Siegfried Hecker worked with Russian nuclear laboratories to secure their stockpiles after the fall of the Soviet Union; visited North Korea’s nuclear facilities several times; and met with Iranians running the country’s nuclear program. Most recently, he offered his perspective on how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is as momentous for nuclear affairs as was the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
One of the world’s top nuclear security experts, Hecker is professor emeritus (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and a senior fellow emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He is the former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and his areas of expertise include plutonium science, nuclear weapons policy, and nuclear security.
Hecker, whose father was killed in World War II, lived in converted army barracks in Austria before moving to the United States when he was 13.
“I have a soft spot for refugees and immigrants,” he said. “I will never forget how this country welcomed me with open arms.”
In order to reduce global threats, Hecker believes that the United States must first improve itself.
“If we’re going to be the democracy that the rest of the world looks up to, we need to fix the deep political divisions that greatly weaken America — the overall moral stature of the country, the political stature, economic stature, and then the military stature,” he said.
