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Richard Branson Goes Nuclear

It’s December 13, 2018, and Richard Branson is gobsmacked. Jaws drop, tears flow, and friends cheer as VSS Unity—a suborbital, manned, rocket-powered spacecraft built by Virgin Galactic—makes its first trip to space. The vessel was named by Stephen Hawking, theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and nuclear weapons abolitionist. It embodied his belief that nations seem capable of cooperating in space “in a way we can only envy on Earth.” In homage to Hawking, the Unity logo includes an image of Hawking’s eye.

A few days later I open my email to discover an invitation to join Richard Branson and a group of his colleagues and friends at a convening hosted by the Branson family foundation, Virgin Unite, and their Australian partner Igniting Change.

It’s an understatement to say that I too am gobsmacked.

ENSEMBLE

In 1980 I left California to study theater. I did a year at NYU followed by four years in the drama division at the Juilliard School. I graduated with excellent training from a prestigious institution and a path of open doors.

Decades later, however, I know that the most important element of that experience had more universal value: when a diverse and well-trained ensemble performs to its fullest potential the effect is transformative. That’s true whether the ensemble looks like a gang of educators designing schools that serve all students or like a transdisciplinary team tackling dangers related to nuclear weapons.

“The fundamental driver of our success at Virgin has, and will always be, our people working together,” Branson once said. Maybe he’d seen this power too.

So that’s what I decide to talk about with Richard Branson and his crew.

KINSHIP

In March 2019, I find myself speaking to the most remarkable collection of people. Presenting just before me is Graça Machel, the Mozambiquan freedom fighter and campaigner for the rights of children and women, cofounder of The Elders, an international group of leaders working together for peace, justice, and human rights. After me will be Victor Ochen. Formerly a refugee in Uganda, Victor is founder of the African Youth Initiative Network and a crusader for human rights and justice. “My heart swells with joy to see Ochen as one of the new hopes for Africa,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said.

Erika Gregory, left, and Graça Machel, cofounder of The Elders

The people in this room bring many kinds of resources. Some have vast wealth and the desire to use it for good. Others have not a penny but possess the courage to do work the rest of us would never dare do. Others are with us because they are global connectors and collectors of extraordinary people; they have dedicated themselves to the notion that good people who feel meaningfully connected to one another and to a shared purpose can accomplish what others consider impossible.

The thread that unites us, from Richard through to his professional and personal families, and from them to those of us assembled, is the power of big ideas. We are gathered, in fact, to determine how we can act in concert—as an ensemble—in service of those big ideas.

One of these ideas is that by 2045—the 100th anniversary of the creation of nuclear weapons—the world will no longer rely upon them for global stability.

OPPORTUNITY

Of course, I hit the usual talking points that everyone rolls out when they describe the nuclear threat landscape. That 14,000 nuclear weapons still exist. That the chance of an accident or a deployment has possibly never been higher. That the population working to make sure these things don’t happen is aging and dwindling, even as the threat becomes more complex.

I’d covered all of this in my 2016 TED talk as well, but my one regret about that talk is what I didn’t say. I focused on the threat when the real story is the opportunity. To envision a world that is more resilient and better equipped to manage conflict and to deter bad behavior precisely because we have moved beyond nuclear weapons. To begin an inspirational new chapter in the evolution of human affairs by declaring the year 2045 as the end of the nuclear weapons century. To build alliances and strengthen movements by understanding the points of intersection between nuclear dangers and climate change, social justice, and healthier democracies.

Ironically, given that preventing the spread of nuclear weapons involves ensuring that energy is used only for productive purposes, there are too few channels for the release of creative energy in the field of nuclear arms control. Funding is competitive, organizational structures hierarchical, the culture staid. One of the most significant opportunities in front of us is to unleash the energy contained in the hearts and minds of the brightest young people working on nuclear disarmament, nonproliferation, and security—the “heirs apparent” to this challenge— so they don’t leave the field in frustration after just a few years.

I tell the group that at a time when formal big systems are struggling to get a purchase on nuclear threats—diplomatic channels between the nuclear superpowers are nearly nonexistent—ensembles are making a comeback. I describe how the N Square Innovators Network—an unconventional, transdisciplinary network of technologists, game designers, nuclear policy experts, diplomats, and Hollywood filmmakers—is taking up the charge. Working in small, nimble teams and facilitated by skilled designers, these innovators are bringing esprit de corps to a field that could use it.

Small teams have long been good vehicles for problem-solving where big systems stumble, and this is not a new idea when it comes to nuclear weapons. The Nunn-Lugar cooperative threat reduction program, for example, enabled the Russian and US scientific communities to cooperate even as the Soviet Union fell. Unemployed Russian scientists—rather than going to other countries to help them build nuclear weapons—helped to downgrade weapons-usable nuclear material so it could be used to power light bulbs instead.

So it might not be a stretch to say that the future of humanity depends on our ability to understand and to replicate the dynamics of small teams powered by big ideas.

INNOVATION

People love concrete examples. So I describe for Richard Branson and the group what it can look like for small but diverse teams to innovate the ways we talk about, teach about, and problem-solve around nuclear threat.

It looks like a mix of nuclear security experts and artists applying the methods of human-centered inquiry and design to awaken, or create, a constituency that understands how to exert pressure on nuclear decision-makers. It looks like N Square fellows—from Apple, MIT, the Skoll Foundation, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, among others—developing new methods for exposing false or misleading information about nuclear activities and making accurate and trusted information more universally available. It looks like an equally unconventional team tackling the question: How might we make the power imbalance surrounding nuclear weapons a personal issue for influential communities?

Then I pose a different question: What if the nuclear security field became one of the brightest sources of creativity and innovation on our planet? This question activates people in the room; I can feel them paying close attention, leaning in to the possibilities.

“EXCEPTIONAL PEOPLE COME FORWARD”

One evening toward the end of our time together, Richard reflects on his life. He talks about his family, he shows a touching short film about Virgin Galactic’s recent triumph. As he tells his grandchildren in the film, “Virgin Galactic has shown that when you set off on challenging but important adventures, exceptional people come forward to join the journey, who are consistently by your side and on your side. People who share your dreams and people who help make them reality.”

