Why might nuclear security be an especially pressing global issue?

Despite reductions in nuclear weapons arsenals following the Cold War, there are still around 10,000 nuclear warheads in the world, with the United States and Russia in possession of around 90% of the world’s weapons.

These weapons have the potential to cause suffering and destruction on an unprecedented scale. Research by 80,000 Hours Research Analyst Luisa Rodriguez estimated that a US–Russia nuclear exchange would directly kill 51 million people (90% confidence interval: 30 million–75 million deaths).

Although initial effects from such a nuclear exchange would be horrible, the aftereffects could be even worse. A nuclear exchange could cause a nuclear winter — a release of black carbon into the atmosphere, blocking the Sun’s thermal energy. That in turn would lower temperatures globally for up to a decade, open up new holes in the ozone layer, and reduce global rainfall by about 10% — triggering crop failures and resulting in widespread food shortages. Nonetheless, there remains uncertainty about how many nuclear weapons would have to be detonated for long-lasting climatic effects to be triggered, and whether the effects of a nuclear winter would be merely bad, or an existential risk to humanity.³

Rodriguez estimates that a famine caused by a US–Russia nuclear exchange would kill around 5.5 billion people (90% confidence interval: 2.7 billion–7.5 billion deaths). That is, between 36% and 96% of the world population would die a horrible and prolonged death.

But worse still, nuclear war is thought to create some risk of outright human extinction. Various estimates have been made of this risk:

• In The Precipice, Toby Ord estimates the chances of existential catastrophe resulting directly from nuclear war by 2120 as 0.1%.⁴
• A survey of academics at the Global Catastrophic Risk Conference by the University of Oxford estimated a 1% chance of human extinction from nuclear wars over the 21st century.⁵
• Pamlin and Amstrong (2015) estimate a 0.005% chance of “infinite impact” from nuclear war by 2115.⁶

As with climate change, we think that nuclear war may pose a greater indirect existential risk than risk in itself. That is, we think there are reasons to be particularly concerned about the resilience of a world after the use of nuclear weapons — for example, whether we could be resilient to global catastrophic biological risks or risks from currently unknown future technology. We’d estimate that this indirect risk is around 10 times higher than the direct risk of nuclear war.

The risk of such a catastrophic nuclear exchange is fairly low, because neither side would want such an outcome. That said, there remains some possibility of:

• Escalation from a traditional conflict unintentionally leading to a nuclear war (e.g. escalation of conflicts in Kashmir, Taiwan, or Ukraine).
• One nuclear state incorrectly believing that they are being attacked due to a technical error and retaliating.
• A highly irresponsible leader taking power in a nuclear state, or a breakdown in the nuclear chain of command.

Chatham House has compiled 16 examples of nuclear ‘near misses’ through history that include examples of each of these risks.⁷ In one notable example of a near miss in 1983, the USSR’s early warning system detected the launch of five missiles by the US. The officer on duty at the early-warning command centre, Stanislav Petrov, correctly guessed that this was a false alarm and decided not to relay the warning up the chain of command.

Overall, estimates of the probability of a nuclear attack each year — deliberate or accidental — range between 0.01% and 2.21%.

What are the major arguments against working on this problem?

This area receives a lot of attention already from governments, the military, think tanks, and international organisations (such as the United Nations). It is almost universally recognised as a risk that needs to be reduced. As a result it is considerably less neglected than other top problems.

The risk is dominated by decisions at the highest levels of foreign policy and the military, which may make it hard for most people to have much influence without dedicating their career to building expertise and credibility.

But we have also seen more novel approaches to reducing the existential risk from nuclear conflict that don’t rely primarily on influencing governments — things like finding ways to produce food without the Sun or building shelters could reduce the existential risks posed by nuclear war.

Because of the nature of nuclear deterrence and conflict between countries, there is the risk of accidentally causing harm. For example, discouraging countries from maintaining an aggressive posture in which they say they will use nuclear weapons if attacked could make the world less safe by encouraging conventional conflict.

