The Exchange Monitor held its 2021 Nuclear Deterrence Summit this week in Alexandria, Va., just outside of Washington. The curtain rose on the show about a year-and-a-half after the 2020 summit, which wrapped up barely a month before COVID-19 changed everything.
For some attendees, and maybe more than just some, the summit was the first large, in-person professional gathering since the very worst of the pandemic abated.
Not to say that COVID-19 is gone. At show time, the potentially lethal virus was again spreading at an alarming rate through the population, with the hyper-contagious delta variant posing an unprecedented threat to the unvaccinated.
But with the widespread availability of vaccinations and fewer federal, state and local restrictions on gatherings, it appeared to this reporter that things had turned a corner at the summit this year.
Some people bumped fists or elbows, some gleefully pumped your hand like in old times, a few marveled (inconspicuously, they thought) at the length of your beard or your (lack of a) new haircut.
Then, there were the masks.
“It’s kind of hard to recognize people with masks on,” one attendee said.
Yes, masks again. By the time of this writing, we’d all had more than a week to be annoyed with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation that everybody mask up indoors, whether vaccinated or not.
Yet plenty of people more-or-less willingly wore their masks at the summit, at least during the heavily attended panel discussions and keynote addresses (which for some attendees are a great opportunity to pass time in the hallway, dreaming up new ventures with old friends — or frenemies).
Once in a while, you and someone you’ve never met in person before might remove your masks, if only for a moment, so that you could really meet face-to-face.
From a high perch, the biggest news out of the summit this year might have been that it happened at all.
Of course, you haven’t found your way behind the paywall for philosophizing. If it’s news from the summit that you’re after, you’ll find plenty on the pages nearby.
On the other hand, if you couldn’t attend this year and missed those energized moments when the entire room laughs or murmurs, you might be interested in the quotes below. Don’t call them a best-of, but do call them an essence-of, if you like.
“What used to take us five, seven years now sometimes takes us 10 or 15 years and you have to ask ‘why?’ We haven’t gotten dumber. Our tools and our people have actually gotten better in some sense. But it takes us longer. And so we need to keep asking ourselves ‘why?’ And a lot of it is process that’s been added on. And it’s not always value-added process.” Charles Verdon, deputy administrator for defense programs, National Nuclear Security Administration.
“Livermore of course is a postage stamp. [At Los Alamos] we have over 40 square miles, but if you look at our 40 square miles, it’s got 1,000-foot vertical cliffs, national forests, Bandelier National Monument. There’s actually not as much space as you would think, and the facilities in which we accommodate people are really past their expiration date.” – Thomas Mason, director, Los Alamos National Laboratory.
“Livermore and Los Alamos have a long history of working together as, I don’t know, peer adversaries. I like my postage stamp. It’s cute.” Kimberly Budil, director, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
“We know at Sandia that we’re somewhat like in fifth place right now because of uranium plutonium, lithium, tritium and then the footprint at Kansas City isn’t large enough to meet the manufacturing mission for the life-extension programs.” James Peery, director, Sandia National Laboratories, Tuesday.
“Pits. Mmmmm. Lose a little sleep on pits.” Robert Webster, deputy director, weapons, Los Alamos National Laboratory.
“We may not be building a pit, but at the end of the day, you need a screw, or a mechanism AND a pit.” Eric Wollerman, president and chief executive officer, Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologies, Kansas City National Security Campus.
“It is so good to be out and about.” Robert Raines, associate administrator for acquisition and project management, National Nuclear Security Administration.
