... that may involve future tactical decisions (Bentz 2022; Kurtz 2022; Vaddi et al. 2022). Both situations require a broad look at a variety of threats and outcomes weighed against resources, policies, and administration priorities....

... need for broader thinking to capture “the things not yet considered” as well as perspectives and input from U.S. allies and partners; a need for expanded adversarial intent modeling (e.g., “decision calculus”) and integrated intelligence collection efforts; the challenge of analyzing the risks of ...

... Finding 3-1: Decision makers from across the U.S. government highlight a need for nuclear war and nuclear terrorism risk analysis to have a broader scope. Decision makers are concerned about signals or threats that they may be missing that could ... to rare but highly consequential surprises. In addition, those within and outside of the Department of Defense (DoD), highlight a need for nuclear war risk analyses to be conducted outside of DoD to consider a broader scope ... pathways and outcomes....

... 1 In the Phase I report, game theory is highlighted as a method that has been successful in analyzing deterrence (NASEM 2023a; see Table 6-1 and surrounding text)....

... 2 A Defense Science Board report in 2019 provided advice on how to improve the National Leadership Command and Control, including the establishment of an exercise, testing, and learning regimen [within leadership] (DSB 2019)....

... A key component of the committee’s tasking was to explore the interface between risk assessment and the development of strategy (Tasks 4 and 5; see Box 1-2). The committee heard from a variety of U.S. government decision and policy makers who were asked about how they utilize risk ... related to nuclear war and nuclear terrorism, what methods they used to guide decisions, and the assumptions they made in developing nuclear security strategy for the United States. The information collected to examine this interface is shown ... Tables 2-1 and 2-2, in the columns labeled “Strategy.” Table 2-1, “Risk Analysis Methods Used by Decision Makers to Assess Risks of Nuclear War,” shows that ... 2-2, “Risk Analysis Methods Used by Decision Makers to Assess Risks of Nuclear Terrorism,” shows that intelligence-informed leadership judgment and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) risk methodology are used by some agencies and departments....

... Decisions that rely on intelligence and leadership judgment can be made quickly and are well-suited to address real-time issues. However, they are susceptible to bias and group think (see the Phase I report section “Challenges to ... Elicitation and Use of Expert Opinion” and the references therein [NASEM 2023a]), and often the number of experts is limited, so the scope of possible outcomes is also limited. These known decision-making biases can be mitigated by ...

... More importantly, intelligence assessments characterize foreign threats and do not usually include the interactions with U.S. behavior or include vulnerabilities, probabilities, and consequences (Murphy 2022; Fullerton 2023; ... 2023). The U.S. government characterizes analysis of its adversaries and the threats they pose as “red” (i.e., as in “red teams” that are assigned the role of adversaries in exercises). Response to threats to ...

... information to guide decisions, officials may be overlooking a large component of risk that could offer a wider array of choices, options, and insight into outcomes that may otherwise not have been considered. The committee also heard that decision makers often consider the worst-case or ... -likely scenarios when outlining possible decisions and actions to take to address a specific problem....

... Conclusion 3-1: Intelligence-informed leadership judgment is a common approach used by decision makers to guide nuclear policy and decisions. Another is the use of “worst-case scenarios” or “most-likely scenarios” to guide decisions. These approaches contain assumptions ...

... Intelligence-informed leadership judgment assumes that the intelligence information provides sufficient context and information to inform decisions, but intelligence assessments are limited to assessing threats and decision making of adversaries. The intelligence ... do not include interactions of adversaries with U.S. plans and choices nor, typically, the consequences of these interactions or vulnerabilities to the United States or its interests....

... to guide decision making. Rather, consideration of a wider set (or sets) of possible scenarios potentially leads to a wider array of choices and options as well as a deeper understanding of the dependencies between pathways that lead to a variety of outcomes, increasing the chances of ...

... Box 1-1, expands the scope of deterrence across domains, regions, types of conflict, and the U.S. government and its allies and partners. With this expanded scope, it is important to not...

.... Addressing the structural gap is beyond the scope of this committee. However, there remains a critical need to conduct analyses that combine red and blue outcomes into an overall risk assessment, especially related to the use of nuclear weapons. Box 3-1 offers an improvised solution using exiting ... and taking advantage of nascent efforts....

... deterrence in particular. Nuclear war is a threat to the world as we know it. President Reagan’s famous 1982 quote, “Nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” has been reiterated by the leaders of the five Nuclear Weapon States as recently as January 2022 (White House 2022). Yet, ... Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and his threats to use nuclear weapons have highlighted the need for a wider variety of assessments of nuclear weapon use and its consequences....

... The implementation of an expanded scope of deterrence provides an opportunity for the United States to address what some have characterized as a widening gap in deterrence strategy ...

... Multiple briefers to the committee mentioned a lack of senior leadership participation in exercises and war games that involve the use of nuclear weapons, and actions to take following their use. A recent National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and ... report on U.S. nuclear forensics capability made the same finding and recommended more no-notice exercises involving senior leaders (NASEM 2021)....

... adaptations that are tailored to fit new and existing adversaries, changing contexts, and new circumstances. The U.S. government has acknowledged an expanded scope for deterrence as integrated deterrence, which seeks new ways to integrate contributions to deterrence across multiple domains (e.g., military ...

... Conclusion 3-3: The current U.S. national security environment requires acknowledgment of the severity of nuclear war and nuclear weapon use, its myriad consequences, and the difficulties in making decisions in limited time and with little information. Lack of practice ... participation by senior leadership in war games and exercises that simulate the use of nuclear weapons and follow-on responses increases the likelihood that real-life decisions related to nuclear weapon use will be impacted by confusion and lack of ...