Key judgement calls you need to make

• How would a nuclear war play out? There’s lots of uncertainty about what would really happen during a nuclear war. For example:
  • How much of a deterrent is mutually assured destruction?
  • What targeting strategy would be used — specifically, would countries target cities (countervalue targeting) or military targets (counterforce targeting)?
• Likelihood of recovery from collapse. If a nuclear catastrophe led to societal collapse, how likely is it we would be able to recover back to our present state, and beyond? We think this is unclear, though suspect recovery is more likely than not. Luisa Rodriguez has written about this in more detail.
• Importance of existential risks. This problem has a particularly large scale if you place value on mitigating a disaster that would prevent the existence of all future generations. We think this is indeed very important.
• Comfort with uncertainty. It is not possible to have strong evidence that interventions to solve this problem will succeed, or even which interventions would be net good or net bad, so you need to be comfortable with a high chance of not having any influence.

What can you do about this problem?

There are a range of possible options for reducing the risk of nuclear conflict, none of which we have yet investigated in great detail:

• Work on improving foreign relations between the main nuclear powers (the US, UK, France, Russia, and China) and defusing any potential conflict.
• Convince politicians or voters in these countries to prioritise avoiding war above other concerns.
• Ensure that monitoring of first strikes and communication between nuclear powers is sufficiently good to prevent a false alarm escalating into a full-scale war.
• Develop resilience within command and control structures in militaries to reduce the risk of false alarms.
• Prevent nuclear proliferation.
• Encourage declarations of no first use policies.
• Ensure nuclear materials are safely guarded and cannot be used by rogue actors.
• Prevent the development of ballistic missile defence in the US in hopes of making US–Russia and US–China mutual arms reductions more likely.
• Reduce the deployment of nuclear weapons that force decisions to be made in short periods of time, like nuclear-armed cruise missiles or intercontinental ballistic missiles.
• Work on improving foreign relations at other nuclear weapon flashpoints, such as India and Pakistan, North Korea, or Iran and Israel.
• Shrink nuclear stockpiles.
• Improve adaptation and recovery in the face of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack.
• Improve resilience of the food supply to nuclear winter.
• Build civilisational refuges to increase the chances that at least some people survive the worst kinds of nuclear catastrophe.

Most of these opportunities are only available within the foreign policy, intelligence, and military establishments of nuclear powers.

A few — such as peace activism, increasing cooperation between the nuclear powers, or foreign policy research — can be conducted independently through think tanks and academia.

Open Philanthropy conducted a shallow investigation of nuclear weapons policy, and concluded that “the largest potential gaps in this space appear to be work on nuclear weapons policy outside of the U.S. and U.S.-based advocacy, with the former gap being larger but harder for a U.S.-based philanthropist to fill.”

Another option is to work on this problem indirectly by reducing the risk of great power conflict.

What skills and resources are most needed?

To work in this space, it’s helpful to have:

• Technical expertise in nuclear weapons policy.
• Expertise in diplomacy, foreign policy, and minimising the risk of war.
• Influence over public attitudes.

The above skillsets are also most needed particularly relating to countries where there are existing or potential stockpiles, such as the US, Russia, Pakistan, India, Israel, Iran, and North Korea.

Who is working on this problem?

The area is a significant focus for governments, security agencies, and intergovernmental organisations.

Within the nuclear powers, some fraction of all work dedicated to foreign policy, diplomacy, military, and intelligence is directed at ensuring nuclear war does not occur. While it is hard to know exactly how much, it is likely to be in the billions of dollars or more in each country.

The US budget for nuclear weapons is comfortably in the tens of billions.⁸ Some significant fraction of this is presumably dedicated to control, safety, and accurate detection of attacks on the US.

