapidly and efficiently assist those in urgent need during the time-sensitive, acute phase of a disaster. New technologies can drastically improve the effectiveness of response operations: satellite imagery to quickly map the destructive path of a hurricane, social media tracking to identify communities of increased need, and computer modeling to predict the route of a wildfire to inform evacuations. The US government has prioritized implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) systems throughout the federal agencies, including those technologies that may assist in disaster response. In this report, we contribute a technological road map for delivering to the response community near- and more distant-future AI-enabled technologies that could aid in SA during disasters. By exploring current and historical technology trends, successes, and difficulties, we envision the benefits and vulnerabilities that such new technologies could bring to disaster response. Given the complexities associated with both disasters and AI-enabled technologies, an integrated approach to development will be necessary to ensure that new technologies are both science driven and operationally feasible.
James Miller and Robert Butler
The United States should establish a National Cyber Defense Center (NCDC) in the Office of the National Cyber Director to proactively address cyber threats to US interests. The NCDC would plan and coordinate US governmental efforts across four areas: cyber deterrence, active cyber defense, offensive cyber operations in support of defense, and incident management. It would also work closely with the private sector, state and local governments, and US allies. Such a proactive and comprehensive approach is needed to deal with cyber adversaries who are exploiting seams within the US government and between the US government and the private sector.
Michael Frankel, James Scouras, and George Ullrich
This report addresses the questions of whether the United States should resume nuclear testing and, if not, whether it should better prepare to do so in the future. Our goal is to provide a comprehensive and balanced consideration of all significant arguments that inform these questions. To place these arguments in the proper context, we briefly recount US nuclear testing history, describing alternative objectives for nuclear tests and providing a taxonomical retrospective of significant surprises encountered—in the nuclear environment, in vulnerabilities of military systems, and in weapon performance and safety. We review as well the critical role played by Science-Based Stockpile Stewardship in lieu of testing and the concerns of its critics. We also describe the current state of nuclear test readiness and assess whether the United States can presently meet its readiness obligations. After considering all significant technical and policy arguments and counterarguments, both for and against test resumption, we conclude that under present circumstances, the United States should not resume nuclear testing because of the lack of a compelling national security need combined with potentially significant negative geopolitical consequences for nuclear proliferation and reignition of a nuclear arms race. However, we identify a series of future technical and political developments whose occurrence would require revisiting our decision calculus. We end the report with recommendations to improve test readiness and, as a final thought, place the issue of whether or not to resume nuclear testing in the context of conflicting far- and near-term US national security goals.
Alan Brown and Marc Mangel
Jonathon Cosgrove
As part of an overall examination of nuclear weapons in post–Cold War crises, this case study examines the role of nuclear weapons in tensions between the United States and Russia during the invasion of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. The initial success of Russian efforts to coerce Ukraine away from association with the European Union (EU) triggered a popular protest movement that led to the removal of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych from office. Faced with a new, pro-Western government in Kiev, Russia immediately moved to invade the Crimean Peninsula. As international tensions rose, both the United States and the EU sought to maintain Ukraine’s territorial integrity through diplomatic and economic means. However, Russia did not accept US nonintervention as a given and sought to deter action to reverse the invasion by brandishing its nonstrategic nuclear arsenal through nuclear messaging, allusions to nuclear first-use policies, drawing of nuclear red lines, and the maneuver of dual-use platforms onto the occupied Crimean Peninsula. By examining the roles that nuclear weapons and their characteristics played throughout the crisis, this case study points to potentially important variables for consideration in future academic studies, and sounds the warning for policy makers on how Russia might leverage its nonstrategic nuclear arsenal in future confrontations.
“Measure Twice, Cut Once: Assessing Some China–US Technology Connections” Series
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory commissioned “Measure Twice, Cut Once: Assessing Some China–US Technology Connections,” a series of papers from experts in specific technology areas to explore the advisability and potential consequences of decoupling.
In each of these areas, the authors have explored the feasibility and desirability of increased technological separation and offered their thoughts on a possible path forward. The authors all recognize the real risks presented by aggressive, and frequently illegal, Chinese attempts to achieve superiority in critical technologies. However, the project also represents a reality check regarding the feasibility and potential downsides of broadly severing technology ties with China.
The project was led by former Secretary of the Navy Richard Danzig, initially in partnership with Avril Haines, former Deputy National Security Advisor. This compilation of papers was authored by experts from across the nation, and the views of the authors are their own.
