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Benjamin Giltner: In this panel, I wanna discuss with all three panelists, things like the type of nuclear weapons, the number of nuclear weapons the US should possess, the cost of nuclear weapons, mainly through modernization, how much should the US be willing to pay for these weapons. And then finally, the tension between crisis stability and/​or reassurance to allies because as, Evan and the other panelists brought up at panel two, a– the US has this nuclear umbrella to prevent other countries from getting nuclear weapons, to preventing our allies from getting, these nuclear weapons. So without further ado, I’d like to go ahead and introduce all our panelists here. We’ll start off with Dr. Austin Long.

Austin is a senior nuclear fellow at MIT’s Center for Nuclear Security Policy and a leading scholar of nuclear strategy and deterrence. He previously served in senior positions on the joint staff, was a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, and an associate professor at Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. Austin’s work has appeared in well-renowned spaces like International Security, the Journal of Strategic Studies, the Texas National Security Review, and many others. He’s also the author of the book The Soul of Armies: Counterinsurgency Doctrine and Military Culture in the United States and the United Kingdom. He’s also co-edited the book Managing US Nuclear Op-Operations in the Twenty-First Century.

Austin received his BS from the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech, and a PhD in political science from MIT. We then have John Wolfsthal, who is a fellow for US nuclear policy at Pax Sapiens, and serves on the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. And up until May twenty twenty-five, he was the member of the US Department of State’s International Security Advisory Board. Prior to Pax Sapiens, he was a director of global risk at the Federation of American Scientists. He previously served as special assistant to President Obama for national security affairs, and as senior director for arms control and non-proliferation at the National Security Council.

John is the co-author of the book Deadly Arsenals: Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction, and he has authored numerous op-eds and articles on nuclear weapons policy. John received his BA in political science from Emory University. And then we have Valerie Stewart, who is the chief executive officer of the Council on Strategic Risks, and a senior non-resident fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School. She has also served as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Affairs. From twenty twenty-two to twenty twenty-five, Valerie served as assistant secretary of state for arms control, deterrence, and stability at the US Department of State, where she oversaw US policy on nuclear arms control, risk, and reduction.

Valerie served as a special assistant to President Biden and a senior director for arms control, disarmament, and non-proliferation at the National Security Council. She holds a BA from Harvard College and a JD from Stanford Law School. And with that, thank you all for being here. It’s greatly appreciated. So I’d like to kind of go in the order that introduced you all, so I’ll address the first question to Austin.

And this one kind of just gets to the, you know, heart, I guess, of this panel. But what would you say is the relationship between US non-proliferation goals and its force posture? And if you could, I know at some point in this panel it’s probably gonna be br-brought up, but just for our, our audience, could you briefly define, like, what damage limitation is? Because that more or less is what our nuclear strategy is as of now.

Austin Long: That’s certainly a piece of it. So the– and the last panel, I think, was very good on this. Yeah. The relationship between US nuclear force posture and non-proliferation objectives is really this question of extending deterrence to allies, right? It’s part of the set of agreements, t- both tacit and formal, that underpin all of the non-proliferation objectives that I think the last panel talked to, quite well.

And so you heard, I think from Jenny Lind, this point about how credible is it that the United States will put its own cities, its own homeland at risk, for allies. And part of how we’ve designed our force structure over the decades is to make that, that promise, to an extent, it’s not really a promise in the sense of a guarantee, but it’s a commitment, commitment to allies credible. And so that involves not just the ability to use nuclear weapons in a limited fashion, which we developed in the ’60s, ’70s, and beyond, but also the ability to hold adversary nuclear arsenals at risk to be able to limit the damage that adversaries can inflict to the United States. And that’s been a variable over time. Early in the Cold War, it was pretty clear we had a, a huge advantage in the ability to limit damage to the United States.

Certainly that was the view of a lot of the decision makers during the Cuban Missile Crisis. That changed over time. But that objective of being able to, to limit damage to the United States and its allies, it’s not just, you know, our own, our own cities we’re trying to limit damage to, has been a major component of US nuclear strategy. But again, not the only element.

Benjamin Giltner: John or Mallory, would you like to, share your input or thoughts on this?

Jon Wolfsthal: Yeah. Maybe just to broaden the frame a little bit, there’s been a lot of consistency in the formal US nuclear strategy dating back– multiple presidents, dating back, uh- easily through, I would say, Johnson, probably even before that, that the United States has nuclear weapons for three reasons. To deter, enemy attack against us or our allies or our strategic interests, to reassure our allies, and if deterrence were to fail, to limit the damage that could be done to the United States and its allies and interests. And the question then becomes one of, are these goals all, possible in parallel, or are there tension between them? And I think what you’re seeing, and, I’ll suggest, here, we’re here, I should say thank you for having us here, but we’re here in part because there is a new debate that has engaged about the extent to which the United States needs to add nuclear weapons to its arsenal in order to be able to improve its ability to limit damage to the United States and our allies as a goal in and of itself.

That that is important to deter, that that is important to reassure. And there are debates about that, and there are trade-offs between the ability to do that and whether or not you are participating in fueling or responding appropriately or inappropriately to the risk of arms racing, of arms race instability, of crisis management. Those are all, I think, very reasonable debates and discussions to be having, but one that, quite frankly, the United States hasn’t had for 30-plus years. Most of the people that are engaged in them read about them in the history books. And we probably need to brush off our understanding and, and, appreciation for how we managed these things in the past.

Mallory Stewart: Yeah, I mean, I think, everything that, the panelist has said is completely correct. The question really is how we go forward in an arena in which some of the fundamental assumptions that we’ve had for decades are shifting, right? There’s some changes in our, closest alliances. There’s some changes in the reliance on international law in so many of our global and, you know, diplomatic settings. And so, you know, definitely agreeing with John that, the, there’s been more commonality than difference in our nuclear policy over the past several decades.

Is there a reason to change now? Is there a motivation to change now? Is it credible to take a different approach, given the changing that we see in the international order? Or do we stay the course and try to minimize some of the drivers of instability, such as arms racing and other, necessary results from a certain nuclear policies? And I think that’s a- an open question that we should be talking about.

