 "Doomsday Clock is now 89 seconds to Midnight. Humanity is closer to destruction than ever.")
The Doomsday Clock has been set 89 seconds to midnight, which is the closest it has ever been.
The endless wars involving nuclear-armed countries in Europe and West Asia, spiralling climate crisis, dangers from unregulated artificial intelligence (AI), and the proliferation of risky biological research with little safeguards led to the scientists managing the Doomsday Clock to move it one second further. For the past two years, it had been set at 90 seconds to midnight.
The Doomsday Clock was founded in 1947 by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (BAS), which was founded two years earlier by Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, and other scientists who were part of the Manhatton Project that build the first nuclear weapons for the United States. The Doomsday Clock uses midnight as an imagery for apocalypse and the countdown mirrors that of the nuclear explosion. It serves to remind the world how close it is to an apocalyptic moment.
Flagging the risks posed by conflicts, emerging technologies, and climate change, the scientists said the world now faces an “existential predicament” and bold actions are needed to address the challenges. Even as critics say the Doomsday Clock is a stunt and repeated warnings are the public policy equivalent of the boy who cried foul, the scientists managing it said in a statement that the world now faces unprecedented danger.
They said, “In setting the Clock one second closer to midnight, we send a stark signal: Because the world is already perilously close to the precipice, a move of even a single second should be taken as an indication of extreme danger and an unmistakable warning that every second of delay in reversing course increases the probability of global disaster.”
Impact Shorts
More ShortsThe Clock set at 89 seconds is a far cry from 17 minutes it was set at in 1991 when the United States and Russia began disarmament following the collapse of the Soviet Union. While the world thought the Cold War had ended, it never ended for Russian ruler Vladimir Putin who has sought to restore the Soviet Union during his 25-year reign over Russia by invading neighbouring countries, seeking to establish puppet rulers, waging war on Ukraine, plunging Europe into the worst security crisis since World War 2 and doling out nuclear threats regularly.
Why the Doomsday Clock is closer than ever to midnight
The Science and Security Board (SSB) of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists said that trends over the past year convinced them to set the Clock closer than ever to midnight. The SSB said the world leaders had failed to do what is needed to change course and it is hoped that they would do the needful now.
While the SSB flagged the conflicts in Europe where Russia is waging a war on Ukraine and Middle East where Israel and Iran have been locked in a spiralling conflict, it also highlighted the emerging dangers of AI, misinformation, disinformation, and unrestrained biological research.
Since the emergence of Covid-19 pandemic in China in 2019, which is now believed by many to be rooted in a lab accident, risky biological research and lack of safeguards around such research has been a centre of attention.
The SSB said, “Supposedly high-containment biological laboratories continue to be built throughout the world, but oversight regimes for them are not keeping pace, increasing the possibility that pathogens with pandemic potential may escape. Rapid advances in artificial intelligence have increased the risk that terrorists or countries may attain the capability of designing biological weapons for which countermeasures do not exist.”
Further flagging concerns around AI, the SSB said its usage has been reported in both West Asia and Ukraine, raising “questions about the extent to which machines will be allowed to make military decisions—even decisions that could kill on a vast scale, including those related to the use of nuclear weapons”.
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