 Rydyn ni'n ystod y pannel gyda'r rhiwc yw'r cyffredin iawn ychydig i ymgyrchu'r ystod i gael bach o'r deimlo yn ymgyrch. Byddwn i'n dechrau'r panellydd yw 10 min. Rydyn ni'n ei wneud i gael i'r tyfnol y bydd. Y rhaid i'n mynd i'w rhaid i meddwl i chi i'w wneud i'w'r panellydd. Yn eich gweithio, o'i fod yn y cwric oedd mas wahan oed efallai i'r gweithio a dweud yn ddim weithio'n gweithio. Oeddw i fod me'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gwahan o'i gweithio. James, Fabion, a ddweud diwrnodd arall o comod. Oedd yn gwneud bod eich gweithio'n gweithio? Roedd ymbell. Oedd mai ddim yn gwneud. Roedd o'n gofynnig. Roedd yma. Oedd yna wedi chi'n gweithio more fwyth o'r gweithio'r gweithio. OK, James. So, if you'd like to start and have you got slides, would you like me to? I can set it up so that if you have, you can share those on my side. Is that possible? It is. Share your screen. Yep. OK, here we go. We are actually starting pretty much on time, which is good. That's a first. I'm normally late for everything. So James, fire away. All right, guys. So I'm delighted again to engage with BISA GNN group. And hopefully this is the final one in the virtual world. Thanks to Nicola and Patricia for organising the event and to Laura for acting as chair. In BISA tradition, this paper has evolved somewhat since I submitted my abstract. So please bear with me on the content. The paper itself is part of a series that applies Cold War era cornerstone nuclear theorising concepts, including deterrent stability, security dilemma, inadvertent escalation and accidental escalation in a nuclear domain to examine primarily the impact of introducing AI and emerging technology more broadly into the nuclear enterprise. The project's overarching arguments, if I don't make it to the end of this talk, is that the prevailing wisdom in the world of asymmetric nuclear diads, nihilistic non-state actors and especially intelligent machines read AI is misguided and arguably obsolete. OK, so I'll begin this brief consultation probably slightly briefer than I anticipated. I'll outline some of the novel ways in which AI and autonomy might affect deterrent theory and practice. Then I'll consider a few arguments for and against, for and against automating decisions to machines, especially in a strategic environment. I will then highlight some trade offs of this potential deterrents and stability paradigm shift and close by outlining some further risk reduction measures. I believe we can probably flesh out more in the Q&A session. At its core, deterrents is about influencing an adversary's sense of risk, cost-benefit analysis, and decision-making outcomes. It requires a deep understanding of the adversary's interests, priorities, objectives, and above all, their perceptions. That is how an adversary's view of his capabilities and intentions, especially, for example, the other side's philosophy of employment and military force, will crucially influence the deterrent effects these systems have and arguably the risk of miscalculation and escalation and accident if these assessments prove wrong. Deterrents and strategic bargaining can fail between rational actors in asymmetric information situations when incentives exist to manipulate this information, as well as where credible commitment is problematic and diversions exist between adversaries on key policy issues. To be sure, my research has found that these conditions are all dialed up and amplified in the digital age. In this paper, I argue that AI and autonomy can undermine deterrents and stability in several ways, including in making it easier to find nuclear assets, attacking nuclear command control and communication systems, for example, with AI-enhanced cyberweapons, and using drones in swarms in primitive strikes against nuclear deterrents assets. This chart, which I can happily distribute, shows or depicts AI applications that are currently being tested, developed, and an increasing number of cases already deployed within the broader nuclear deterrents architecture, including things like early warning systems, intelligence surveillance and recon, command control systems, and non-deterrents or non-nuclear deterrents operations. Again, things like cyber warfare, missile offence, and counterface technology. So how might delegating decisions and machines affect stability, deterrents, and escalation risk? Now, during crisis conditions, the deterrent effect of AI and emotional technology, very much like other capabilities, is predicated on the perceived risks associated with a particular capability it enables on hunters. The highly uncertainty generated by capacity, thus deploying AI augmented capability into a crisis, might encourage an adversary to act more cautiously, thereby increasing its deterrent effect. To somewhat count intuitively, states may view further automation of their command and control systems as an easy way to manage escalation and perhaps bolstered deterrents. That is signalling to an adversary that an attack or even the threat of one might trigger a nuclear response. In other words, there's a prima facie argument, albeit a reasonably fed braw one, that building automated response mechanisms into nuclear systems might resolve the logical paradox inherent with rational-based classical deterrents. That is premised on mad and the war to retaliate, thus ensuring mutual vulnerability and perhaps in ensuring or improving stability. However, because of the difficulty of demonstrating a posture like this before a crisis of conflict, this kind of implicit threat, something like Dr Strains loves doomsday machine on steroids, might equally worsen crisis stability. A critical factor in this scenario is to what degree of particular technology, in this case AI, disproportionately affects states' perceptions of the prevailing balance of power. Beside the confusion uncertainty that would inevitably result from mixing various and potential unknown levels of human-to-machine interaction, and AI's reacting to situations in non-human ways at machine speed could dramatically increase inadvertent risk and risk deterrents failure. This risk will be further compounded by an overconfidence in and a reliance on AI decision-making tools known in psychology parlance as automation bias, meaning that force negatives and positives could go unnoticed or even ignored. We saw in the recent defeat of a human F16 jet fighter pilot by an AI in a Dart for Sponsored Alpha Dog Challenge, how AI's performing in complex dynamic, albeit virtual environments, can compress decision-making and use very unorthodox or non-human tactics in a high stakes game of human-to-machine chicken. So how might mixing various levels of human-machine interaction affect deterrents? We saw in recent experimental wargaming by Rancor in the US the effects of mixing various degrees of human-machine collaboration on crisis dynamics, and they revealed some interesting preliminary findings. They found in summary that all things being equal, higher levels of autonomy combined with humans in the loop, we found there the escalation risk unsurprisingly is lower. Juxtapose when human decision-making was out of the loop and AI's were more involved in decision-making, we saw unsurprisingly the risk of escalation to be ramped up. This hypothesis was attributed to the fact that human involvement in decisions generally allow for more time to de-escalate, and for now, at least, humans are thought better at understanding signaling compared to an AI. Conceptually speaking, an AI algorithm that is optimized to pursue pre-programmed goals can very easily misinterpret an adversary's signal design for resolution to avoid conflict or de-escalated situation. Thus complicating the very delicate balance between an actor's willingness to escalate, a situation is the very last result to a nuclear level and keeping the option open to step back from the brink. To be sure with these scenarios, there's several open questions about how the various parts of this hypothetical synergy would work in practice. For example, would commanders on the ground become too reliant on an AI, believing it to be superior at its own job, or juxtapose might commanders equally distrust AI's recommendations because of its fuzzy machine logic, and might an adversary calculate risks very differently due to the presence of non-human agents on the opposing side. In short, while delegating decisions to machines during a conflict may well lower the risk to human life and potentially reduce accidents and miscalculation, the absence of normative deterrents or escalation frameworks, things like firebreaks, signalling or de-escalation ramps, will likely further compress or perhaps entirely remove various parts of Hermann Cahn's co-war era metathorical escalation ladder, with uncertain and inherently destabilising outcomes. You have two minutes. Thank you, thank you. I'll skip over this machines and catalytic war risks. This is war coming from potential impact of non-state actors, nefariously increasing the risk of accidental warfare between nuclear arms states. I can send you an article that I have published on this recently to give you an idea of my ideas here. In terms of the trade-offs and our finish here of the employment of AI and autonomy in the nuclear enterprise, we can see here a multitude of trade-offs that hopefully should pursue a sway policy makers to pursue and consider how and whether AI power capabilities might strengthen or complicate the stability, deterrence and escalation in an increasingly fragile, multipolar world order. In terms of a line of effort that we can use to manage these risks, these can be categorised into four broad areas, enhancing the safety and reliability of safety of nuclear weapons, hardening nuclear systems and processes, improving command and control protocols and mechanisms, designing more robust safeguards to contain the consequences of error, accidents and over-competence in nuclear control, and modifying existing arms control verification processes and encouraging bilateral, multilateral confidence-building measures and stability dialogue on emerging technology more broadly. We can discuss some of these measures in more detail during the Q&A. Just to end with a quote on the father of modern computing, Alan Turling, who said, we can only see a short distance ahead, but there is plenty that needs to be done. I'll thank the panel here for their attention and just to stress a lot of this research in still working progress, so very much look forward to your feedback, comments and questions. Thank you Patricia. Lovely. