INNOVATION IN ACTION

NRiched

The general public remains relatively uninformed about nuclear weapons and the threat of nuclear war. What if educators had easy access to engaging, compelling materials on these issues? And what if nuclear experts took the lead in creating them, effectively forming a community of experts committed to sharing their knowledge with the world? NRiched is an online marketplace platform that brings active and experiential learning resources into in-person and virtual classrooms. The platform facilitates connections between students, educators, and experts working in the field of peace and security, enabling teachers and professors to invite experts into the classroom, connect students with mentors, and help experts recruit the next generation.

NRiched was a Cohort 2 project and is now in the beta stage of development. The team continues to recruit more experts to serve as mentors

Fellowship Projects

During their fellowship, nuclear professionals partner with creatives, with experts from other fields, and with one another to design innovative solutions to pressing nuclear risk reduction challenges. After learning and practicing the methods of collaborative design, each cohort (working in small teams) prototypes novel solutions to real-world nuclear challenges. The first three cohorts alone developed nearly two-dozen viable prototypes, several of which have been implemented or are still in development.

Examples of fellowship projects that launched in the real world:

Datayo

Datayo is a new kind of open source insights platform to identify, track, understand, and prevent security breaches that pose a threat to humanity. The goal is to increase security for everyone—not just those countries that build and maintain nuclear weapons or that are wealthy enough for advanced intelligence systems—by enabling us to discover important nuclear truths for ourselves through open source data gathering and analysis. The collaborative data platform busts up the silos that keep people from connecting seemingly disparate pieces of data and empowers civil society to make novel contributions to global security.

After seed investments of $50,000 from the Skoll Foundation and Carnegie Corporation of New York, One Earth Future Foundation provided a $100,000 match to launch Datayo, now a project of the Vienna-based Open Nuclear Network.

Amnesia Atómica

Amnesia Atómica—an art installation featuring a 30-foot-tall inflatable sculpture in the shape of a mushroom cloud created by artist Pedro Reyes— opened in Mexico City in 2020 to commemorate the landmark Treaty of Tlatelolco, revitalize the once vibrant anti-nuclear community, and put pressure on political leaders, policymakers, and global citizens by informing them of the consequences of inaction. Born from a partnership forged between The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’s Rachel Bronson and international arts curator Pedro Alonzo during their fellowship, the project shows the promise of the expert community and artists working together to raise awareness of nuclear issues for global publics.

In May 2022, Reyes’s sculpture stood for a week in Times Square as part of the exposition Amnesia Atómica NYC in parallel with Reyes’s ZERO NUKES installations at the Frieze New York international arts festival, described by ArtNet as the beginning of a global campaign for nuclear disarmament. In collaboration with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), Amnesia Atómica is beginning its world tour with installations in Stockholm, Oslo, Santa Fe, and Singapore.

Getting Bombed

A team of Cohort 1 fellows developed the concept for a YouTube series in which nuclear experts share fascinating stories of our nuclear past, present, and feasible future, all while getting increasingly inebriated. With Hollywood, Health & Society director Kate Folb as producer in collaboration with 44 Blue Productions, “Getting Bombed” premiered in 2020 and was hosted by comedian Chris Reinacher.

The four episodes of the show (see the trailer here) featured Laicie Heeley, Paul Carroll, Jim Walsh, and Yasmeen Silva

Getting Bombed episodes were viewed nearly 40,000 times on YouTube and the show was re-released as a podcast, available on all major streaming platforms.

Radioactive Roadtrippin’

Innovation fellow Natasha Bajema—an expert in nuclear nonproliferation, cooperative threat reduction, and weapons of mass destruction who has worked at the US Department of Defense, the National Nuclear Security Administration, and several think tanks and NGOs—used the fellowship to develop the concept for Radioactive Roadtrippin,’ a travelogue show produced for YouTube. In the show, Natasha travels across the United States in a truck camper with her two dogs, visiting more than 65 historical and current sites of the US nuclear weapons complex, chatting with locals and experts about the risk of nuclear war, and documenting her own life-changing journey.

The pilot episode of Radioactive Roadtrippin’ was featured at the Rockport Film Fest in November 2022.

