I remember the first moment when my interest in national security came crashing into ecological reality. I was on a U.S. government trip to Central Asia to inspect uranium mines in the newly-independent states of the former Soviet Union. The Cold War security imperative to achieve nuclear superiority had done a number on the environment there: Uranium was leached from the ground with sulfuric acid, transformed into a uranium oxide powder called yellowcake, and shipped off to be enriched for nuclear reactor fuel or weapons. The generals in Moscow who issued these orders did not see the collateral damage that their idea of security wreaked on the environment in Central Asia. In their attempt to out-weaponize the United States, they laid waste to the groundwater, agriculture, and public health of their own citizens.