Category: Publications

Citation:

N. Mahowald, B.L. Goldblum, T. Hickey, J. Kornell, “Quantifying Correlations between International Relations and Nuclear Proliferation Status” ANS Topical Meeting: Advances in Nuclear Nonproliferation Technology and Policy Conference (ANTPC), Santa Fe, NM, USA, 25-30 September 2016.

The spread of nuclear weapons remains a grave concern. Unfortunately, the influence of political and economic relations on nuclear proliferation is not well understood, and is further complicated by complex interplay between internal and external factors. Here, we present a new method for quantifying correlations between international relations and proliferation. This work builds on quantitative political science investigations of the relationships between proliferation and alliances, macroeconomic ties, conflicts, and nuclear cooperation agreements (NCAs).

Citation:

J. Kornell, Z.N. Gastelum, B.L. Goldblum, “Informational Sensing for Nonproliferation” ANS Topical Meeting: Advances in Nuclear Nonproliferation Technology and Policy Conference (ANTPC), Santa Fe, NM, USA, 25-30 September 2016.

Verifying nuclear nonproliferation is difficult, in that the goal is to continually confirm the absence of undeclared nuclear materials and activities, to say with high confidence that what we don’t see doesn’t exist. The nuclear security community has largely relied on physical sensing for detection of potential clandestine activity. There are many kinds of information that could complement physical sensing, including open source data, publicly available images produced by commercial or scientific satellites, networked sensors, various societal verification tools, quantitative political science datasets, and social media.