International security

Interview with Peter Zimmerman, Emeritus Professor of Science and Security in the War Studies Department, King’s College London. Zimmerman recounts his upbringing in Wisconsin and then New Mexico in support of his father’s work in civilian and military defense, and he describes his early interests in science. He discusses his undergraduate experience at Stanford and the influence of Walter Meyerhof, and his decision to remain at Stanford for graduate school. Zimmerman discusses his postdoctoral appointments at DESY and then Fermilab until his first faculty appointment at LSU. He explains his involvement with the nuclear issues at the federal level in the 1970s and his offer to join the ACDA. Zimmerman discusses his opposition to strategic missile defense and he explains how his policy analysis work at the Carnegie Endowment filtered its way into policymaking. He describes the debates around ending nuclear testing and his interest in looking at nuclear weapons in the context of international terrorism. Zimmerman explains the negative security ramifications of the ACDA being folded into the Department of State and he explains his move to become Chief Scientist of Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He describes the scene in Washington on 9/11 and the subsequent anthrax attacks in Congress, and he explains why he never believed that Saddam Hussein had a WMD capability before the Iraq War. Zimmerman discusses his professorship in London and his opportunity to create a new center on science and security, and he shares his perspective on the JCPOA and what bothered him the most about Trump’s foreign policy decisions. At the end of the interview, Zimmerman reflects on how to best translate scientific analysis into good policy outcomes, and why a lack of public interest or media coverage should never make us lose sight of ongoing security threats.

In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP interviews Siegfried Hecker, Professor Emeritus with the Department of Management Science and Engineering, and Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Security and Cooperation, at Stanford University. Hecker recounts his family background as the child of ethnic Austrian and German parents who lived in Bosnia at the outbreak of World War II. He describes his family’s ordeal during the war and the circumstances surrounding his mother’s decision to move the family to the United States. Hecker recounts his experiences growing up in Cleveland and his decision to attend Case Tech for his undergraduate education. He explains his decision to switch his focus from physics to metallurgy, his formative summer at Los Alamos Lab before returning to Case for his Ph.D. work, and his decision to return to Los Alamos for postdoctoral research in metallurgy and elastic to plastic transitions. He describes his work at the General Motors Research Lab and his decision to return once again to Los Alamos, where he was assured he could focus on science and not management issues. Hecker explains how he became more involved in plutonium research and the various national security implications of this work. He describes his rise in the ranks at Los Alamos and how he became involved in national policy decisions in Washington. Hecker recounts the circumstances leading to being named director of Los Alamos, and he reflects on the challenges and opportunities he saw to improve the lab in this position. He provides an overview of nuclear weapons policy at the end of the Cold War and the renaissance in plutonium research in the 1990s. Hecker reflects on his decision to join the faculty at Stanford, and why he wanted to pursue matters of international security studies, and he describes his record of advisory work on nuclear verification in North Korea and elsewhere. At the end of the interview, Hecker describes his ongoing interest and research in metallurgy, and he reflects on how these interests bring him back full circle to the origins of his career.