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you for finishing so brilliantly on time for a very interesting and thought-provoking presentation. That's great. Thank you. I think what we'll do is have each of the presentations and then have time for questions afterwards, otherwise it gets a little bit too bitty, I think. So the next person up is Fabian. Have I said that right, Fabian? Have I pronounced your name right? There's nothing worse than having it wrong. No, you did. All good. Fabian is reconsidering conventional nuclear integration from capability to function. I've just realised that very rudely of me, I haven't introduced you all. So, could I maybe ask each panelist if they could just say a little bit about themselves before they begin, because I think with such a small group, it's a much nicer way of kicking things off and it helps frame the research and the presentation. So I'm putting you on the spot a little bit. I apologise for that, but I think it might be nice just so we know your background and a little bit about this. So just where you're from would be helpful. Sure, absolutely. My name is Fabian. I am from Germany. I recently completed my studies at the War Studies Department, KCL. Currently, I'm a research assistant at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, where I support two projects. One is related to Defence Innovation and the other one is the Missile Dialogue Initiative. And I'm also currently preparing a PhD on this issue of the pluring between the conventional and nuclear domain. And what I'm going to talk about today touches partly upon the topic that I have in mind, but not entirely. And also I want to stress that the paper that I'm presenting today is very much in its early stages. So I would like to focus you, for you and your feedback, maybe on the bigger picture. And if I drop a couple of words, like, you know, Lynn and I'm looking at you like strategic stability that are a bit more contentious, don't freak out and just keep the bigger picture in mind. Perfect. Then let me start. Yeah, today I'm going to talk about conventional nuclear integration. In particular, I want to focus on the role of function in this process. And here we go. I define conventional nuclear integration as the intentional and unintentional combining of conventional nuclear forces and missions for the purpose of realizing strategic theater and our tactical objectives. And I think the issue of conventional nuclear integration is not necessarily new already during the Cold War. Conventional nuclear integration was very much visible, for example, in the deployment of dual capable aircraft or the deployment of Warsaw packed theater range missiles. What is perhaps new is the extent to which it is practiced today. And in particular, states seem to deploy an increasing amount of dual capable weapon systems offensive and defensive in nature, such as missile capabilities early warning systems employed for both conventional and nuclear purposes. I think most attention disregard has been paid to the issue of warhead ambiguity relating to the idea that it becomes difficult to say whether a missile system is armed with a conventional or nuclear warhead. And this can result in target ambiguity, potentially leading to inadvertent targeting of nuclear assets. And then overall this process has been said to increase nuclear escalation pressures and undermine strategic stability. I think this focus on these technical capability related considerations is very much important. However, I argue that this capability focus perspective should be complemented by one on function. I argue that these technical issues next to these technical issues we should also have a look at at function. In other words, the tasks and purposes related to the conventional and nuclear domains and the blurring of these functions. And the first step, this requires a reconceptualisation of the nuclear and conventional domains as functional domains. I think with the word domain, it's very much one of these words that we use all the time in our field, but we rarely define it. And following my research, I come to the conclusion that it is very simple and short definition is preferable. So I define it as a distinct operational environment in which state actors can maneuver to create effects. And really, I think the key notion here is the distinctness of different domains. So unless a domain is not distinct from other domains, there is no reason to denote a unique operational environment and it does not make sense to speak of a domain. This creates issues with regard to the conventional and nuclear domains to the extent that these domains can even be said to exist. Namely, how do they differ from each other? Their environments are essentially the same. They consist of land, maritime, airspace and cyberspace. Capabilities operating within these domains are essentially similar relating to similar types of capabilities which are, as we've seen increasingly, dual capable in nature. And then also the effects are the same as actors in both domains intend to achieve or threaten destructive effects. So how do they then differ at all? I argue that the key factor separating the conventional and nuclear domains is function, meaning the tasks and purposes of these operational environments. State actors generally maneuver within the conventional and nuclear domains to achieve different tasks and purposes. In other words, they attach different functions to distinct domains. Strategic functions have been attached to the nuclear domain. Traditionally, these have included counterforce and countervalue purposes. This means that conduct in a nuclear domain has generally included two missions. One to threaten the survivability of the enemy's nuclear arsenal and two to jeopardize high value political and socio-economic targets inside the enemy's territory threatening the state's connectivity and its ability to function normally. In contrast, non-strategic functions have prevailed in the conventional domain. The key function of the conventional domain is of course warfighting. In addition, conventional and non-strategic functions include substrategic deterrents or the gradual imposition of pain, meaning a very important escalation control function has been attached to the conventional domain. In addition, the functions of the nuclear domain have traditionally been recognized as Ultima Ratio, and in contrast, conventional functions are much more readily available constituting a premium remedium, if you like to call it like that. To be clear, I don't argue that a perfect functional separation exists or has ever existed, keeping the nuclear and conventional domains entirely distinct. For example, since the demise of the massive retaliation doctrine in the late 1950s and the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons for battlefield use, the warfighting function has not been entirely exclusive to the conventional domain anymore. In addition, a key function in both domains, for example, relates to the acquisition of international prestige, nuclear and conventional weapons, as scholarship has shown, have been deployed with the aim of increasing the state's international standing. Nevertheless, I think distinct functions operating in the different domains have constituted a factor separating the two operational environments. Generally speaking, strategic functions have been attached to the nuclear domain, and non-strategic ones have been attached to the conventional domain. However, this functional separation has started to break down in a process that I call functional pluring. Increasingly, state actors attach strategic functions to the conventional domain. For example, Russian doctrine and military strategy is relatively open about the potential employment of its conventional missile arsenal for counter value functions in order to destroy NATO's warfighting potential early on during a conflict. On the other hand, NATO has started to deploy increasing numbers of conventional precision strike capabilities with hard target kill capability, which could credibly threaten hard and strategic targets in Russia, such as underground command and control bunkers or missile silos. In the absence of declarations to the contrary, a counter force function relating to these conventional capabilities can be inferred. Overall, strategic functions are nowadays increasingly being attached to conventional domain, whether this happens through an explicit process as in the case of Russia or accused implicitly as in the case of NATO. As a result, the conventional and nuclear domains integrate further and become increasingly inseparable. Why do I think this is important? I think functional pluring can undermine both crisis and arms race stability. On the one hand, the deployment of conventional weapons can be seen as preparing for counter force or counter value strikes in such a scenario, heightening risks and insecurities and crisis. On the other hand, states may feel compelled to take into account conventional deployments when deciding on nuclear force posture requirements, increasing the number of nuclear weapons deployed, and of course also with regard to conventional weapons. However, I think this process also yields important implication with regard to arms control and can highlight also new opportunities. Nowadays, the prospects of regulating the deployment of conventional weapons systems, especially conventional precision strike capabilities, seems extremely unlikely. Yet, rather than regulating the deployment of conventional weapons, perhaps we should focus on regulating the use. In other words, functional arms control may be a way forward. Deglaratory policy announcing, for example, that NATO's conventional precision strike capabilities do not play a role in NATO's nuclear planning could be a first step. Of course, I recognize that such a measure would be relatively cheap and uncomplicated, although it can only constitute the beginning of a larger process. Finally, I think this functional perspective also highlights the importance of non-baterial factors. When it comes to conventional nuclear integration, strategic and doctrinal considerations are as important as the capabilities they relate to. With that in mind, I would like to close my remarks. Thank you very much for your attention. I look forward to feedback and questions, and of course also to the next speakers. Thank you very much. It's brilliant. Thank you. You're actually two minutes ahead, which is really lovely. Well, we've got these two minutes. If I could just apologize. I know there's some notes in the chat. I should have allowed James a chance to introduce himself. So James, if we've got the two minute pause, I can't see you up. I don't know if you're there, if I've caught you the moment that you've just quickly stepped away. I will introduce James to everybody just to say that James is a lecturer in strategic studies at the University of Aberdeen, and if