In addition to this, some intergovernmental organisations devote substantial funding to nuclear security issues. For example, in 2016, the International Atomic Energy Agency had a budget of €361 million.⁹ Total philanthropic nuclear risk spending in 2021 was approximately $57–190 million.

Philanthropic organisations working on reducing nuclear risk include:

• The Nuclear Threat Initiative is a US nonpartisan think tank that works to prevent catastrophic attacks and accidents with nuclear, biological, radiological, chemical, and cyberweapons of mass destruction and disruption. The NTI also sponsors the William J. Perry Project, an initiative from former US Secretary of Defense William Perry to educate the public about the continuing threat of nuclear weapons. See current vacancies.
• The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is also a US nonpartisan think tank focusing on peace and international cooperation. One of its 10 programs focuses on nuclear policy.
• Longview Philanthropy is an organisation that recommends grants focused on improving the lives of future generations. They have a nuclear security grantmaking programme that aims to grant $10 million to opportunities focused on reducing existential risks posed by nuclear weapons. See current vacancies.
• Ploughshares Fund is the largest US philanthropic foundation focused exclusively on peace and security grantmaking. It supports initiatives to reduce current nuclear arsenals and to limit the likelihood of nuclear war (and to a lesser extent, risks from chemical and biological weapons). See current vacancies.
• The Future of Life Institute works to reduce the risks from a number of areas, in particular nuclear war, pandemics, and advanced AI. See current vacancies.
• Global Catastrophic Risk Institute is an independent research institute that investigates how to minimise the risks of large-scale catastrophes, such as from nuclear war. See current vacancies.
• Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED) researches and develops alternative foods that could be quickly scaled up to feed everyone in a nuclear winter, and coordinates preparedness and planning. Contact ALLFED to volunteer or apply to an open position.

What can you concretely do to help?

We’ve written a number of career reviews that we think could be particularly effective if you choose to focus on reducing risks of nuclear war:

• Policy careers. Since many important decisions relevant to the risks of nuclear war are made by governments and militaries, it could be particularly effective to work in policy. For more, read our career reviews on policy-oriented government jobs, party politics, and becoming a congressional staffer. The US Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and State Department are likely to be important actors in developing nuclear policy.
• Research at a think tank. There are a number of think tanks that focus on nuclear security, including the Nuclear Threat Initiative, the Ploughshares Fund, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Brookings Institution, Chatham House, RAND, the Belfer Center, and the Wilson Center.
• Academic research. There are lots of unanswered questions about existential risks from nuclear war. We’d be particularly excited about research looking at the interaction between nuclear risk and other existential threats. There may also be important forecasting research into how likely certain events might be.
• Improving China-Western coordination on global catastrophic risks. China is a nuclear power that seems likely to be increasingly important to global geopolitics and security.
• Specialist in emerging global powers. India and Russia are likely to remain important actors geopolitically in the coming decades, and both are nuclear states.
• Grantmaker focused on pressing world problems. A number of philanthropic foundations allocate grants towards work focused on reducing the risks of nuclear war. We’re particularly excited about Longview Philanthropy’s nuclear security grantmaking programme.

Other things that might help you enter the field:

• Obtain technical skills in this policy area through undergraduate or graduate studies, or apply to work in relevant parts of the government and military.
• Apply to the Nuclear Scholars Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The programme is a good opportunity for current graduate students and early-career professionals to get to know senior people in nuclear policy.
• Apply for an internship at the Nuclear Threat Initiative (listen to our podcast interview with Joan Rohlfing, president of the Nuclear Threat Initiative).
• Work on a relevant Effective Thesis.

Finally, you might also consider donating to the Future of Life Institute, Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters, or the Global Catastrophic Risks Institute.

Find opportunities on our job board

Our job board features opportunities in nuclear security:

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Learn more about nuclear security

Top recommendations

• Luisa Rodriguez’s research on risks from nuclear weapons
• Our problem profile on reducing great power conflict
• Joan Rohlfing on how to avoid catastrophic nuclear blunders

Further recommendations