Pardee Welcomes Mallory Stewart to Discuss the Future of Arms Control and AI’s Potential
This article was written by Fabian Salvador (BA IR ’26).
On November 18th, the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies had the privilege of welcoming the Executive Vice President of the Council on Strategic Risks and former Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence, and Stability at the Department of State, Mallory Stewart, where she shared insights on the current status of the global arms control regime and the future of arms control. She began with an exploration of the Syrian conflict and the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons. She recollected her experience during negotiations when tensions were high and highlighted the importance of finding shared commonalities between state parties and honing in on them to make progress.
She then also touched on taking a creative approach with the Prohibition on Direct Ascent Destructive Anti-Satellite Tests to regulate behavior and reduce miscalculation that could lead to the creation of more space debris surrounding our atmosphere. She underscored just how important unilateral commitments can be in encouraging adoption as the U.S. has paved the way for other countries to see value in a prohibition of this nature. She echoed that this “mantra that nonbindings are not as strong because they are not verifiable” should be questioned, given how valuable the prohibition has been in alerting the international community that misbehavior in space is not tolerated.
She concluded with an exploration of the realities that AI poses to the ways militaries across the globe operate and the department’s efforts to launch a proposal for a politically binding consensus building document that could govern its use. She made it clear that the purpose of the proposal was not to ban AI from any military use, but that it could provide a “basis to agree on a certain level of understanding of the threats AI could pose and how to approach them.” With the reality that accompanies today’s end of a rules based order, she emphasized just how important it is to still try to “strengthen regulations and norms in the international community.”