This, clearly, is the animating idea behind our gathering: to build a community of adventurers and pioneers eager to tackle the world’s greatest challenges together. Important ideas attract exceptional people who make the most significant contributions when they go beyond the ordinary, seeking to amaze themselves and others.

Now, as Richard says in his blog post, it’s time for that community of adventurers to turn their attention to the nuclear threat.

Creating a world free from nuclear weapons is the realm of the visionary and the iconoclast, but for some reason too few people like Richard Branson have set their sights on nuclear weapons. More than their financial resources we need their guidance and their grit, their networks, and their leadership. We need their optimism and appetite to do what others can’t even imagine. We need them to use their influence to do what government leaders have been unwilling or unable to do.

We’re excited by who else might join us on this path; who will invest in transforming the field by flooding it with new talent and new ways of working on an issue that all of us have a stake in; and how many other innovators, artists, experts, investors—and iconoclasts—will step up to light the way.

photos by Eric Rojas

Responsible Disruption

How can we encourage an atmosphere of collaboration and responsible disruption in the nuclear security field? By ensuring that all feel empowered to contribute. In my mind, the first barrier to that empowerment is whether or not you see yourself and your ideas as legitimate. Given that legitimacy is in many ways a product of public opinion, part of the mission is to influence the way the public considers who is a legitimate voice on nuclear issues and what ideas are both credible and justified.

In the nuclear security space, we often equate the most dominant voices with the most legitimate voices. Whether we are talking about the military, the scientific community, or the highest level of government, experience and ideas from these perspectives have been held up as the most authoritative and thus the most valuable.

Culturally, the architecture of the current world order, one that positions nuclear weapons at the center of global dominance, was set up by a small number of powerful men from the U.S., Europe, and the former Soviet Union. When we think about key players in the Cold War—whether scientists like Oppenheimer or Fermi, national leaders like Truman or Churchill, or generals like Eisenhower and Groves—their maleness and whiteness are among their most obvious unifying features.

However, like the stories we’ve told ourselves about the U.S. space race or the history of computing in America, the fact that the celebrated contributors in nuclear security are often very male and very white is a function more of our neglect of detail than it is a reality of who has historically contributed. Just as we saw with the blockbuster film Hidden Figures, women and people of color have a long history of contribution to key moments in American and global history. But this oversight, in the best case, or intentional erasure, in the worst, contributes to the image we have in our minds about who this space belongs to.

“THE FACT THAT THE CELEBRATED CONTRIBUTORS IN NUCLEAR SECURITY ARE OFTEN VERY MALE AND VERY WHITE IS A FUNCTION MORE OF OUR NEGLECT OF DETAIL THAN IT IS A REALITY OF WHO HAS HISTORICALLY CONTRIBUTED.” 

If we were to step outside the narrowness of the established history that centers men of European descent as the stewards of our collective security future, we would recognize that we too have stories that can be used as vehicles for the inspiration and engagement of a broader demographic around nuclear weapons. Take, for example, the Calutron Girls. These women, many of them fresh from high school between the ages of 18 and 25, were responsible for operating the uranium enrichment machines in Tennessee that produced the fuel for the first atomic bombs in WWII. Outside of a book published in 2013 on their work, their story as women at the center of war-fighting efforts has gone largely underreported and underappreciated. Measured against the impact of films like Hidden Figures—which grossed over $200 million worldwide while reframing the protagonist not as a powerful white man but as a technically brilliant group of black women—it becomes clear that the public is interested in a reexamination of the past that acknowledges their contributions and establishes these disciplines as their own.

“The Calutron Girls,” Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 1944

Similarly, the role of creative expression in shaping the public consciousness of nuclear weapons issues cannot be ignored. The film The Day After is a useful illustration of this point. Watched by over 100 million people in 1983, this film explored the realities of a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. It gave the American public, and those that viewed it in the Soviet Union, a common starting point to probe their governments about what was being done to protect against this exchange. Distinguished policymakers and thinkers in this space were called to the carpet by journalists to speak plainly about alternatives to war and ways to infuse stability into what was then a very unstable situation.

Some say the film influenced Ronald Reagan’s evolution from a hard-lined nuclear arms control skeptic into a president that would sign one of the most consequential nuclear arms control agreements, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty—which Russia is violated and the Trump administration just ended. If we fast-forward to today, many of the same signs of instability are once again present, and the American public is hungry for a way to understand these issues and influence the thinking of their leaders. Mediums like film, podcasting, and radio are positioned to bring nuclear weapons out of the abstract and explore the human consequence of the policies we have pursued in the past and are entertaining today.

If there were one thing to take away from the question of how to overcome the barrier of legitimacy on the road to empowerment, it would be the importance of a complete and correct record of our nuclear history. Knowing that women and people of color have an established legacy of contribution relieves us of the pressure of being the first down this path. Knowing that creatives have long helped both the American public and policymakers think about the implications of their actions means we have a foundation to build from. What we need to do now is build new frames and tools that help us understand the world as it is today, and may be tomorrow.

“KNOWING THAT CREATIVES HAVE LONG HELPED BOTH THE AMERICAN PUBLIC AND POLICYMAKERS THINK ABOUT THE IMPLICATIONS OF THEIR ACTIONS MEANS WE HAVE A FOUNDATION TO BUILD FROM.”

It is true that the world is different than it was during the Cold War, and it is justified to question if the frameworks we used to understand the dynamics of deterrence are appropriate to use now. Is the vocabulary appropriate for a world with multiple nuclear powers, whose actions in the nuclear space affect not only their main rivals but others in this multipolar world? How can we think about security in a way that accounts for the new dynamics of climate change, and the role it will play in introducing instability? In many ways, the problems we face are messier than what our predecessors had to navigate, and the solutions will require thinking that accounts for much more.

