Bryan Lee
February 5, 2014
Report cover detail
View the Full Report
New Media Solutions in Nonproliferation and Arms Control: Opportunities and Challenges
New Media & Nonproliferation
CNS has released a ground breaking new report investigating the role new and social media can play in tracking nonproliferation and verifying arms control. The paper lays out how these new technologies have the potential to significantly enhance current practices in the field of nonproliferation and arms control. They stress, however, that it is critical to approach anything that is so new and fluid with caution and flexibility as technologies that might be effective today for solving a particular nonproliferation or arms control problem might not work or require a major redesign in the future.
The paper contains four detailed examples that show how new media can be applied to the nonproliferation challenge. They include: 1) election mapping; 2) Github; 3) real time commercial satellite image analysis; and 4) a Twitter text mining analysis. The findings demonstrate emerging technologies and procedures that can enhance the ability of countries or organizations or even individuals to identify when weapons of mass destruction are being built or used, or in ensuring that countries live up to their international treaty obligations.
