Rachel Whitlark

Dr. Rachel Elizabeth Whitlark is Associate Professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. In 2024, she served as Senior Nuclear Deterrence Policy Advisor on the Nuclear Deterrence Policy team in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear and Counter Weapons of Mass Destruction. For her work, Whitlark earned the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service.

Whitlark is also a nonresident senior fellow in the Forward Defense practice of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and a Director with the Bridging the Gap Project. Previously, she was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow with the Project on Managing the Atom and International Security Program within the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Security Studies Program. Whitlark’s scholarship examines nuclear proliferation, counterproliferation, and foreign policy decision-making. Her book, All Options on the Table: Leaders, Preventive War, and Nuclear Proliferation(Cornell University Press 2021), investigates American and Israeli decision-making regarding the use of preventive military force as a counter-proliferation strategy.