I’m glad we are on this panel.

Benjamin Giltner: Yeah, absolutely. Before, because I definitely wanna get into, arms control and arms racing, ’cause that, you know, is very much connected to our panel today. But, first, John, you brought up numbers. I’d like to get your thoughts, and also Austin and Mallory’s thoughts on this. But, currently the US has about 3,700 nuclear warheads in total, about 1,770 of those are deployed.

I guess a question that, you know, everyone wants to know is how much is enough? It’s the classic question from the Cold War and up till now. So, how much do you say is enough? Like, obviously, can’t give an exact number on this, but, you know, there’s debates generally if the US needs more, less, keep about the same. J- what are your thoughts?

Jon Wolfsthal: Sure. It, it, again, it depends on what it is you’re trying to achieve. And so, the, there’s nothing magical about the number or a particular number, unless you’re McNamara, in which case you like nice, round numbers. It’s an old nuclear joke, sorry. So we have roughly 1,700 nuclear weapons, and I don’t think there’s anybody who doubts, or let me put it positively, no one believes that Russia or China is about to embark on a major military attack on the United States or its allies because they doubt our physical capability to respond and to destroy them with nuclear weapons.

So in that sense, we have plenty of nuclear weapons to deter. Now, the question is, do you have enough nuclear weapons to reassure our allies? I would argue, not being a big fan of the current administration’s approach, that, in my mathematical expertise, I’ve put forward the, the calculation that deterrence equals capability times credibility. And if either capability or credibility is zero, deterrence is zero. Right now, our credibility for our allies and deterring our adversaries is as close to zero as you can get until you know it’s zero.

So it wouldn’t matter to me if we doubled our nuclear weapons. We’re not going to increase our credibility to our allies or our adversaries based on numbers. I think you can do things with conventional weapons. I think you can do things with alliance management. But I don’t think there’s anything numerically you can or need to be doing right now to reassure.

The question, then, I think, gets to this issue of is damage limitation a necessity for reassuring or for deterring? I think there’s some evidence that our ally– our adversaries do really care about those calculations. I think there’s also a lot of evidence that says right now we’re fully capable of handling the entirety of the Russian nuclear and strategic complex with the arsenal we have. There’s more than enough to handle the Chinese nuclear s- complex and strategic complex. The question is, do we need to cover both Russia and China simultaneously?

There’s a lot of debate about that. I don’t see anything in the nature of the Chinese and Russian relationship that amounts to a joint suicide pact. But planners are– It is their job to think if we have a war with both, do we have enough nuclear weapons to cover both? And then the question becomes, if the answer’s no, what is the consequence of building more? In terms of the amount of money, in terms of slowing down the already existing modernization programs that we’ve decided are in our interest, like the submarine program, like the bomber program, and what does it mean in terms of our ability to provide the other forms of reassurance, economic?

Our economic power and vitality is a big part of our, alliance management and reassurance policy. So I, I ca- that’s a cop-out to say I can’t give you an answer. I currently don’t support adding more nuclear weapons to the US arsenal. I don’t think that would be where my priority is. My priority is let’s do the things we’ve committed to, that we say are important, on submarines, on bombers.

The ICBM, I think, you know, we’ve obviously found wiggle room, because the modernization program’s taking a lot longer. We can maintain our ICBMs in current force longer than we previously thought. I’d rather do those things well and modernize our conventional capability before I would prioritize more nuclear weapons. And I’m going on too long, but I’ll just say a point about that. The previous panel talked about the consequence of the Iran war.

One of the things we’ve realized is that we don’t have the conventional munitions, either offensively or defensively, to fight a small war in Iran and be able to handle our defense commitments in Europe or in Asia Pacific. If we can’t do that, then no amount of nuclear modernization’s gonna matter because we’ve gotta be able to conventionally reassure and conventionally deter before we get into the nuclear calculation. And so if we’ve got extra dollars to spend, let’s increase our defense production on interceptors. Let’s increase our defense production on munitions that are most likely going to be the capabilities that reassure our allies and deter our adversaries.

Benjamin Giltner: Yeah, you bring up, a good point, which is that, you know, the US has this damage limitation strategy to reassure its allies, and it seems like you’re questioning that to some degree. I, I- correct me-

Jon Wolfsthal: Yeah, no, I, I- if I’m wrong there I don’t question We clearly go to our allies and have these conversations and say, “Don’t worry. If things go horribly wrong, we will blow the, that country off the face of the map- Yeah and you don’t have to worry about it.” And they say, “Well, will a couple get through?” And we have to say, “Well, okay, a couple might get through, but we’re building missile defense. You know, we’re gonna do everything we can.” There is no absolute state of reassurance. One of the areas where people think we disagree, and I actually think most people, reasonable people, do agree, is we want to reassure our allies so they don’t need to build nuclear weapons, and so they s- remain closely aligned with the United States. We’re looking for ways to do that.

Sometimes we do that with the defense community and say, “Don’t worry, we’re gonna have these defense capabilities for you.” Sometimes we talk to the nuclear community and say, “Don’t worry, we’re gonna have these nuclear capabilities.” Most of the time we’re talking to the politicians and the alliance managers and say, “Don’t worry, we’re with you no matter what.” And then, of course, all of our businesses are saying, “Well, we couldn’t live without you if we tried,” right? You know, “We’re, we’re all in on South Korea because you make most of our chips. You know, we’re all in on you, Saudi Arabia, because, you know, Europe needs your oil.” Like, we, we demonstrate that. So I, I don’t think it’s a question of whether I support it or don’t. It is a factor, but there are lots of factors, and how they all balance each other is, is how policy gets made.

Benjamin Giltner: To that point, Austin, I’d like to pose this question to you, but John kind of brought this up in that, you know, w- with, our reassurance to allies, this can, to some degree, create, instability, with, our adversaries, where, you know, with, things like a damage limitation strategy, they might be, you know, more willing to, launch on warning during a crisis, or at, at the very least be more on edge. So my question to you is that, is, is there a way that the United States can reassure its allies and s- attempt to the best of its ability maintain this crisis stability? Is there a, a way to balance both of them?

