Name: Tyler Huang

Social Justice Group: 2022-2023, Nuclear Weapons/Nuclear Proliferation

Date of Fieldwork: February 6, 2023

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):James Acton; Co Director of Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endownment

Type of Fieldwork: Interview

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?:

On Febuary 6th, we orginized an interview with James Acton. Ajev orginized this meeting during our lunch period. He joined a few minutes late and it was no big deal. James Acton is a physict and holds the Jessica T. Mathews Chair and is co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

We talked about a wide variety of questions. A question that I thought was helpful for our topic was, how does a question roll out a nuclear ban? He replied saying that countries are disembling nuclear weapons and replacing them all of the time.he also mentiond that dismanteling nuclear weapons is easy and the countries would want some kind of verification or proof that it would change their countries nuclear reputation. However countries would want the reputation of having a nuclear arsenals so it would be less likely for an invasion.

James Acton is a specialist in hypersonic weapons (Missiles that can reach a speed of Mach 5 which is 5 times the speed of sound). He talked about how difficult it can be to intercept a hypersonic missile, but countries are developing next generation missile defence systems to handle these types of weapons.

James ended our chat by saying he doesn’t directly affect the growth of these weapons but his job is to overall make our world a better place without these weapons.