The New European Voices on Existential Risk (NEVER) project aims to attract, nurture and sustain new talent and ideas from wider Europe on nuclear issues, climate change, biosecurity and emerging disruptive technologies (EDTs), and to connect this talent pipeline with wider debates on existential risks facing humanity.
What will the project do?
Attract new talent to work on nuclear issues as part of a broader approach to existential risk, i.e. threats that could lead to human or planetary extinction.
Nurture this talent by convening a network dedicated to existential risk, integrating it with other ELN networks and providing connections to policymakers, developing skills through seminars and mentoring.
Sustain interest and ideas on nuclear topics, by building lasting links with expert and policy ecosystems, drawing on mid-career and late-career role-models and mentors to help identify career paths, and integrating nuclear work with other relevant fields.
How will we carry out the project?
Why is this important?
Nuclear war has the potential to end human life as we know it – through mass casualties and through cascading effects on the world’s economies and societies. Yet the nuclear policy field has been shrinking in recent years and much of the thinking is stuck in 20th century paradigms.
We believe that more talent and fresh thinking from the field of existential risk needs to be applied to the problems of nuclear policy to prevent possible catastrophe.
Nuclear policy could benefit from new and more diverse talent, and from linkages with thinkers, doers, scholars, activists and entrepreneurs who are seeking to address other existential risks to humanity, such as those from climate change, biological threats, or AI.
It is not only about developing the nuclear field specifically, but developing expertise on nuclear issues among a wider set of people working for a safer future – so that this expertise is not siloed and is integrated with wider thinking about protecting our shared future.
How are we measuring progress?
At NATO headquarters and in European chancelleries, a new consensus has emerged: the security of the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific is indivisible. Yet Europe’s major powers are responding to this reality in strikingly different ways. As Harvard Kennedy School Fellow Joel Christoph writes, this divergence is not a weakness to be papered over. It is an asset that should be organised.
The ELN’s first impact report details the organisation’s accomplishments in reducing the risk of existential conflict and the power of our unique network, even at moments of deep geopolitical tension.
Artificial intelligence, much like nuclear technologies, has the capacity to transform our world for the better, offering breakthroughs in several fields whilst simultaneously posing catastrophic risks. Nuclear policy experts, skilled in managing existential threats, are well-suited to guide AI governance. ELN Network and Communications Manager Andrew Jones argues that urgent, coordinated international action and further collaboration between experts in the nuclear and AI fields is needed before AI outpaces our ability to control it.
A new report published from the European Leadership Network’s New European Voices on Existential Risk (NEVER) project calls for a systemic international approach to be taken to address man-made existential risk. The risks from nuclear weapons, climate change, biological threats, and AI are interconnected and cross-cutting lessons should be drawn.
In 2024, the European Leadership Network (ELN) delivered an intergenerational networking programme designed to support emerging leaders in the fields of security, foreign policy, and existential risk. The programme brought together 25 participants from across the New European Voices on Existential Risks (NEVER) Network and the Younger Generation Leadership Network (YGLN).
As part of the ELN’s New European Voices on Existential Risk (NEVER) network’s podcast, “Ok, Doomer!”, ELN Policy and Impact Director Jane Kinninmont spoke with Historian, Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor, and Director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, Professor Francis Gavin, on the history of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Members of the NEVER network convened on Wednesday, the first of November, 2023, for a discussion of the existential risks stemming from biological risks, with presentations from ELN Senior Network member, Angela Kane, and NEVER member, Rebecca Donaldson.
Members of the NEVER network convened on Thursday, the 24th of August, to discuss climate change, climate change governance, and the role of great power competition in aggravating this existential risk, with NEVER coordinator, Edan Simpson, chairing the meeting.
NEVER members gathered for a roundtable discussion of AI and its role in aggravating existential risks.
In June NEVER members gathered for a discussion of internal logistical matters in relation to running the network.
In May, the ELN’s New European Voices on Existential Risk (NEVER) network convened for the first time for a discussion of existential risk, how policymakers should react to it, and why diverse voices matter in the existential risk space.