... the lens when considering options. For example, an existing, well-constructed risk analysis capability can assist both in making quick decisions and in the development of a long-term strategy. However, it requires active engagement of all sources of relevant information across government, industry, ... and academia. It also benefits from the attention and participation of decision makers throughout the process. DHS has a capability for assessing quantitative risks of nuclear terrorism, and a partial ... objectives. For example, RoSDF incorporates the impacts of economic sanctions as part of its analysis, engaging the Department of the Treasury and Intelligence Community (IC) in doing so....

... Much more can be done, however, especially to capture a wider range of consequences and vulnerabilities. For example, within the U.S. government, multiple federal agencies that could contribute to an integrated-deterrence risk assessment ... nuclear war are listed in Table 3-1. (This table is not intended to be exhaustive.) Other new and diverse strategic threats could also be considered, including chemical, biological, and cyber weapons and proliferation of nuclear weapons....

... National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration...

... U.S. Strategic Command and Geographical Combatant Commands...

... Nuclear strategy and planning including risk analysis, nuclear weapons, and nuclear security...

... Energy resources and energy security...

... Nuclear weapons and nuclear security...

... Department of Health and Human Services...

... Department of Homeland Security:...

... Homeland effects and response...

... Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency...

... Cyber threats and resilience; infrastructure security and resilience...

... Preparedness, response, recovery, and resilience...

... Science and Technology Directorate...

... Threats and consequences modeling...

... Nuclear and radiological material detection and incident response...

... Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Coast Guard...

... Securing containerized supply chains and critical infrastructure...

... Water, mineral, and fossil fuel resources...

... Illegal activities in U.S. homeland; material trafficking; transnational terrorism and criminal networks...

... Transportation and supply chains...

... Economic consequences and mitigation...

... Communication effects and response...

... National Aeronautics and Space Administration...

... Nuclear–environmental effects and response to threats to commercial reactors...

... Intelligence threat analysis and adversary capabilities...

... across its multiple domains, an interagency integrator with access to federal agency capabilities is needed to make best use of the information and responsibilities across the government.4 Examples of groups formed by the President to address high-priority topics include interagency working ... (IWGs), presidential task forces, and ad hoc groups (i.e., tiger teams).5 The advantage of declared interagency efforts is that it signals the importance of an issue and its priority ... an administration. It also outlines the organization of the group and allows outside expert participation (e.g., academia, university-affiliated research centers, think tanks, private sector, and industry) and access to ... agency capabilities and resources such as federal agency experts including parts of DoD, the Department of Energy National Laboratories, and other federally funded research and development organizations. A recent example is the effort that outlined the U.S. Strategy for Countering WMD and ... Nuclear and Radiological Materials....

... its adversaries), does not currently exist within the U.S. government. The establishment of such a risk analysis capability, following best practices and capturing expertise across U.S. government agencies, would support better-informed decisions and longer-term strategy development but will require ... and investment to develop....

... to address this gap, existing interagency ad hoc groups could begin incorporating best-risk analysis practices outlined in Box 2-1 into a wider-scale and enduring capability. Current examples are tiger teams that were used to assess decision making leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as ... by the Washington Post and others.6 This capability would serve as a focal point for other interagency risk management proposals and efforts (even those not specifically asking for risk analysis).7 An early win could be an interagency effort to develop a set of possible scenarios ... for longer-term planning or be used as tabletop exercises.8 In the longer term, the capability would need to be codified with show of support and commitment by leadership through an Executive Order or similar means....

... In addition, the committee identified a set of potential activities or actions that could expand the use of risk analysis to guide the implementation and management of integrated deterrence, especially as it relates to nuclear war. One option ... Officer for Warning. Yet another idea was to create an annual or biannual federally hosted workshop or meeting to share nuclear risk methods and results across the U.S. government. This could increase awareness of others working in the same space, encourage the sharing of capabilities, and/or ...

... 6 A nascent capability to analyze risks of nuclear war may be under development by the current National Security Advisor and a team of National Security Council (NSC) officials in the form of an emergency task force or “tiger team” created in February 2022. Per media ... team was initially tasked with considering options for a response to the use of a weapons of mass destruction by Russia in its conflict with Ukraine, and the press reported that tabletop exercises were conducted to identify possible outcomes. (See Collins 2022; Nakashima and Parker 2022; and Sanger et ...

... National Academies’ committee recommended the establishment of a similar capability: an interagency effort to establish a process for identifying and assessing threats and vulnerabilities of strategic significance to U.S. technology leadership and other interests be established and led by NSC, the ... Science and Technology Council, and the National Economic Council, ensuring a “whole-of-government” approach (NASEM 2022)....

... The National Security Advisor is in a position to coordinate and integrate the required expertise from across the entire government in responding to an imminent nuclear crisis or planning for future crises by the ... of an interagency integrated deterrence risk analysis capability. This capability must be supported by technically based and enduring expertise such as that residing within the federal agencies as well as outside experts. Examples of agencies with relevant expertise are ... in Table 3-1. This capability would likely be invisible at most times to agency and administration decision makers....

... This capability would not lie dormant, however, as it would need to...

... Identify possible scenarios leading to the use of nuclear weapons as threats and capabilities evolve;...

... Integrate consequence results into risk evaluations and prioritization decisions; and...

... Develop, train, and encourage communication and coordination using the necessary crisis management processes....