William Barletta worked in a number of research and management positions at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory starting in the 1970s. He begins the interview with a discussion of lasers and the requirements for turning them into powerful weapons. Funding and experiments planned for the 1990s, he says, will determine whether the transformation will actually occur. Even if it does not entirely pan out, he believes that at least the technology developed involving directed energy will pay off with improved conventional defenses. Soviet research, he notes, has run parallel to U.S. work but is not necessarily ahead of it. On SDI, he remembers that people listening to the presidents speech were amazed and that he personally viewed it as a moment likely to drive the bureaucracy into action. Looking ahead, he believes that President Reagan will be remembered as having been committed to trying to reduce the numbers of strategic weapons.
![Interview with Kenneth Nichols, 1986 [3]](https://bpldcassets.blob.core.windows.net/derivatives/metadata/commonwealth-oai:4t64jk385/image_thumbnail_300.jpg)
![War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Kenneth Nichols, 1986 [3]](https://bpldcassets.blob.core.windows.net/derivatives/metadata/commonwealth-oai:bz60h7041/image_thumbnail_300.jpg)