New America Foundation

   Dr. Jeffrey Lewis (see Arms Control Wonk), director of the Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative, invited me to speak at the New America Foundation last Thursday. They filmed it and you can view the presentation here.

   I'm grateful to Jeffrey and the New America Foundation for asking me. The people at New America are very professional and run this sort of thing with remarkable efficiency. Katherine Tiedmann was particularly helpful in sorting out the details.

   Jeffrey, of course, asked me a question that was smart and sophisticated and I was flummoxed for an answer. He crackles with intelligence.

   It's a funny thing being filmed - hot. And I hate looking at myself. The reactions were positive - you can feel the greater receptivity to this message. The chariot thing was especially well-received. I also saw people making notes after the slides that show a straight line interpretation of the relationship of power and usefulness and then the one showing a bell curve relationship. Those slides were new and I think they really got the point across (that there is a point of diminishing returns - that once a weapon gets to a certain size it starts to become less and less useful). It's hard to see some of the slides but New America is going to put the full presentation up on the site in a few days.