Week 7: Nuclear Security
80,000 hours problem profile (30-60 minutes)
July 16, 1945: humanity has access to technology capable of destroying civilisation
Importance
Probability
Nuclear war within next 100 years: 20-50%
Human extinction resulting directly from nuclear detonations
Not enough nuclear weapons to kill everyone
currently around 12,000 nuclear warheads, down from approximately 70,000 in 1986
10% chance to kill 10% of population
Human extinction resulting from nuclear winter
Very Low probability
Nuclear winter is fairly controversial, and researchers disagree about its effects
How much soot would be generated by a nuclear attack on a city
How much soot would get into the stratosphere
How long that soot would remain in the stratosphere
How much light that would block
How much that would affect agriculture and food supplies
Whether society would be able to respond to that effectively
kill billions of people, largely as the result of a famine caused by nuclear winter
How?
Soot from fires could rise into the atmosphere and block sunlight from reaching the Earth causing widespread famine.
Knock-on effects that lead to an existential catastrophe some other way
End to the nuclear taboo
Perceiving nuclear weapons not as morally worse to use
Shift in focus on prioritizing of x-risk
Chaos
Disaster leading to general loss of law and order
Infrastructure damage and disruptions to water, food, energy supplies
Arms Race
China 2024: estimated to have about 500 nuclear warheads
China 2020: 250
Officials in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Germany, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan have expressed interest in developing nuclear weapons
Uncertainty
Significant change in technology, geopolitics, and strategy
False information, such as computer errors or mistaking clouds for nuclear missiles,
On January 24, 1961, two nuclear bombs fell out of a plane over North Carolina. Neither exploded, but one fell apart on impact — and five of the six failsafes on the other failed
September 26, 1983, Stanislav Petrov refused to report five incoming US missiles that had been detected by the USSR’s early warning system, suspecting a false alarm.
During the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, Valentin Savitsky, the captain of a nuclear submarine which had been cut off from radio traffic, decided that a war might have already started and wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo. By chance, Vasili Arkiphov, chief of staff of the USSR flotilla heading to Cuba, was on the submarine and refused to authorise the launch
Solvability
Nuclear states are very aware that the use of strategic nuclear weapons would very likely result in nuclear retaliation.
Jobs
working in government, researching key questions, working in communications to advocate for changes, or attempting to build the field
Topic
Reduce the risk of accident or miscalculation.
e.g., avoiding close calls
e.g., improving the reliability of early warning systems
Introduce checks and balances on the use of nuclear weapons.
Decentralize power away from e.g., one person
Anticipate and limit potentially dangerous technological developments.
Achieve resilient deterrence while avoiding a new arms race.
e.g. USA/NATO making a stand
Promote arms control dialogue between the US, China, and Russia.
Strengthen international norms and laws against nuclear possession and use
Develop a better understanding of the possible pathways to inadvertent escalation
Neglect
Government
Major topic of Interest
Non-Profit
Minor topic of interest
Yearly Budget
Government: 1 billion USD / year
Non-Profit: 35 million USD / year (It is decreasing)
People Working
Government 20,000
Non-Profit 100
Personal Reflections
More powerful weapons in the future i.e., one bomb might be enough to cause x-catastrophe
Nuclear weapon knock on effect of violence/selfishness leading to it in the first place
Nuclear weapons safety and security career review (30 minutes)
In 1995, Jayantha Dhanapala chaired a pivotal conference that led to the indefinite extension of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
This meant committing 185 nations to never possessing nuclear weapons
Importance
Key players are nuclear countries
US, the UK, France, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea
Solvability
Strategy
Improve decisions and actions of nuclear countries
Prevent proliferation to non-nuclear countries
Jobs
Working in governments and international organisations.
Broad expertise of the government,
Specialist knowledge in nuclear policy
Move into a position where you might be able to help make decisions that would reduce the risk of nuclear conflict.
Research — both academic and non-academic.