Austin Long: I think there is conceptually. It’s really hard in practice. So if you look at some of the work in the late Cold War, some of which was actually done by scholars affiliated with Cato, but also with the RAND Corporation, there is a trade-off between instability, adversaries believe you might use nuclear weapons first and perhaps even on a large scale, and their, their fear to attack in this sort of strange Levian sense, right? You want them to have some discomfort. You don’t want perfect stability where they think there’s no chance the United States will ever use nuclear weapons first, because then that creates the sort of world in which they feel like they can create all sorts of mischief, this sort of stability-instability paradox, and mischief in this case, we were worried in the Cold War, could include a conventional invasion of Western Europe.

So this is perfect stability, probably not good for extended deterrence. Perfect instability, for reasons you’ve articulated, that an adversary feels like for whatever reason they have to use nuclear weapons first and probably on a large scale very early in a crisis, that’s probably not good either. There’s probably a sweet spot. Conceptually, there clearly is a sweet spot, this idea of optimum instability, enough that an adversary doesn’t feel pressure to use early and, and large in a crisis, but at the same time discomforting enough to them that they actually will not even initiate a crisis. So this isn’t even about shaping crisis alone.

It’s about keeping adversaries from even doing anything to enter into a crisis. So conceptually, that’s the sort of point you wanna reach, and the US has done a lot to shape its force structure in ways to, to sort of create this optimum instability. Most of our nuclear forces, certainly day to day, you know, are in a survivable mode, right? We have ICBMs that potentially are not survivable in a large scale attack, but we keep lots of boats at sea. If we generate in a crisis, we have more boats at sea.

Most of our capability, certainly in the current configuration, lives in a b- a mode that doesn’t invite adversary attack. So we’ve done a lot in terms of our force structure to try and get to that point. Whether we’ve succeeded or not is maybe a different question.

Benjamin Giltner: Yeah, to, so to loop back, to, i‑in keeping in line with kind of this crisis a‑instability, we also get the question of arms control, which I’d like to pose to Valerie, because, one thing that gets overlooked in the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which again, this is, all tied in with this conference, is that, Article 6 aims to have nuclear arm countries at the very least pursue arms control, preferably disarm. Valerie, obviously that’s not, happening, at least as of late. You know, we have new start that expired, as well as the, INF treaty. So my question to you is, to what degree or would you say that US nuclear strategy and doctrine is an obstacle to, achieving arms control and achieving, you know, this Article 6 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty? ‘Cause this is a point that countries like Iran and others are, you know, continue to bring up, “Well, why should we, you know, not pursue the bomb when the US, you know, continues to build up and maintain its arsenal?”

Mallory Stewart: Yeah. It’s an interesting question, going back to the earlier conversation, since we have so much consistency in our nuclear policy, and yet with that consistency, we’ve been able to engage in arms control discussions. I don’t think n‑the nuclear policy alone is either limiting, those arms control discussions or promoting those arms control discussions necessarily. It often comes down to, you know, the politics, the diplomacy efforts, the, you know, the policies of the particular administrations, what the perception of risk and threat is, between the countries. Certainly having, you know, the Schelling balance between, adequate deterrence and defense capacities to drive, potential adversaries to the negotiating table is a necessary aspect, and that’s why I think even in this morning’s conversation, you have that Schelling balance of arms control and defense and deterrence to be able to, go forward with these principles.

But given, again, the, the stated nuclear policy, and I will say there hasn’t been a new NPR, but, nuclear posture review, but the NPRs through the, previous several administrations have been fairly consistent. I don’t think the nuclear policy itself limits arms control. I just think there has to be an engagement in the obligations, that, that we all committed to under the, you know, under, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and there has to be a commit-commitment to understanding why, risk reduction, arms control, and non-proliferation are in our own national security interest. And I think that’s where you see the up and down. You see the up and down in the engagement in an arms control discussion, or maybe just a risk reduction discussion in general.

Can we reduce the risk of misunderstanding and miscalculation before we even get to an arms control point? Can we at least try to stabilize some of the miscalculation potential between ourselves and our, and our, greatest adversaries? And, and that’s where you see the up and down motivation for arms control. You know, certain administrations appreciating the value of that risk reduction and other administrations thinking that the, the benefit of a deterrence, a model that doesn’t include risk reduction as some of its, strength, as, as a benefit, versus pursuing some risk reduction in, in that deterrence context. And I, I think that’s, that’s the up and down we’ve seen.

I think that’s the up and down we’ll continue to see, and I think a large part of this does rely on, where our allies are, where they feel comfortable, and where our adversaries are rattling chains, and where we ourselves potentially are going forward with chain rattling in, in some of the deterrence posturing.

Jon Wolfsthal: If, if I can just add on here-

Benjamin Giltner: Of course

Jon Wolfsthal: I think an, an observation that keeps coming back to my mind, I’ve been doing this now since, the mid-1980s, and I think the biggest change has been, there was a, a recognition among the old guard that I came up under that worked through the 1940s and ’50s and ’60s that these things were integrated with each other. Nuclear strategy, deterrence, reassurance, arms control, risk reduction, were all part of the same process to achieve a stable world where the United States could manage its relationships, prosper, and win, right? Win the Cold War, win the economic battle, the competition of, models, for governance. Over really since the late 1990s, even though there were intellectual arguments and it’s not like they all got along in the ’50s, they all, argued and then had martinis, is, you now have these camps, and the camps don’t believe the other side are relevant. You know, you don’t need deterrence anymore.

All you need is arms control. You can’t do arms control unless it’s multilateral, or unless we have the conditions where we can dominate. And in fact, the world doesn’t work that way. Presidents don’t think that way. Leading politicians shouldn’t think that way.

What are you trying to achieve? You’re trying to create a condition of stability and deterrence so that you can go about the business of America, which is often business, and other people would say other things as well. Pick your choice. Democracy promotion, you know, whatever. But until you agree that you’ve got these different tools and that they all work in different contexts and you use them well, you’re really operating with one arm tied behind your back, and I think that’s the challenge we see today, where, you know, when I tell my students that the– most often in the intellectual debates in the 1970s and 1980s, the Defense Department and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency were unified in support of arms control measures, and the State Department, was opposed, along with parts of the White House.

