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  • Levi: On Nuclear Terrorism
    By Michael A. Levi, David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment and Director of the Program on Energy Security and Climate Change
    Podcast
    December 5, 2007

  • How Likely is a Nuclear Terrorist Attack on the United States?
    Online Debate
    Updated: April 20, 2007

  • U.S.-India Nuclear Cooperation
    By Michael A. Levi, David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment and Director of the Program on Energy Security and Climate Change and Charles D. Ferguson, Philip D. Reed Senior Fellow for Science and Technology
    Council Special Report
    June 2006

  • New Council Report Urges Two-Stage Compromise on U.S.-India Nuclear Deal
    News Release
    June 7, 2006

  • Nuclear Terrorism in the United States
    Podcast
    May 3, 2006

  See Also

  United States, Defense Technology, Biotechnology, Weapons of Mass Destruction

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  Secret Science: Hoarding Nuclear Secrets—Even From Enemies—Can Be Downright Dangerous

  Author:	Michael A. Levi, David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment and Director of the Program on Energy Security and Climate Change

  February 18, 2008
  SEED Magazine

  For over 70 years, scientists, by dint of their unique ability to inform policymakers, have occupied a special position in driving the ways governments treat nuclear secrets. Enrico Fermi went so far as to write, “secrecy was not started by generals, was not started by security officers, but was started by physicists.” He was undoubtedly thinking of Leo Szilard, who, having conceived of the chain reaction in late 1933 and later reported it in a 1934 patent application, promptly assigned it to the British government to be kept secret. In many ways, Fermi did not exaggerate: Szilard’s first attempt to assign the patent was rejected by the War Department, which saw no harm in disclosing his insight.

  In the early days, when no one was sure how widely known the basic principles of the bomb were, blanket secrecy was a sensible approach. Indeed there are still prohibitive risks involved in releasing many nuclear secrets. Today, though, the balance is different. Scientists and military experts, through more than half a century of experience, are now far more capable of distinguishing between dangerous and benign releases of information. At the same time, an increase in global exchange and international cooperation has raised the value of shared information, not only within the nuclear sphere, but with respect to national security measures more generally. Moreover, Cold War experience has taught us that sharing some information with enemies can help shape their behavior in useful ways.

  View full text of article

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  New CFR Books

  

  In Termites in the Trading System, Jagdish Bhagwati reveals how the rapid spread of preferential trade agreements endangers the world trading system.

  

  America Between the Wars explores how the decisions and debates of the years between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Twin Towers shaped the events, arguments, and politics of the world we live in today.

  

  In The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State, Noah Feldman tells the story behind the increasingly popular call for the establishment of the sharia—the law of the traditional Islamic state—in the modern Muslim world.

  Complete list of CFR Books.

  

  

  New Independent Task Force Reports

  Confronting Climate Change

  This report argues that the United States must lead with domestic action on climate change and proposes a U.S. negotiating strategy for a global UN climate agreement that includes commitments from all major economies, while also promoting a less formal Partnership for Climate Cooperation that would focus the world's largest emitters on implementing aggressive emissions reductions.

  U.S.-Latin America Relations: A New Direction for a New Reality

  This Task Force report examines changes in Latin America and in U.S. influence there, while taking account of the region's enduring importance to the United States. The Task Force offers an agenda for U.S. policy toward Latin America and identifies four critical areas that should provide the basis of a new U.S. approach.

  About Independent Task Forces at the Council.

  

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