The virtual seminar will be held from 12:30 to 2 p.m. (E.T.)
The United States and Soviet Union pursued radiological weapons during the 1940s and 1950s in parallel with their nuclear weapons and chemical weapons programs. This talk will explore the cultural context in which these programs emerged and what they reveal about military innovation in both the US and USSR. It will also examine subsequent US-Soviet efforts to ban radiological weapons—and the reasons why these efforts are worth revisiting today. The talk draws upon a recent article by Samuel Meyer, Sarah Bidgood, and William Potter “Death Dust - The Little-Known Story of U.S. and Soviet Pursuit of Radiological Weapons.”
About the speaker: Sarah Bidgood directs the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies and is an adjunct professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. Her primary areas of research are US-Soviet and US-Russia nonproliferation and arms control cooperation, as well as the nonproliferation regime more broadly. Bidgood is the coeditor of Once and Future Partners: The United States, Russia, and Nuclear Non-proliferation (2018) and has published in International Security, The Nonproliferation Review and Foreign Policy. She is currently pursuing a PhD at King's College, London.