 Hi, my name is Kartika Shashikumar and I'm a professor of political science at San Jose State University. I'm Ashley Tellis, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. I'm Chris Clary. I teach political science at the University of Albany in New York. We're here at USIP talking about changes in the Indian nuclear weapons program. In the last 25 years, India hasn't been asleep as it's thought about what to do with its nuclear weapons. So there are more weapons today than there were in 1998. Those weapons that are higher states of readiness, there are new missiles to deliver them. Those missiles are more accurate and they've thought a lot about what options they want to have available to them in the event of a severe crisis with Pakistan or China. And so the next crisis may follow a different playbook from those that occurred in the past and the nuclear weapons may have a more prominent role as we move forward. The most dangerous feature of the strategic situation in southern Asia is the number of players. We know that China is responding to moves made by the United States, such as a purchase of weapons systems. In turn, India responds to China and that triggers a response from Pakistan. So this linked dynamic makes the security dilemma more challenging. And this is exacerbated in times of crisis when signaling can be missed or misunderstood. In addition, in southern Asia, we have in the audience sub-state actors or militant groups. You can think of a situation where India makes a signal that is seen by the Pakistani government as a small step on the ladder of escalation. But the same signal is perceived by the militant group as an existential threat which then leads it to carry out a massive attack on civilians. If I were asked what is the one single thing that all three countries could do, it would be to increase the degrees of separation within their weapons systems and between their weapons systems and their means of delivery. In other words, not to maintain ready nuclear weapons if that is at all possible. Maintaining a distance between weapons components and between weapons and delivery systems makes a huge contribution to the safety of the weapons and it may in certain circumstances even increase the survivability of those weapons. So if there is one thing they could all do is to go back to the postures that they maintained around 1998 which is weapons separated from the delivery systems and weapons not assembled in their nuclear reserves.