Strategic Simplicity Podcast

I really enjoyed this conversation with Lowell Schwartz, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Nonproliferation Policy, who joined the podcast to talk about the role Congress plays in overseeing arms control and nuclear policy. I’m glad we were able to get Lowell’s perspective on the opaque world of executive-legislative branch relations, particularly on national security issues, and wh...

We had a long, detailed conversation across a host of policy issues that impact arms control policy, diving into his long career as a DoD and NSC official from the late 80s into the early 2000s, overseeing the policy process that supported negotiated reductions in U.S. and Russian nuclear forces for two decades. Here’s a quick list of the topics we covered: * The relationship between parity as a p...

We have a wide-ranging episode to cover the current events wavefront, touching on Vipin’s recent trip to Australia and the state of extended deterrence in the Indo-Pacific, the self-determined end of Russia’s self-imposed purported “moratorium” on INF-range missiles, and how tomorrow’s US-Russia head of state meeting may influence arms control and nuclear deterrence topics—including the dynamics a...

I was happy to host a one-on-one conversation with Alexandra Bell, President and CEO of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, a couple of weeks ago. She offered a glimpse into what a career in nuclear risk reduction and arms control really looks like in and out of government. Hopefully this offers some insights to early career professionals thinking about their next steps. Alex and I talked about her...

Vipin and I welcome Austin Long, a former deputy director for strategic stability on the U.S. Joint Staff (J5) to the pod, and as a new Senior Fellow with MIT’s Center for Nuclear Security Policy. We had a wide-ranging discussion on * the recent UK-France joint statement on nuclear deterrence and the possible areas for the two allies to cooperate and implement the “Northwood Declaration” moving fo...

Ola and I talk about the Biden administration’s National Security Memorandum on Missile Technology Exports, the new Trump administration executive order, MTCR implementation and defense trade streamlining more generally. We summarize our recent article (link below at CSIS), and discuss the balance between protecting missile technologies and discouraging allies from pursuing nuclear weapons or othe...

Following an earlier conversation with Bob Peters and John Warden on a possible U.S. force posture after New START expires on February 5, 2026, we look at the arms control side of the coin to brainstorm what a New START successor agreement may look like Mallory Stewart and Mike Albertson, two former U.S. government officials with decades of experience in implementing strategic arms control agreeme...

Heather takes the mic to interview Vipin and I. We covered as much ground as we could in discussing our article, but spent most of our time discussing Iran, U.S. nuclear strategy (including why the United States retains a damage limitation objective and how that is complicated by China’s nuclear modernization and expansion), extended deterrence, arms control, nonproliferation, and what we hope peo...

Today, I’m joined by Eric Brewer , a Deputy Vice President for the Nuclear Threat Initiative’s Nuclear Materials Security Program and former National Security Council Director for Counterproliferation, and Corey Hinderstein , a vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, overseeing the Technology and International Affairs Program, the Nuclear Policy Program, and t...

We went far and wide into the world of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) with Heather Williams, director of the Project on Nuclear Issues and a senior fellow in the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). In addition to talking about the relevance of the NPT in an era of major power disagreement and nuclear proliferation risks, we discu...

Shashank Joshi is the Defence Editor with The Economist, where he covers intelligence, military affairs, and a wide range of other security issues. He has been following the Russia-Ukraine conflict closely since day one, contributing high quality, deep analysis that’s digestible for casual observers and experts alike (kind of what we’re trying to do with our Substack, but better). We take advantag...

Two pods in one week, we’re really overworking ourselves (MIT’s semester ended and we are in between trips in writing limbo, so why not). In this episode, Vipin and I talk to Bob Peters, a Senior Research Fellow for Strategic Deterrence at the Heritage Foundation, and John Warden, a former NSC Director for Strategic Stability and Arms Control in the Biden Administration, about a future U.S. nuclea...

We were happy to host Ankit Panda, the Stanton Senior Fellow in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to discuss his new book: “The New Nuclear Age: At the Precipice of Armageddon.” Ankit lays out the features of the new era, including: * allied proliferation and other risks to the nonproliferation regime and norms; * deterrence and strategic stability in a...

We welcome Mira Rapp-Hooper, a partner at The Asia Group, political scientist, and the former Senior Director for East Asia and Oceania on President Biden’s NSC, as well as Zack Cooper, a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on American strategy in the Indo-Pacific and U.S.-China competition, with earlier stops in a his career in At DoD and the NSC, academia, and th...

A brief outline of the various topics we cover, as we really went all over the map, with timestamps: 3m 30s: A little history on the UK and French nuclear strategies dating back to the Cold War, and interactions with U.S. extended nuclear deterrence. 6m 00s: The absence of limited nuclear options among our nuclear allies in Europe, and the “religion” of escalation management. 14m 00s: The varied c...