you look in the chat, he's included his paper, which you might want to sort of copy and paste to be able to view later. So it's quite nice to have that pause just to say that. And when he comes back, I'll let him know. Oh, hi James. I've just introduced you to everyone and just highlighted that your paper's in the chat. So I don't know if you'd like to say anything more, if you're happy with that. Yeah, I'm happy with that. Thank you. I don't want to delay proceedings. We had a bit of a snow storm up in Aberdeen, so I've been shoveling a bit of snow off the car, but I'm back now. Nothing like a bit of exercise. I hope you're all OK. I did see trees down and everything else. It's the joy of the winter. Excellent. Thank you for that. OK, so if we move on to Arthur, and again Arthur, if you'd like to introduce yourself and you can share your screen if you've got slides, if you haven't got slides, that's OK. Lovely. Thank you. I think you should be seeing my slides now. Yeah, it's perfect. Thank you. So hi everybody. Thanks so much for having me and it's great to see some familiar faces and special thanks to Dr. Leveringhouse and everybody else who made this event possible. My name is Arthur. I'm from Hungary and I graduated from the Department of War Studies this summer and I'm currently interning at the Nuclear Policy Directorate at NATO headquarters in Brussels. And I will quickly add that my research does not represent the views of my employer. So if we take a look at the security environment, we can observe how missile threats are becoming increasingly sophisticated. And as a result, states feel the need to come up with concepts and capabilities that could help them counter these missile threats. And now excited to present my analysis of one particular concept, concept of left of launch, which gained traction in the United States in the past years. OK, so hopefully the slide is moving. So let me start with the bottom line up front. The term left of launch refers to the neutralization of missile threats, even before the missiles could be launched. To use a metaphor, this is about shooting down the archer instead of waiting to deal with incoming arrows. And this term has been used repeatedly in US defense circles over the past decade. However, it is not defined in US joint doctrine. In addition, and this is where things get really interesting, both unclassified primary sources and the secondary literature demonstrate a lack of clarity regarding the key details of this concept. To use an extreme example, there is no clarity on whether left of launch would mean a non kinetic cyber attack against a limited missile threat or an all out preemptive counter force attack with kinetic or even nuclear forces. And this is a pretty broad spectrum. So we should ask the question, why is all of this significant? Well, defensive measures against missile threats are a partial solution at best. So going on the offense is not necessarily an unfounded idea, what you need to have clear concepts for your capabilities. So very briefly about the structure of my presentation, I will first situate the left of launch concept in the broader missile defense context, then followed by a summary of the research problem and my research design. And after this, I will discuss four main conceptual issues before offering a few concluding points. So just to set a scene for my presentation, let's take a quick look at the broader missile defense context. What are the options when it comes to countering missile threats. The picture on the left depicts active missile defense, which is about intercepting missiles that are already on their way towards your forces. Additionally, you can also rely on passive missile defense to minimize or mitigate the consequences of an attack against you. But since both active and passive missile defense would try to deal with incoming missiles after they have been launched, they can be labeled right of launch. Meanwhile, as I said, left of launch means engaging the adversarial missile system prior to launch. If we look at the doctrinal documents like the joint publication on countering missile threats from 2017, which was produced by the joint US Joint Chiefs of Staff. We can see that this offense oriented approach is not just one option. But actually in doctrinal terms offense is the preferred option for defense. So that said, it all seems fairly straightforward. You could even ask what is the issue here. While there are a number of issues, the first one is that the above mentioned joint publication does not mention this term left of launch. And we do not really have a detailed official definition elsewhere. The second is the notion of neutralizing missile threats. The second is that the notion of neutralizing missile threats prior to launch is a largely overlooked topic. And most of the academic and think tank discourse focuses on the feasibility, the cost and the strategic implications of active missile defense. So there's a gap here in research. And the third one is that in the early phase of my research, I realized that there's a decent amount of unclassified publicly available primary source material and nobody has conducted a comprehensive overview of these sources before. So I put forward to interrelated research questions. The first one is how left of launch is conceptualized in official US primary sources and how, if at all has the understanding of this concept evolved since it has been mentioned for the first time. In 2011. So to answer these questions, I systematically investigated more than 40 publicly available primary sources. These include the Department of Defense documents, public speeches, congressional testimonies of US military leaders and senior officials, budgetary documents and the final documents. And perhaps this is the right time to mention that an obvious limitation of my research was that it was limited to unclassified documents. Still, I would argue that the highly classified nature of a topic does not excuse contradictory statements when speaking about it publicly before Congress, for example. So I just put three key documents on this slide which are wireless milestones in the evolution of the left launch concept but in the interest of time. Let me proceed to my findings and I'm happy to return to these in the Q&A. So, I will not go one by one through the four main conceptual issues concerning that launch, and I will try to demonstrate the mismatch between the literature and the primary sources and I will also present my results in terms of the conceptual analysis. The first question concerns the definitional boundaries of this term. Because if you think about it, left of launch is a temporal concept. It represents a right close left open interval, where the right most ends of the interval is the distinct moments of the missile launch. What is unclear, however, is the left most boundary. Where does left of launch begin? Unfortunately, the secondary literature does not reflect on this issue at all. And when you turn to primary sources, we have two very interesting but diverging perspectives. The narrower view considers left of launch as an attack against the missile platforms themselves to prevent launch. And while there are a number of congressional testimonies, which discuss a more holistic view, holistic view of engaging the entire kill chain, including the supply chain of the entire missile complex of the adversary. And of course, in this case, our left of launch concept will overlap with counter proliferation. The verdict on this first problem is that although primary sources provide some nuance to the definitional boundaries, overall the uncertainties still remain about how early left of launch operations could actually begin. The second key question concerns the capabilities that could be used in a left of launch mission. The literature is divided on this because a number of experts consider left of launch only to be non-kinetic. Just to clarify, kinetic would be a missile strike, an air strike or a drone strike, and non-kinetic would mean offensive cyber, electronic warfare or directed energy. Still, in contrast to the literature, most primary sources already back in 2015 and ever since assert very clearly that both kinetic and non-kinetic means are on the table. They are relevant, and this perspective is also reflected in the official declaratory policy documents of left of launch. And what is really interesting that there was one single testimony by a former deputy assistant secretary of defence who talked about how nuclear forces could be potential means of left of launch, although other sources publicly do not confirm nor deny this. So, turning to the third question, it's about the type of missiles that would be targeted in left of launch operations because the original internal DOD memo that kicked off the left of launch discussions in November 2014 focused only on ballistic missiles. However, three years later, the declaratory policy documents already included ballistic and cruise missiles, and in subsequent congressional testimonies, we can see that it's ballistic cruise and also hypersonic potentially. So I think this is the aspect where we can observe, but it takes most clearly how the evolution of the concept has come with the expansion of its focus. And last but not least, the fourth uncertainty about the concept is the scale in which left of launch operations would be conducted. Simply put, are we talking about a tactical concept would left of launch be about engaging rogue missile threats, or is this about conducting a disarming all out first strike potentially against North Korean or even Chinese strategic forces. So the literature is again divided into two camps, as you can see on the slide, and primary sources are likewise ambiguous. On the one hand, the proliferation of cheap and simple ballistic missiles is often cited in testimonies as the key reason for considering left of launch options in the first place. On the other hand, if you look at the 2017 national security strategy, or the 2019 missile defense review, they refer to defeating missile threats prior to launch in the homeland missile defense context, so that's a strategic sense. And turning to my conclusions, the findings of my research suggests that the lack of conceptual clarity is still a persistent problem in these four key aspects. And this will be a problem for the US because getting this offense oriented approach right in terms of the operational and the budgetary perspective would require a clear conceptualization of what exactly left of launch is and what it isn't. But the good news is that there are several ongoing review processes in the DOD right now that might provide some answers early next year. And finally, I hope that my conceptual analysis could open up several avenues for further research, and I also hope to look at some of these issues in the future. Once again, thanks for having me, I welcome your feedback, and now back to you, Patricia. Fabulous. Thank you. Thank you for a very interesting presentation. I've learnt some new things from that. That's very good. Thank you very much. Okay, so then we move on to Henrietta. Hi Henrietta. Nice to see you. If you could just again just introduce yourself and I don't know if you have slides, pop the slides up. If not, then feel free just to press on with your presentation. Thank you very much, Patricia. And no, I'm not going to be sharing slides so that makes that maybe easier. I don't know. So my name is Henrietta Wilson. I do freelance research in weapons of mass destruction disarmament and I've been involved in non-governmental work in the UK and in Europe, in university groups and also in conventional kind of think tank NGO sort of work. I'm now visiting research fellow at Kings and I work as a consultant for SOAS and I'm teaching at the University of Bristol. And what I'm going to talk about are instabilities that derive from verification. I think the panel up till now have been talking much more about offensive capabilities. I'm taking it back to how the weapons regulations. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to speak and thank you to all the talks I'm looking forward to everybody, everybody's own comments. So what I'm going to be talking about is very much work in progress and that's partly why I'm not sharing slides is pretty fluid at this stage. I'm thinking about online open source research and its implications to treaty verification. It's going to be very simple. I'm going to start by talking about some definitions and some traditional understandings of verification. And then I'm going to be looking at the relationship between open source research and verification. So the first thing to say is what I mean by open source research and I'm taking a very broad definition. Any sort of research that uses publicly available tools or information. We've already had some of the panelists mentioning how they use open sources from doctrines or from newspapers. I'd also add to that list that people use published data from companies like the equivalent of the UK's company's house and parliamentary records. So open sources have been a mainstay of research by academics, non-governmental groups or government groups for a long time. But there's been an absolute transformation in the scope and the scale of open source research thanks to developments in digital technologies and in particular the internet, which means that non-governmental groups now have access to resources that were previously only available to a very few governments. So I'm thinking about satanites. I'm thinking about the ability to look at newspapers all around the world, not just in your home language. I'm looking at the connectivity between different communities. And also we have this amazing resource of user generated content from which victims of atrocities or neighbours of weapon systems or first responders of disasters are commenting, taking photos, taking videos and uploading them to social media, making things visible in an unprecedented way. So some features of this are that it's essentially collaborative. It involves communities often self-organising around Twitter. And there is no doubt that it's made a difference to what different groups can know about nuclear weapons and nuclear proliferation. So a lot of our big reveals recently about Iran and about China and about North Korea have come from this sort of non-governmental online open source research. So I hope it's clear from that, that some of this open source research directly intersects with the functions that we typically associate with treaty verification. And there's all sorts of ways that I could define treaty verification. I'm going to go to Alan Cross's book, Verification How Much is Enough, that was published in 1985 and remains a benchmark for understanding about verification. And I say that with confidence because I see the assumptions that it reports constantly reference and invoked in debates around verification and in the ways that verification and treaties are talked about. Our treaties verifiable is often taken as a shortcut to whether treaties are worth it or desirable, which I think Alan Cross really explains well in his book. So I'm going to quickly whistle through some of Cross's key points with full apologies that I'm not going to capture the nuance that he presents. But some of his main points that I think are relevant in assessing open source research are that verification is, it comprises an interface between technological systems and political frameworks. That it doesn't really make sense to talk about technologies in isolation. And it also is not helpful to talk about verification in abstraction from the political lens which is its aim. So you kind of need to think about verification of what? What are you trying to verify? What's the treaty that it's associated with trying to do? Cross also outlines some really two key purposes that verification was serving in the treaties that he reviewed. One of them is that verification is useful, is hoped to be used to build confidence in compliance. So state parties look to each other, use verification to show to each other that they are in compliance with their commitments. And another purpose that he identifies is that verification can deter cheating by providing a sort of credible threat that would be proliferation will be discovered. There's also key points about who does verification in Cross's account, which is reflecting the strategic assumptions that he was working within. So for him, it's states that do verification, either through their national technical means or through an internationally negotiated arrangement that's administered by an international organisation. There's a sort of partnership between states and international organisations. And within this, most of his work was thinking about the USA and the USSR, but he did recognise that there's a real patchiness on how different states, the ability, the capacity of them to have national technical means. There's also a question mark that he has about legitimacy of different methods, different verification systems set up different legitimacy for tools and methods. And of course he raises fundamental problems, ambiguities, challenges with these traditional understandings of verifications. And two that I'd point out are it's unclear what verification systems can do about false alarms. So there's an allegation of cheating that's wrong. Can verification systems cope with that? And also, bigger than that, what do they do when they detect some non-compliance? There's a huge question mark with verification systems about non-compliance. I'd also say that he makes it very clear that he thinks verification is possible. And since he wrote his book, we've had the CFE, the Chemical Weapons Convention and the CTBT, which kind of echo his identification of a wider trend towards more robust verification. Anyway, so making sense of open source research with this kind of very traditional framework. As I said, I think PRAS is still very relevant in terms of political discourses around verification. And I think within those traditional understandings, open source research represents a number of really significant opportunities and very definite challenges to the possibilities of developing robust verification in the future. So the first of those opportunities, I think it's clear that open source research, because more people do it through more diverse ways, it has increased the deterrence function. Well, it has a capacity to increase the deterrence function associated with verification. So, as I mentioned, some really important big reveals about cheating or violations of norms in any case have been uncovered by non-governmental groups. I'm thinking particularly about the use of chemical weapons in Syria. I know that formally at the start of when that started happening, it wasn't a violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, but open source research was really important in finding out what was going on there. Open source research is often cheaper and quicker and more agile than international organisations and less bureaucratic than national technical means. So it has some advantages, I think, over traditional verification. Okay, I'll whizz through, thank you. It can also help with the absolutely huge amounts of digital data the world now has and the attendant misinformation, excuse me, different disinformation claims. This field of open source research can be enormously useful if it's harness correctly into authenticating information and also saving it for a future date. But of course, you know, I'm going to move on to the complications now. I think it's vastly misunderstood. To an extent, it's unusable by states and by the international organisations that might be able to take the next steps and use it to reinforce the strengths of treaties. So to say a little bit more about that. I think it's very precarious. I think the open source world is full of people doing things in different sorts of ways in a not joined up way. And they're dependent on funding like everything else. And so invitations to look at open source research as a sort of new digital panopticon of a whole bunch of digital slew sing any what anything anywhere in the world. I think they're really misguided because there's no sense in which they're not available these systems. Anyway, I'm going to very quickly sum up with a few kind of themes that have come out of my research. Open source research is definitely here. I don't think it's going away. I think it's making a difference. We've seen newspaper reports based on it all the time. And so without care, systems like the IAEA or the Chemical Weapons Convention OPCW, they could be undermined by this growing set of slews. The speed with which open source researchers can respond to things and generate findings could undermine the very careful data collection that goes on in verification. And without systems to double check that they're doing things right, I think that could be a problem. And there's a huge pressure because the speed of digital data is here to stay as well. I think there's huge pressure to kind of come to conclusions quickly and respond to allegations of non-compliance quickly, which again could be really destabilising for treaty verification. However, with care, I think there's definite scope for treaty regimes to harness this more effectively than those dangers might indicate. And in particular, I think going again back to Alan Crass and back to former understandings of verification