Feb. 24, 2020 Sharon Weiner, former Princeton Program on Science and Global Security postdoc and award winning national security scholar led an international team that conceptualized and designed a virtual reality (VR) experience which simulates presidential decision-making in a nuclear weapons crisis. It offers first-hand experience to participants on how the decision to launch nuclear weapons could unfold following current U.S. nuclear strategy and protocols. Participants have 15 minutes in which they have the opportunity to interact with advisors, ask questions, make tough decisions, and ultimately determine a course of action. Senior government officials, national security experts, and civil society leaders engaged with the VR simulation at the Munich Security Conference in Germany. Ivo Daalder, US ambassador to NATO from 2009-2013, said “This simulation shows how truly terrifying it would be if a president had to decide on launching US nuclear weapons in the few minutes after receiving warnings of an incoming strike — and why we need to do everything we can to prevent such a situation from ever occurring.” The project team, along with Weiner, includes Moritz Kütt, former postdoc at the Princeton Program on Science and Global Security and current senior researcher at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg, Bruce Blair, research scholar at the Program on Science and Global Security who was a U.S. nuclear missile launch control officer and is a founder of Global Zero. See the full article on the Science & Global Security Website. "Virtual Reality Project Lets World Leaders Experience Nuclear Crisis Decision Making," Science & Global Security, (2020), https://sgs.princeton.edu/news-announcements/news-2020-02-24
