Aaron Bateman

Aaron Bateman is an assistant professor of history and international affairs and an affiliate of the Space Policy Institute. His research explores questions that lie at the intersection of technology and international security during the Cold War. His work draws from archival collections in the United States, Western Europe, and the former Soviet Union. He has published in the fields of international relations, diplomatic and military history, intelligence studies, and history of technology. A significant theme in his research has been the military dimensions of space competition during the Cold War. 

His first book, Weapons in Space: Technology, Politics, and the Rise and Fall of the Strategic Defense Initiative, investigates the origins, evolution, and enduring consequences of Ronald Reagan’s controversial missile defense program. He details the impact of the Strategic Defense Initiative on U.S. relations with Western Europe and the Soviet Union as well as the superpower arms control negotiations in the 1980s and early 1990s. His new book project explores the interplay of telecommunications and American national security strategy in the second half of the twentieth century. It focuses on how the Cold War shaped the development and evolution of global U.S. information networks for command and control of conventional and nuclear forces. 

Aaron’s work has been published in Foreign Affairs, the Journal of Strategic Studies Diplomacy & Statecraft, Intelligence and National Security, the Oxford Handbook of Space Security, the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Science & Diplomacy, the Journal of Slavic Military Studies, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Physics Today, and War on the Rocks. 

Prior to graduate school, Aaron served as a U.S. Air Force intelligence officer with assignments at the National Security Agency and the Pentagon. He has completed multiple intensive Russian- language courses in the United States and the Russian Federation.