ideas around standing consultative arrangements where communication is facilitated to try and deal with allegations of non-compliance might be a good idea. And I also think standardised systems of practice for open source research kind of a more, maybe not a uniform methodology because it's quite advantageous to have diverse methods. But a more recognised, more transparent, a better understood system of methods would help people use results. Anyway, thank you very much. Sorry for the very quick rush through. Over to you, Patricia. Thanks. And that was really interesting. Thank you. No, you're fine. You were one minute over time, which I think is brilliant. And there was a lot in there. So thank you very much. Very interesting. Thank you. OK, so we move on to our last presentation, which is from Robin. So again, Robin, feel free to share your slides if you have slides. I think you said you didn't have slides, didn't you? No, that's right. That's right. So fire away. And I will let you know. Sorry. It's always the way when you're when you've got your microphone off or when you're teaching, your phone goes. It's classic. All the dog barks or there's something. So fire away. And I will let you know when you're when you're close to time. Thank you. Great. Thank you. So hi, everyone. It's my first time here. So nice to meet you. Nice to meet you all. Thank you for having me today and giving me the opportunity to discuss my research here. So my name is Robin. I am working at the University of Antwerp in Belgium, where I'm a second year PhD researcher in international relations. And my research focuses on the idea of strategic stability and how demonstrations of disruptive military technologies reconstitute new and different meanings of this concept. And the abstract that I submitted for this working group is based on the second chapter of my dissertation, in which I basically lay out my theoretical approach to the idea of strategic stability. So in contrast with most of the other presentations in this first panel, I think my presentation has a bit of a broader theoretical and conceptual perspective to it. And it is still sort of, well, a working progress, like the other ones as well. Nonetheless, I think it fits the broad team of this conference quite well because it is an attempt to put one of the oldest and most prevailing concepts in the debate on nuclear weapons and strategic stability into sort of a new theoretical light. And like I said, I'm not going to use a PowerPoint for this talk, but I'll address three main points in order to make my argument, which is that the idea of strategic stability is actually a contingent product of social construction produced through discourse produced through international practices, instead of a fixed concept with a universal value or with an objective meaning. So first, I'll touch upon a few theoretical considerations to briefly frame the argument in the wider context of IR theory. Second, I'll go a bit deeper into how strategic stability was conceived and how it has been invoked in the nuclear debates over the past few decades, and then explain that the meanings of the concept can differ according to how one talks about it and how one acts towards it. And third, I'll go over some of the implications that follow out of this new approach to the idea of strategic stability. So let's start simple. The concept of strategic stability is, and I think nobody will be surprised, an artifact of the Cold War. And yet it is still very actively being used today, perhaps even more so than during that period, and especially during the last decade or so, all sorts of stakeholders have been putting forward largely similar questions that focus on strategic stability being under threat by certain new geopolitical realities, or by particular military technological innovations, think of artificial intelligence or hypersonics. But when those questions are being posed, there's rarely any reflection on the object that is supposed to be under threat. And it is actually surprising, I think, that from a theoretical IR perspective, the concept has not really been under much scrutiny outside of the maybe expectable rationalist or realist inspired accounts. So, because strategic stability, in my opinion, is a social creation more than an objectively observable state of affairs. I thought it was time to approach the concept from more socially oriented ideational theory of international politics and this would have focused on the social construction of reality. There are many, many different variations of social constructivist thinking in IR. I think one of the basic premises is that the structures in which most of international politics is embedded are a contingent product of social and historical circumstances that they are constructed, and that they are not of seemingly natural or evidential conditions. So these social structures vary from overarching ideas such as Anarchy, as Alexander Went attempted to illustrate in 1992, to more specific concepts, I argue, such as strategic stability. Now that these structures of international politics do not naturally or organically emerge, but are instead socially constructed means that there is a social process taking place that constitutes what we consider reality and that this process should be duly investigated and understood in order to make any theoretical but also practical claims about these social structures. And so therefore social constructivist pay attention to the discursive processes that produce or produces and shapes these social structures and the practices that are an integral part of this process. So far some of the overarching very concise theoretical considerations from the basis of my research, so it's diving a bit deeper on the idea of strategic stability itself. The concept emerged in a particular US strategic culture, I argue, where it was cultivated in the minds of several prominent round corporation thinkers, and later found its way into the discourse of some key public officials such as for example, Robert McNamara in the late 1960s. And I'm not going to digress on this too much because I think most of us present will have a pretty good idea of where the notion came from but I can perhaps elaborate a bit on this during the discussion later. But I think it's important though to understand that this strategic culture was the main breeding ground for nuclear stability thinking. And key elements of strategic stability such as second strike capability mutual vulnerability or mutually assert destruction thinking originated in the minds and the ideas of these strategic thinkers. And by continuously employing them in what I call nuclear discourse they basically became institutionalized in the US by the 1970s and known under the schedule phase of strategic stability. It took a while though and a lot more of that socialization process so the continuous references to this idea of strategic stability before it was actually employed by by academics and strategic thinkers in the US SR but in the late 1980s and late or in the 1990s. Through these processes of socialization and institutionalization on a more global scale, strategic stability quickly became considered a strategic reality that was objectively there for everyone and something to be achieved or to be maintained. And I think this tendency has actually increased in recent years as well. When we look at the discourse on strategic stability, both in the academic field and in the policy field, you see that many, many different meanings exist and that stakeholders refer to strategic stability when they actually mean something slightly or completely different. And in James Acton's 2013 work on strategic stability, a former US undersecretary of the fence is cited, we said that there are largely three different ways of employing the concept of strategic stability, either in a narrow way that focuses on crisis stability and arms stability in a broad way that focuses on the absence of armed conflict between nuclear armed states, and in an even broader way that focuses on a global security environment where states enjoy peaceful relations. And this way of categorizing the use of strategic stability in the academic field and in the policy field, I think is actually confirmed in my literature review that I wrote for the PhD chapter. And in a discourse analysis of international actors, speech acts and documents on strategic stability. But then the question is why that so many different meanings of this concept of this idea exists. And I argue that because strategic stability is a social creation, a social structure of international politics, it is built on rules and common understandings that are made and reproduced by international practices. Just for example, arms control negotiations, international summit meetings or the showcasing of new weapon systems in AI and hypersonics, as we have seen in recent years. At the same time, these international practices are meaningful or only meaningful because meaning is attributed to them in this, this whole, this ensemble of inter subjective rules that forms this social structure of strategic stability. So they are mutually constitutive. And in a sense, this means that what some would call a strategically stable state of affairs is only stable because we speak of it that way and we act towards it that way. And therefore, yeah, thanks. Therefore, it is important for us as an academic community, I think to explain and to understand how strategic stability that might seem like a natural strategic reality is in fact constituted by international practices and the company discursive processes that are there. And so now come to the final part of my talk what are some of the implications of this approach to strategic stability. First, I think we should steer away from relying on the idea of strategic stability as if it would only mean one thing. I think it is inevitable that because there are so many different discursive practices that play that shape the social structure. The concept will mean different things in different contexts. Therefore, we should be very clear about the meaning we give to strategic stability when we write or when we speak about it, because if we keep using it as a container term for all things nuclear, nuclear stability, we risk an environment I think in which actors will be talking past each other, instead of which with each other. And then second and I'll finish here. I think there is a clearance of our quite untapped research avenue that shows a lot of potential here by applying the theoretical perspective of social constructivism on a team as this. I think we open up space for studies that focus on the discursive and the ideational processes that are at the basis of strategic stability. And that can shed