The Bulletin’s nuclear concerns were highlighted by the United States’ decisions, under the impetus of its impetuous president, Donald Trump, to abandon the Iran nuclear deal and announce that it would withdraw from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), decisions described by the Bulletin as “grave steps towards a complete dismantlement of the global arms control process.” The new abnormal risks emboldening autocrats and lulling citizens around the world into a dangerous sense of anomie and political paralysis.” The new abnormal describes a moment in which fact is becoming indistinguishable from fiction, undermining our very abilities to develop and apply solutions to the big problems of our time. “This new abnormal is a pernicious and dangerous departure from the time when the United States sought a leadership role in designing and supporting global agreements that advanced a safer and healthier planet. “As the Bulletin’s Science and Security Board prepared for its first set of Doomsday Clock discussions this fall, it began referring to the current world security situation as a ‘new abnormal’,” explained Rachel Bronson, PhD, President & CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. ![]() “Humanity now faces two simultaneous existential threats, either of which would be cause for extreme concern and immediate attention,” the Bulletin writes in the statement delivered to “Leaders and citizens of the world” and titled “A new abnormal: It is still two minutes to midnight.” “These major threats-nuclear weapons and climate change-were exacerbated this past year by the increased use of information warfare to undermine democracy around the world, amplifying risk from these and other threats and putting the future of civilization in extraordinary danger.” As the years have gone by the clock has shifted back and forth and reached its closest position to midnight in 1953 during the opening years of the decades-long Cold War.Ĭlosest, that is, until 2018 when the Bulletin moved the clock-hands back to 2 minutes to midnight, and that’s where they have remained a year later. The Doomsday Clock was specifically created in 1947 to use the imagery of apocalypse, stylized on a clock as midnight, to convey threats to humanity and the planet. However, considering the history of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - formed in 1945 by scientists from the University of Chicago who had helped develop the first atomic weapons as part of the Manhattan Project - and the continued diligence of its members, the importance of their warnings should be well-heeded. There are those out there who scoff at the idea of a Doomsday Clock - calling it abstract nonsense or hyperbolic exaggeration. At the time, it was the closest humanity had inched to symbolic doom since 1953, during the Cold War.The prestigious Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced this week that they are leaving the Doomsday Clock at 2 minutes to midnight in “a new abnormal” that represents the threat of “two simultaneous existential threats” - nuclear weapons and climate change. The last time the Doomsday Clock’s minute hand was moved was in 2018, when the Bulletin, a nonprofit organization that oversees the Doomsday Clock, set the timepiece at two minutes to midnight. ![]() "The resulting falsehoods hold the potential to create economic, social and military chaos," Latiff said, adding that nuclear arms, climate change and disruptive technologies are a “witch’s brew of ingredients for global conflict.” Robert Latiff, a member of the Bulletin's Science and Security Board, pointed to so-called deepfake audio and video recordings as an example of how technology can sow political antagonism and lead to global instability. In addition to nuclear weapons and climate change, the Bulletin highlighted the dangers posed by information warfare and disruptive technologies. "We must heed the demands of the young people on our streets and listen to the science. "We must see an immediate end to the investment in and exploration of fossil fuels," he said.
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