We are poised to do that thinking. Professional, cultural, and gender diversity among the individuals working toward these solutions will allow us to look at the risks and consequences of nuclear war through lenses beyond traditional government, scientific, and military perspectives. I encourage everyone who enters the nuclear security space to see it as their own, and know that their voice is legitimate and necessary in the way we think about nuclear policy and the impact of nuclear weapons development and possible use. We must all be generous with our expertise—and open to seeing the issues in new ways.

Mareena Robinson Snowden is a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an N Square Fellow. This piece was adapted from remarks she gave to the N Square Innovators Network in November 2018.

top photo: Trevor Holden for the N Square Innovation Summit at RISD

The Diplomat

Bruce Lowry has the nuclear field surrounded. With a background in foreign policy, tech, communications, and philanthropy, he brings a broad professional toolkit to the challenge of reducing nuclear threats. At the Skoll Global Threats Fund and now at the Skoll Foundation, Bruce has spearheaded efforts to identify and explore new ways to make the world safer from the risks of nuclear weapons, primarily by identifying and funding fresh collaborative approaches to solving decades-old problems. N Square is one such approach. In this brief interview, Bruce talks about what his time in the Foreign Service and the tech world taught him about how innovation happens, why nontraditional philanthropic approaches to the nuclear threat are sorely needed, and why he remains optimistic about the prospects of a nuclear-free future.

Q  How did you end up at the Skoll Foundation?

A  It was a circuitous path. After studying international relations in college and in graduate school, I went into the Foreign Service for almost 14 years, working on a variety of projects, including nuclear safety. I left in 1999 and went into tech for about a decade. Then I started looking for opportunities to reenter the global policy world, but without having to leave the Bay Area. That’s how I landed at the Skoll Foundation. At the time, Jeff Skoll was creating a separate project called the Skoll Global Threats Fund, which aimed to tackle a handful of the biggest wicked problems facing humanity, including climate change, pandemics, and nuclear nonproliferation. Given my foreign policy background, I ended up overseeing Skoll Global Threats’ nuclear nonproliferation work, and that included N Square. When Skoll Global Threats Fund sunsetted at the end of 2017, I brought this work back into the Skoll Foundation.

Q  How have your Foreign Service and tech-sector experiences influenced your career in philanthropy?

A  Both taught me a lot about innovation and the conditions that can either encourage or stifle it. The Foreign Service gave me insight into how hard it is to innovate from within the government in any systematic way. The Foreign Service runs foreign policy at the direction of political leadership, and Foreign Service contacts and networks carry over even when administrations change. There is value in that continuity and in institutional memory—but it also can discourage experimentation. I was in the Foreign Service during the Cold War, and while I wasn’t working on nuclear weapons policy directly, I did work on G7 issues after the Chernobyl incident. There was a lot of conversation about how to put a sarcophagus over the Chernobyl reactors that were still leaking—and yet that didn’t happen until 2016. That’s how long it takes to get stuff done in government. Even when government is willing, they are slow to commit to trying something completely new.

“I SAW THE POWER OF CROWDSOURCING AND OF EMBRACING NEW WAYS OF APPROACHING OLD CHALLENGES, AS WELL AS THE VALUE OF AN OLD ORGANIZATION TRYING TO DO NEW THINGS IN A FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT WAY.”

In the tech sector, I worked for a company that sold security, network, and management software. It was not tremendously dynamic, but then they decided to get into open source. This was a company known for its “if it’s not invented here it’s no good” syndrome, so its move toward commercializing open source was a big pivot. It exposed me to open source communities and developers who had very different views on how software gets built. While the software itself wasn’t relevant to nuclear nonproliferation, I saw the power of crowdsourcing and of embracing new ways of approaching old challenges, as well as the value of an old organization trying to do new things in a fundamentally different way.

Photo credit – Skoll Foundation

Q  You helped start N Square. We’ve asked other founding funders what attracted them to the idea. What about you?

A  The conversation around N Square came pretty early after the launch of Skoll Global Threats. I had been talking to Megan Garcia, who was working on nuclear threat at Hewlett and was keen on bringing innovation into the arena. Philip Yun at Ploughshares was also interested. Because Skoll Global Threats was brand new, we didn’t have an established approach to nuclear issues. So it was easy for us to say that we wanted to explore new approaches.

The biggest nuclear funders at the time were Hewlett, Carnegie, MacArthur, Ploughshares, and Skoll. We came together for a series of conversations about innovation in this area, recognizing how much of the work focused on reducing the nuclear threat was quite traditional. A lot of NGOs had been working on this issue for a long time. We saw that there were interesting developments in other arenas where people were taking advantage of new platforms, new technologies, and new approaches. So we retained IDEO, a Bay Area design firm, to take us through an innovation process. How could we think about introducing innovation to this field? What would that look like? What had been tried in analogous areas that might be relevant? That process ultimately led to the creation of an innovation collaborative, which we called N Square.

“HOW CAN BRILLIANT PEOPLE INSIDE AND OUTSIDE THE FIELD GET INVOLVED IN INNOVATING NEW APPROACHES TO NUCLEAR CHALLENGES?” 

Q  While your goal is to bring innovation to the nuclear field, this collaborative approach to philanthropy is its own kind of innovation. What were some of the early challenges of committing to a five-headed funding approach?

A  All five funders had their own remit and their own way of doing things. We all had distinctly different processes for monitoring and evaluation. But we had to create a different, dynamic, and iterative process for N Square because we didn’t know what we didn’t know. We didn’t know what innovation might be the most successful or what we could achieve in a specific timeframe. So early on, everybody got comfortable with the idea that we would have to do things differently. We agreed to retain a developmental evaluator, who worked with us from the beginning to keep strategic questions in focus. That was really helpful. The whole point was that we wanted to do something that would reduce nuclear risk. There was a lot of debate about framing the work around nonproliferation or disarmament, but the effort was designed to surface new players and new ideas around reducing nuclear risk, and we weren’t going to prejudge what those were. We acknowledged it, we were okay with it, and we built it into the process.