“Measure Twice, Cut Once: Assessing Some China–US Technology Connections” Series Documents:
South China Sea Military Capabilities Series
J. Michael Dahm
In the information age, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) believe that success in combat will be realized by winning a struggle for information superiority in the operational batttlespace. China’s informationized warfare strategy and information-centric operational concepts are central to how the PLA will generate combat power. These South China Sea (SCS) military capability (MILCAP) studies provide a survey of military technologies and systems on Chinese-claimed island-reefs in the disputed Spratly Islands. The relative compactness of China’s SCS outposts makes them an attractive case study of PLA military capabilities. Each island-reef and its associated military base facilities may be captured in a single commercial satellite image. An examination of capabilities on China’s island-reefs reveals the PLA’s informationized warfare strategy and the military’s designs on generating what the Chinese call “information power.” The SCS MILCAP series is organized around different categories of information power capabilities, from reconnaissance to communications to hardened infrastructure. Kinetic effects will remain an important component of PLA operational design. However, any challenger to Chinese military capabilities in the SCS must first account for and target the very core of the PLA’s informationized warfare strategy—its information power.
South China Sea Military Capabilities Series Documents:
Erin Hahn and James Scouras
What if North Korea were to actually use one or more nuclear weapons? How should the United States respond? The singularly important US prewar objective is to deter nuclear war, but once nuclear weapons have been unleashed, this objective will immediately become moot. US post-nuclear-attack imperatives will likely include (1) physically preventing further use of nuclear weapons by North Korea; (2) cognitively dissuading further North Korean nuclear use; (3) convincing other adversaries that nuclear use is a horrendous idea; (4) allaying allies’ concerns about extended deterrence; (5) satisfying domestic political demands; (6) conforming to international law; and (7) last, and quite possibly least, restoring the nuclear taboo. We address each of these imperatives in turn. Our goal is not to determine the “correct” response to North Korean nuclear first use but rather to identify the principal considerations involved in each of these imperatives. Fulfilling all these diverse imperatives in any particular scenario is highly improbable, so we also briefly address the relative priorities among several of them. We conclude with a discussion of the roles of the research and analysis community, the public, and political and military elites who may find themselves in positions of advising the president in a future nuclear crisis.
James Scouras
Nuclear war is clearly a global catastrophic risk, but it is not an existential risk as is sometimes carelessly claimed. Unfortunately, the consequence and likelihood components of the risk of nuclear war are both highly uncertain. In particular, for nuclear wars that include targeting of multiple cities, nuclear winter may result in more fatalities across the globe than the better-understood effects of blast, prompt radiation, and fallout. Electromagnetic pulse effects, which could range from minor electrical disturbances to the complete collapse of the electric grid, are similarly highly uncertain. Nuclear war likelihood assessments are largely based on intuition, and they span the spectrum from zero to certainty. Notwithstanding these profound uncertainties, we must manage the risk of nuclear war with the knowledge we have. Benefit-cost analysis and other structured analytic methods applied to evaluate risk mitigation measures must acknowledge that we often do not even know whether many proposed approaches (e.g., reducing nuclear arsenals) will have a net positive or negative effect. Multidisciplinary studies are needed to better understand the consequences and likelihood of nuclear war and the complex relationship between these two components of risk, and to predict both the direction and magnitude of risk mitigation approaches.
Kelly Rooker and James Scouras
The binomial distribution is widely used across many different disciplines. In cases where data can be represented with a binomial distribution, an estimate for the binomial distribution parameter (for the probability of success) is often produced. However, uncertainty surrounding this estimate is only sometimes reported, partly due to the opacity of the various methods available for determining this uncertainty. Failing to appropriately analyze uncertainty can lead to erroneous, or at least incomplete, conclusions. Here, we explore both Bayesian and frequentist methods for quantifying uncertainty in the binomial distribution parameter, and discuss each method's various advantages and limitations. Our work is motivated by nuclear crisis outcome data. While nuclear crises have been studied to determine the likelihood of the nuclear-superior, compared to the nuclear-inferior, state winning in a crisis, there is great uncertainty in these estimates for the probability of winning. We demonstrate methods that appropriately quantify such uncertainty and use nuclear crisis outcome data to illustrate applications of the methods we present, as well as to demonstrate insights that can be provided by explicitly analyzing uncertain
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