Excited to share a work-in-progress on how revenge and deterrence motives can lead to divergent designs for automated nuclear command-and-control systems; inspired by the Soviet Union's Dead Hand system during the Cold War.
interactive heat map of data available from Roper iPoll
Our collection of over 25,000 full datasets of public opinion spans the globe! Our interactive map makes it easy to find quality data with representation from more than 120 countries. https://bit.ly/3gfZYQ1
Rose Gottemoeller, the former chief US negotiator for New START, explains that a one-year extension of the treaty limits would not prejudice any of the vital steps Washington is taking to respond to China's nuclear build-up.
- 9/n
#NewSTART #armscontrol #nukesky @stanfordcisac.bsky.social
Great new book on the strategic implications of drones, including some interesting Cold War history of drone use along side interesting experiments newbooksnetwork.com/the-remote-r...
Zainab Saleh discusses how the Iraq she grew up in—during the Ba'ath Party reign and under Saddam Hussein and explores the concept of nostalgia for the Saddam era, which exists even among those who suffered under the regime, because of the basic services that were provided.
youtu.be/p5bjV3N0Zrw?...
New post on Iranian thinking after the June 2025 war and why missiles, not nuclear latency, are now at the center of Tehran's strategy. axesandatoms.substack.com/p/why-israel...
Your Name Here is a fascinating bridge between literary fiction and foreign policy well worth reading. It warns that when a culture rewards ignorance and mendacity, politics is rarely far behind.
www.thenation.com/article/cult...
The paper by Rauf et al. (2025) shows faculty-led experiments succeed more often, likely because of both resources (sample size) and design experiences.
If you’re a grad student, collaborate! Bringing an experienced experimentalist into the design stage raises your odds of success.
🎧 What if nuclear war didn’t look like chaos, but competence?
CISAC Co-Director Scott Sagan discusses A House of Dynamite and the real risks of nuclear decision-making on the Bang Bang Podcast. ⤵️
www.bangbangpod.com/p/a-house-of...
📢 New paper w/ @mcward.bsky.social in @ripejournal.bsky.social
: We show that left- and right-led governments negotiate fundamentally different bilateral investment treaties, with lasting consequences for treaty formation, design, and exit.
doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2025.2589412
The Generalizability of IR Experiments beyond the United States
The Generalizability of IR Experiments beyond the United States By Lotem Bassan-Nygate, Harvard University, Jonathan Renshon, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Jessica L. P. Weeks, University of Wisconsin–Madison and Chagai M. Weiss,…
Hollywood meets nuclear strategy, and it’s messier than you think. CISAC Co-director Scott Sagan and Research Assistant Shreya Lad unpack what A House of Dynamite gets right about nuclear risk, and where it goes dangerously wrong.
thebulletin.org/2025/12/a-ho...
So cool -> Quebec researchers tracked eye dilation + sweat when showing respondents political issues to see if they aligned with results from standard poll questions on issue importance. They did! And suggest asking people to choose their top issue is most reliable academic.oup.com/poq/article/...
"Hallo"? 🤣
Conventional wisdom suggests that states, when challenged, can demonstrate their resolve by retaliating militarily, thereby deterring future challenges. I argue that rather than deterring, retaliation provokes cyclical revenge.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuBM...
Grateful to have been in DC for the Stanton conference meeting fellows, scholars, alumni, and policy practitioners who are working on deterrence and nonproliferation from both social science and technical angles.
🚨 How & why do nuclear delivery vehicles proliferate? My article on the spread of delivery vehicles is out at Security Studies! #OpenAccess
It explains:
- Why the NPT allows nuclear delivery vehicles to spread
- How did India acquire its #nuclear delivery technology
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Please join us in welcoming our 2025-2026 fellows! These scholars will spend the academic year generating new knowledge across a range of topics that can help all of us build a safer world.
cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/news/cisac-n...
One understudied phenomenon in political science: how leaders (and publics) draw connections between seemingly unrelated events—across domestic and foreign arenas—simply because they happen concurrently, enabling unexpected cross-domain policy influence.
