NucleCast

Alan B. Carr currently serves as a Program Manager and the Senior Historian for Los Alamos National Laboratory . During his tenure as a Laboratory historian, which began in 2003, Alan has produced several publications and lectures pertaining to the Manhattan Project , nuclear testing history, and the historical evolution of LANL . He has lectured for numerous professional organizations and has bee...

Mr. Curtis Buckles is the Navy’s Strategic Deterrence Policy Advisor to the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Operations, Strategy and Policy) (N3N5) . His responsibilities include providing Navy strategy and policy guidance on strategic and integrated deterrence, countering of weapons of mass destruction policy, nuclear weapons programs, stockpiles, deployments, employment policy, safety, securit...

The Honorable Franklin Miller is a principal at the Scowcroft Group in Washington, DC. He dealt extensively with nuclear policy and nuclear arms control issues during his 31-year government career, which included senior positions in the Defense Department and on the NSC staff. He was directly in charge of US nuclear deterrence and targeting policy from 1985 to 2001 and also chaired NATO’ s senior...

Aaron McAdow, Head of US Marketing Development Retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel Aaron McAdow, who has more than 20 years of experience in US Special Operations and other Joint Strategic DoD programs. Aaron currently serves as Codeac Solution’s Head of US Market Development and advises on technology integration to meet operational requirements Ben Hall, CEO and President A former Australian Army...

Dr. Jennifer McArdle is the Senior Director of Futures and Advanced Concepts at CAE USA, where she focuses on applying innovative simulation technology to defense. She is also an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security in their Defense Program and Wargaming Lab, and a member of the Editorial Board and Adjunct Professor at the Joint Special Operations University. A former pr...

Robert J. Peters is a Senior Fellow for Nuclear Deterrence and Missile Defense, The Heritage Foundation. He was previously the Chief within the Strategic Integration Directorate of the Strategic Trends and Effects Department (STED) at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency . STED’s mission is to generate timely, credible, and actionable insights into threats within the counter-WMD and counter-emergin...

The Honorable David J. Trachtenberg is Vice President of the National Institute for Public Policy , a nonprofit research center in Fairfax, Virginia. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on October 17, 2017 as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and served in this capacity until his retirement from government service in July 2019. Until January 2018, he also served as the Acting Under Secr...

As Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) Director, Vahid Majidi is responsible for the management, operation, and strategic direction of SRNL. Employing approximately 1,000 technical and support staff, SRNL conducts research and development for diverse federal agencies, providing practical, cost-effective solutions for the nation’s environmental, nuclear security, energy and manufacturing chal...

Dr. Mark Schneider is a Senior Analyst with the National Institute for Public Policy . Before his retirement from the Department of Defense Senior Executive Service , Dr. Schneider served in a number of senior positions within the Office of Secretary of Defense for Policy including Principal Director for Forces Policy, Principal Director for Strategic Defense, Space and Verification Policy, Direct...

Colonel George L. Chapman is the Deputy Commander, 91st Missile Wing, Minot Air Force Base (AFB) , N.D. In this role, he assists leading the wing’s 1,800 personnel as they operate, maintain, and secure 150 Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), 15 missile alert facilities, and 150 remote launch facilities located throughout an 8,500 square-mile missile complex in N.D. Combat-re...

Rebecca Grant is a national security analyst based in Washington, DC and president of IRIS Independent Research , a small, woman-owned business specializing in defense and aerospace research and national security consulting. She has appeared on TV as an expert on national security for Fox News, Fox Business, and CNN . She is a series regular on The Smithsonian Channel’s Air Warriors . Dr. Grant wr...

Maj. Gen. Jason R. Armagost is the Commander, Eighth Air Force, and Commander, Joint-Global Strike Operations Center, Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana. "The Mighty Eighth" is responsible for the service’s bomber force and airborne nuclear command and control assets, encompassing approximately 24,000 Airmen across six installations, and proudly operating more than 150 E-4, B-1, B-2, B-52 and T-3...

