Aaron Bateman

Aaron Bateman Headshot photo

Aaron Bateman

Assistant Professor of History and International Affairs

Cold War; Technology; International Security


Contact:

Email: Aaron Bateman
Phillips Hall, 801 22nd Street NW Washington DC 20052

Aaron Bateman is an assistant professor of history and international affairs. He studies how technology shapes U.S. foreign relations, alliance dynamics, defense strategy, and superpower competition. He explores these themes in the context of space security, missile defense, nuclear security, and global information networks. His work draws from archives in Australia, Europe, New Zealand, the former Soviet Union, and the United States. He has been awarded grants from the Stanton Foundation and the Smith Richardson Foundation.

Aaron’s first book, Weapons in Space: Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative, is an international history of Ronald Reagan’s controversial Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Using recently declassified documents, he situates SDI within intensifying U.S. - Soviet military space competition in the final two decades of the Cold War that emerged as détente collapsed. Both the technological and political forces that shaped SDI’s research and development trajectory through the end of the Cold War and beyond are thoroughly explored. Moreover, the book details the participation of Western European allies in SDI, thereby shedding new light on the politics of technology cooperation within the transatlantic alliance in the 1980s. Finally, Aaron details SDI’s enduring consequences for space security and its connections with resurgent anxieties about an arms race in space. This book received the 2024 U.S. Air Force Historical Foundation’s Space History Prize.

Aaron’s second book project explores how the nuclear age shaped the global information networks that constituted the “connective tissue” of American power in the Cold War. He details how the United States grappled with the challenge of moving data on a global scale, rapidly and securely, to realize its national security ambitions. The project emphasizes the political and security dimensions of the physical infrastructure – submarine cables, satellites, and long-range radio – for transmitting data. Moreover, since this infrastructure both depended on allied territories and served as a vital informational link with allies in Europe and Asia, the book explores the nexus between information networks and alliance dynamics. An article drawn from this book project can be accessed here.

Aaron’s peer-reviewed work has been published, or is forthcoming, in the Journal of Strategic Studies, International History Review, Diplomacy & Statecraft, Intelligence and National Security, the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, and Science & Diplomacy. His policy commentary has been published in Foreign Affairs, Engelsberg Ideas, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Physics Today, and War on the Rocks. He has presented his research to academic, government, and policy-focused audiences in Asia, Europe, Australia, the United States, and New Zealand.

Aaron received his PhD from Johns Hopkins University. While in graduate school he held a Guggenheim predoctoral fellowship at the Smithsonian Institution. Prior to his doctoral studies, Aaron served as a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer.  


  • Cold War
  • Technology and international security

PhD, History of Science, Johns Hopkins University

BA, Political Science, Saint Joseph’s University (summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa)

Certificate in Russian Language, Kazan Federal University (Russian Federation)

HIST 2001/IAFF 3190: Science, Technology, & Espionage

HIST 2001/IAFF 3190: Outer Space and International Security

HIST 6001/IAFF 6158: Science, Technology, and Global Statecraft (graduate students only)

Books
Weapons in Space: Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative (MIT Press, 2024)

Peer Reviewed Articles (selected)
“Hunting the Red Bear: Satellite Reconnaissance and the ‘Second Offset Strategy’ in the Late
Cold War,” International History Review (2024),
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07075332.2024.2406215?src=
“The Weakest Link: The Vulnerability of U.S. and Allied Global Information Networks during the Cold War,” Journal of Strategic Studies (2024), https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01402390.2024.2360724
“Information security in the space age: Britain’s Skynet satellite communications program and the evolution of modern command and control networks,” Journal of Strategic Studies (2024), https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01402390.2023.2265072
“Secret Partners: The National Reconnaissance Office and the Intelligence-Industrial-Academic Complex,” Intelligence and National Security (2023), https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02684527.2023.2219013
“Trust but Verify: Satellite Reconnaissance, Secrecy, and Arms Control during the Cold War,” Journal of Strategic Studies (2023), https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01402390.2022.2161522?journalCode=fjss20
“Keeping the Technological Edge: The Space Arms Race and Anglo-American Relations in the 1980s,” Diplomacy & Statecraft (2022), https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09592296.2022.2062130?journalCode=fdps20
“Mutually Assured Surveillance at Risk: Anti-Satellite Weapons and Cold War Arms Control,” Journal of Strategic Studies (2022), https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01402390.2021.2019022?journalCode=fjss20
“Intelligence and Alliance Politics: America, Britain, and the Strategic Defense Initiative,” Intelligence and National Security (2021), https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02684527.2021.1946958?journalCode=fint20

Commentary (selected)
“Undersea Cables and the Vulnerability of American Power,” Engelsberg Ideas, 7 May 2024, https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/undersea-cables-and-the-vulnerability-of-american-power/

“Why Russia Might Put a Nuclear Weapon in Space, Foreign Affairs, 7 March, 2024, Foreign Affairs, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/why-russia-might-put-nuclear-weapon-space