At the end of this awful year, Jeffrey and Aaron talk about the future of arms control, the future of analytics, and the future of the pod. 2021 will have a lot going on: New START expiration or extension, new facilities in Iran, figuring out what the heck the North Koreans are doing, what's going on with anti-satellite missiles, and more. Head over to the Arms Control Wonk slack channel to voice your opinion on what topics we should prioritize, because we have a lot of them and not everything's getting covered!    Support us over at Patreon.com/acwpodcast!

New Year, New START, New Facilities in Iran

The nuclear weapons, arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation podcast.  Companion to the popular Arms Control Wonk blog (www.armscontrolwonk.com). Hosted by Jeffrey Lewis & Aaron Stein.

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We have data! Jeffrey and Aaron walk through the new primary source data to figure out if either Iran's missile raid or Israeli's missile defense efforts were effective. This appears to be the first time that successful wartime ballistic missile defense intercepts can be validated via open source means, which is a major step forward for open source missile and BMD analysis.  Jeffrey and Aaron also talk about the relative impact of conventional ballistic missiles, and what secondary effects must be considered when assessing the value of interceptors vs. offensive missiles.  This one gets wonky.  Support us over at Patreon.com/acwpodcast!

Iran and Israel's Missile War

And you may find yourself not complying with the IAEA And you may find yourself in a war in another part of the world And you may find yourself making a metaphor about an automobile And you may find yourself enriching your uranium stocks, and building reactors And you may ask yourself "Well, how did I get here?"    Letting the days go by, politics will hold you down  Letting the days go by, heavy water underground  Into Fordow again, maybe to Isfahan Once in a lifetime, realignment all around   Same as it ever was, Same as it ever was   Jeffrey and Aaron go through the current state of play in Iranian politics (just prior to its massive missile strike on Israel), particularly around the nuclear program and what the bomb genuinely means for security and Iranian internal politics, and review how we got here over the past 20 years of Arms Control Wonkery.   Support us over at Patreon.com/acwpodcast!

Iran's Once in a Lifetime Moment

William Alberque joins Jeffrey for a friendly and deep debate about the Russian Navy nuclear documents leaked to FT, covered in our  previous episode. This is a fascinating discussion not only on the documents themselves, but what they imply for Russia's view of its own territorial integrity, what it needs to convince its soldiers to go to bat for, and the eternal issues of "self-deterrence".   Support us over at Patreon.com/acwpodcast!

Russian Nuclear Doctrine in the Financial Times 2: A Conversation with William Alberque

Max Seddon and Chris Cook with the Financial Times have written an excellent piece on leaked Russian Naval documents that FT saw, focused on thresholds for Russian nuclear use, especially in a war scenario with China.  Jeffrey and Aaron go through what the documents reveal and debate if they're generally consistant with what is understood about Russian nuclear doctrine or, as FT states, indicate that the threshold is lower than previous understood.   Support us over at Patreon.com/acwpodcast!

Russian Nuclear Doctrine in the Financial Times

Road trip to Vegas. As part of an NGO transparency visit, NNSA opened up the Nevada Test Site to a group of international nuclear weapons experts, including one Dr. Jeffrey Lewis. Jeffrey goes through what he saw: P Tunnel, The BEEF, and the crown jewel, U1a. This was an NNSA exercise in transparency, aimed at showing the community and world that the U.S. stockpile stewardship and treaty verification exercises are separate from nuclear explosive tests. It was also, and we cannot underline this enough, extremely cool. Support us over at Patreon.com/acwpodcast!

New Year, New START, New Facilities in Iran

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