In the early stages there was a lot of experimentation. We put seed money into a variety of activities designed to explore what might engage people. As time went on, we saw that some things were more successful than others and started narrowing down what seemed to be working. We engaged with both nuclear sector experts and folks from outside the sector. We listened carefully, and if they chose to disengage, we tried to understand why. When they were interested in doing more, we tried to suss out what that might look like and how we could support it. As a funder collaborative, we also had to identify if people were engaging because they were genuinely interested in the issue, or if they were just participating because there was an implied promise of funding. We relied on feedback, seeing where the enthusiasm was landing, and listening to what people were saying they needed in order to stay engaged. Those were the things that helped us better understand was working and what wasn’t.

Q  Eventually, this experimentation led you to the idea of creating a more formal N Square network. What was the goal of that?

A  The latest incarnation of N Square is going deeper with a group of N Square fellows over a period of time on very specific work, with N Square serving as a convener and hub. This direction emerged very much in response to the question of agency. How can brilliant people inside and outside the field get involved in innovating new approaches to nuclear challenges? Many of our fellows are doing very cutting-edge work around the world but have never thought about this issue at all. So the N Square Innovators Network invites new members into a community of practice that comprises both incumbent nuclear nonproliferation players and newcomers to the space, while making sure that all see real value in their participation. So far this is going well—our first cohort is finishing its projects and our second cohort is just getting started. A challenge that remains is making clear connections between N Square activities and the ultimate outcome of reducing nuclear risk. But I think we’re moving more into that direction now.

Photo credit – RISD

Q  In the meantime, you’re also helping to inspire other organizations and networks to take on this issue in ways that are independent of N Square. When you first sat down with the other four funders, you probably never imagined that the Rhode Island School of Design, for example, would somehow get involved.

A  No, but I think that’s a credit to the idea. And it’s another way that we can gauge success. One measure is whether there are partners whom we’ve touched and connected with at some level who have run with the issue. RISD has embraced this idea that everyone—even a well-known design school—can contribute to innovations that lessen the nuclear threat. They are now creating nuclear-focused classes on trust and verification. We’d love to have even more of these kinds of relationships with organizations or networks that embrace this work. PopTech has certainly done it, elevating the nuclear theme in their convenings. The Lear Center is injecting more realistic themes in Hollywood portrayals of nuclear weapons, which may lead some people to think differently about nuclear issues. We’ve had less success in building out relationships to technology companies. There are individuals who are interested and engaged but there’s no organizational partner able to play a similar role to RISD or PopTech. At least, we haven’t identified that partner yet.

Q  What do you think the nuclear threat field will look like in 10 years, and what could the future look like if everything goes well?

A  I’m optimistic. I think there are a number of factors that could gradually reduce the perception that nuclear weapons are essential to our security. One is the diminishing role of these weapons in military strategy. They are not war fighting weapons, and they are unusable in the conflicts that we face today. Having nuclear weapons doesn’t help you win in Syria. And when something isn’t useful or helpful, costs issues come into sharper focus. And we’re already seeing this, with new House Armed Services Committee members set to challenge the Trump administration on the proposed modernization of the nuclear space because it’s so costly. I’m hopeful that we’re at the beginning of a rising recognition that these weapons aren’t all they’re made out to be.

 

 

The Negotiator

Michelle Dover has a perspective on nuclear weapons that few others have. She grew up a short drive away from the Hanford nuclear production site in Washington State. Plutonium manufactured in her community was used in the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki in 1945. For Michelle, growing up in the shadow of one of the most toxic radioactive sites on Earth meant nuclear catastrophe was a backdrop to life. Now director of programs at the Ploughshares Fund, one of N Square’s founding funders, in Washington, DC, Michelle has dedicated her career to reducing that threat. In this interview, she talks about the field of nuclear nonproliferation, how it’s changing, and what gives her hope for the future.

Q  How did you get into this field?

A  It was a bit of a winding path. I grew up near the Hanford nuclear site—one of the legacy Manhattan Project sites—so nuclear threat was always in the background for me. I’ve always been interested in how conflict is pervasive in human interactions, in both the positive and negative sense. Differences of opinion and differences of interest permeate our lives from the individual to the state level. I was always more interested in how things were resolved, so I didn’t end up at law school. The skill that I needed was negotiation.

But I really came into the field through the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA). They sent me to a course at the Monterey Institute and I met the most fascinating people. When I finished my graduate work, I was accepted as a Nonproliferation Graduate Fellow at the NNSA. I worked on international safeguards—including the policies of the international inspectors that go into different nuclear facilities, the agreements between countries on the types of technology they’re allowed to use, and the way they approach analysis.

Q  Who was the Secretary of Energy then?

A  Dr. Steven Chu. Many people were excited to have a scientist running the Department of Energy. It changes the tone of conversation, knowing that he understood the science behind things. My impression was that civil servants were happy to have somebody who understood and appreciated the work of the scientists within the complex.

Q  Is that also what excited you about the people you met in the nuclear field?

A  When I was taking the course at Monterey Institute, I remember talking to scientists from Livermore National Laboratory who had done some really interesting technical work. I had assumed that work was what they’d be most proud of—but the thing they were really most proud of was going into places like Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union to help secure nuclear material and engage Russian scientists. I really respect that dedication to the issue and the sense that whatever small part you play, you really are contributing to making the world a safer place. That is one of the key features that I see in people who work in this field.

I did my graduate work on a phenomenon called epistemic communities. They’re tight-knit groups of people, typically based in science, who share a common language and a common set of opinions about how the world should operate. When this phenomenon was described in the early 1990s, the arms control community was a key study. It’s a group of people who refer to themselves as a community, and, once you’re in—once you can speak the language, once you can articulate what some of these shared values are—I’ve found it to be very supportive. This strong network gives them a very powerful impact on policy.

Hanford N Reactor
Photo Credit – United States Department of Energy.

Q  Does that make it harder, though, for the public to understand nuclear issues?

