Contributors

James M. Acton is Co-Director of the Nuclear Policy Program and a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His work spans the field of nuclear policy. Acton recently published Wagging the Plutonium Dog: Japanese Domestic Politics and its International Security Implications, and is the author of two Adelphi books, Deterrence During Disarmament: Deep Nuclear Reductions and International Security and Abolishing Nuclear Weapons (with George Perkovich). He wrote, with Mark Hibbs, the highly cited study Why Fukushima Was Preventable. An expert on hypersonic conventional weapons and the author of Silver Bullet?: Asking the Right Questions about Conventional Prompt Global Strike, Acton has testified on this subject to the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee and the congressionally chartered U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. He is a member of the Commission on Challenges to Deep Cuts and of the Nuclear Security Working Group. Acton has published in The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Survival, The Washington Quarterly, and Science and Global Security. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics from the University of Cambridge.

Elisa D. Harris is a non-resident Senior Research Scholar at the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM). From 1993 to 2001, she was Director for Nonproliferation and Export Controls on the National Security Council staff, where she had primary responsibility for coordinating U.S. policy on chemical, biological, and missile proliferation issues. Ms. Harris has held a number of research positions, including in the Foreign Policy Studies program at the Brookings Institution, the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies in London, and the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. She is a former SSRC-MacArthur Foundation Fellow in International Peace and Security Studies and staff consultant to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives. Ms. Harris is the author of numerous publications on chemical and biological weapons issues and has testified frequently before the U.S. Congress. She has an A.B. in Government from Georgetown University and an M.Phil in International Relations from Oxford University.

Herbert Lin is Senior Research Scholar for cyber policy and security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, both at Stanford University. His research interests relate broadly to policy-related dimensions of cybersecurity and cyberspace, and he is particularly interested in and knowledgeable about the use of offensive operations in cyberspace, especially as instruments of national policy. In addition to his positions at Stanford University, he is Chief Scientist, Emeritus for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies, where he served from 1990 through 2014 as study director of major projects on public policy and information technology, and Adjunct Senior Research Scholar and Senior Fellow in Cybersecurity (not in residence) at the Saltzman Institute for War and Peace Studies in the School for International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. Prior to his NRC service, he was a professional staff member and staff scientist for the House Armed Services Committee (1986–1990), where his portfolio included defense policy and arms control issues. He received his doctorate in physics from MIT.

Robert Rosner is a theoretical physicist, on the faculty of the University of Chicago since 1987, where he is the William E. Wrather Distinguished Service Professor in the departments of Astronomy & Astrophysics and Physics, as well as in the Enrico Fermi Institute, the Computation Institute, and the Harris School of Public Policy Studies. He served as Argonne National Laboratory’s Chief Scientist and Associate Laboratory Director for Physical, Biological and Computational Sciences (2002–2005), and was Argonne’s Laboratory Director from 2005–2009; he was the founding chair of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Laboratory Directors’ Council (2007–2009). He was elected to the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (as a Foreign Member) in 2004; he is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Most of his scientific work has been related to fluid dynamics and plasma physics problems, as well as in applied mathematics and computational physics, especially in the development of modern high-performance computer simulation tools, with a particular interest in complex systems (ranging from astrophysical systems to nuclear fission reactors). Within the past few years, he has been increasingly involved in energy technologies, and in the public policy issues that relate to the development and deployment of various energy production and consumption technologies, including especially nuclear energy, the electrification of transport, and energy use in urban environments. As an outgrowth of these interests, he co-founded the Energy Policy Institute (EPIC) at the University of Chicago, spanning the Harris School of Public Policy Studies, the Booth School of Business, and the Department of Economics. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001. He is a member of the Academy’s Council and serves as Cochair of the Academy’s Global Nuclear Future Initiative.