They’re like, “What do you mean?” Like, first of all, what was the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency? They don’t remember what that was. And they’re like, “Why would DOD support arms control?” And it’s because it was a way of achieving limitations on your adversary, without having to go to war with them, and it was able to a- avoid some of the things that drove instability. Now, in the trenches, most people get that, and, you know, Austin and I and Mallory have worked together, and we, we, we can do that pretty well, but intellectually and ideologically, we’re, we’re being forced to these extremes, which I think make it harder for us to make good policy.

Mallory Stewart: And I would just two-finger on that, ’cause I absolutely agree. I think the acknowledgement of risk reduction, all things risk reduction, being a crucial part of a balanced deterrence approach that protects ourselves and our allies, has been lost somewhere. But it kind of rides along with a diminishment in appreciation for diplomacy, a diminishment in appreciation for multilateralism. And I think, unfortunately, even international law is declining in some of the policy approaches that, you know, disfavor risk reduction, diplomacy, and, and, and arms control. And I think that’s unfortunate, because, for many, many decades, you know, that, that element of diplomacy, multilateralism, risk reduction, arms control, and nonproliferation was seen as crucial to maintaining national security equivalent, to our defense capacities.

Benjamin Giltner: Yeah. With, with, John, I’m glad you brought up, the 1980s, ’cause I have a question related to that, and this is just to the general panel. It also deals with this arms control issue, but, there’s obviously the Trump administration’s Golden Dome. I guess my question for you all is, how is this driving Or maybe not driving, but, contributing to, you know, uneasiness or some instability among our adversaries? ‘Cause both Russia and China have ex- like, you know, expressed some concerns about this.

You know, the Congressional Budget Office put out an estimate that this is gonna cost, like, over a trillion dollars, I believe within, you know, the next couple years. So what are your all thoughts on this?

Austin Long: Oh, everybody’s gonna look at me? Okay. I’m, I’m just taking up all the oxygen. I thought I’d share. Yeah.

Look, a lot depends. I mean, you referenced the ’80s. We had the Strategic Defense Initiative-

Jon Wolfsthal: Yes

Austin Long: In the 1980s. That certainly created unease in the Soviets, but not panic. So I mean, I think it’s a set of capabilities that, y- you know, we have some limited mis- national missile defense today. We’ve had some for 20 years now. You know, in terms of cost, a lot depends on what we actually deploy, how we deploy it, et cetera.

So I think if the general question is should strategic defenses as well as strategic offensive capabilities be part of the mix of tools, to John’s point, that the United States has, I think absolutely. Beyond that, you get into the eaches of where’s your best investment, et cetera. But I, I It does not discomfit me that our adversaries are uneasy about our capabilities. I think that’s a positive good for deterrence. The question is, how uneasy?

What complications does that create? Is there a better tool? How does it work with other tools? Those are, I think, the important questions.

Jon Wolfsthal: Yeah. It, it Look, I don’t think China is increasing the number of nuclear weapons that it has because they’re worried about Golden Dome. I think they’re worried that they wanna have the ability to have at the minimum a second strike retaliatory capability so that the United States can’t coerce them or attack them, and they would lose their deterrent. Will Golden Dome make that situation better or worse? I think it’s likely to tell the Chinese, “Whatever we’re building to may not be enough, and we need to keep those production lines hot, and if necessary, we need to keep building up,” which then complicates the challenge of damage limitation, which then says, “Okay, well, we are in an arms race.” You know, they’re gonna keep building up.

We need to build up in order to cover our damage limitation strategy. Golden Dome is never going to be highly effective or cost-effective at the margins in dealing with conventional not conventional, ballistic missile threats. And even if it were, there are lots of unconventional delivery means that adversaries can use, so it, it’s, it’s not a wise investment in my belief. I think we should be investing in point defenses, regional defenses, mobile defenses. I think there are lots of things you can do that help, improve our, our defense, operational strategy.

But we just have to recognize that these things are not cost-free in terms of the dynamic. Now, if we don’t care about arms racing, if money is no object, if the consensus is we shouldn’t live in a world where China or Russia have second strike retaliatory capabilities, that that’s no longer necessary for deterrence, then okay, fine, let’s have that conversation. But I think that’s one of the challenges that we’ve moved away from, is while we never all agreed that it was a good thing, we recognized that there was a situation where we couldn’t disarm Russia, and they couldn’t disarm us, and that contributed to us, neither side attacking each other. Is that the basis for security going forward? Some people would say it, whether we like it or not, it is.

Some people say, “I don’t like it. I wanna change that.” But there are real implications for those two answers, and we haven’t done a very good job in the public policy discourse about what they mean.

Mallory Stewart: I also think we have to go into Golden Dome sort of eyes wide open, which is we will drive our potential adversaries to those new and novel capabilities that won’t be able to be easily addressed by what we already have proposed in the Golden Dome architecture, right? Realizing there’s still an open question as to interceptors, as to sort of which capacities we’ll be able to roll forward with, based on money or physics or any other reason. But certainly, putting Golden Dome out there will encourage future planners from potential adversaries to say, “Okay, let’s go undersea, let’s go hypersonic, let’s go drone to a maximum degree,” those kind of capabilities that are harder for us to deal with in the, in the Golden Dome context. That said, I think Golden Dome is a response to a feeling that the US government has had for some time that Russia has gone forward with these, you know, super weapons, these new and novel nuclear capabilities, undersea, nuclear powered, you know, nuclear weapon, hypersonics. We’ve seen all of these, Avangard and Poseidon tests that Russia has done of these new and novel capabilities, and the US has not done any new and novel nuclear development for some time.

