The Roles of Science in National Security Policymaking: A Case Study on Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse

The format is approximately 7 inches by 10 inches. [2], 50, [4] pages. Decorative front cover. Footnotes. Illustrations (color). Cover has some wear. Madison Hissom is a fellow at the Center for Global Security Research (CGSR) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where his work focuses on how intelligence programs assess proliferation threats and other emerging technologies. His research interests include the history of weapons proliferation, counterterrorism, and illicit trade. Madison received an MA in international studies from North Carolina State University and a BA in economics and German language from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Cole Pruitt is a postdoctoral researcher in the Design Physics Division at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. His research interests include nuclear data and reaction theory, nuclear weapons policy, and science communication. Prior to joining the laboratory, he co-directed/produced The Surrounding Game (2017), the first feature documentary about the game of Go. He received his Ph.D. in chemistry from Washington University in St. Louis and a Bachelor of Science in biophysics from Brown University. Wes Spain was a CGSR senior fellow from 2014 until his retirement in 2021. He joined the laboratory in 1997 and served in multiple leadership positions, including director of the Office of Strategic Outcomes, Intelligence program director and Z Division leader. Before joining LLNL, he served with Central Intelligence Agency and the United States Army. He received an MA in international relations from Boston University. This volume addresses squarely the responsibility of scientists and technologists at this laboratory and elsewhere to create the needed bridge to the policymaker. More than that, it offers practical advice on how to be effective in the policy environment. The monograph grows out of the experience of lab technical staff with programmatic activities at the Center for Global Security Research, where such bridge-building is an ever-present project. It also grows out of their own professional experience serving as advisors, whether formally or informally, to decisionmakers in Washington DC. The authors sift through these experiences for lessons of enduring value to the bridge builders. In making their case, they draw effectively on a case study—the provision of technical advice to policymakers on the threat from electromagnetic pulse weapons. The result should be of value to any member of the laboratory's technical community seeking a better understanding of how to be effective in ensuring that policy judgments are technically sound. When thrust into a policymaking environment, scientific advisors—isolated from the norms and protocols of their technical fields, and often without policymaking experience themselves—stand to benefit from the guideposts for advising that we identify in this paper. Rather than advocate for specific, formal changes to the structure of existing policymaking institutions, we explore the many roles science advisors can play when engaging on thorny national security topics. While technological progress presents new challenges, many of the difficulties faced by advisors, such as uncertain and limited data, conflicting values and risk tolerances, and potential misalignment between policymaker expectations and scientific reality, have plagued scientific advising since the earliest days of American governance. To focus our exploration, we recruit four idealized technical advisor roles identified by Roger Pielke, Jr. in The Honest Broker. In a series of fictional dialogues (rooted in actual Congressional testimony), we examine the threat from high-altitude nuclear electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, a national security topic that lays bare many challenges for technical advisors.…