Careers in Arms Control Transparency and Verification
Sandia National Laboratories
University of California, Berkeley
James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies
Nuclear weapons proliferation whether by state
or non-state actors poses one of the greatest threats to international security today. The
existing global nonproliferation and arms control regime is a highly developed system
for controlling weapons of mass destruction. Yet it is the ability to verify treaty compliance
that gives meaning to these international arms control and disarmament agreements. Multiple
pathways exist for scientists and policy makers to explore the development of nonproliferation
and verification technologies and polices through careers in academia, national laboratories
and government.
Academia
Welcome to the University of California Berkley.
The home of the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium. The NSSC is a multi-institution
initiative composed of seven academic institutions and four national laboratory partners working
to collectively train the next generation of nuclear security experts. The NSSC explores
research at the science technology policy interface to address arms control verification
and transparency issues in an academic environment.
Meet the Educators
Michael Nacht: My name is Michael Nacht. I’m
a professor of public policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University
of California Berkley.
Bethany Goldblum: My name is Bethany Goldblum
and I am the Associate Director of the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium
Kai Vetter: Kai Vetter I’m a professor in the department of nuclear engineering at UC
Berkley. I’m also the head of the Applied Nuclear Physics program at Lawrence Berkley
National Laboratory.
Michael Nacht: I had a bachelor’s degree
in astronautics and aeronautics from New York University and then I went to work for NASA
Space agency laboratory in Ohio.
Kai Vetter: My background is nuclear physics,
nuclear Sciences. I got my PhD in Nuclear Physics and I moved on to the more applied
side of applications of nuclear science and technologies.
Bethany Goldblum: My work is focused on applied nuclear physics for nuclear security applications.
Michael Nacht: I work on the relationship of nuclear security through other threats
like cyber and space.
Kai Vetter: In total, we have about 20 projects
in our research program which is split between UC Berkley and Berkley Lab. So the technologies
and concepts we develop have a wide range of applications starting from basically research
basic physics, astrophysics and medical applications and nuclear security which is nonproliferation
detection for homeland security verification and arms control.
Bethany Goldblum: The work that I’ve done with the labs has been more focused on the
specific missions. So there’s usually a deliverable whether it be a scientific deliverable
or a conceptual deliverable associated with the project so you’re always working towards
a specific end and so because of that, the collaboration with the labs has been really
positive in directing me towards an application space so in this case national security broadly
and nuclear security and nonproliferation research and development more specifically.
Michael Nacht: I worked on nuclear arms control issues in the Clinton Administration in the
90’s when I was assistant director of the arms control agency.
Kai Vetter: so we do have a lot of developments to improve the ability to detect radiation
in our environment or for basic research. So we do that by improving technologies, developing
new concepts and then mapping these new developments on a range of applications.
Bethany Goldblum: It’s really important to understand the applications of your scientific
research. There are few careers that give you the opportunity to contribute to issues
related to national security and arms control. This is a unique opportunity.
Michael Nacht: People don’t have any appreciation for the fact that the weapons remain very
salient and nuclear energy keeps growing in certain countries which can lead to nuclear
proliferation, so this is a wakeup call to the younger generation of the importance of
these issues.
Kai Vetter: In fact I would recommend to take
some classes and get involved in some of these activities as well so that students understand
it’s not just about improving technology but it exposes students to the additional
challenges when you go actually in the field to deploy or implement what you have learned
and what you have dialoged.
Bethany Goldblum: the international security
landscape is changing. That means that the nature of the problems that we’re facing
are changing, and so in order to address that we need to bring in people from a variety
of different backgrounds with different skill sets to contribute to these issues in arms
control today.
Michael Nacht: It’s going to take 10 years
probably before we have a really highly trained group of new younger people who can make contributions
in this area. I think it’s absolutely the right thing to do.
