Horns of a Dilemma

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Iran's Nuclear Tightrope: Between Power and Peril

June 23, 2026

As the United States and Iran negotiate an end to recent hostilities, the strategic implications of Tehran's nuclear latency are more urgent than ever. In this episode of our podcast, Eric Brewer unpacks the realities of Iran as a nuclear threshold state. He argues that maintaining a threshold capability forces Tehran to walk a dangerous tightrope, balancing the perceived deterrence of adversaries against the severe peril of military escalation. The conversation offers a rigorous assessment o...

New Tech, Old Traps: The Persistent Pitfalls in Military Innovation

June 10, 2026

National security scholar Herbert S. Lin joins us to discuss his latest TNSR article, "On Optimism About New Military Technologies." Lin argues that political incentives and cognitive traps like the "fallacy of the last move" often blind planners to the complex, systemic realities of new capabilities. He also maps out the crucial distinction between artifactual hardware and architectural technologies like AI. Hosts: Sheena Chestnut Greitens and Ryan Vest, PhD Producer: Jordan Morning

The Balance of Control and Vulnerability: Cyber and Nuclear Risks

May 27, 2026

Dr. Jacquelyn Schneider joins us to discuss her article, "Cyber Operations and Nuclear Stability: Networked Instability." Moving beyond Hollywood analogies and pop-culture fears, Schneider argues that common understandings of how cyber operations impact nuclear stability are often misguided. Throughout the conversation, she unpacks three specific pathways to escalation—deliberate, inadvertent, and accidental—and applies percolation theory to explain how the structure of nuclear networks dicta...