Fellows Putting What They’ve Learned to Work

While it is exciting to see some of the prototypes developed during the fellowship program launch, the success of these initial group fellowship projects is not the primary goal. Rather, the goal is to give nuclear professionals practice in working collaboratively with one another and with experts from outside their field to design solutions to real-world challenges. Our hope is that they will then take the frameworks, approaches, and tools for collaboration they practiced back to their organizations and begin applying them in their work. Happily, we have also seen fellows launch entirely new projects and collaborations that were partly inspired by their fellowship experience. For example:

PATH Collective

Launched by four N Square Innovators Network fellows from different cohorts, PATH Collective has now raised sufficient funding (from N Square and Ploughshares Fund) to build prototypes of novel solutions using Web3 technologies— including development of a fail-safe decentralized autonomous organization with PathFinder Media,8 development of a nuclear weapons-free zone in the metaverse now being prototyped on the Nowhere platform, and due diligence on novel crypto fundraising strategies for civil society actors engaged in nonproliferation and disarmament activities (massive aggregation of small dollar donations as well as more significant investment) and the potential for global mesh network of disarmament verification mechanisms (including societal verification, not just state-sponsored mechanisms) supported by blockchain.

nuclearweapons.info

Fellow Ariel Conn organized and built nuclearweapons.info, a site that aims to provide a single location on the internet where people can learn about the threat of nuclear weapons, the organizations acting to address this threat, and how individuals can take meaningful action to help rid the world of these weapons.

Nuclear Content Library

Jim Walsh from the MIT Security Studies Program created a Nuclear Content Library featuring more than 200 pieces of unbranded nuclear video and still-graphic content intended for use on digital platforms such as websites, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube—and he is making it freely available to the arms control and disarmament community. Jim was an N Square Fellow in Cohort 2; his project was informed by his collaboration with fellow cohort members. N Square edited and designed his content guide and hosted the library’s virtual launch party.

“Preventing Nuclear Catastrophe”

Soon after completing his N Square Innovators Network fellowship, veteran Wall Street research analyst David Epstein published a 74-page report, “Preventing Nuclear Catastrophe,” designed to jumpstart engagement by the sustainable investment community in nuclear issues. Epstein’s fellowship experience helped inspire and further his core research; the report was funded in part by N Square. As David explains: “There are people who know more about nukes and there are people who know more about sustainable investing. But there’s almost nobody focused on combining these two issues in a comprehensive way.”

The Network Effect in Action

A perpetual challenge for us over the years has been finding the right media through which to communicate the many types and layers of innovation and impact that N Square has created or encouraged. How do we explain the dynamic we’re seeing, where individuals in the network are using, spreading, and embedding a network mindset in their work? How do we show that introducing certain individuals to one another or to an idea that’s new to them often sets off a positive chain reaction? The network effect (and therefore N Square’s impact) is not a linear process nor pegged to one point in time. Many of our network members operate almost like bouncing balls through the network, making different connections, touching different nodes, bringing different people and ideas together to form something new—a project, a partnership, a program, or simply a supportive and fruitful connection. Below is an illustration of this dynamic shared through a few examples.

Cindy Vestergaard

After collaborating with the Stimson Center’s Brian Finlay and Cindy Vestergaard, we sponsored their participation (along with several other innovation fellows) at the 2017 PopTech conference. While there, Cindy met with PopTech board member and N Square partner Nick Martin of TechChange and learned for the first time about the promise of blockchain. Because of N Square’s partnership with TechChange, Cindy and five other Stimson Center colleagues became certified through their online Blockchain for International Development course.

With further support from the Stanley Foundation, the NNSA, and CCNY, Cindy and her team collaborated with the Pacific Northwest National

Laboratory (PNNL) to understand challenges and opportunities for IAEA member state acceptability and nuclear safeguards.

Until her recent departure for the private sector, Cindy ran Stimson Center’s Blockchain in Practice program, which is focused on harnessing the potential of distributed ledger technology to increase transparency and streamline/secure information sharing for nuclear material accounting. She was part of the team that created SLAFKA, the world’s first distributed ledger technology prototype for tracking nuclear material at the national level and managing nuclear safeguards information.

Deborah Rosenblum

Deb, then executive vice president of NTI, was a fellow in our first N Square Innovators Network cohort. She participated on the “verification team,” which comprised both nuclear experts and industrial designers and explored the question: How might we better articulate the problems and opportunities in the nuclear verification space so that people without expertise understand the issues and feel empowered to contribute? The team believed that “newcomers” to complex nuclear challenges like verification are more likely to form effective partnerships with experts if we can present the issues using language that facilitates transdisciplinary collaboration.

