Anticipating Rare Events of Major Significance

Abbreviated Version of a Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief

INTRODUCTION AND WORKSHOP OVERVIEW

The Intelligence Community Studies Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened a 1-day classified workshop on March 2, 2022, to discuss the Defense Threat Reduction Agency’s (DTRA’s) methodologies and rare event anticipatory models and share insights from the unclassified Workshop on Anticipating Rare Events of Major Significance (AREMS) held on December 17 and 21, 2021. A major goal of both workshops was to examine the methodologies and experiences of other disciplines in dealing with significant rare events with a view to aiding DTRA in examining and further developing its own methodologies to address rare events of particular concern to that agency.

In accordance with procedures established by the National Academies for classified activities, this abbreviated version is an unclassified summary of a classified Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief (PIB). DTRA has determined that the full PIB is restricted under exemption 1 of the Freedom of Information Act (5 USC § 552(b)(1)) and therefore cannot be made available to the public. Requests for the full PIB should be submitted to DTRA.

The March 2022 workshop began with a series of classified presentations by DTRA. These presentations described current efforts and methodologies designed to help DTRA anticipate or detect, in early stages, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in individual countries.

Theodore Plasse, chief of the Analysis and Plans Division of DTRA, introduced the program and the presenters. In outlining the purpose of this joint workshop with the National Academies, Plasse noted that DTRA has the responsibility for developing techniques to counter the proliferation of WMDs. The morning session presented DTRA’s methodologies for dealing with proliferation threats, which are, indeed, rare events of major significance.

The afternoon session included presentations by members of the AREMS workshop planning committee— member Justin Kasper (BWX Technologies) and chair Christopher Barrett (University of Virginia Biocomplexity Institute).

Following the above presentations, workshop participants discussed possible steps forward in applying lessons learned from the workshop that could be helpful to DTRA in advancing its ability to anticipate rare events of particular concern.

ABBREVIATED AFTERNOON SESSION

Justin Kasper, BWX Technologies

Kasper gave a presentation related to two types of rare events of major significance: the first was on space weather and solar flares, which could lead to an event of major significance that was of natural origin; the second was on the development of a new type of nuclear fuel for future research reactors (HALEU, high-assay, low-enriched U-235) and the issues associated with this fuel that could lead to a rare proliferation event of human origin.

Christopher Barrett, University of Virginia Biocomplexity Institute

Barrett gave a presentation describing his thoughts, after reflecting on the presentations that had been given at the December 2021 unclassified workshop. He explained four factors to consider when thinking about rare events. These factors are described in Box 1.

Barrett suggested that an approach to solving the problem of dealing with significant rare events would be to develop a platform for rare event analysis—a system based on computational science that would represent the co-evolution of the massively interacting systems described above. The goal would be to predict the rare events resulting from the interactions of these complex systems in a scientific, validated way. This would be done in order to understand the essential characteristics of the rare events, such as the frequency of the event, the range of magnitudes of its consequences, and the points at which the event may be detected in advance (e.g., from precursors) and either mitigated or even prevented. The concept of a platform based on computational science is a potential path forward to deal with rare, significant events.

In summary, several disparate points were emphasized by Barrett:

• A suggestion to create a systematic framework that could be used to navigate complex cases that could arise from a rare event. A potential case that could occur is that the consequence for individuals may not always coincide with consequences for the whole of society.
• In protecting assets, consequences depend on whether the assets are physical or digital.
• “Extended mind theory” raises the concept that a cognitive system may extend beyond the brain of one actor to the various external resources available to the actor.
• Modeling rare events can usefully be done by starting with guesses for courses of action and propagating an event tree. The tree would then be “pruned” to reduce the results of modeling to tractable proportions.
• Finally, the suggestion was made that one could develop a platform based on computational science to model optimal paths for dealing with rare events of major significance.

COMMITTEE MEMBERS Christopher Barrett (Chair), University of Virginia Biocomplexity Institute; Dan Fukushima, Toffler Associates; Justin Kasper, BWX Technologies; Cato T. Laurencin, University of Connecticut.

STAFF Caryn Leslie, Director; Dionna Ali, Associate Program Officer; Anthony Fainberg, Senior Program Officer; Liza Hamilton, Program Officer (until May 2022); Marguerite Schneider, Administrative Coordinator; Alan Shaw, Director (until March 2022) and Scholar.

DISCLAIMER This Abbreviated Version of a Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief was prepared by Anthony Fainberg and Dionna Ali as a factual summary of what occurred at the workshop. The statements made are those of the rapporteurs or individual workshop participants and do not necessarily represent the views of all workshop participants; the planning committee; or the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

REVIEWERS To ensure that it meets institutional standards for quality and objectivity, this Abbreviated Version of a Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief was reviewed by Diane DiEuliis, National Defense University; Justin Kasper, BWX Technologies; James Scouras, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory; and Jayda Wade, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, served as the review coordinator.

SPONSOR This workshop was supported by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

SUGGESTED CITATION National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2022. Anticipating Rare Events of Major Significance: Abbreviated Version of a Proceedings of a Workshop—in Brief. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/26697.