Midcoast Forum on Foreign Relations

Two Essays by Ron Lehman

Posted on Saturday December 30 2023

Lehman, Ron. “Sputnik-like Events: Responding to Technological Surprise.” In Strategic Latency: Red, White, and Blue — Managing the National and International Security Consequences of Disruptive Technologies edited by Zachary S. Davis and Michael Nacht, pp 33-51. Center for Global Security Research, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 2016.

National security costs imposed by technological surprise can be immense. Take the case of Sputnik I,” the first man-made satellite. Launched by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957, Sputnik—primarily a technology demonstration—humiliated a superpower, catalyzed mankind’s greatest national-security technology competition, encouraged risky geostrategic behavior, and transformed the world in ways that still shape our future. Few technological surprises match the impact of Sputnik, and like Sputnik, few are totally unexpected. Their consequences, however, are often not those anticipated.

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Lehman, Ron. “Simplicity and Complexity in the Nth Nuclear Era.” In Cross-Domain Deterrence: Strategy in an Era of Complexity edited by Jon R. Lindsay and Erik Gartzke, pp 66-91. Oxford University Press, 2019.

Because separate expert organizations with distinct cultures inform nuclear, cyber, space and other special operations, perspectives often differ on strategy, capabilities, threats, and priorities. Thus, a comparative approach can provide interesting insights, analogies, and lessons learned, highlighting relative strengths and weaknesses. When confronted with the most challenging scenarios, however, an important defense policy goal is synergism between cross-domain and nuclear deterrence — a total deterrent greater than the sum of the parts.

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