
Sam Nunn
Co-Founder and Co-Chair, NTI
For the past 15 years, the three of us and a distinguished group of American and international former officials and experts have been deftly and passionately led by our late friend and colleague, George Shultz. Our mission: reversing the world’s reliance on nuclear weapons, to prevent their proliferation into potentially dangerous hands, and ultimately ending them as a threat to the world. Without a bold vision, practical actions toward that goal won’t be perceived as fair or urgent. Without action, the vision won’t be perceived as realistic or possible.
George led this charge with the tenacity of a U.S. Marine and the wisdom of a man who held four cabinet positions for two presidents, including secretary of state for Ronald Reagan. Reagan considered nuclear weapons to be “totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization.” He took that view and his most trusted advocate for it, George Shultz, to a summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1986.
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EASLG leaders Des Browne, Wolfgang Ischinger, Igor Ivanov, Ernest J. Moniz, and Sam Nunn, along with 34 dignitaries from 12 countries, call for all nuclear-weapons states to conduct internal reviews of their nuclear command-and-control and weapons systems.
Eric Brewer, deputy vice president for NTI’s Nuclear Materials Security Program, co-authored a piece for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace titled “South Korea’s Nuclear Flirtations Highlight the Growing Risks of Allied Proliferation.”
Modern technologies like cyber are introducing new risks to nuclear systems and underscore the need and urgency of conducting a new failsafe review.