Where are all the nuclear experts?
The idea this week: nuclear war remains a horrifying possibility — our new nuclear career review examines what you could be doing about it.
Here at 80,000 Hours, we’re often trying to find ways to protect future generations.
If we’d been trying to do that in 1950, one thing would have been at the top of everyone’s minds: the terrifying threat of nuclear annihilation. Indeed, many of the world’s greatest thinkers, politicians, and communicators devoted their careers to understanding and reducing the threat — people like Thomas Schelling, Carl Sagan and even, in his later years, Albert Einstein.
But since the end of the Cold War, the nuclear expert has all but disappeared.
And that’s a problem.
It’s a problem because the risk of nuclear war didn’t just disappear with the Cold War.
In fact, the world is currently facing many nuclear challenges:
- The US is modernising its nuclear arsenal.
- China is on track to quintuple their nuclear forces by 2030.
- Cooling relations between the US and Russia mean that existing arms reduction treaties (like New START) are looking very likely to lapse.
- Rising tensions in the Middle East, alongside the collapse of the Iran deal, mean we could very possibly see a new nuclear weapons state in the near future.
