Nuclear Terrorism

This morning was the Council on Foreign Relations conference call. There I was, with three other freshmen, a gtf, and the provost of the university, in her office, on the phone with Micheal Levi all the way from Israel, and about 30 other prestigious universities with mostly graduate students. Another amazing opportunity brought to me by the University of Oregon. Also, donuts and coffee.

The conversation was amazing. I won't summarize the whole thing here because its pretty involved and no one but me cares a whole lot anyway, but here is a link to one of my favorite of the debates Micheal Levi has been participating in. He also recently wrote a book entitled On Nuclear Terrorism which I've read a bunch of excerpts from and its really easy to read. Today he basically covered the probability of a nuclear attack and what that means for how we should best go about developing our defenses and how we might try to think differently about some of our foreign policy. He also talked about risk-benefit analysis both for terrorist groups and US defense. Most of the questions were from Rutger's Law school and also U of Nebraska's international affairs grad program. Linda, or course, knew a lot of the professors from the other schools.

At the end of the call Linda stayed and talked with us and showed us some sweet pictures of when she was part of the US negotiating team in Vienna during the cold war. Basically awesome. She's really nice and approachable and her office is amazing. I must find a way to go to office hours.

Well, now I need to go run and get on with my day. The last three nights I haven't gotten very much sleep, so I'm looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow!