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Owen Coté PhD ’96, a principal analysis scientist with the MIT Security Studies Program (SSP), handed away on June 8 after battling most cancers. He joined SSP in 1997 as affiliate director, a job he held for the remainder of his life. He guided this system by means of the course of three administrators — every cashing in on his clever counsel, management abilities, and sense of accountability.
“Owen was an indomitable scholar and chief of the sector of safety research,” says M. Taylor Fravel, the Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and the director of SSP. “Owen was the guts and soul of SSP and a one-of-a-kind scholar, colleague, and pal. He might be drastically missed by us all.”
Having earned his doctorate in political science at MIT, Coté embodied this system’s skilled and scholarly values. Through his analysis and his instructing, he nurtured three of this system’s core pursuits — the research of nuclear weapons and technique, the research of the connection between technological change and army follow, and the appliance of group idea to understanding the conduct of army establishments.
He was the writer of “The Third Battle: Innovation within the U.S. Navy’s Silent Cold War Struggle with Soviet Submarines,” a e book analyzing the sources of the U.S. Navy’s success in its Cold War antisubmarine warfare effort, and a co-author of “Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy: Containing the Threat of Loose Russian Nuclear Weapons and Fissile Material.” He additionally wrote on the way forward for naval doctrine, nuclear power construction points, and the specter of weapons of mass destruction terrorism.
He was an influential nationwide professional on undersea warfare. According to Ford International Professor of Political Science Barry Posen, Coté’s colleague for a number of many years who served as SSP director from 2006 to 2019, “Owen is credited, amongst others, with serving to the U.S. Navy see the knowledge of remodeling 4 ‘surplus’ Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines into cruise missile platforms that serve the Navy and the nation to at the present time.”
Coté’s principal curiosity in recent times was maritime “conflict in three dimensions” — floor, air, and subsurface — and the way they interacted and adjusted with advancing expertise. He just lately accomplished a e book manuscript on this advanced historical past. At the time of his dying, he was additionally making ready a manuscript that analyzed the sources of revolutionary army doctrine, utilizing circumstances that in contrast U.S. Navy responses to moments within the Cold War when U.S. leaders nervous concerning the vulnerability of land-based missiles to Soviet assault.
“No one in our subject was as educated about army organizations and operations, the politics that drives safety coverage, and related theories of worldwide relations as Owen,” in keeping with Harvey Sapolsky, MIT Professor of Public Policy and Organization, Emeritus, and SSP director from 1989 to 2006. “And nobody was extra keen to share that data to assist others of their work.”
This broad portfolio of experience served him nicely as co-editor and in the end editor of the journal International Security, the longtime flagship journal of the safety research subfield. His colleague and editor-in-chief of International Security Steven Miller displays that, “Owen mixed a superb analytic thoughts, a mischievous humorousness, and a ardour for his work. His contribution to International Security was immense and might be missed, as I relied on his judgement with whole confidence.”
Coté believed in sharing his scholarly findings with the coverage group. With Cindy Williams, a principal analysis scientist at SSP, he helped set up and ran a sequence of nationwide safety simulations for army officers and Department of Defense (DoD) civilians within the nationwide safety research program on the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. He repeatedly produced main conferences at MIT, with a number of on the U.S. nuclear assault submarine power maybe essentially the most influential.
He was enthusiastic about nurturing youthful students. In current years, he led applications for visiting fellows at SSP: the Nuclear Security Fellows Program and the Grand Strategy, Security, and Statecraft Fellows Program.
Caitlin Talmage PhD ’11, one in every of his former college students and now an affiliate professor of political science at MIT, describes Coté as “a loyal mentor and teacher. His lessons sparked many dissertations, and he engaged deeply with college students and their analysis, offering detailed suggestions, usually over steak dinners. Despite his towering experience within the subject of safety research, Owen was all the time affected person, beneficiant, and respectful towards his college students. He continued to advise many even after commencement as they launched their careers, myself included. He might be profoundly missed.”
Phil Haun PhD ’10, additionally one in every of Coté’s college students and now professor and director of the Rosenberg Deterrence Institute on the Naval War College, describes Coté as “a mentor, colleague, and pal to a era of MIT SSP graduate college students,” noting that “arguably his best achievement and legacy are the students he nurtured and liked.”
As Haun notes, “Owen’s experience, with a close to encyclopedic data of improvements in army expertise, coupled with a gregarious character and willingness to share his time and expertise, attracted dozens of scholars to affix in a journey to check necessary problems with worldwide safety. Owen’s ardour for his work and his eagerness to share a meal and a drink with these with comparable pursuits inspired these round him. The diploma to which so many MIT SSP alums have remained linked to this system is testomony to the caring group of students that Owen helped create.”
Posen describes Coté as a “larger-than-life determine and essentially the most brave and decided human being I’ve ever met. He might mild up a room when he was amongst folks he preferred, and he preferred most individuals. He was within the workplace suite almost on daily basis of the week, together with weekends, and his door was normally open. Professors, fellows, and graduate college students would drop by to hunt his counsel on points of each sort, and it was not unusual for an anticipated 10-minute interlude to show right into a one-hour seminar. He had a really distinctive capability to know the interplay of expertise and army operations. I’ve by no means met anybody who might match him on this capability. He additionally knew the right way to actually take pleasure in life. It is an unimaginable loss on many, many ranges.”
As Miller notes, “I acquired to know Owen whereas serving as supervisor of his senior thesis at Harvard College in 1981–82. That was the start of a lifelong friendship and fortunately our careers remained entangled for the rest of his life. I’ll miss the fantastic, respectable human being, the pricey pal, the nice and cozy and dedicated colleague. He was a courageous soul, struggling a lot, overcoming a lot, and contributing a lot. It is deeply painful to lose such a pal.”
“Owen was sort and beneficiant, and although he endured a lot, he by no means complained,” says Sapolsky. “He gave splendidly organized and insightful talks, improved the writing of others together with his enhancing, and all the time gave sound recommendation to those that have been clever sufficient to hunt it.”
After graduating from Harvard College in 1982 and earlier than returning to graduate faculty, Coté labored on the Hudson Institute and the Center for Naval Analyses. He obtained his PhD in 1996 from MIT, the place he specialised in U.S. protection coverage and worldwide safety affairs.
Before becoming a member of SSP in 1997, he served as assistant director of the International Security Program at Harvard’s Center for Science and International Affairs (now the Belfer Center).
He was the son of Ann F. Coté and the late Owen R. Coté Sr. His household wrote in his obituary that at house, he was all the time up for a superb dialogue about Star Wars or Harry Potter motion pictures. Motorcycle magazines have been a lifelong ardour. He was a loyal uncle to his nieces Eliza Coté, Sofia Coté, and Livia Coté, in addition to his self-proclaimed “faux” niece and nephew, Sam and Nina Harrison.
In addition to his mom and his nieces, he’s survived by his siblings: Mark T. Coté of Blacksburg, Virginia; Peter H. Coté and his spouse Nina of Topsfield, Massachusetts; and Suzanne Coté Curtiss and her husband Robin of Cape Neddick, Maine.
