Bruce G. Blair

Bruce Gentry Blair (November 16, 1947 – July 19, 2020) was a nuclear security expert and a research scholar, a national security expert, the author of articles and books on nuclear topics, and a television show producer.
Education and background.
Blair was born in Creston, Iowa. He earned a Ph.D. in operations research at Yale University in 1984. He received his B.S. in communications from the University of Illinois in 1970.
Prior to his position at Princeton, Blair was the president of the World Security Institute, a non-profit organization. He was a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution from 1987 to 2000. Previously, he served as a project director at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment from 1982 to 1985, where he worked on a study of the U.S.'s ability to communicate with its strategic forces. From 1970 to 1974, Blair served in the U.S. Air Force as a Minuteman ICBM launch control officer and support officer for the Strategic Air Command’s Airborne Command Post.
Career.
Blair was a nuclear security expert and a research scholar at the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Joining the program in May 2013, he focused on technical and policy steps on the path toward the verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons, specifically on deep bilateral nuclear arms reductions, multilateral arms negotiations and de-alerting of nuclear arsenals. He was co-founder of Global Zero, an international non-partisan group consisting of 300 world leaders, over 150 student chapters and millions of supporters worldwide dedicated to achieving the elimination of nuclear weapons.
Blair was an expert on United States and Russian security policies, specializing in nuclear forces and command and control systems. He frequently testified before Congress In 2011, he was appointed to the U.S. Secretary of State's International Security Advisory Board, a small group of experts that provides the Department of State with independent insight and advice on all aspects of international security, disarmament and arms control. He also taught security studies as a visiting professor at Yale and Princeton universities. In 1999, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship Prize for his research, work and leadership on de-alerting nuclear forces. In 2008, he was selected as a finalist for the Skoll Social Entrepreneur Award.
Blair's expertise helped make nuclear and global affairs issues accessible to the public in various media outlets. He was an executive producer of "Countdown to Zero", a documentary film on nuclear weapons. He also created and was the executive producer of the PBS weekly television series "Superpower: Global Affairs Television" (2002–2004), and was the executive producer for Azimuth Media and its weekly PBS television series, "Foreign Exchange", which was first hosted by Fareed Zakaria (2005–2007) and subsequently by Daljit Dhaliwal (2008–2009).
He published the "Washington ProFile" (Russian), "Washington Observer" (Chinese), "Washington Prism" (Persian), "Taqrir Washington" (Arabic) and "China Security." He was also the executive producer of two television documentaries, CNN Presents’ "Deadlock: Russia’s Forgotten War" and the PBS FRONTLINE’s "Missile Wars" in 2002.
He was the author of numerous books and articles on security issues in such publications as "Scientific American", "National Interest", "The New York Times" and "The Washington Post". His books include "Strategic Command and Control" (Brookings, 1985), winner of the Edgar S. Furniss Award for its contribution to the study of national security; "Crisis Stability and Nuclear War" (Oxford, 1988; co-editor); "The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War" (Brookings, 1993); and "Global Zero Alert for Nuclear Forces" (Brookings, 1995).
Blair died in Philadelphia after a stroke on July 19, 2020.
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