So there’s been a feeling both in the, you know, d- defense arena, but also more broadly, that the US has been trying to stay the course to sort of, keep within its traditional model of nuclear policy, to stay sort of with its existing arsenal while, first, China’s building up, but second, Russia is going to all of these novel capabilities. And that really drove, in large part, a thinking that we need more to defend ourselves. And, Golden Dome, you know, brought together a lot of the policies of previous administrations to have our missile defense capacities talk to each other, to, you know, be able to more systematically, utilize our missile defense coherently across, you know, both the, the United States and our allies and partners in a way that makes more sense than just individual systems the way it was originally developed. And I, and I, I don’t think that’s wrong, but I think it does lead to the need for a conversation with China and Russia to explain why Golden Dome was deemed necessary, why Golden Dome is supported, right now in the United States, because there’s no other way to really try to feel secure in the face of novel and nuclear development, of weapons systems by Russia and a, a, a advancement, of exponential increase in China’s nuclear arsenal. So, you know, I think Golden Dome is a perfect conversation to have if we are gonna talk about what a potential risk reduction conversation would look like with, Russia and China, not necessarily to restrict ourselves, but at least to explain why we deemed it necessary.

Jon Wolfsthal: And I would just note that Russia and China are complaining about Golden Dome, but Russia is now saying, “Isn’t it good we have these super weapons because of Golden Dome?” Which is ironic, because they developed the super weapons, the ideas for it, before Golden Dome was even announced, right? The blaming on missile defense of all things development in either Russia or China is, somewhat questioned if it’s just Golden Dome itself, because they always blame missile defense, and they always kind of push forward with a need for additional arsenals as a result of our defensive capacities.

Mallory Stewart: But, but I think there is good evidence that the, decision by President Putin to invest a lot of money in these novel delivery systems, Poseidon, Skyfall, were driven by the US decision to withdraw from the ABM treaty.

Jon Wolfsthal: Yes.

Mallory Stewart: And he said, “Okay, well, if ballistic missiles are no longer gonna be the vehicle by which we have an assured, destructive capability, I need to do these things that are less vulnerable to interception by what missile defense might be.”

Jon Wolfsthal: Absolutely.

Mallory Stewart: So just ’cause they, they say it-

Jon Wolfsthal: Yeah

Mallory Stewart: Doesn’t mean that it’s inaccurate.

Jon Wolfsthal: No, no. I think missile defense is one of the drivers, for all of the new and novel capabilities that we’ve seen, and I think Golden Dome will just exacerbate that.

Mallory Stewart: Completely agree. I just think Golden Dome as a political concept itself was not the driver for these new and novel, but it’s just gonna be added to the list of reasons that they feel they need to continue this going forward.

Austin Long: I will note that those capabilities are not necessarily a wise use of their money. So when you think about arms races and costs at the margin, there are lots of costs at the margin, and some favor us and some may not.

Benjamin Giltner: Yeah, on that point, what, what would you all say is, like, the right investment for the United States? Like, obviously, you know, modernization was brought up. That’s gonna, I think CBO put out it’ll cost over a trillion dollars over the next decade. Yeah, what do you all see as, like, should the US prioritize certain things? There’s also debate about whether or not ICBMs, should be kept, or, you know, whether we should upgrade to the Sentinel systems, which is already having a host of issues already.

What are your all thoughts on this?

Jon Wolfsthal: Yeah, good. Maybe I’ll, I’ll set the frame and then, let the panelists sort of weigh in. So, under the terms of the New START treaty, President Obama committed to the Senate that he would, and the administration would, modernize, or update all legs of the triad, submarines, bombers, and ICBMs. That grew into something known, in the, in the community as the program of record. So we’re gonna build the new Columbia class submarine, we’re gonna build the new B21, and we’re gonna build the new Sentinel.

In 2014, when I was out of government, we did the first study at the Monterey Institute, which said that’s gonna cost a trillion dollars over 30 years. And people said, “Oh, you’re an extremist, you know, that’s a, that’s an exaggeration.” Then CBO came out a couple of years ago and said, “No, it’s gonna be a trillion dollars over the next 10 years.” And everybody recognized that this was a massive undertaking, whether you believed it was necessary or important, it was what the, body politic, Congress, administrations had agreed was necessary to maintain our deterrent. We had recommended at the time that you actually stagger those systems. Instead of pursuing all three at the same time, you could avoid the strain on the defense industrial base and actually have a better odd of success, than if you pursued them all at once. Because we worried about unilateral disarmament by default.

And in fact- What we are seeing is a sentinel program which is having many more problems because it was rushed to decision under the Trump ad- first Trump administration. We’ve seen the submarine program actually get up a head of steam, and the bomber program, even though it’s unnecessarily classified, make pretty good marks and seems to be doing okay, but we don’t really know what the costs are. I think there’s still broad consensus that the United States will, will and should maintain all three legs of the triad. In this environment, that that still has pretty broad consensus. Where it begins to break down are things like, well, should you go at breakneck speed for sentinel no matter what, or can you in fact rely on life extending the minuteman older systems for another 10 or 15 years, if technically feasible?

Could you manage, say, fewer minutemen, but with more warheads on each missile, so you can maintain roughly the same numbers and give the sentinel program time to actually be fixed, if it’s fixable? And that’s a big question. Where that consensus breaks down are on these new systems. Do we need a sea-launch cruise missile? Trump said yes.

Biden said no. Trump says yes. But now Trump isn’t actually pursuing it at breakneck speed, ’cause there are other things they wanna do. So it’s not clear, and I think there’s some debate on how important it is, but there’s a debate there, and we should continue that discussion. Do we need, brand-new follow-on systems that are being contemplated?

I think, again, that’s where the consensus breaks down, but it should be driven by what you think is necessary for deterrence and reassurance, and if damage limitation should be a driver. And if you don’t have consensus there, then you don’t have consensus on what to do. Now, do you need consensus? Sometimes you go without it, but I think what we have seen is opportunism, where an administration gets into power and they drive decisions through a process that’s inconsistent with what we’ve built up over decades to ensure accountability, financial management, delivery on time, and the results are predictable. You have programs that are massively over budget, that aren’t going to fill our defense commitments, and that drain the coffers, of money that we need for other things.

Mallory Stewart: I’ll just note that it was the Congress that gave us the nuclear sea-launch cruise missile back, not the Trump administration part two. It was the Congress and the Biden administration. So to your point about consensus, there was at least sufficient consensus in the Congress to restore that. Now, to your other point, whether that consensus endures or we have other priorities now is a different question. But it wasn’t just administration changing, it was, it was congressional, fairly unusual congressional endorsement.

