| Event Title: | Atlantic Council-ISAS Roundtable |
| Topic: | Emerging Technology, Shifting Power Balances and Nuclear Stability |
| Date/Time: | 19 November 2018 | 10:00 - 17:00 |
| Venue: | UNDP Auditorium, Block A, Level 8, 29 Heng Mui Keng Terrace, Singapore 119620 |
| Speaker/s: | Multiple Speakers |
| Description: | ISAS organised a symposium on ‘Emerging Technologies, Shifting Balances of Power, and Nuclear Stability’ in partnership with the Atlantic Council on 19 November 2018. The roundtable included experts from the United States, China, Russia, India, and Japan. The symposium began with opening remarks by Professor C Raja Mohan, Director, ISAS. Dr Matthew Kroenig, Deputy Director for Strategy at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security presented a brief history of the Council and then presented on the Council’s project on how emerging technology could affect nuclear stability. The presentation listed emerging technologies (including their capabilities and implications), critiques and defences of the conventional wisdom, and they hypothesis that emerging technology’s effect of the broader balance of power is a greater risk to strategic stability.Following Dr Kroenig’s presentation, the participants discussed the topic in the context of four different themes: evaluating the conventional wisdom on emerging technology and strategic stability, the state of play of emerging technologies, the geopolitical context and flashpoints, and policy implications for arms control, non-proliferation and exports control. Three experts presented in each thematic session followed by an interactive discussion between the roundtable on the theme. The discussions on the first theme covered points of discussion such as the stabilising effect of arms races, the ‘layers’ of strategic stability and its nature, and non-rational use of technology. The second thematic session covered points such as new and conventional weapons capabilities and their impact, the challenges and uses of new technologies, and competition in technologies between different countries. In the third session, the experts discussed technologies in the context of geopolitical flashpoints such as South Asia, the ‘grey zone’, and great powers like Russia, China and the US. The final session considered policy implications related to arms control, a ‘cascading’ security dilemma, the possibility of a non-proliferation treaty (NPT) type arrangement for weapons, and codes of conduct. |