Aaron Bateman

Aaron Bateman’s scholarship takes place at the nexus of history of technology, diplomatic history, and international history. He studies the interaction of technology and international politics since 1945 with a focus on U.S. foreign policy, alliances, and defense-industrial relations. His ongoing projects explore these themes in the context of space and nuclear technologies as well as global information networks.

His first book, Weapons in Space: Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative (MIT Press, 2024) is an award-winning international history of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). The book uses newly declassified sources to reveal SDI’s linkages with intensifying U.S. - Soviet arms racing in space beginning in the 1970s. The book details SDI’s impact on U.S. - Soviet relations, arms control, transatlantic alliance dynamics, and post-Cold War space security.

His second book (under advance contract with MIT Press), entitled Wiring an Empire: Information Networks and U.S. Global Power in the Cold War, shows how the U.S. ambition to wire the globe profoundly shaped its foreign policy. The United States and its allies built a worldwide network of subsea cables, communications satellites, satellite ground stations, and radio links to move data. Yet hubs and critical nodes of the network – often in far flung places –were vulnerable to sabotage and political upheaval. Protecting these sites drew the United States into new geographic entanglements, making the movement of data as much a political challenge as a technical one.

His other peer-reviewed work has been published, or is forthcoming, in International Security, the Journal of Strategic Studies, International History Review, Diplomacy & Statecraft, Intelligence and National Security, and Science & Diplomacy (among others). His policy commentary has been published in Foreign Affairs, Engelsberg Ideas, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and Physics Today. His research is supported by grants from the Stanton Foundation and the Smith Richardson Foundation.

He received his PhD in history of science from Johns Hopkins University. Prior to his doctoral studies, he served as a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer. He has also held positions with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, RAND, and the Aerospace Corporation.