David Wright

David Wright

Overview

* Former co-director of the Global Security Program for the Union of Concerned Scientists
* Opposed the U.S. development of a National Missile Defense system
* Authored an article titled “Cut North Korea Some Slack”


David Wright worked for the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) from 1992-2000, including a stint as co-director of the organization’s Global Security Program..

Wright received his PhD in physics from Cornell University and was a Social Science Research Council – MacArthur Foundation Fellow at the Center for Science and International Affairs, located at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Along with Global Security Program co-director Lisbeth Gronlund, Wright was in the vanguard of the effort to derail the development of National Missile Defense (NMD) technology. He testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in opposition to NMD construction, deployment, and utilization, calling it “an indefensible system.” To help justify this position, he contended that such rogue nuclear powers as North Korea posed little, if any, threat to American security. In an article titled “Cut North Korea Some Slack,” Wright stated that the U.S. should “try to engage North Korea politically and economically, to create incentives for it to cooperate with the international community.” In short, he viewed diplomatic agreements – even with such volatile and barbarous dictators as North Korea’s Kim Jong Il – as more reliable guarantors of American security than a missile defense system. Later in the article, however, Wright admitted that “[t]here is, of course, no guarantee that engagement would work.”

Wright and Gronlund were the primary organizers of the UCS’s International Summer Symposiums on Science and World Affairs, which aimed to “encourage and support the development of young scientists working on policy-oriented research on international security and arms control issues.” In reality, these symposiums serves as a recruiting mechanism to enlist international students to condemn U.S. policies around the world.

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