Becoming a prominent researcher and then using this to enter senior government positions (more on this above)
Building an influential platform from which you can advocate for things which could reduce nuclear risk (more on this below)
Trying to find answers to currently unanswered questions on nuclear risk
Public support for nuclear reductions
Negotiations with adversaries
Reduced spending on nuclear weapons
Example 2017, 56 countries signed a treaty completely banning using, developing, testing, building, and stockpiling nuclear weapons.
Ultimately, no nuclear weapons states signed the treaty
Building the field of nuclear risk reduction.
Decline
In 2022, the MacArthur Foundation, the largest philanthropic funder of nuclear risk reduction, announced it was withdrawing from the field.
Opportunity
grantmaker, earning to give, founding new organisations, or working in leadership positions in relevant organisations
Luisa Rodriguez, Which nuclear wars should worry us most? (10 minutes)
Importance
nuclear exchange may have the potential to kill millions or billions of people, and possibly lead to human extinction.
Potential for Harm
The size of the involved countries’ nuclear arsenals
Relates to death by detonation&radiation as well as potential for nuclear winter
The size of the involved countries’ populations
Relates to death by detonation&radiation as with greater population comes greater number of death
As well as potential for nuclear winter depends on smoke produced from the burning of cities
The probability of the given nuclear exchange scenario.
Highest Potential for Harm
Russia and the US
India and Pakistan
China and either the United States, India, or Russia
Daniel Ellsberg on the creation of nuclear doomsday machines, the institutional insanity that maintains them, and a practical plan for dismantling them (~3 hours)
Doom
'We are on the Titanic, going at full speed on a moonless night into iceberg waters. Have we hit the iceberg yet, and made it inevitable that we will go down? We don’t know. …. there’s no way to prove it. It is definitely not a waste for some of us to keep trying to explore to see if there’s a way out.'
Deterrence vs Secrets being a Menace
Russia's deterrence system
deterrence system which will automatically wipe out humanity upon detection of a single nuclear explosion in Russia
US's authority to launch nuclear weapons
delegated alarmingly far down the chain of command
whole justification for this is to defend against a ‘decapitating attack’, where a first strike on Washington disables the ability of the US hierarchy to retaliate.
Nuclear Winter
Confidence in nuclear winter being plausible with exchange between USA and Russia
Global Food supply being 60 days
Nearly everyone would starve to death
Power & Trade-Offs
Gorbachev
“The military came to me, and said, ‘If you don’t continue this (pandemic research), you cannot stay in office. We will overthrow you.'”
He looked at all the things he was doing, reducing nuclear weapons, Glasnost, opening up the society and all that, and rather than give all that up, he continued this insane program
Pessimism & Attitude
When you look at human character, it’s hard to be confident humans will survive.
To me, it’s crazy to be confident,
To think that it’s highly likely we will survive nuclear weapons, climate change, artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, biological warfare
Attitude
“I act as if we have a chance to find our way out of this. I don’t know what that path is yet, but that doesn’t tell me there is no way.”
Joan Rohlfing on how to avoid catastrophic nuclear blunders (~2 hours)
Importance
Even a tiny 1 in 500 risk of a nuclear war each year adds up to around an 18% chance of catastrophe over the century.
Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)
Our current strategy for deterrence.
Hope that we can update this strategy to not have MAD
Source of Nuclear Event: Blunder > Intentional
Tensions are very high. Everybody is poised to react. Might we see some kind of unexpected incident, and misinterpret what’s happening — on either side of the equation
Increased threat from computer security
Neglect
$60 million a year, it was already just a thousandth as much as the US spends maintaining its nuclear deterrent.
Solvability
Retirement of what they see as vulnerable delivery systems, such as land-based silos
Renewed efforts to extend and expand arms control treaties
Peak Nuclear Arsenal: 70,000
Today: 14,000
Changes to nuclear use policy
Open the Overton Window
Public Awareness
Politicians require societal support
Deterrence is insufficient for
Accidents
Decrease in Effectiveness of Policy
Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994 in exchange for security guarantees.
Turned out not to be worth the paper they were written on.
States may take this as a valuable lesson in the importance of military power over promises.
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