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