ABOUT THE TOPIC: Why was nuclear war deemed unwinnable in the United States? Pace conventional wisdom, the truth was not self-evident. The determination that nuclear weapons were useful in a negative sense (deterring conflict), but not a positive sense (pursuing victory), became axiomatic in the Kennedy Years. Standard accounts explaining how a nuclear taboo arose highlight policymakers’ and thought leaders’ moral revulsion toward great loss of human life. This paper looks at studies of post-attack environments to argue that economic and ecological considerations were of equal if not decisive importance. The core question was how to protect and conserve the natural foundations of an advanced industrial state according to the tenets of modernization theory. Economists and ecologists thus clashed because of incompatible methods and political competition. Their collective inability to deliver concrete recommendations for overcoming an all-out thermonuclear attack reinforced a gathering international norm that the possession and use of nuclear weapons merited legal circumscriptions and prohibitions. 

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Jonathan Hunt is a MacArthur Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC for 2013-2014. He was a predoctoral fellow at CISAC for 2012-2013, and received his PhD in history from the University of Texas at Austin in December 2013. His dissertation, “Into the Bargain: The Triumph and Tragedy of Nuclear Internationalism during the mid-Cold War, 1958-1970,” examined how decolonization, the meanings of nuclear power, discord in Cold War alliances, and a schism in internationalist thought shaped how a burgeoning international community brought order to the Nuclear Age. Jonathan graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Texas at Austin with a B.A. in Plan II Honors Liberal Arts; History; and Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies. In 2011, he was a residential fellow at the George F. Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and, in 2012, at the Security and Sustainability Program of the International Green Cross in Washington, DC. He was also a Dwight D. Eisenhower/Clifford Roberts Graduate Fellow for 2012-2013. He has published in Passport, Not Even Past, The Huffington Post, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Barton J. Bernstein is Professor Emeritus of History at Stanford University. He was Professor of History at Stanford from 1965-2012. Additionally, he was previously Co-Chair of the International Relations Program and the International Policy Studies Program. Professor Bernstein received his PhD in History from Harvard University and his BA from Queens College. He has taught extensively at Stanford; in the past, his courses have included: The United States Since 1945; The Politics and Ethics of Modern Science and Technology; and Decision Making in International Crisis: The A-Bomb, the Korean War, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Professor Bernstein has published extensively in numerous academic journals, and his books include: The Truman Administration: A Documentary History; Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History; Politics and Policies of the Truman Administration; and Twentieth-Century America: Recent Interpretations.

About the Topic: The Internet in 2014 is a marvelous communication utility. It provides cheap and fast transfer of information to and from most places on or near the surface of Earth. It also regularly betrays that information to curious onlookers, commercial entities, criminals, and governments.  We will explore the origins of the Internet, the workings of its core protocols, exploits which take advantage of those protocols, and feeble attempts to make those protocols secure. In sum, we will describe the devolution of the Internet from a peaceful commons to the jungle it is today.

About the Speaker: Tom Berson is a CISAC affiliate and the founder of Anagram Laboratories. He is a cryptographer who views cryptography broadly as the science and ethics of trust and betrayal. He has spent his career working both the defensive and the offensive sides of the information security battle and is attracted most strongly to security issues raised at the confluence of technology, business, and world events.

Tom is a student of Sun Tzu’s Art of War and its applicability to modern information conflict. He was the first person to be named a Fellow of the International Association for Cryptologic Research. His citation reads, “For visionary and essential service and for numerous valuable contributions to the technical, social, and commercial development of cryptology and security.” He was an editor of the Journal of Cryptology for fourteen years. He is a Past-Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Security and Privacy.

Tom earned a B.S. in physics from the State University of New York in 1967 and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of London in 1977. He was a Visiting Fellow in Mathematics in the University of Cambridge, and is a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge. Tom has been a member of several National Research Council committees: including the Committee on Computer Security in the Department of Energy, the Committee to Review DoD C4I Plans and Programs, and the Committee on Offensive Information Warfare.