Austin Long: I, I think John’s framing is basically right. A lot of the additional expenditures if you wanted, a larger nuclear force will be outside that decade window, because our industrial base is gonna be limited in producing big systems. I mean, we’re producing submarines about as fast as we can right now, absent opening another shipyard or something like that, and even that would take a long time. So I mean, there’s, there’s only so much we can do, in the immediate near term. The question is, what should the goal be?

How should you manage modernization versus keeping older systems going, et cetera? There’s a lot of questions there. I will note, a trillion dollars, that’s a lot of money. Even for Elon Musk, that’s a lot of money. But if you really wanna save money, that comes out of the conventional forces budget, because, you know, the trillion-dollar figure you quote is about 10% of what DOD will spend, maybe 12%, depending on what we think budgets will be over the next decade.

You know, the other 80-odd percent, wherever that ends up being, are for conventional forces. So, you know, nuclear weapons are, relatively speaking, your best economic bet. They have, you know, not as much, versatility in some cases as conventional forces do, but they are relatively, again, relative does a lot of work in that statement, inexpensive.

Mallory Stewart: I think we should also sort of parse a little bit the semantic argument that modernization somehow includes new types, right? The interesting thing to me about China’s buildup is that they’re calling it their own modernization, right? And our modernization concept is, is ensuring a safe, secure, and effective nus- nuclear arsenal, which everyone presumably would want. You don’t want your nuclear arsenal to be easily hacked. You don’t want your nuclear arsenal to fail miserably.

You don’t want to have accidents, and, and result in nuclear disasters because you haven’t modernized– you haven’t kept your systems, up to par with, with the standards that are required in today’s, you know, technological environment, versus what, you know, China and Russia can argue, and Russia said this as well, modernization for them includes these novel nuclear, super weapons in Russia, includes the exponential increase in the nuclear arsenal, and that’s very different, right? I think the, the Obama administration certainly in negotiating for the New START treaty understood that modernizing the nuclear arsenal meant keeping it up to today’s safety, security, and effectiveness standards. It didn’t mean new and novel types of nuclear weapons, and I think that’s, that’s an important difference because we hear this word modernization tossed around. I’ve even seen sort of the nuclear opponents argue that modernization is a bad thing, and that, that confuses me because we all want a safe, secure, and effective nuclear arsenal if we have to have a nuclear arsenal, which in today’s environment, the consensus is we do. F- not just for ourselves, but for our, our, our allies.

So, you know, I think the question is, in the trade-off that Austin mentioned, yes, the nuclear program may be 10% of our conventional, but our conventional is also struggling, as we saw in, again, an Iran war, that, you know, Trump began, which didn’t necessarily come to a positive, winning conclusion, right? And so even if you’re, you’re arguing that it’s just 10% of that conventional capacity, i- is that a trade-off that we should, we should discuss a little bit more before we start new nuclear weapons programs, before we commit to new and novel variants of, you know, of our traditional nuclear arsenal that is being appropriately modernized but doesn’t necessarily has to inc- have to include these new and novel variants?

Benjamin Giltner: Let’s see, we have about 20 minutes left. We’ll go ahead and go into Q&A unless anyone has anything further to add at the moment. Okay. If you’re online, please, submit them, through either the events webpage, Facebook, YouTube, or on X. For those in the audience, please speak clearly into the microphone.

Try to keep questions short if you can, and in the form of a question. And we’ll go ahead and get started. Yes, sir, in the back. Thank you.

Carl Pulzer: Carl Pulzer, Center on Capital and Social Equity. So my question has to do with the move from a, a two-player game of mutual assured destruction. It used to be just us and the Soviets, so if, if you blow me up, I’ll blow you up. Commun- you know, and it still almost happened. And now we have a multiplayer game, maybe three main players and about 10 side players.

Some are in alliances, some are independent, some are overlapping. So i- I mean, the question is: How do you manage that? Or, it seems to me we’re less secure because c- there’s more of a chance of surprise attack. There’s d- you know, deception, and if you only have an hour or two to respond, and you only had one red phone before, now you maybe have, like, 20 colors. So how do you manage th– I mean, in, in real time?

And I mean, maybe you have a president that’s on TV, you know? Like, may- maybe how do you manage that? I mean, maybe we have to do more in the communications. Anyhow, that’s the question. Thanks.

Benjamin Giltner: Thanks for your c- discussion. Do you wanna take more questions or-

Mallory Stewart: Sure, yeah, we’ll take another question.

Benjamin Giltner: Yes, in the front, middle.

Ashida: Excuse me. Hi, my name’s Ashida. Thank you so much for being here. We talked or you guys talked a little bit about Golden Dome. Could you please touch on how other countries might start taking their capabilities to space, and what the nuclear domain intersected with the space domain looks like or will look like, and what, security risks we can expect?

Benjamin Giltner: I was gonna have you take the first question, but I think you gotta take the second one.

Mallory Stewart: Sure. I can do both if you want. Certainly to your question, I do think e- enhanced communication, preventing risks of misunderstanding and miscalculation is something that we need at all times, but even more so in a multilateral environment where we have, multipolarity on, y- sort of arms racing, but also, potential threat and threat perceptions. That doesn’t solve the problem. It does become that much more complicated.

I think one of the reasons that our, deterrence analysis, and our, national security community has to constantly evolve is to take into account the multipolarity we’re now facing, the fact that there are so many more potential sources of both nuclear and conventional attack, and what we can put in place to strengthen our own security and that of our allies, including what international laws we negotiated, what normative processes we ourselves promoted because we saw it in our interest, and whether we need to preserve them more adamantly to feel that we understand what’s coming, to preserve a certain amount of transparency and predictability, and again, to prevent misunderstanding and miscalculation. And I can go into some examples if you want, but I do wanna jump to your question ’cause I think it’s really important. We’ve seen with the, allegation of the US government u- under the previous administration, in 2024, a, a deep and serious concern about Russia placing a nuclear weapon in orbit around the Earth in violation of the Outer Space Treaty. And I mention the Outer Space Treaty because, again, this is one of the treaties we negotiated that we strongly believed w- was in our own interest. But we negotiated it at a time before it had w- before there was, technical capability to verify much of the parameters.