a new light on the remaining potential of the concept for strategic deliberations and the real relevance that you can still have in the 21st century. So I'll stop here. I give the word back to you, Patricia. Like I said, it's still a work in progress, so I'm very much looking forward to hearing your questions, your input and your suggestions. Thank you. Lovely. Again, great. Thank you. Definitely had a lot of very interesting discussions today, all about different understandings, different attitudes. I've got a number of different notes that I've made down, but I don't want to influence the discussion. So if I open it out for questions, we've got plenty of time. It's quarter past one now. So we'll see how we go. I mean, I'm always a big advocate of breaks. So if we do have an opportunity for just sort of even five minutes, we've got, we should finish at 155. If we can finish a little bit earlier than that, that would be great because it's nice to move around and get a coffee or something like that. And before Nick, is your hand up because you've got a question or was there a sort of a procedural? OK. OK, well, I can see the first hand up is Nick, then I have Benoit, then I have Paul. Lovely. OK, so shall we go in that order? And then as more hands come up, then we'll go from there. So can I just say, Paul, I love your background. I think that that's great that it's nice to have a nice to have a change from bookshelves and plants. Lovely. OK, so Nick, do you want to fire away? Thanks very much, Trish. Great panel. It did what we hoped it would do, which is sort of wrestle with some concepts that I think need a lot of wrestling with. I have had a question for Jim, but he's gone, so I'll email him. I have a question for Fabian and for Robin. For Fabian, just going to be a little bit picky and controversial. I mean, I kind of want to know a bit more your own perspective and whether you actually think the left launch is just a fancy way of saying counterproliferation. I think I want to push a little bit more on your own view of that, whether you think it is a distinctive. And if you don't think it's distinctive, why is it being used? Why is there this particular distinction being made, particularly in the US community? Robin, I share, I think, a lot of concerns as you do around the term strategic stability. And I'm particularly worried about it in the context of current affairs between the US and China and this discussion about mutual vulnerability. Because I often find that concepts get linked together, rather problematically. And if mutual vulnerability is a condition that needs to be made public, I don't think so. But if it's a condition that exists and both parties see merit in making it public in order to get something else like arms control. Then strategic stability, again, another problematic term, starts to come into play in a different way because it becomes an end goal. And there's a sense that you have to keep things up, you have to maintain things. And one of the reasons I don't like mutual vulnerabilities is because it probably entails keeping up with your competitor, rather than reducing and the like. So I don't see it as a positive term. So I kind of wanted to push you on this linking of terms and where strategic stability in a way feeds into a whole host of other problematic terms, one being, as I mentioned, mutual vulnerability. So maybe I could just, of course, that's also something that I think works very well with the way that you think about it theoretically. Shall we take a number of questions and then respond to them rather than working through each question, or would each person like to take each question in turn? Or maybe sort of leave that out for, well, for everyone, actually, to chip into. How do you like it? Shall we maybe take a few questions and then come back to them? Let's try to do it that way. And if we don't like it like that, then we'll work on each individual one. OK, so Benoit. Right, sorry, I muted. So thank you all. Quick question for Robin, because I was intrigued with the approach of strategic stability. First, I mean, as I always say, I'm much better at commenting on anything and writing. So if you want to send me a paper, I'd be happy to read it. But the one thing that I was surprised about is that you're assuming that the use of the notion of strategic stability intends to be politically productive. Because we have a lot of scholarship or nuclear discourse that essentially shows that vagueness is meant to produce exactly what it produces, just no change of power structures in political stalemate. So there is that element and you can find the same thing with the use of the notion of disarmament, which can mean both a process and an instate. So people can agree on the term without agreeing on anything else and therefore not doing anything. And in the other element is that there is kind of a lot of scholarship on how in the nuclear realm there is a particular oddity of the meaning of terms and the use of terms and the fact that they in the nuclear realm mean the opposite of what they would mean outside the nuclear realm. And that's something that Shalva and I have called reverseification. And I think there's a lot of that at play with strategic stability. So happy to talk more about this. Sorry, I'm muted. I can see. I'm actually typing a message to Lyndon and I'm thinking, why am I typing a message? I may as well just say it. Is it okay to take the three questions and then come to you, Lyndon? Is that okay? I think if we try and take it in threes, that helps that we don't veer too much off track, but that we try and sort of address each person's question. So if that's good with you, I saw your thumb up. That's lovely. So Paul, are you okay to raise your question and then we'll take it out to a panelist to respond to all three questions. We'll try it that way. Thank you. Well, I think these are interconnected. First of all on strategic stability, is it really an artifact of discourse originating in the Cold War, which was actually the only time nuclear weapons were ever part of the conversation. That's where it began. But isn't it inevitable that political and military and intelligence organisations will scan the horizon for scenarios which frighten them? I mean, isn't that their job? And how in a world of armed nation states are you ever going to stop that kind of consideration inside capitals? And that will lead to various concepts of threat and stability. But how is that escapable? Some form of that is going to occur, which perhaps connects with the left of launch question, because for such organisations, left of launch interference is absolutely terrifying. So isn't the mere possibility of left of launch actions by strategic rivals a real spur to endless innovation and maybe vertical proliferation. Final point, on trust, and Henrietta will know how sceptical I am about the way that open source will be allowed to impact very much on disarmament, because it can be faked. It will be denounced as being faked. It will be kept off the agenda. It will be regarded as inadmissible in proper disarmament organisations. And this is all part of the major problem of disinformation and the advanced playbrook of obstructors and cheats. One of the easiest things you do is to say all these things are lies and false flag operations and you maybe start producing lies yourself, which can then be denounced to water down the case against you. How in a radically distrustful and worsening world do you ever stop that? Lovely, thank you Paul. So we've got quite a lot of detailed questions there. And I know when you're a panelist there's nothing worse than having a question than the thinking answer that. So I will take it to you guys to respond and if we go in the order that's on the agenda in terms of response. So if we start with Fabian, is there anything that you would like to add? I would pass it on to Artur. It was directed at me but Artur gave the excellent remarks on left-of-launch. Okay, thanks then. I'll take this on. So the first question from Nicolae was on that her left-of-launch is really counter-proliferation. Well, I think the honest answer is that we cannot know because existing literature doesn't care and available primary sources do not share. But if I try to be more serious, so what I try to do is just to depict it to different views, to parallel narratives that are out there that we can recognise that exist without casting judgement on it. So one view is a narrow view, which is just about engaging to beside platforms and the more holistic view is, and again I can cite a few examples. For example, the Defence Science Board, which is a civilian advisory body to the DOD on science and technology. So they published a study report on strategic surprise. And this is one of the instances when they discuss how missile defence should be more holistically understood and it should be about engaging the entire kill chain of the adversary. The ability to launch a missile in the first place and not just the specific missile platform. And of course, this could mean penetrating the adversary's missile enterprise. And by that I mean the ability to develop, the ability to deploy and also the ability to launch missiles. So the question is really how holistically you look at the notion of preventing a missile from being launched. Give you a real life example. In 2017 there were a few articles in the New York Times about how the DPRK has seen a very high number of missile test failures in 2014. So towards the end of the second administration of President Obama. And there were some rumours that this might be due to US interference in the supply chain. So just providing not functioning problematic broken spare parts to DPRK through. While they are trying to acquire these means illicitly and then of course a counter proliferation approach would be just to try to poison their supply chain. And to try to break the missiles before even, you know, they could be launched or even tested. So I would say that this is the more holistic view and I would say that my. So I think left of conflating left of launch counterproliferation would be problematic because counterproliferation is an extinct the final term. What my ultimate argument is that right now the lack of conceptual clarity presents the problem of these being potentially conflated. And just on Paul's question about left of launch being absolutely terrifying and contributing to arms racing dynamics. Well, I would say that's just big regards to strategic stability. We need to be actor specific. I think, you know, we cannot talk about strategic stability in the general in general terms and also left of launch is not something that you know it's a it's not a universal concept. We need to be actor specific. So let's