Full Description
Improvements to strategic situational awareness (SA)—the ability to characterize the operating environment, detect and respond to threats, and discern actual attacks from false alarms across the spectrum of conflict—have long been assumed to reduce the risk of conflict and help manage crises more successfully when they occur. However, with the development of increasingly capable strategic SA-related technology, growing comingling of conventional and nuclear SA requirements and capabilities, and the increasing risk of conventional conflict between nuclear-armed adversaries, this may no longer be the case. The Project on Nuclear Issues (PONI) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the University of California, Berkeley's Nuclear Policy Working Group undertook a two-year study to examine the implications of emerging situational awareness technologies for managing crises between nuclear-armed adversaries.
Contents
Acknowledgments iii
Chapter 1 1
Introduction 1
The Growing Nuclear Shadow 2
The Evolving Strategic Situational Awareness (SA) Ecosystem 3
Pathways to Escalation 6
Evolution or Revolution? 8
Chapter 2 | Understanding Situational Awareness Technologies and the Emerging Situational Awareness Ecosystem 10
Platforms, Critical Enablers, and Defense and Counter Capabilities 10
Key Attributes of Strategic SA Capabilities 11
Surveying the Global Strategic SA Capabilities Landscape 15
Chapter 3 | Risk Factors of Situational Awareness Technology and Strategic Stability 19
Advanced Strategic SA Capabilities and Stability Risks 19
Assessing Risk in the Emerging Strategic SA Ecosystem 20
Action-Reaction: Understanding Dynamic Risk Factor Interactions 24
Risk Versus Reward: Evaluating Strategic SA Capabilities 25
Chapter 4 | Pathways to Escalation 28
Provocation 28
Entanglement 33
Information Complexity 38
Chapter 5 | Tabletop Exercise Takeaways 44
Analysis 48
Chapter 6 | The Way Ahead 54
Key Conclusions 55
Recommendations 57
About the Authors 58
