Chapter 2.3: Monitoring Nuclear Weapons Developments with Open Source Intelligence

This chapter demonstrates how open source research can be used to establish the details of global nuclear weapons stockpiles. It starts by overviewing the patterns of secrecy that surround nuclear weapons, and argues that in contrast to these practices, greater transparency can help stabilize insecurities and reduce the risks of nuclear weapons. It then presents the authors’ work for the Federation of American Scientists, showing how they produce accurate estimates of the world’s nuclear arsenals by outlining their overall methods and the open sources that they use, as well as highlighting inherent challenges to their work and how they address these. The chapter also assesses ways in which new digital tools and data are transforming opportunities for open source research, and concludes by demonstrating that non-governmental open source research focused on enhancing transparency benefits societies and their security.