A  One of the things that we run into is how to translate this for the broader public, and how not to turn them off. I offer up my own background as an example that you don’t need to be a nuclear scientist to have a say in these issues, or even have a career in this field. You need nuclear scientists, and you also need people from other backgrounds, perspectives, and disciplines. I think that’s the best practice when you’re talking about policies that affect everyone.

For the public, it’s not just about making nuclear issues meaningful for them—it’s also about giving them agency. People find this topic important, but they don’t think they can make a difference because it’s something that’s controlled by faceless bureaucrats. It’s always a challenge in a highly technical field to figure out what to convey to the broader population, and what they will find interesting or useful. But there’s a broader world out there that does care, and people do have important things to say on this. So, how do you give them a chance to do that? And how do you give them the tools and knowledge that they need to have an informed opinion?

“ONE OF THE MOST HIGHLY CONTAMINATED SITES IN THE US WAS A 20-MINUTE DRIVE FROM MY HOUSE. BUT I DIDN’T SEE POLICYMAKERS ADDRESSING THE ISSUE UNLESS SOMEONE RAISED IT IN A REALLY PUBLIC WAY.”

Q  How do you do that?

A  My perspective is informed by growing up near a Manhattan Project site. It was frustrating to know that one of the most highly contaminated sites in the US was a 20-minute drive from my house. I felt powerless. I was told this radioactive material would far outlive me and future generations. But I didn’t see policymakers addressing the issue unless someone raised it in a really public way. And you need that—you need the public to say that this is an issue that’s important. The public wants to see a world in which we’re trying to reduce nuclear threats, where we get rid of weapons through negotiation or engagement and not through military action. But unless you are telling policymakers that these are your values and your principles, and this is what you think should happen, they’re not going to make it a priority.

Q  What role do you think popular media has in creating a common understanding of the threats posed by nuclear weapons—or even in influencing policy?

A  There’s the lore that President Reagan saw the movie The Day After and that was a wake-up call for him on the effects of nuclear weapons. Talk to anyone in the field and they usually have an opinion on Dr. Strangelove, War Games, The Hunt for Red October. You just start listing off the movies and you realize that nuclear weapons, how we relate to them, and what we think of them has been a theme in our popular culture. Public consensus is shaped by that. Nucleus, one of the groups that has worked with N Square, has done some really interesting work on how people between the ages of 15 and 35 view the world. It’s not so much that they think the apocalypse can be stopped, it’s that they think the apocalypse is inevitable and that they will survive it. They point to examples like The Hunger Games or The Maze Runner or other dystopian novels where the apocalypse has happened, but the focus is on how you survive. It’s an interesting take on nuclear weapons, because does that mean you think it’s impossible to reduce nuclear threats or to eliminate them? How do you move that focus to before the event arrives?

I think Hollywood can help with that. Do you know that the president will only have at most about 12 minutes to decide whether to launch nuclear weapons in the case of a potentially incoming strike? Do you know how many weapons are out there? Do you know who has them? Do you know how much money it takes to maintain them? Do you know under what conditions we are actually going to use them? Hollywood can play an important role in communicating the basic facts about these issues.

Michelle Dover at Hanford B Reactor

Q  How did you end up at Ploughshares Fund?

A  By chance—a colleague sent me a note about an opening. I was aware of what grantmaking looked like but I had never really thought about the role that foundations play in supporting civil society. When I got to Ploughshares, I found they were doing amazing things. Ploughshares funds in a few different areas. We’re aiming for a world free of nuclear weapons, and we see three main approaches to that: get rid of the ones that already exist, prevent new groups or states from getting them, and then address the underlying problems that drive states to proliferation to begin with. We pride ourselves on trying to be as nimble and responsive as we can be, despite the fact that foundations can be slow to respond.

I came at a time when Ploughshares was focusing a lot of its work on diplomacy with Iran. I watched the debate over the deal that summer and saw so many policymakers speak about the deal in the Senate. For those who supported the agreement, they were listing the work of groups in civil society as having factored into their decision, sometimes citing specific experts. For me, it was such a powerful example of the role that civil society can play. The way I see it, we may be playing on the margins in some ways, but they’re really important margins.

“SOMEBODY ONCE TOLD ME THAT THE MOST CREATIVE SPACE IS THE SPACE BETWEEN FIELDS, AND THAT’S WHERE WE’RE SEEING SOME OF THE BRIGHTEST INNOVATION.”

Q  What innovations in the field are you most excited about?

A  Some of the most interesting innovation involves bringing in voices that haven’t been heard before, or voices that may have been there but were not given a prominent place at the table. The work that some in the Navajo Nation are doing to tell the story of the impact of uranium mining, and the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons, are good examples. There’s a lot of energy in that type of work that is really powerful.

In the technology arena, democratizing access to information is a game-changer. Instead of having to hunt down routes for ships, there’s satellite imagery you can buy, and there are large amounts of data that are available to anyone if they have the time and they’re smart about how they spend it. I think of innovation as, “What are the new ideas that we’re applying to this space?” Somebody told me once that the most creative space is the space between fields, and that’s where we’re seeing some of the brightest innovation.

Photo Credit – F Charles Photography

I also think that cultivating networks of people who are working on—or could be working on—nuclear issues is itself a key innovation. At Ploughshares Fund we work hard to cultivate a network for our grantees so that they’re not working on their projects in isolation and can draw on a broader field of people working on this issue. And, of course, that’s the central idea of N Square—to facilitate and support this kind of connecting the dots between different kinds of experts to create a new kind of community working these problems together. It’s been fun to sit in the room at N Square convenings and see people from completely outside the field saying, “Wait a minute. How many people work on this issue? How many weapons are there actually in the world? How big is this problem?” People are able to draw connections that are not otherwise obvious. I’ve appreciated the perspective that this problem is solvable, which brings me hope.

“WE ARE IN THE MIDST OF A VALUES-BASED MOVEMENT, WHERE WHAT YOU STAND FOR MATTERS IN SOME CASES MORE THAN THE ISSUE. THAT’S WHAT DRIVES MY WORK AND WHAT GIVES ME HOPE.” 

