By Julia Cooper, Policy Intern, Fall 2025 When I was 13, at a luncheon for DACOR, I heard military leaders saying that having more nuclear weapons makes the United States safer — which didn’t seem quite right to me. This piqued my interest in nuclear weapons, and I had my first taste of the nuclear […]
Nukes of Hazard blog
A House of Dynamite, Eisenhower and Lessons for Non-Proliferation
By Julia Cooper, Policy Intern, Fall 2025 In Kathryn Bigelow’s nuclear thriller A House of Dynamite, allusions to President Dwight Eisenhower are present throughout. Portraited just over the Secretary of Defense’s shoulder in the film, Eisenhower’s watchful gaze serves as a reminder that many present-day challenges in nuclear policy have been around since the 1950s […]
Why ‘Tactical’ Nuclear Weapons Are Anything But ‘Usable’
By Julia Cooper, Fall 2025 Policy Intern Vague threats of the use of nuclear weapons, especially tactical ones, have been a critical tool of Russia’s rhetoric around its invasion of Ukraine. Russian drills practicing the use of these weapons have been numerous since the invasion and were further exemplified last month with the Zapad-2025 military […]
One Person’s Pre-Watch Guide to ‘A House of Dynamite’
By Farah Sonde Just in time for Halloween, Netflix is dropping a new nuclear thriller that fits the “spooky season” mantra. A House of Dynamite, the new film directed by Kathryn Bigelow, will hit select theaters October 10 and will stream on Netflix starting October 24. The film’s new trailer delivers multiple hints about what’s […]
Intangible Threats: How Uncontrolled Knowledge Fuels Proliferation
by Mathew Montiel* How do we govern knowledge? Can we control knowledge? If I gave you blueprints for an LGM-35 Sentinel Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, could you build it? Thankfully, most of us could not. But it’s not because we can’t figure it out; it’s because there are still significant gaps between expertise, infrastructure and materials […]
