Valdai Club

On September 19, 2016, the Valdai Discussion Club will present the Valdai Paper titled "Nuclear Weapons in the Cyber Age: New Challenges for Security, Strategy and Stability."

The safe, secure and reliable management of nuclear weapons has always been a complex and complicated business, plagued by uncertainty and risks. But these challenges are being magnified and aggravated by new cyber tools, dynamics and capabilities, and from the threat posed by hackers seeking to gain access to, or interfere with, nuclear systems. The challenge is myriad in its scope, and ranges from the safe, secure and reliable nuclear C2, through fresh problems for information security, proliferation, and the safeguarding of highly sensitive nuclear secrets., to new complications for strategic deterrence and escalation, and the emergence of a cyber-nuclear security dilemma.

While cyber threats may not currently undermine or supersede the role of nuclear weapons as the ultimate symbol of national security, increased uncertainty about the integrity and security of these systems raises questions for nuclear force management, thinking and strategy for all nuclear-armed states. The cyber challenge is nuanced and subtle, complicating and obfuscating the intrinsic difficulties of nuclear C2 and nuclear strategy rather than fundamentally transforming them. That said, these new challenges do represent an important shift in the environment in which nuclear weapons are thought about, states manage their nuclear forces and nuclear policy and strategy is made. Accordingly, the challenge will have both direct and indirect implications not just for nuclear security and C2, but also for strategic balances, the maintenance of arms control agreements, and future nuclear reductions.

Speakers:

Andrew Futter, Senior Lecturer in International Politics, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester, Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy ;

Oleg Demidov, PIR Center Cyber Security Strategy Consultant.

Moderator:

Andrey Sushentsov, Programme director of the Valdai Discussion Club Foundation, Director of the Foreign Policy Analysis Group.

Venue: Valdai Discussion Club Conference Hall (42 Bolshaya Tatarskaya St., Moscow, Russia), 15.00

Working language - English.

Information for media: to attend, please fill out the accreditation form or call +7 926 930 7763 (Maria Miklushevskaya, Public Relations Department).

Information for participants: if you have any questions, please contact Ruben Prazyan, Event Management and Research Programs Department, by calling +7 903 730-3118.