Q  What else gives you hope?

A  I’m a strong believer that change is possible and that civil society can influence that change. It can be a force for reducing threats and increasing peace. And I don’t just mean peace as an absence of war, but as a place where you can achieve your potential. With nuclear weapons, we’ve gone from the peak of almost 70,000 weapons to 15,000. We can keep going. If we’ve gotten this far, movement is possible.

If you look at the bigger picture, you see that there’s so much that we’ve already done to reduce the chances of another Cuban Missile Crisis. Is there more that we can be doing? Absolutely. But the point is that we’ve seen that movement before. We’re at a place where, at least in the US, we’re questioning who we want to be. In looking at the current grassroots mobilizations, I’ve been reminded that we are in the midst of a values-based movement, where what you stand for matters in some cases more than the issue. From a conflict resolution point of view, that’s a positive discussion to have. We have an opportunity to demonstrate what we value, and that’s what drives my work and what gives me hope.

Q  One of the limitations in this field is that not that many people fund this work. How can the field attract more funders?

A  Foundations each have their own personality and mission, but we also have places where our missions align. I’m a part of groups like the Peace and Security Funders Group, where I can engage with foundations that are outside of the nuclear field but are still working in peace and security to hear how they’re thinking about problems. Bringing in new foundations or new types of funding requires thinking outside the box about how your projects fit with others’ goals. It also requires making the case of why it’s important and why you think providing resources will make a difference. We do our best to reach out to potential new donors to make that case, but it will require a field-wide effort. The good news is that we’ve seen some new individuals either become engaged or re-engaged with the topic since the 2016 election. In terms of very large new institutional funders, I really haven’t seen much, but that’s something that we’re going to keep plugging away at. N Square, which helps make these connections, is part of this outreach effort.

Q  What do you think the nuclear threat field will look like in 10 years, and what could the future look like if everything goes well?

A  You’re going to see a field that preserves the important lessons we’ve learned. There is a very strong mentorship component in this field and a transfer of knowledge that I’m confident will continue. The field will be more diverse and more inclusive. There will be people from different fields and walks of life who have a say on some of these issues. There is even a chance that multilateral treaties could be negotiated. Maybe that’s a hope, but given how much globalization has affected relationships between countries, I think it’s a reasonable one. I believe we can truly make a safer and more secure world, and that working on reducing nuclear threats opens up more space to tackle the other problems. If we can keep addressing it, we can make room for collaboration and cooperation on a variety of issues that affect us all.

Photo Credit – Patrick Dover Photography

Five Minutes to Save the World

The first words you read when you enter the Nuclear Decisions game (nucleardecisions.org) set the tone for what’s to follow: “You receive information that the US might be under nuclear attack. You have five minutes to ignore or respond to the threat. The clock is ticking. What do you do?” With these words, players enter the game—and get put on the clock—assuming the role of a military officer charged with determining whether nuclear-armed ballistic missiles are, or are not, heading for the US mainland. A mistake in judgment, in either direction, could be catastrophic.

Produced in partnership by the game design firm Playmatics, the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM), N Square, and Public Radio International (PRI), the first “module” of the Nuclear Decisions game launched in late May 2018—the result of its own breakneck decision process. Just three weeks earlier, N Square had learned that the season finale of the CBS series Madam Secretary would feature a nuclear crisis storyline that some in the N Square community had helped bring to the show. Ideas were quickly floated for how to convert that moment into an opportunity to draw viewers and others into deeper conversation about nuclear decision-making.

“We knew that there was likely to be a cliffhanger ending, and we assumed it would be that missiles would be coming and you don’t know what will happen next,” says Nancy Gallagher, a public policy expert who heads CISSM and served as a lead author of the game. “We thought, maybe we can give people an idea of the complexities of how we could have ended up in this situation in the first place—and get them to consider what decision-making at a policy level looks like around nuclear weapons.”

Decision Game Module One:
While covering the night shift at NORAD, you receive data from U.S. early warning satellites that several ballistic missiles were just launched from locations within Russia.
Image credit – DoD

N Square quickly built a team around this idea. Playmatics founder Nick Fortugno, a fellow in the N Square Innovators Network, had a history of designing timely and serious games, including a recent experimental news game created with ProPublica exploring the experiences of asylum seekers. Gallagher, who had served as executive director of the Clinton administration’s Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Task Force, had extensive experience conducting opinion polls and simulations about global decision-making—both efforts geared at understanding and influencing public discourse around nuclear weapons. Together, and with the help of colleagues, they turned their focus to creating a game that would marry their talents and capture the Madam Secretary moment.

“WE WANTED TO OVERWHELM TO USER WITH INFORMATION—TO GIVE THEM THE CHANCE TO REALIZE HOW COMPLEX AND EVEN CONTRADICTORY IT WAS, AND HOW UNSURE THEY WOULD FEEL EVEN AFTER TAKING IT ALL IN.” 

For Fortugno, the fact that US policy and operating procedure requires decision-makers to evaluate the verity of a possible nuclear attack within five minutes had to be central to the game. So a ticking clock became a key feature. Given their own time pressures, the team didn’t have the bandwidth to create a deeply multimedia experience—but they also didn’t want to, says Fortugno. “Multimedia wouldn’t communicate the complexity of the situation as well as text,” he says. “We wanted to overwhelm the user with information—to give them the chance to read it, but also to realize just how much information there was, and how complex and even contradictory it was, and how unsure they would feel even after taking it all in.”

In the game, players have access to factual information and advisors with different perspectives to help them navigate each decision—but that doesn’t make their task any easier. Creating that part “tapped into the experiences that I had when I was working in the State Department, trying to put myself in the shoes of multiple people with different political perspectives and think about how they would think about a given question,” says Gallagher.

