RESCHEDULED Seattle Chain Reaction 2025 | Mobilize. Act. Disarm.

Our mission is to reduce and eventually eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons. We do critical work to drive collaborative action within the nuclear field and provide funding to experts and organizations focused on mitigating the threat.

Ploughshares

When the World Changes, Someone Has to Explain It. Join us for an intimate luncheon conversation on nuclear risk in a time of war.

The Ruins

The Moment We're InThe U.S.-Israel military campaign against Iran—launched this February—has changed the equation. Strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities have not ended the nuclear question. They have made it more urgent. What happens to a nation's nuclear calculus when diplomacy is replaced by bombs? What does the spread of conflict across the Middle East mean for the global nonproliferation order that has held, imperfectly but consequentially, for decades?This is not an academic question. Iran is not an isolated case. Nations react when they witness the attacks on a country without a complete nuclear weapons program. Other countries are taking note, and decisions are being made on their nuclear programs.Our speakers will bring two rare vantage points to this conversation: a view from space—the satellite imagery, open-source intelligence, and hard policy expertise that tracks nuclear programs around the globe—and a view from the ground—what it means for communities, for health, for the Pacific Northwest, and for what citizens can actually do. Your SpeakersDr. Jeffrey Lewis — The View from SpaceProfessor and Director, East Asia Nonproliferation Program, James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Middlebury Institute of International StudiesJeffrey Lewis has made a career of knowing what governments don't want you to know—and finding it in plain sight. Working from commercial satellite imagery, open-source intelligence, and decades of policy expertise, he and his team at Middlebury have tracked the nuclear programs of China, North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, and others with a rigor that has put his work in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Foreign Policy. He has been a columnist for Foreign Policy since 2013 and founded ArmsControlWonk.com, the leading public forum on disarmament and nonproliferation.Jeffrey's work is animated by a conviction: that citizens equipped with real information make better decisions than citizens kept in the dark. He has advised the Secretary of State's International Security Advisory Board and spent 15 years in Washington before concluding that the most powerful thing he could do was work in public—on behalf of all of us. On April 22, he'll tell us what he's actually seeing right now, and what it means.Max Savishinsky, MPA, MAIS, EdD — The View from the GroundExecutive Director, Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility (WPSR)Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility has worked for decades at the intersection of public health and the gravest threats to human survival—nuclear weapons, climate change, and economic inequity. As its Executive Director, Max Savishinsky leads an organization that asks a simple, demanding question: what does nuclear risk mean for the health and lives of real people in Washington state, and what can we do about it?Max will bring a perspective that is often missing from policy conversations—the human cost, the community organizing reality, and the case for why citizens, health professionals, and local advocates aren't bystanders in this story. They are, in fact, the only ones who can change it. Why This Gathering Is DifferentThis is not an average panel discussion. It is a moderated conversation between two people who have spent their careers trying to make nuclear risk legible to the rest of us—and who will bring that same directness to a room of people committed enough to show up.Whether you have followed these issues for years or are trying to make sense of what you've been reading in the news, you will leave with something concrete: a clearer picture of what’s happening, what the risks are, and where diplomacy, the only reliable path to preventing the next nation from going nuclear, has room to succeed.And you will leave having spent an Earth Day afternoon in one of Seattle's most extraordinary rooms, with people who care deeply about the same things you do. About PloughsharesFounded in San Francisco in 1981, Ploughshares is a public foundation devoted to nuclear weapons threat reduction. For more than four decades, we have connected and funded the researchers, advocates, and diplomats working to reduce global nuclear stockpiles and make arms control possible—awarding more than $100 million in grants along the way. Washington State, home to the third-largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the world, is central to this work. Conversations like this one are part of how we build the informed public that diplomacy ultimately depends on.This event is made possible by the generous support of our donors. We are grateful for every one of them Ploughshares | Chain Reaction 2026Every new ally represents a critical innovator of change. Be part of the chain reaction.

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RESCHEDULED Seattle Chain Reaction 2025 | Mobilize. Act. Disarm.

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