say the US does not accept usual vulnerability vis-à-vis North Korea. Then they might look at options how to defend against their missiles including active missile defense and passive missile defense. And then they might realize that this might not provide them enough certainty. And if they want to reduce that vulnerability which apparently they are trying to do, then they would of course have to resort to offensive measures and that's how left of launch comes into the picture. And of course the reaction, the action reaction dynamic is there. So I agree with you in a sense that, you know, if you only look back in the past few months, the testing record of the DPRK was quite impressive. They are actively trying to diversify the delivery platforms of their of their of their forehead. So yes, there is an action reaction dynamic at play. But also if you consider it from an actor specific, if you take an actor specific view then the US can make that decision that they do not accept mutual vulnerability with the DPRK and then they will try to act on that policy. Thank you. So shall we move on, Henrietta? Would you like to reply? Yeah, brilliant. Thank you very much and thank you Paul. Yes, I had anticipated your question. We've talked about it before. So I think it's a really interesting point. Will open source research be allowed to interface with formal systems? And maybe or maybe not. I don't know. My answer to you, though, is I don't think it can help but be involved. You know, it's now such a sector is so impacting on how individuals understand and interpret the world. I think it's it's there. I think you can see it in in people's responses in official circumstances, official interactions. They're understanding about proliferation and use by the open source world. So then the question becomes, is open source research going to make it worse? Is it going to make the very messy, complicated information environment messier and more complicated and harder to navigate? Or will it help? Because I think that this nascent sector has the tools to really make sense of that contested information environment. And things like it can distinguish between misinformation and disinformation and authentic information. It's very hard and it takes a long time and it takes a lot of resource, but open source researchers do have these tools. And so if there were systems like the ones I mentioned, if there were systems for standardising the work so that it was better understood by decision makers so that they use the best bits of it well and weren't undermined by the messy bits of it, then it then it might help. I don't know if that, you know, I'm sure that you expected me to give a different sort of to your viewpoint. Yes. Thank you. Lovely. Thank you. And Robin. Okay. Thank you, Patricia. Nicola, so first on your question about mutual vulnerability, I think it is indeed through that it is now seen as a sort of condition instead of a concept of its own, I think. In the relationship with the US and China and the exactly what I'm trying to say is that this problem with for this, this idea of strategic stability is seen as an end means that needs to be maintained of needs to be achieved. And that we are still always looking for more concrete concepts, concrete concepts that are under this container term of strategic stability and that they these concepts always have some sort of conceptual issues or clarity. So, I think your, your, your, your question was spot on and I think you, you're absolutely right there. Ben, well, let me, I don't know if you, if you had a specific question, I will definitely take you up on the, the suggestion that I can send my paper to you for some more specific comments. But I didn't really know if there was an actual question or if you just gave some feedback. So I, yeah, I mean, so the question was, are you assuming that the people who mobilize the notion of strategic stability are actually pursuing something specific, or does your framework allow for the possibility that what they pursue is no change. Okay, okay. No, I think it's definitely not always the case that they pursue it in a, in a, in a knowingly way, I think. I think sometimes because this strategic stability structure is already there they don't really understand or that people or actors don't really know that it is that it is a specific or that it has a specific meaning and they use it in the sense of meaning that they think it for them it is it is useful. But so I don't know if that is that answer the question but and then Paul. I think you said that it is inevitable that these concepts are looked for or are searched by by policymakers and that's true I think, but the point I want to make here, I don't think it is problematic that there are that there is sort of look for or search for, for concepts to think about, or to handle the nuclear realities of today. But I think that there should be that we should notice and we should be aware basically of the fact that these concepts mean different things for for different different actors. And so if we use it in one single way, like Arturo also said, if we use it in a single way and not actor specific, then I think we will be talking past each other. The whole policy field will be talking past each other or the nuclear, the academic field as well, instead of with each other. So I think that's a very important point point to make here. Wonderful. Oh, and I've got, I was going to say my thing saying that there's four hands full. Okay, shall we, I can see I've got number of hands up. Shall we take it three questions ago? Paul, if we try and do it that way, depends if the questions are short if they're long. I'm just mindful of time does that sound okay. Okay, lovely. So, Linton, did you want to go first? Thanks very much. Yeah, a question for Fabian, and then maybe just a comment about Paul's question and Henrietta's sort of response in that conversation. So Fabian, great presentation. Like I always love your clear concise nuanced in various ways as well. So, I really just interested you talked about, I think towards the end of your presentation about how there was the functional approach highlights need to consider non material factors in the analysis generally. And so just, I'd love to hear more about that like where does that lead you in your your PhD proposal design like if that's sort of coming out of what you've read so far. How do you think about approaching that issue. Just to sort of come back to to Paul's comment around trust and disinformation and that whole discussion with Henrietta. I think what's really interesting in that space is that if you look at research that's coming out of the commercial world. And I think for example of like Microsoft and the BBC. Obviously people that have a great interest in countering misinformation and disinformation. And they put together a coalition called the coalition for content provenance and authenticity, which I think would be a set of attributes that will be essential for for any open source verification work. And they are aware that what they need is a sort of multi factor approach with content tagging and security and verification of the authenticity of the source and all that stuff. And to the end of it they said, so how would we do that and the answer was, well they do it on a blockchain. So that's what they're doing. So that's what the BBC is doing in order to pursue its, what's it called project origin in order to verify and authenticate the that sources being read on official websites are actually from those sources. So it's only one aspect of the answer but I think it's an interesting part of the potential picture. I'll leave it there. That's lovely. Thank you, Lyndon. Very interesting. Okay. Henryetta and then Arthur. Hi. Thank you. So I'm, I've got a comment from Fabian and I'm not responding to Lyndon's comment. Fabian, I was really interested by your idea, your suggestion to think about regulating use and function rather than bits of kit. And it's just a comment really to mention that the Chemical Weapons Convention, I think really aims to do that. And I know other people in this meeting know a lot more about it than I do. But they have this general purpose criterion that defines chemical weapons as something that's used as a chemical weapon. And it's associated with kind of more material definitions of chemical weapons that grounds verification. But ultimately the general purpose criterion is really a nuanced and powerful tool to mean that the Chemical Weapons Convention can keep up to date with any technological developments going forward. So that's really powerful. The complication there is that that nuance is very hard to implement, that people that have implemented treaties just kind of want a list of things that are outlawed, it feels to me. And so in the implementation stage of things, people constantly have to be reminded that the convention doesn't just stick to schedules of chemicals. It's, it's can be, it can be adapted in all sorts of way. Well, it can be adapted in keeping with the general purpose criterion. Yeah. Thank you. Lovely. Thank you. My question is also to Fabian. I feel like your presentation how finally somebody took on how the usage of the term domain is just over the place so congrats. And just reminded me how deterrence is not necessarily about the absence of conflict or not, certainly not about the absence of competition. It is about driving the state of relations with the other party to a level that you find acceptable to compete or fight on. And in that regard, I was wondering how you see the future strategic picture, given that more nations will likely possess more sophisticated non nuclear strategic systems. And if you want to regulate the function of the conventional precision strike, for instance, if I understood you correctly, then wouldn't that increase, you know, reliance and reverse trends towards more nuclear deterrence and how does that fit with making deterrence more credible and the entire loyal debate. So I was just wondering like what would be the strategic implications of regulating the function of let's say conventional precision strike. Thanks. Okay. So I think really Fabian, it's over to you. And then we'll go on from there. So Fabian. Perfect. Thank you so much for these excellent remarks and also the questions and I'm really sorry following following this this answer session I have to a hop off the call I have another commitment I would also love to to ask a couple of questions. But I think I will I will just write you guys an email. Okay, the first one for Lyndon. So what are these immaterial factors I'm really glad you asked. I think they really kick in when you dive deeper into where do these functions come from because obviously they don't originate