Rethinking National Security in the Age of Pandemics

This is a virtual program, instructions on how to join this meeting will be sent the day before the event.

The Coronavirus pandemic has reshuffled American views of our priorities – both personally and nationally. One of those is the way we view national security. As the $2 trillion stimulus package makes clear, the cost of fighting the pandemic and the coming recession will be enormous. Joe Cirincione argues that we cannot afford this increased government spending and still fund the Pentagon at the historically high levels reached since 9/11. We have to reprioritize government spending – and our entire concept of what constitutes a national security threat. Once we get through this emergency, we will need a long-term investment strategy aligned to the imperatives of the new world we face. Please join the World Affairs Council and Joseph Cirincione, the president of Ploughshares Fund, for a virtual brown bag lunch about national security in the age of pandemics.

About the Speaker
Joseph Cirincione is president of Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation. He is also the host of Press The Button, a weekly podcast from Ploughshares Fund dedicated to nuclear policy and national security. A new episode is available every Tuesday.

Cirincione is the author of the books Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World Before It Is Too Late, Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons and Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Threats. He has worked on nuclear weapons policy in Washington for over 35 years and is considered one of the top experts in the field. He served previously as vice president for national security at the Center for American Progress, director for non-proliferation at Carnegie Endowment, and senior associate at the Stimson Center. He worked for nine years as professional staff on the U.S. House of Representatives Committees on Armed Services and Government Operations. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former member of the International Security Advisory Board for Secretaries of State John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. He also teaches at the Georgetown University Graduate School of Foreign Service.