And Article 4 of that Outer Space Treaty says that any WMD is prohibited from being placed in orbit around the Earth or in celestial bodies, but this would be a clear-cut and direct violation of the Outer Space Treaty, and so where does Russia wanna go with that? Are they gonna continue developing this program covertly, and then potentially utilize it in violation of the Outer Space Treaty as an endgame in a conflict? Are they just developing it as a, you know, a threat they can hold over us? What, what is the intent? And I think that, that there’s a lot of confusion on that, but certainly there’s a recognition of the importance of outer space to our national security, to global stability, to financial markets, to all forms of, of daily life, both in our country and almost in every country around the world.

So it’s a, it’s very much a, a, a endgame kind of weapon system that we should try to understand. I would argue that we strengthen the treaties that we put in place to try to prevent these kind of developments, and the Outer Space Treaty is a perfect example of something negotiated 60 years ago that now we have the capacity to verify. We didn’t build in a verification provision, but maybe now through a practice of the parties or through all the ongoing open-ended working groups in which they’re discussing, the prevention of arms race in outer space, maybe we can start talking about verification capacities to strengthen that treaty and to show attribution toward anyone that would violate it and hopefully hold them accountable. But as we see international law diminish, the likelihood of strengthening treaties, the likelihood of attribution and accountability under treaties itself is also diminishing. And so then you face the additional challenge, then do we have to prepare and harden ourself against nuclear attack in space?

And I think we should be hardening our satellites. We should be, you know, developing capabilities to persist and be resilient through such an attack. But it’s very hard for those countries that don’t have the capacity or resource to do that with their satellites to be able to maintain that, resilience. So it’s an open question. I think one of the approaches should be strengthening international architectures that have kept us safe, and another should be preparing ourselves to be more resilient and to be able to outlast, such a novel use of nuclear weapon in outer space.

Jon Wolfsthal: I agree with Mallory generally, particularly on that last point about the need for hardening and resilience. But you know, you asked questions about stability. I mean, there’s, there’s nothing more destabilizing than a nuclear weapon in space because it is both vulnerable to preemption, this is part of why we believe the Russians were gonna keep it secret. It’s vulnerable to preemption.

Austin Long: Yes, it is the Doomsday Machine. I see you, see you snickering over there.

Jon Wolfsthal: I’m not, not at all. Uh- I’m comfortable. And so this is the, you know, the, the, the question about stability, it’s, it’s not just up to the United States to decide whether stability, prevails in relationships. This is a capability that genuinely invites preemption but is quite powerful if it u- it’s used. It’s exactly the kind of thing that brings up questions about crisis stability much more so than US nuclear force posture.

It, for me, this is a question on both fronts, both on crisis communication, but also on this, action reaction cycle of, nukes in space, missile defenses in space. And, you know, we have a responsibility to be strategic, to think about, okay, what might happen, and how would you like to avert that? It’s likely possible, inevitable, we will come into some sort of conflict with Russia and/​or China, unintended, accidental, or intentional. It would be a good thing if we had the means to communicate with each other in real time without having to rely on Verizon. And so let’s put those things in place now.

Yes, they’re hard to do, and yes, there’s a lot of work, and sometimes the Chinese don’t wanna cooperate, and sometimes the Russians don’t wanna cooperate, but it’s time worth spent. On Golden Dome, here’s the scenario. We’re gonna build a, a, a, a network of thousands of space-based interceptors to try to intercept one nuclear weapon potentially coming from an adversary that’s gonna land on the United States. And so we think we can intercept that. And our adversary isn’t going to take a nuclear weapon and blow it up in space to blow a giant hole in those interceptors so that they can then follow through with another nuclear weapon through that exact hole to hit us.

That’s not very strategic, and it gets to the point of where Golden Dome came from. It came out of Donald Trump’s head, and that is not where strategy comes from. We all have to interpret what presidents say and try to make strategy out of it, and we have a feedback loop to do that. But Golden Dome is not a wise investment. What is a wise investment, and I think you’ve got consensus here on this panel at least, if you think you are vulnerable in space because you rely on space-based battle management communications for all sorts of things, have the ability to quickly put up low Earth orbit satellites to replace if you lose them.

And that removes the incentive on your adversary to attack you in space. That’s been legislated for the last 20 years, and we haven’t built it. And Elon Musk, for all of his ills, has provided a capability to do that quickly. We should be doing that in a very aggressive way to remove the incentive to attack. But that’s where we’re supposed to be doing our jobs and where the administration is actually supposed to be imposing good policy.

We’re just not in that world right now.

Benjamin Giltner: Let’s take some more questions. Yes, Sahar.

Sahar Khan: Hi, I’m Sahar Khan with the Institute of, Global Affairs. Keeping in mind that US foreign bases don’t house nuclear weapons but are considered essential for US extended deterrence, what lesson does the damage to US bases in the Gulf offer to US force posture and extended deterrence? And this is for all three of you. Thanks.

Jon Wolfsthal: I’m no longer with the Federation of American Scientists, but when I was, they put out information that says the US does maintain nuclear weapons at foreign bases overseas. So I’m just saying.

Austin Long: Go ahead.

Jon Wolfsthal: No, no, go for it.

Austin Long: I mean, bases are vulnerable to attack, whether they’re here or overseas, right? I mean, that’s, that’s been true, right? We build our force posture to try and lessen that, but I think it does call for, you know, John mentioned regional missile defenses. That’s a capability we’ve invested in, we should continue investing in. You also have to be able to, you know, potentially, if you have nuclear weapons based anywhere, whether it’s at a bomber base in the United States or overseas, the ability to get it away from the base.

A base is a large known target. Adversaries will target it even if they’re not intending to target nuclear weapons. They wanna target where your military aircraft are operating from. You need to be able to get your military aircraft, and presumably some set of your nuclear weapons if you’re in a crisis or conflict, away from that. So whether it’s dispersing bombers or dis- dispersing dual capable aircraft or associated with NATO or whatever, you have to have those kind of things in place.

But I mean, it’s a war. Bases are gonna get attacked. Like, that’s, that, that’s part of war fighting. You have to be prepared for it.