Deb brought in her colleague Corey Hinderstein to work on that team.

Corey connected the team’s work to the 2018 IAEA Innovative Safeguards Symposium in Vienna. At the symposium, N Square’s Morgan Matthews presented the team’s thinking about the relationship between verification challenges, language, and innovation. The audience’s overall response was positive and encouraging, reflecting a high degree of openness to new ways of thinking—and talking— about the issues. This helped N Square lay plans to further our collaboration with international agencies, national labs, and others.

Our relationship and engagement with Deb was key in creating a deeper partnership with the Nuclear Threat Initiative and ultimately led to the creation of Horizon 2045.

Deb now serves in the Department of Defense as assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs (ASD(NCB)). Corey is now the Department of Energy’s deputy administrator for NNSA’s Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation.

Lesley Blume

In Fall 2020, N Square’s Sara Kutchesfahani read the book Fallout and reached out to author Lesley M.M. Blume, who also writes for The New York Times and National Geographic. Sara interviewed Lesley for her December 2020 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists column, where Lesley spoke about the nuclear community being in a storytelling crisis

N Square staff acted as a sounding board for Lesley as she looked for angles and new articles to pitch on the dangers of nuclear weapons. Lesley also began attending N Square Innovators Network events as a participant and as a panelist.

Lesley wanted to write a piece about the US government’s impending deadline for amending the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) to include those exposed during the 1945 Trinity Test, focusing on the experiences of frontline communities. N Square introduced her to Tina Cordova, who was (and is) leading the charge for the expansion of the RECA. Tina became a lead source for the story.

National Geographic published the story in September 2021 and it got picked up by NPR and other media outlets. The article also circulated in Congress; every member of the House Judiciary Committee was given the article to read. Later, Lesley was told that her article proved influential. The article was entered into the Congressional record, and RECA legislation passed through committee on a bipartisan vote.

In May 2022, Lesley participated in an N Square Innovators Network event alongside Tina Cordova and network member Daron Murphy on “Storytelling for Change: How Stories Shape the Way We Think About the World.” (In June 2022, President Biden signed the RECA Extension Act into law.)

Sheree Renee Thomas

We met Sheree Renee Thomas, an accomplished sci-fi author and afrofuturist, through our connections with Lonny J. Avi Brooks and Reynaldo Anderson of the Black Speculative Arts Movement (BSAM).

Sheree participated in a course led by N Square for the BSAM community on “Afrofuturism 2.0 and Global Security.”

We then invited Sheree to be a key participant in the Horizon 2045 Iconoclast Summit and featured some of her work in the “Festival of Ideas” shared with participants in advance.

We have since invited Sheree to write a story for Horizon 2045’s Far Futures Lab. Her story will be part of a collection of stories exploring visions of what the world might be like 50 years after we’ve achieved a nuclear weapons prohibition.

In researching her story, Sheree traveled to White Sands, New Mexico, where she grew up. While there, she interviewed Tina Cordova about the experiences and legacy of Trinity Test downwinders.

Daron Murphy

N Square met Daron and Laura Dawn Murphy, his partner at creative agency and social impact firm ART NOT WAR, at an event about storytelling for peace hosted by Partners Global and the Skoll Foundation in Los Angeles.

Daron joined the second cohort of N Square fellows. During the fellowship, he worked on a team with Lindsey Harper of Georgia WAND. They came up with the idea of doing a digital campaign to raise awareness around the harm nuclear weapons are causing for real people in America titled “From the Bomb to Burke County.”

N Square accelerated this project in Cohort 5 and it became part of #stopinvestingindestruction, a larger campaign, developed in collaboration with Outrider, to frame nuclear weapons as a social justice issue.

#stopinvestingindestruction, a series of eight short videos, garnered over 2 million views and was favorably received by bipartisan audiences.

Elizabeth Talerman and The Nucleus Group

N Square met Elizabeth Talerman and her partner Gena Cuba of Nucleus through our partnership with PopTech when Elizabeth and other branding and communications experts became interested in partnering on nuclear challenges.

Nucleus partnered with N Square on new messaging research that, with support from the MacArthur Foundation, yielded NuclearNarrative.org, a messaging toolkit focused on reaching new, intersectional audiences.