Decision Game Module One:
The preliminary tracking data suggests the missiles are targeting some of the 399 ICBMs stationed at three military bases (Warren, Minot, and Malmstrom Air Force bases), which span North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska and Montana. These silos are hardened to protect the missiles inside them, but could be destroyed by a direct hit.
Image credit – DoD

As the deadline approached, the game still needed a host. So the team reached out to Jodi Gersh, head of Public Radio International’s Engagement Lab and also a member of the N Square Innovators Network. Ultimately, PRI agreed to host the game, promote it on the air, and use it as a springboard for enhancing its own coverage of nuclear issues. (Case in point: this new PRI piece about the growing market for personal bunkers, hazmat suits, and emergency rations in South Korea.)

The Nuclear Decisions game launched on time in May—but that wasn’t the end of the game building. Since then, three more five-minute decision modules have been added, with two more still planned. Users play each one in succession, with the choices they make affecting how the story unfolds. Each new module explores a different facet of nuclear policy and how it might contribute to the buildup toward a crisis. “How did we end up with these really vulnerable ICBMs?” explains Gallagher. “Why is it that we don’t have many channels of communication with the Russians? And why do we have this policy that basically relies on other people believing that we’re going to incinerate millions of their civilians?”

“TELLING STORIES IN NEW WAYS CAN ITSELF DRAW PEOPLE’S ATTENTION AND HELP THEM ABSORB YOUR MESSAGE.”

Players may find themselves in the shoes of a member of Congress, an average voter, or others weighing dilemmas and making decisions that raise or lower the risks of nuclear war. In all cases, there are no clear-cut, easy, or right answers. “We wanted people to understand it’s not just the president who makes this one really big decision,” says Gallagher. “It’s Americans at any number of different levels, including somebody who works for the military, or somebody who works through the State Department, or civil society activists, or just regular citizens.”

Decision Game Module One:
ICBMs travel at about 15,000 mph, so one launched 6,000 miles away could hit a target within 30 minutes. Current U.S. policy and operating procedures require you to make a decision within five minutes about whether this is a real attack or a false alarm.
Image credit – Sara Santini

The citizens part is important—because actively engaging a broader public in the conversation about the challenges of nuclear decision-making is the game’s ultimate goal. “It’s easier for people to become active on climate issues because they can do concrete things to make a difference, even if it’s changing their light bulbs,” says Gallagher. “It’s harder to think about how you can give people any kind of feeling of agency around nuclear weapons.” But she does see promise in the power of games like this one to spark new public discourse. “My 12-year-old nephew played it, and it led to a conversation with him that I never would have expected about what some of the policy issues were.”

“Telling stories in new ways can itself draw people’s attention and help them absorb your message,” says Fortugno. “With this game, users are agents rather than perceivers—they have to make decisions about nuclear weapons instead of passively reading about it. That kind of agency creates understanding in a way that other things can’t.”

Play the game: nucleardecisions.org

 

Incubating Peace

Over the past decade, the world of philanthropy has been significantly influenced—disrupted, even—by a large infusion of new money. This money is coming from new and often young philanthropists who have acquired it largely through dynamic, risk-taking entrepreneurship. These new entrants into the traditional field of charitable giving bring with them a decidedly private-sector attitude about risk and results—and a willingness to break traditions. Failure is not just OK but valued for the learning it fosters. So are partnerships with an array of institutions and people that extend beyond the world of nonprofits.

One Earth Future Foundation (OEF) embodies these dynamics. Founded by Marcel Arsenault and Cynda Collins Arsenault in 2009, OEF has a simple but audacious mission: to catalyze systems that eliminate root causes of war, effectively eliminating war as a means of resolving disputes by the year 2100. Central to OEF is its Future Labs department, where new projects and programs aimed at enhancing human collaboration in the interest of peace get developed and tested. One of these programs is the SAFE (Shared Awareness, Fusion, and Engagement) Network, which seeks to harness non-classified data analytics to reduce the risks associated with nuclear weapons. Jon Bellish, who runs OEF’s Future Labs, has been an N Square Innovators Network fellow since the network began. In this brief interview, he talks about OEF’s vision for creating structural changes in society, why he joined the Innovators Network, and why OEF has decided to help fund one of the network’s first pilot projects.

Q  What makes One Earth Future’s founder, Marcel Arsenault, different as a philanthropist?

A  Marcel is willing to be disruptive, but not for it’s own sake. Rather, he sees what he believes are missing elements to philanthropic endeavors and looks to address them. For example, he would be totally OK going to Davos and criticizing the way private philanthropy has been going about some aspect of its work. But he wouldn’t trash the whole system. Instead he’d say, “Private philanthropy is essential to our future. Here’s how we can do better.”

Q  Can you talk a bit about the SAFE Network, and why Marcel and other folks at OEF are so passionate about the program and the approach it envisions?

A  SAFE stands for Shared Awareness, Fusion, and Engagement. It is a project that will use open data from a range of sources and pair that with a network of people who can analyze it and decide if there is a risk of nuclear proliferation or crisis. If there is a crisis, an elite set of trusted third parties—international diplomats, nuclear security and operations experts, and former military leaders—will be called into action in order to deescalate tensions before it’s too late. All of these trusted third parties will have strong credibility with global leaders and a decidedly non-nationalistic role. The shared goal will be to prevent, then diminish, nuclear crisis from becoming a nuclear “use.”

We didn’t know a lot about the space when we began. But like all good designers, we don’t just dream something up ourselves and decide for everyone what they need or want. We go to the users or customers and interview them to learn what they need—and that’s what we did here. And we have the advantage of resources to bring. Ultimately, we determined that there was a potential value to deploying such a network and we have just done so. We’ll see if it gains traction.

Photo credit – One Earth Future Foundation

Q  How does OEF see changing or improving global governance for the better?

A  We are living in a new landscape. There are many more relationships today than just nation-to-nation. We see more and more relationships between cities and nations, states and nations, cities and cities, etc. Not only are the levels of engagement more diverse, but the rise of tribalism has made multilateral approaches essential, and at these different levels. OEF’s central answer to what is needed comes from what we see as the three basic ways in which humans interact. The first is hierarchies, where someone has authority or power over you and therefore can make you take certain actions. This has been the typical approach in international relations. The second is markets. Since the Industrial Revolution, markets have been a powerful tool for effecting change, essentially coercing people to do things because they see it as being in their economic self-interest.

