March 11, 2021
On March 10, 2021, CNS convened an online seminar entitled “Warfare is In Your Genes: What the Biden Administration Should Do About It.” This event, which was moderated by CNS Director Dr. William Potter, featured remarks by former Secretary of Defense William Perry, former Governor of California Jerry Brown, and CNS expert Sarah Bidgood.
Secretary Perry began the event by tracing the history of human evolution and describing how it had shaped—and been shaped by—wars and military innovation. While he acknowledged that thermonuclear weapons had prevented World War 3, he also observed that they had created incentives to proliferate and the potential for a mass extinction event. He concluded his remarks by outlining three concrete policy recommendations for the new Biden administration to consider that would reduce these risks. These were (1) ending sole authority, (2) prohibiting launch on warning, and (3) formalizing no first use.
Governor Jerry Brown endorsed Secretary Perry’s recommendations and offered an additional recommendation: affirming the Reagan-Gorbachev principle that a “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. He called upon the next generation to use their voices and creativity to put these recommendations into practice. As an example of one such approach, Sarah Bidgood then described how these and other unilateral measures might be implemented to reinvigorate US-Russia arms control. The event concluded with a discussion among the panelists, other experts, and students in the audience.