Nucleus collaborated with N Square to design and deliver the first two cohorts of the innovation fellowship.

Nucleus principal Shaz Bhola went on to publish in the European Leadership Network forum about “Changing the Nuclear Narrative.”

Elizabeth, Gena, and Shaz collaborated with innovation fellow David Epstein on a toolkit for engaging the finance community in the mission to reduce nuclear dangers.

Laicie Heeley

Early innovation fellow Laicie Heeley approached N Square with the concept for what ultimately became the successful podcast “Things That Go Boom.” N Square provided financial support for the first season, but perhaps more importantly brokered a relationship with N Square partner Public Radio International (now PRX).

PRX provided Laicie, then a podcast neophyte, an expert production team and connected her to Marco Werman at the PRX flagship program “The World.”

Laicie went on to found Inkstick Media and has become a regular commentator on foreign affairs on “The World” and other public radio programs.

Epistemic Community

Not surprisingly, many N Square network members have changed jobs and moved into new positions since completing their fellowship. When they make these switches, they take the knowledge and frameworks they learned, the network mindset they’ve adopted, and the network itself with them.

As Peter Haas observed in his seminal paper “Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination,” “Without the help of experts, [governments] risk making choices that not only ignore the interlinkages with other issues but also highly discount the uncertain future.”9 While we don’t claim that the N Square network yet has mechanisms to influence policy innovation, diffusion, selection, or persistence (characteristics of a successful epistemic community, per Haas), we have observed the endurance of ties forged through shared work on real-world challenges, particularly in context of the innovation fellowship.

Moreover, it is our hunch that as people move into positions of greater authority and decisionmaking they are (or will be) calling on the network from their new posts. This creates an opportunity for us to act more purposefully on cultivating relationships and knowledge transfer between diverse network members with shared political goals in and outside government.

Examples:

• Deborah Rosenblum was an early innovation fellow who went on to work closely with numerous members of the fellowship program and larger network while at the Nuclear Threat Initiative. She is now the US’s assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs (ASD(NCB)).

• Corey Hinderstein was also one of our first fellows, which led her to bring N Square into work with the INMM, Sandia National Labs, and the IAEA. She is now the Department of Energy deputy administrator for NNSA’s Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation.

• Michelle Dover was a member of the N Square funders collaborative on behalf of Ploughshares

Fund and became an innovation fellow in Cohort 2. She is now executive director of the International Security Advisory Board at the US Department of State.

• Megan Garcia was one of the original architects of N Square as the nuclear program officer for the Hewlett Foundation. She is now chief of staff for US Representative Becca Balint of Vermont.

Maxwell Downman was a nuclear policy analyst at BASIC when he went through the N Square fellowship. He is now a Parliament researcher in the service of the House of Lords (the second chamber of UK Parliament).

• Kate Hewitt was a research assistant at The Brookings Institution and is now serving in the US Department of Defense as a multilateral arms control and nonproliferation advisor, Office of Secretary of Defense for Policy—Nuclear and Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction.

• Melissa Hanham Ullom was a senior research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies and is now a senior advisor in the US Department of State.

• Vincent Ialenti was a MacArthur Nuclear Waste Solutions Fellow at George Washington University and is now a social scientist with the US Department of Energy.

• Marion Messmer was co-director of BASIC and is now senior research fellow for the International Security Programme at Chatham House.

• Allison Puccioni, an early innovation fellow, is now at the UN’s Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs.

• Danielle McLaughlin was a corporate attorney, author, and political commentator when she became an N Square fellow. The fellowship changed the course of her career. She is now co-founder of PATH Collective, a program lead for the Horizon 2045 project, and is working with the Vatican and different agencies in the UN to develop ideas that emerged from Cohort 3 and to connect nuclear issues with sustainable development goals.

• Tom Weis, professor at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and founder of Altimeter Design, has been teaching courses on culture, design, and global security at RISD, introducing graduate design students to nuclear challenges. He has also worked closely with N Square on design and development of our network and fellowship program. This has led the US State Department to engage designers to work on verification challenges, West Point to collaborate with RISD on an exchange program of sorts for West Point cadets and RISD design students, and Altimeter to work with the United Nations, the NNSA, and the Navy Seals (among numerous others).

• Heather Hurlburt, innovation fellow and N Square partner at New America, is now chief of staff at the Office of the United States Trade Representative.