nowhere. And I think these functions what is behind them and they really relate to two different codes of conduct that are associated with the different domains, which create differing norms and fresh holes. So I think, you know, this is also like something that really separates the conventional from the nuclear domain, or you could also even include a subconventional domain and this. And then you have three different functional domains and I think within each of these functional domains, you have different prevailing codes of conduct, which are created and and recreate different norms and thresholds that are important in these different domains, and also clearly delineate these these domains, these functional domains for for the other ones. And you know, in the end, I think this comes down to social construction. And I think in the strategic studies field, the idea of social construction often receives too little attention. And I hope that this this approach to conventional nuclear integration, or more broadly this this functional approach to the to the nuclear conventional domains can can help highlight this a tiny bit. And then how does this fit in within the PhD proposal. I think that would be part of the conceptual theoretical overview in the beginning of the of the PhD, but that is that is still to be determined how exactly it's going to fit in. Yeah, so I think, you know, just to to to comment on the comment made by by Henrietta. I agreed, like in the sense that functional arms control, it is a rather weak approach. And I think often the feedback I get is, or not often, but like I heard sometimes that you know it's not ambitious enough, or it would not be doing enough. And you know, I agree like if you if you have, if you declare that you're not going to use your precision strike capabilities for for nuclear missions. And obviously you could also just walk away from such a statement. So it is it is not very strong. And it I think it only be the start of a product dialogue, and more engagement. But what I think is is really good about it is that it's such an uncomplimentated and cheap first step that could just be taken to to advance the discussion or basically just restart it at this point. And then to our tour. How does the future look like and how does it interrelate with with nuclear proliferation. To be honest, I haven't I haven't really thought about that yet I know there's a really good chapter out there. Written by by what's called Andrew, I think this is his name, who is who has thought about strategic non nuclear weapons a lot. And from the University of Leicester, I forgot the name I'm really sorry, I should know that. But he has written a chapter. Sorry. Sorry, you mean exactly my God. Thank you. Yeah, he has written a chapter in a in a good volume that I can recommend in this regard. And further, if you want to read a bit more like to any of you guys about strategic non nuclear weapons, I've recently published a small report with the foundation for the research strategic on that issue, which tries to delineate the term a bit and and describes and defines different types of strategic non nuclear weapons. And their distinct implications in regard to strategic stability. And with that, thanks again for for the remarks and unfortunately I have to hop off now. But but thank you so much for that. It was it was really interesting. It was a pleasure participating. I can just see there's a very quick note from Henry after Henry after two seconds. Do you want to. Sorry, I didn't mean to imply the general purpose control. Sorry was weak. I don't think it is weak. It people need to be reminded of it constantly the full ramifications of it. Yeah, I think it's very strong. No, no, that is that is totally fair. No, I'm, I don't know. I think I picked something up in the beginning of your question, which applied that, you know, the functional approach is not the strongest. If I misunderstood that, I'm sorry. No, of course, the chemical weapons conventions, the general purpose criterion is very strong. I totally agree. And it's also very unique. Fabian, can you have two seconds just to double check? Paul was your question for Fabian email him or not especially. No. Okay. No. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you Fabian. Excellent presentation. Thank you. Sorry, Paul. Sorry to have you waiting. Do you like to fire away? Well, I want to go back to this trust theme, which I think may recur later in the conference. We face intensifying strategic competition and new technologies and information, computational propaganda, information, all of that. And it doesn't seem to me that blockchain is going to save us because any organisation that uses blockchain will be denounced for using it wrong and prejudicially. And what we need to keep in mind, I think, from most of these discussions and saying it now may seem we haven't mentioned it in my session, which is that the Syrian case is wonderfully illustrative because it shows that the best organised, consensually set up organisations whose purpose the OPCW is to sift truth from lies using advanced scientific means can still be utterly blocked. Probably most of the human race doesn't believe what the OPCW has found and won't because successful information warfare floods the zone and changes the politics of everything. And I think that's absolutely necessary to keep in mind before we easily accept that there are benign sounding technical ways out of this, this morass of unbelievable ability that the world seems to be going towards. And in that sense, the idea that came up over precision strike conventional weapons about declarations sounds to me interesting, but radically frail. If you do the thought experiment, we're approaching an imagined war over Ukraine being actively thought about, analysed, prepared for in staffs all over Europe and beyond. How much credence do you think that any of those military staffs would place in declarations and promises about the limited use of strategic conventional weapons. Do you think that really is the way the world works that it that it could attenuate a crisis very much strongly, strongly pressed question. Really. Okay, so I hand it over to you guys. We have Arthur and we have Henrietta and we have Robin. Sorry Robin. So do you want to take it in that order Arthur? It just to chip in on the credibility of that territory policies because my sense is Paul is getting to that point. Well, yeah, I mean, credibility is a complicated, complicated animal and it's not just up to you know what you declare but also what you have, and what you, you know what you're doing like exercising and how you're posturing your forces so I would agree that there are some actors in 2021 that are less credible when it comes to their declaratory policies. And ultimately, I believe that the job of military planners is to plan for not just the credible but also a first case scenario so I can understand how you know that comes into play the dynamic that you mentioned. Okay. I think it is Henrietta next. Brilliant thank you. So Paul, you know, I take your point. I share your concerns. Syria has been an enormous challenge on all sorts of levels to lots of to lots of global attempts to strengthen human security and respond to bad things happening. I think you overstate the case, you know, you know, I'd have to do some research but my, my instinct is to say that most people in the world think that the OPCW is lying. I think might be an exaggeration. And I don't think it's done yet. I think I'm, I'm enormously impressed at the way the OPCW is slowly, carefully doing things that aligning information and the things that it has is fingertips that it can do. It's, it's slowly taking actions. So it's not over. I don't think so. We'll see, won't we? And I, you know, but I totally and I totally recognise the world you're describing that we're living in a messy contested. Area where trust is falling down and it really relates what Arthur was saying about credibility. These are difficult things. These are difficult times. Lyndon, yes, you know, I think there are signs of all sorts of emerging communities of practice around how to legitimise, build credibility and open source research findings. Lots of them look and sound very similar to conventional understandings of the scientific method, I think. And I'll point to the Berkeley protocol as being really exciting in this area. It's too agnostic so it doesn't advocate for blockchain or anything because it feels that individual open source researchers will use the things that they're comfortable with. Also, the technologies will change so that they've written a manual for step by step approach to conduct open source research in a way that means that its findings are usable by the International Criminal Court, which is really exciting to me. And going back to the Syria example, Paul, it's giving a framework for the open source research community to streamline that effort so they don't all have to authenticate exactly the same tweet that their systems are sharing things that are transparent and reproducible and have this kind of quality of robustness that we come to expect from peer review work. Anyway, thank you. Interesting conversation. Excellent. I think it's good to push in question. This is what we're here for. So that's great. It's lovely to hear it. Thank you. And it's nice to hear. You know, it's nice to hear. I shouldn't really say this but I am. It's nice to hear differences of opinion because this is how we think. So it's great. Thank you. Robin, would you like to add anything? Very briefly, maybe on the declaratory policy. I kind of agree with what Arthur said but I think there is in 99% of the cases, I think there is still some value or still an important value for these declaratory policies and I think in some cases they might even be stronger formulated than actually meant by the actors. I think it can be similar to where some actors are identifying red lines that other actors should not cross and then in the end they're not really react or act upon it. So I think these declaratory policies certainly have some value still if that is what Paul meant. Thank you. Lovely. Great. Well, we've got, we have finished five minutes early, which is lovely. So we've got a 10 minute break to have a coffee, just move around and then we'll be back for the next panel, which is rethinking deterrence and the nuclear future. So just to say a massive thank you to everyone really for the panelists and for the questions. I think we've started out really nicely and it's good to have a good mix of opinions and a good mix of material to discuss. So thank you very much and you just need to use the same link again to come back in 10 minutes time at 2 o'clock. Right, thank you. Bye bye.