National Laboratories
The national laboratory serves as leading
institutions for science innovation in the United States. Sandia National Laboratories
is a multi-program delivering essential science technology to resolve the nation’s most
challenging security issues. Sandians innovate and discover new technologies to strengthen
the nation’s technological superiority and inform the national debate where technology
policy is critical to preserving security and freedom throughout our world.
Meet the Scientists
Erik Brubaker: So I’m Erik Brubaker and
I’m a physicist here at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, California.
Julia Craven Jones: My name is Julia Craven Jones and I’m an optical Engineer at Sandia
National Labs in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Jason Reinhardt: So I’m Jason Reinhardt.
I’m a manager of systems analysis here at Sandia National Laboratories and right now
I’m actually on leave at Stanford and spend some of my time over there doing PhD research
and work with the Center for International Security and Cooperation.
Erik Brubaker: I worked in particle physics as a grad student and as a post doc and then
moved into the more applied research in radiation detection at Sandia.
Julia Craven Jones: I have a bachelor’s degree in physics from San Diego State University,
and then I have a Masters and a PhD from the University of Arizona in optical sciences.
Jason Reinhardt: So I’m a pre-doctoral fellow at CSAC. I study nuclear nonproliferation
and nuclear risk reduction, and things like that.
Erik Brubaker: So the kinds of questions, the kinds of problems we’re looking at relate
to arms control have to do with potential future arms reduction or limitation treaties.
Julia Craven Jones: More specifically, my background is remote sensing and once I got
to Sandia and joined the technical staff there, I started getting involved with research and
development associated with the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
Jason Reinhardt: I’ve done a short study on the use of game theory in understanding
performance requirements for sensors for things like CTBT, so that sort of led me to systems
analysis so that’s the current role I serve at Sandia.
Erik Brubaker: So I ended up here in the radiation detection group at Sandia, which turned out
to be a really good fit.
Jason Reinhardt: Being at the Center for International
Security and Arms Control at Stanford and being a Sandian puts me in a really
unique position.
Julia Craven Jones: The role I’ve served
so far is as a subject matter expert where I’m, you know, providing guidance and assistance
to the CTBTO as they develop their onsite inspection capability.
Erik Brubaker: I’d like to think the kinds of detectors systems that we develop are potentially
useful for future arms control treaties.
Jason Reinhardt: and so I’ve got to go along
and as sort of an expert on risk analysis and someone from the labs.
Julia Craven Jones: We went all over the country deploying field equipment and so, you know,
things like that that take you out of the office for a few weeks can be, you know, really
exciting once in a lifetime opportunities that I really enjoy.
Jason Reinhardt: I think as I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that it is sort of an
essential issue of our time and now that I have a child I have this real desire to have
a hand in building a future where it’s safer for him.
Erik Brubaker: The end goal of a world with fewer weapons of mass destruction and lower
probability of global nuclear war is something that, you know, keeps me going.
It gets me up in the morning.
Government
The U.S. Department of State works to counter
threats of the United States and the International Order. State leads the interagency policy
process on nonproliferation and manages global U.S. security policy in the areas of nonproliferation
and arms control. This entails overseeing the negotiation, implementation and verification
of international agreements in arms control and international security.
Meet the Policymakers
Rose Gottemoeller: My name is Rose Gottemoeller.
I’m the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security here at
the Department of State in Washington, DC.
Alexandra Bell: My name is Alex Bell and I’m
the Director for Strategic Outreach for the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control
and International Security.
Matthew Sharp: I’m Matthew Sharp, I’m
a Foreign Affairs Officer at the State Department and I’m in the Bureau of International Security
and Nonproliferation. In particular I’m in the office for Multi-Lateral Nuclear Security
Affairs, which is an office that focuses on IAEA verification, nonproliferation safeguards,
and nuclear material, and also on the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Rose Gottemoeller: My whole day is taken up with the diplomacy of arms control, nonproliferation,
compliance issues, also political military affairs, which means all of our regional security
cooperation with all of the countries around the world.