Tomás Díaz de la Rubia is a science and technology leader, strategist and administrator with extensive experience in government, academia and the private sector. At present, Tomas is the Vice President for Research and Partnerships at the University of Oklahoma. In this capacity, he leads OU’s efforts to enhance the scale and scope of the university’s research enterprise, and to develop a new stra...

This is a special one hour episode with Dr. Lani Kass, Senior Advisor for Center for American Defense Studies and Senior Fellow at The Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. From December 2011 to January 2020, Dr. Kass served as Senior Vice President and Corporate Strategic Advisor at CACI. In 2014, she was elected to the Board of Women in Aerospace (WIA) and in 2016, sworn in as a member of th...

Marc Wortman, PhD, is an independent historian and freelance journalist. He is the author of four books on American military and social history, most recently Admiral Hyman Rickover: Engineer of Power (Yale University Press, 2022), which was named a National Review Book of the Year and received an honorable mention for the John Lyman Award in biography from the North American Society for Oceanic H...

Dr. Rajeswari (Raji) Pillai Rajagopalan is the Director of the Centre for Security, Strategy & Technology (CSST) at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) in Canberra . In 2020, she was Co-chair for a thematic group on “Strategic Technologies” for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy (STIP 2020) work, a...

For the past 40 years, Tom Ramos has been a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) . For the past few years Tom has been conducting research and writing a history of the early years of the Cold War, and the nuclear weapons program of LLNL. Through interviews with historical figures and with extensive research into top secret archives, he has brought out new perspectives of...

For the past 40 years, Tom Ramos has been a physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) . For the past few years Tom has been conducting research and writing a history of the early years of the Cold War, and the nuclear weapons program of LLNL. Through interviews with historical figures and with extensive research into top secret archives, he has brought out new perspectives of...

As Raft’s Senior Director of Data and AI, Angela Sheffield leads programs to build software, data, and AI solutions to deliver information and decision dominance in all operations conditions and all warfighting domains. Before joining Raft, Ms. Sheffield served as the Senior Program Manager for AI at the Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research and Development, National Nuclear Security...

Dr. Howard Hall is the Director for the UT Institute for Nuclear Security . He holds a joint appointment with Consolidated Nuclear Security (Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, TN, and the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, TX) , and serves as Professor in both the Department of Nuclear Engineering and the Bredesen Center For Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education . Professor Hall is al...

James Stemm has been Curator at the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History since 2021. He began his museum career in 1996 working with the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona as the museum’s Registrar. He remained at Pima for the next twenty-five years while holding several jobs in the museum’s Collections Department including Assistant Curator, Curator of Collections, and Dir...

Frank Lowery is the Associate Administrator for Management and Budget , National Nuclear Security Administration , where he oversees the offices of Budget and Financial Management, Human Resources, Business Services, Employee Empowerment, Learning and Career Management , and International Operations . A member of the Senior Executive Service in NNSA since March 2012, he has also served as the Depa...

Matthew Costlow is a Senior Analyst at the National Institute for Public Policy . His areas of expertise are in nuclear deterrence, missile defense policy, arms control, and Russian and Chinese nuclear doctrine. His work has been published by Comparative Strategy, Strategic Studies Quarterly, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. He has also published numerous opinion pieces in the Institutes...

Maj Gen (Ret), USAF, Garrett Harencak is the President and CEO of Mission Support and Test Services, LLC (MSTS) . Harencak joined Mission Support and Test Services, LLC after nearly four years as Vice President of Strategic Defense Programs for Jacobs Engineering. While at Jacobs, he also served as Deputy Program Manager of the Missile Defense Agency Integrated Research and Development for Enterpr...

James McCue is a career helicopter pilot having performed all three USAF rotary wing missions; nuclear security, combat search and rescue, continuity of government. He has earned his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering and masters studies with the Air Force Institute of Technology, Emby Riddle, Missouri State University, and a fellowship with the National Defense University's C-WMD prog...