Dr Brad Roberts has served as director of the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory since 2015.

From 2009 to 2013, he was deputy assistant secretary of defense for Nuclear and Missile Defense Policy. In this role, he served as policy director of the Obama administration’s Nuclear Posture Review and Ballistic Missile Defense Review and led their implementation. Prior to entering government service, Dr. Roberts was a research fellow at the Institute for Defense Analyses and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, editor of The Washington Quarterly, and an adjunct professor at George Washington University. Between leaving the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2013 and assuming his current responsibilities, Dr. Roberts was a consulting professor at Stanford University and William Perry Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). While at CISAC, he authored a book entitled The Case for US Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century, which won the Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title in 2016.  

Education:

B.A., International Relations, Stanford University

M.A., International Relations, London School of Economics and Political Science

Ph.D., International Relations, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Recent publications:

• Deterring a Nuclear-armed North Korea, May 2023
• “China’s Emergence as a Second Nuclear Peer: Implications for U.S. Nuclear Deterrence Strategy”, Spring 2023 (study report)
• “Rethinking Mutual Vulnerability in an era of US-China Strategic Competition,” May 2022
• Stockpile Stewardship in an Era of Renewed Strategic Competition, April 2022 (editor)
• Getting the Multi-Domain Challenge Right, December 2021 (editor)
• “Redesigning Nuclear Arms Control for New Realities,” ETH Zürich, Center for Security Studies, November 2021 (coauthor)
• “Orienting the 2021 Nuclear Posture Review,” July 2021 (journal article)
• “Germany and NATO’s Nuclear Deterrent,” July 2021 (research report)