The third, though, is networks. In a network people can be influenced to do things because they identify as part of a group. They are connected in some way, and there is a strong sense of a shared goal and therefore shared value when actions are taken. We as a society are the least good at this approach, at least when it comes to making and implementing public policy. Networks can build trust, and yet they are not yet as powerful as markets or hierarchies. But most life outside officialdom and markets is through networks.

“ULTIMATELY, WE COULD SOLVE PROBLEMS IN WAYS THAT GOVERNMENTS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO BECAUSE OF POLITICAL OR INSTITUTIONAL CONSTRAINTS. THAT IS THE VALUE OF PHILANTHROPIC INVESTMENT IN NETWORKS AND COLLABORATION—BRIDGING THE GAPS WE SEE WITH A MORE HOLISTIC APPROACH TO PROBLEM-SOLVING.”

So OEF’s approach is to increase the emphasis and value of networked coordination as part of this equation. This is a little in the weeds, but it’s really networked coordination and not networks that’s key for OEF. Some of our best work happens within institutions—helping different parts of NATO work together differently, for example. I think SAFE will do at least as much to bring networked coordination within hierarchies as it will to create new networks per se.

Getting better at this is a key part of OEF’s theory of change. For example, nuclear arms control treaties came into being in part because of a network relationship. Sure, they are managed in a hierarchical system, but presidents and their advisors are part of a small, elite network and relationships at that high level are powerful. Nobody coerced these leaders into entering the treaty. These same treaties can later fail because the network component that existed when it came into being fades when new powerful players enter the stage and wield that power in a hierarchical fashion among nations. Witness the current administration’s track record of leaving a series of treaties more for ideological reasons than efficacy. There is no network to help defend them.

Q  Are you worried about proving that the SAFE Network is a viable approach?

A  What I think OEF and N Square share is the sometimes dicey position of not having to prove something works or has market value but rather demonstrates evidence that it can. Potential donors or partners like to see something new or innovative that has enough of a test track to give confidence and therefore gains partners or donors. That being said, I don’t think private-sector approaches always map well to non-private-sector endeavors. Marcel may disagree, but I actually think there are clear limits to where the private-sector tools and sensibilities translate.

But there are funders and philanthropies that understand the parts that can translate—the Omidyars, Skoll, Marcel, Gates, Soros. We can have a much bigger part of the philanthropic world taking this approach—risk-taking for a couple of years, refining and learning for two or three more years, then going to more traditional funders to say, “We are ready, and we know this works.” If we got more serious about measurement and evaluation, we could be far more effective as a sector. Ultimately, we could solve problems in ways that governments are not allowed to because of political or institutional constraints. That is the value of philanthropic investment in networks and collaboration—bridging the gaps we see with a more holistic approach to problem-solving.

Q  How did you learn about N Square, and ultimately decide to join the Innovators Network?

A  My first interaction was with a dinner in San Francisco with folks from N Square. At that point our work in developing the SAFE Network was about eight months old. Our big question at that point was, “Will this die if no one uses it?” You guys introduced us to the team at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies, at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. They had been doing similar work using open source tools. So there seemed to be a great opportunity to learn from them and to determine if there were synergies between us. N Square was actually modeling the way OEF does things—giving some modest resources for a small group to try new stuff. The way N Square nurtured relationships and utilized talent was also something we took note of. Essentially, your approach is to test specific things in order to learn from them, and to be prepared for failure. That work, though, is what fundamentally builds a network. That was impressive to us.

Photo credit – One Earth Future Foundation

Q  OEF is going to help fund “Datayo,” one of the first projects to come out of N Square’s own version of an incubator, the Innovators Network. You were on the team that prototyped and tested the project. Why did you decide to help fund it?

A  Datayo was built on two propositions: that information about nuclear weapons is inaccessible and siloed, and that recent advances in the quality and affordability of open data present an opportunity that didn’t previously exist in the field. Datayo will be an online, collaborative data lab that complies open data and presents it in a useable form. We hope that it can improve dialogue within and across governments, add value to the private sector, and open public conversations about these weapons, both in and out of the media. We are funding it because it supports our own SAFE project. I don’t personally do a “lit review” of grant investments like a standard program officer at a foundation. I don’t need to be a subject matter expert. If regular grantmakers looked at our process, they wouldn’t see typical “rigor.” Instead, we like iteration, testing things, experimentation. This helps us learn. We start out “stupid” and become less and less stupid as we try things. Eventually, we get smart about a specific topic or technique. Then we’re ready to design and even deploy something new.

“JUST AS THE PRINTING PRESS CREATED POSSIBILITIES FOR INDIVIDUALS TO INTERPRET THE BIBLE WITHOUT THE INTERVENTION OF THE CLERGY, OPEN DATA CAN ALLOW CITIZENS TO DRAW THEIR OWN CONCLUSIONS WITHOUT THE INTERVENTION OF THE ‘HIGH PRIESTS’ OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS.”

Q  What do you think the nuclear threat field will look like in 10 years, and what could the future look like if everything goes well?

A  I see two competing forces that will play out over the next 10 years. The first is rising nationalism and geopolitical competition among nuclear armed states. As we saw last year between President Trump and Kim Jong Un, these risks are real and nuclear weapons are clearly implicated. The second, countervailing force is the potential for open data to open conversations in this space. I’ve compared it in the past to the Protestant Reformation. Just as the printing press created possibilities for individuals to interpret the Bible without the intervention of the clergy, open data can allow citizens to draw their own conclusions about the costs and benefits of these weapons without the intervention of the “high priests” of nuclear weapons. If we are successful, I expect we’ll see less awe and fear on the part of citizens and more accountability for those who make decisions about the development and use of these weapons systems. That’s the future we are betting on at OEF.

Photo credit – One Earth Future Foundation

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