Harold Trinkunas, the Deputy Director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, and a senior research scholar at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, recently helped assemble our special issue on emerging technologies and strategic stability. In this episode, he previews the issue by explaining how Cold War deterrence assumptions rooted in a bilateral US–Soviet relationship no longer hold amid more nuclear-armed actors, wider access to AI, cyber, hypersonics, and the possibility that these tools can threaten second-strike forces or create effects once associated with nuclear weapons. Our discussion highlights risks of preemption, inadvertent escalation driven by automation and bad data, and psychological and organizational biases intensified by time compression and increasingly personalist regimes.

Article: "Emerging Technologies and the Future of Strategic Stability"

Hosts: Sheena Chestnut Greitens and Ryan Vest

Producer: Jordan Morning