(U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Nick Wilson) The second conference of the 2017-2018 PONI Conference Series will be held on October 11-12 at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana in partnership with Global Strike Command. The two-day conference will feature a series presentations from emerging nuclear experts, keynote talks with senior leaders, tours of facilities at Barksdale Air Force Base, and a breakout discussion. The conference will be off-the-record, and a draft agenda will be posted shortly. Register by September 11 We have reserved a block of rooms on base at the Barksdale Inn (Barksdale AFB, 555 Davis Ave. West) for U.S. citizens at the cost of $61/night. Rooms can be reserved by calling 318-456-3091 and letting them know you are part of the “PONI Conference.” Foreign nationals can make their arrangements off base at the Hilton Garden Inn Shreveport Bossier City (318-759-1950), as they will need to be escorted any time they are on base. The PONI Conference Series, now in its fourteenth year, is unique in its emphasis on featuring rising experts and young professionals in the nuclear field. The Conference Series draws emerging thought leaders from across the nuclear enterprise and policy community, and provides them with a visible platform for sharing their new thinking on a range of nuclear issues. Agenda and Presentations Panel 1: Emerging Arsenals in Asia Shifts in DPRK Nuclear Policy: Impacts on Arsenal Size, Command and Control Diane Stevenson, Government Analyst, Thomson Reuters Special Services, LLC Nunn-Lugar for North Korea: Exploring the Realm of Possibility Timothy Westmyer, Associate Project Manager, Nuclear Security, CRDF Global Trump, Moon and South Korea’s Nuclear Ambition Lami Kim, PhD Candidate, Tufts University China’s Approach to Nuclear-Tinged India-Pakistan Crises Hannah Haegeland, Research Associate, Stimson Center Panel 2: New Perspectives for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction and Nonproliferation Nuclear Forensics and Decision Making: Early Timeline Solutions and Understanding Drake Brewster, Master’s Student, Naval Postgraduate School Reconciling the NPT and the Ban Treaty: Can it be Done? Sebastian Brixey-Williams, Project Leader, BASIC MERLIN VIPER: Contamination Avoidance/Hazard Mapping Kurt Gerfen, Nuclear Technologies Detection, Defense Threat Reduction Agency Eliminating Assumptions and Managing the INF Treaty Abigail Stowe-Thurston, Program Assistant, Friends Committee on National Legislation Panel 3: Deterrence Challenges in the 21st Century Why “Limited” Matters: Homeland Missile Defense and Strategic Stability Bernadette Stadler, Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellow, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation Limited Nuclear War and Escalation Shane Praisewater, Strike Pathfinder Intern, Global Strike Command The PLA’s “Combined Nuclear and Conventional Arsenal”: Systems, Force Structure, and Strategic Deterrence Elsa Kania, Director of Research, China Cyber and Intelligence Studies Institute