Matthew Sharp: I have been at the State Department for about five years now. I started there
as a fellow through the American Association for the Advancement of Science. My background
is as a physicist and after grad school, I did a one year post doc at the Kennedy School
at Harvard and Cambridge working on arms control verification aspects.
Alexandra Bell: I took a slightly different path than a lot of my peers who may have gone
into the military or straight to graduate school and went to the Peace Corps and that
was because I definitely wanted to do public service and that had always been a motivation
of mine. I wanted to live abroad, I think it gives you an interesting perspective, in
fact that is exactly what happened.
Rose Gottemoeller: I’ve done a lot of work
over the last couple of years on the challenges of monitoring and verifying future arms control
treaties and agreements where we’ll be looking at smaller and smaller units of account. We’ll
be looking at warheads, for example, which we need to be able to monitor and verify to
a high degree of precision, especially as the number of nuclear weapons become smaller
and smaller. Smaller numbers means anybody who’s cheating can quickly accrue a significant
advantage, so you want to make sure you’re monitoring and verifying very very accurately.
Alexandra Bell: This work is really about protecting the world and I can’t really
think of a more noble job for people to get into.
Rose Gottemoeller: So, every day I’m engaged in this effort and now a lot of it is here
with our interagency colleagues in Washington because good policy of course requires everybody
to be engaged whether it’s the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the
Department of State, the White House of course always has to be involved.
Matthew Sharp: Getting the policy right on nonproliferation and arms control is for me
something that is extremely urgent and worthwhile to participate in. But at the same time, I’m
in a scenario where my technical background has a direct relevance and it’s not a total
departure from the skills and training that I had as a physics graduate student.
Alexandra Bell: I do this all the time in my job of working with the Hill and working
with press, is taking technical issues and making them more accessible and connecting
them to the policy objectives that we have.
Rose Gottemoeller: President Obama said in
Prague in April of 2009 that we need to work for the peace and security of world without
nuclear weapons, so we have reduced and eliminated a lot of nuclear weapons over the last 40
years, but now when it’s getting down to lower numbers it becomes more challenging.
Getting Involved
Jason Reinhardt: What we tell a lot of our
students right now constantly found a company, make a million dollars, cash out at 27 right?
Like that’s sort of the model everyone aspires to. It’s really robbing the country of some
really talented people that should be working on problems that are important to all of us.
Rose Gottemoeller: I think there are a lot of new directions where we need, where we
need the help of the next generation quite honestly.
Alexandra Bell: Particularly just how much we need folks. The retirement rate is pretty
astronomical.
Jason Reinhardt: Remember that there is a
national service role for what you’re learning and what you’re doing.
Michael Nacht: But it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, and for example to be career government
official is lifetime service can be rewarding, but it can be constraining to some people.
Alexandra Bell: This can be a frustrating job and liking the people you’re working
with, wanting to come into work every day is much more important than any title on a
business card.
Bethany Goldblum: And so it’s important
to looks at regardless of your particular area of expertise is, how that can contribute
to the problem.
Alexandra Bell: there’s tons of ways to
make a difference whether it’s at think tanks or advocacy organizations or labs or
the government or the Hill and you just have to find where it is that you feel like you
have a comparative advantage and just go there. And the title and the salary will all just
work themselves out.
Michael Nacht: There are also great places
like the RAND Corporation and other think tanks where they can do very state-of-the-art
technical work, but that’s policy relevant.
Jason Reinhardt: Partner with somebody who’s
outside your field, but focused in this area.
Kai Vetter: The more people you know the better,
and that’s honestly is for incoming freshman or the senior undergraduates or the incoming
graduate students. So the relationships, or establishing relationships is going to be
very important.
Jason Reinhardt: Nothing gets you that exposure
like some project you care abou,t so like if you dive in and actually go after and “Hey
I’m really interested the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. What are the issues there?
I’m going to go do a project. Like what would it actually take to verify that.”
Bethany Goldblum: So by working with national laboratory scientists, it gives you an opportunity
to tailor your research to more of these application driven issues like nuclear security, nonproliferation
and arms control and it allows you to really make a difference and make a contribution
to the problems that we are facing today.
Jason Reinhardt: and I think what you get
out of that is really new perspective as a student because it’s not
just another engineering project.
Rose Gottemoeller: And it’s that kind of
practical experience that will, I hope, help students to see that this isn’t so difficult
after all, and they shouldn’t be afraid of issues related to nuclear, chemical or
biological weapons, but just dive right in and work the policy side.
Julia Craven Jones: You know, take a look at what opportunities are out there, because
it doesn’t take much searching to see that they are looking for talented people.
Michael Nacht: and what are you interested in? You shouldn’t work in an area which
doesn’t really capture your attention most of the time.
Alexandra Bell: I think a huge thing that anyone can do is just volunteer and show up
for things. In addition to being a peace corps volunteer, if there was ever an opportunity
to join groups or fellowship programs or simply, you know, work for a professor, I just kept
seeing if there was more stuff I could do.
Jason Reinhardt: First of all, I never said
no to anything. Even if I thought I couldn’t do it or I didn’t know
what I was getting into.
Julia Craven Jones: “Go for it” would
be the real term I would use.
Jason Reinhardt: It’s daunting, right? What
do I know about arms control, but I think there’s a lot to be done and just get started.
Erik Brubaker: Get some breadth. If you’re a physicist, take a course or two in philosophy
or political science.
Matthew Sharp: Pay attention to what’s going on out there
because the amount of information that's available to anyone with an internet
connection far exceeds what you could possibly ever read.
Bethany Goldblum: Just go on the internet and google opportunities in arms control.
Twitter has a flood of information on arms control, verification, on opportunities,
internship activities.
Matthew Sharp: When I was a graduate student,
I found that there were a number of organizations for people in my situation as sort of a hard
scientist looking for a segway into, in particular, arms control communities, and there are NGOs
that are out there with the explicit aim of helping people make those kinds of connections.
Rose Gottemoeller: I think most important are the human skills, the communication skills,
having the ability to speak clearly and succinctly.
Alexandra Bell: no matter what you’re doing,
whether its policy or the technical side or science side of this field, become a better
writer. You become a better writer, one, by being willing to critique your own work or
have it critiqued.
Rose Gottemoeller: Because it’s really very,
very important to get fresh ideas to come to the table too, and I often find that some
of our younger experts bring the fresh new ideas that we need.
Alexandra Bell: if we don’t get new energized young people into the field, we won’t have
enough people trying to keep the worst weapons out of the worst hands.
Acknowledgements: This work was sponsored by the Key Verification Assets Fund (V Fund) established by Congress in 1999 to help the Department of State Preserve critical verification assets and promote the development of new technologies that support the verification of, and compliance with, arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament requirements. The V Fund is administered by the Verification and Planning Outreach (VPO) and is intended to influence rather than replace or duplicate activities elsewhere, and therefore its resources are, by design, modest relative to the scope of its mission.
Participating Organizations: University of California, Berkeley Nuclear Science and Security Consortium Nuclear Policy Working Group Sandia National Laboratories United States Department of State Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance
Cinematography and Editing by: Jodie Howard
Direction and Supervision by: Bethany Goldblum Erika Suzuki Elie Katzenson
Creative Commons Music Credit: Podington Bear The Losers
Interviews by: Michael Nacht Bethany Goldblum Kai Vetter Erik Brubaker Julia Craven Jones Jason Reinhardt Rose Gottemoeller Alexandra Bell Matthew Sharp
Special Thanks to: Lorraine Sadler Anne Choi David Borengasser
Dislcaimer: This material is based upon work supported by the Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration under Award Number DE-NA0000979. This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or limited, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or
process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise dos not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof. The views and opinions of authors express herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof.