Bruce Blair

Bruce G. Blair is the president of the World Security Institute, a nonprofit organization that he founded to promote independent research and journalism on global affairs. He is the Co-Founder of Global Zero, an international movement seeking the universal elimination of nuclear weapons, and is an executive producer of Countdown to Zero, a feature film about nuclear danger. Blair is an expert on nuclear weapons who has frequently testified before Congress. He has taught security studies as a visiting professor at Yale and Princeton universities. In 1999, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship Prize for his work and leadership on de-alerting nuclear forces. Blair was a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution from 1987 to 2000. In previous positions, he served as a project director at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, and as a Minuteman launch control officer. He holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research from Yale University.

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+Nuclear Weapons | December 5, 2011
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If Anything, $700 Billion Underestimates U.S. Nuke Spending in Next Decade

By Bruce Blair

This week the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler assigned two Pinocchios to the Ploughshares Fund estimate that the United States will spend upwards of $700 billion on nuclear weapons programs over the next decade.  My take on this debate, based on a Global Zero study, comes down in favor of Ploughshares.

+Military | July 13, 2011

China’s Rapid Space Ascent

By Bruce Blair

A recent revelatory study by my colleagues Eric Hagt and Matthew Durnin to be published in the Journal of Strategic Studies (October 2011 Vol. 34) describes China’s rapid expansion of its space satellite network from humble beginnings only one decade ago. It’s constellation of reconnaissance, data-relay, navigation and communications satellites provide global as well as [...]

+Nuclear Weapons | June 4, 2011

World Nuke Spending to Top $1 Trillion Per Decade

By Bruce Blair

Having contributed to the two definitive studies of U.S. nuclear weapons spending (Brooking’s Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 and Carnegie Endowment’s Nuclear Security Spending: Assessing Costs, Examining Priorities) which found that the United States incurred a cost of nearly $6 trillion on its nuclear weapons program from 1940-1996, [...]

+National Security | April 25, 2011

Trump to Obama: We’re Under Nuclear Attack – Pass the Phone to Biden

By Bruce Blair

What would Donald Trump do if he were a nuclear emergency action officer on duty today at the war room in the Pentagon (the National Military Command Center) or its alternates, and a nuclear emergency erupted that required the President to be summoned by phone to consult with his top nuclear advisors about a possible [...]

+Weapons | April 25, 2011

Nuke Modernization – Wrong Priority

By Bruce Blair

Why should we (and Secretary of Defense Gates in particular) be talking about modernizing all elements of the U.S. strategic triad of nuclear-armed submarines, land-based rockets, and bombers if we (President Obama in particular) have a decent chance of negotiating the total elimination — Global Zero — of all of the world’s nuclear arsenal? “All [...]

+Pentagon | April 20, 2011

Trapped in ‘Residual Nuclear Deterrence’

By Bruce Blair

Has anyone else been wondering why our vast nuclear forces are largely escaping unscathed from the budgetary axe falling on other defense programs?  The justification, as put to me this week by a top Pentagon official, is that we still need to maintain ‘residual deterrence’ in our relations with Russia. So missile launch crews stand [...]