Mallory Stewart: I, I think I would just add that it’s, you know, just s- shows that the US is not impenetrable. And, and I don’t think anyone thinks that we are, but I think there has to be an understanding that even with the best defense systems possible, things will get through, especially with the novel uses of drones, es- especially with the novel weapons that are now being utilized. And I, I think that’s an important consideration. You know, I would just flag that in such an environment where things will get through and you have numerous players and a challenge to attribute and maybe a diminishment in international law that would sort of allow for more clarity or transparency on what is happening, that’s when you really need, that’s when you most desperately need the ability to communicate clear- clearly and the ability to parse through what’s happening on the ground. ‘Cause the fog of war that exists no matter what during war will get even worse if we somehow think we don’t need those communication capacities or we don’t need those, those, networks and connections.

And so, you know, I, I think it just argues for closer connectivity and more communication as much as possible with all of our allies in the event that there are attacks going on on our bases in their territory.

Benjamin Giltner: Let’s get someone in the back. Yes, the gentleman in the very back. Thank you.

Audience Member: If an adversary were to launch a preemptive first strike before the Golden Boondoggle is fully operational, how would the US respond? Would we use nukes, or is it more likely that our adversaries would rather we spend ourselves into a financial crisis by sinking trillions into this Golden Boondoggle?

Jon Wolfsthal: I’ll try to take the first whack here. So if, I mean, if a country launches a nuclear weapon at us, the United States is going to use all the means at its disposal to defend itself, defend its allies, and to attack that country. Now, the nature of the conflict, the nature of the adversary will dictate what that response looks like. Every president, even this one, has wisely said, “I’m not gonna commit myself explicitly a priori to a specific response. We don’t need to tell that.” But we’re very specific when we say to North Korea, “If they use a nuclear weapon against us or allies, that’s the end of the Kim regime,” period.

Russia and China know that if they launch a nuclear weapon at us, they are likely to face a nuclear reprisal. That is one of the reasons, probably not the dominant reason, but one of the reasons they don’t launch nuclear weapons at us. They probably don’t launch nuclear weapons at us because they’re not really interested in starting a nuclear war. There’s no real benefit for them to do so in regular situation. So it’s not that we then pivot and say, “Okay, you nuked us.

Don’t worry, we’re gonna get Golden Dome ready,” you know? It, it That’s– I don’t think that’s the dynamic here. I think the question is: What is the circumstance under which the United States is attacked with a nuclear weapon? In that situation, things are horrible. The United States is at war, or we are in a massive crisis and miscommunication, where we’re trying to figure out what is going on and how.

That’s welcome to a world with nuclear weapons.

Austin Long: The- Use a conventional weapon to take out

Jon Wolfsthal: You can’t I mean, one, Golden Dome doesn’t work. Two, if it’s built and it has any working capability, it’s likely not gonna be built with a single point of failure. And so the idea is that you’ve got resiliency to your systems. Y‑you know, what we’re trying to avoid is war. W‑we’re good at that in certain circumstances.

We’re bad at that, clearly, in other circumstances. I don’t think Golden Dome is likely to start a war, and I don’t think that having Golden Dome is likely to prevent the United States from suffering damage. The question is, you know, with all of the different things, from, educating your children to hitting the button, how are you structuring your society and the global security environment? And are we prioritizing things well? And, you know, having been doing this for a while, we’re not at our best right now.

But, you know, stand by. Operators are working and, and we hope to be with you soon.

Austin Long: I would also note we’ve pursued national missile defense in the past, SDI. We have national missile defense today that started more than two decades ago. The Soviets and the Russians complained about them. They invested in things that were countermeasures. What they did not do is attempt a preemptive attack in order to forestall that.

Committing suicide for fear of death seems an unwise course.

Mallory Stewart: Yeah, I mean, I don’t think that, Golden Dome itself is gonna force a country to attack us. What I’m concerned about is that we just don’t know all of the various different complications. If we’re already in a war and a country, this is years in the future, a country thinks Golden Dome will prevent a certain amount of missiles from getting through, and they thus do a larger, you know, a, a larger attack to try to get through Golden Dome and they, you know, either intentionally or unintentionally are more effective in damaging us than they intended to be, and the it immediately escalates. And this could be a conventional attack, and they somehow don’t think they’re gonna go through. I mean, even look at the attack on Israel several years ago, where it was a large volley of, of, missiles from Iran, and some got through and some didn’t, and they, their calculus may have changed because they were factoring in Israel’s missile defense.

I think my concern is that we play out scenarios. We tabletop. We have deterrence experts across the board looking at all of these different scenarios to control escalation, but we don’t account for the numerous variables that we cannot predict, the, the credibility of one particular president versus another president, the predilection to protect allies or not protect allies in different administrations, the belief that your missile is gonna be more or less effective based on the advocacy for a defense system that does or does not work. And I think why we need so many of the international legal and normative architectures that we put in place after World War II to m- stay in place is just to allow for some predictability in our processes, allow for some capacity to communicate, allow for some consequences if violations of those normative and legal architectures go forward, so that we can, again, feel that in this world of unpredictable circumstances, we at least know where we’re starting from with respect to, engagement o‑o-on a warfare front. And I think as we see that normative and legal architecture declining, we also see the variables increasing, right?

The effectiveness of programs, the credibility of i- alliances, and the US government itself, and that’s what makes the situation so dangerous right now. And I think, to your point, it’s not gonna be Golden Dome that starts or ends a war, but it could just allow for an additional exacerbation of the planning, of the thinking of both adversaries and allies.

Benjamin Giltner: All right, so we are right at time, at 2:05. Thank you all for providing your insights. A very good discussion. And that concludes our entire Nuclear Non-Proliferation Conference. So, first would like to thank all of you up here and then to the rest of our panelists for taking time out of your busy schedules.

I know you all have a lot going on, but we very much appreciate you providing your insights on this very important topic. Would like to thank the AV development and conference teams. You all put this all together. We’re very grateful for that. And then finally, thank you all t‑to the audience.

You asked some great questions. And with that, we are doing a reception in the lobby, where w‑we’ll have some food and refreshments, so please do join us there. Thank you.

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