Nuclear Weapons and Emerging Technologies
The rapid integration of emerging and disruptive technologies into nuclear decision-making is introducing new and poorly understood risks. Advances in artificial intelligence, cyber capabilities, and data systems are becoming increasingly entangled with nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3), reshaping how information is processed, decisions are made, and crises unfold. While these technologies may enhance speed and situational awareness, they also risk compressing decision-making timelines and introducing new pathways to miscalculation and unintended escalation.
Staff Contacts
The ELN’s Nuclear Weapons and Emerging Technologies Programme addresses these challenges by analysing how technological change is transforming nuclear risk, and by developing practical, policy-relevant solutions. It focuses on the risks arising from human-machine interaction, automation bias, and system vulnerabilities, while identifying opportunities to strengthen resilience and safeguards within nuclear decision-making systems.
Through cutting-edge research, collaborative projects, and sustained engagement with policymakers and practitioners, the programme translates complex technical issues into actionable recommendations. Leveraging ELN’s multinational network and partnerships, it works to raise awareness, close critical knowledge gaps, and drive the adoption of risk reduction measures, helping ensure that technological innovation does not outpace the safeguards needed to prevent nuclear catastrophe.
Project Publications
Podcast
Ok, Doomer! podcast: Nuclear bombs and bots
The ELN’s Ok, Doomer! podcast is back. Listen in to learn how emerging technologies are reshaping nuclear weapons policy. Experts discuss the risks and benefits of artificial intelligence and other disruptive technologies, historical technological shifts, changing threat perceptions, and the importance of training military personnel to recognise AI-driven biases. Hosted by the ELN’s Deputy Executive Director, Bekki Field.
Podcast
The Women Leaders podcast: Risk and reality
Assessing risk is a vast and growing field, made ever more complex and expansive by the introduction of technology, especially AI. Tinatin Japaridze, YGLN member and Director of Geopolitics at Anadyr Horizon joins ELN Senior Associate Fellow Ilana Bet-El to analyse how the ever-changing nature of global affairs intersects with emerging technologies to transform our conceptions of risk.
Event
The European Leadership Network at the 2026 NPT Review Conference
Building on our work throughout the review cycle, join the ELN for two state-sponsored side events at the 2026 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, United Nations, New York.
Related Content
Podcast
Ok, Doomer! podcast: Nuclear bombs and bots
The ELN’s Ok, Doomer! podcast is back. Listen in to learn how emerging technologies are reshaping nuclear weapons policy. Experts discuss the risks and benefits of artificial intelligence and other disruptive technologies, historical technological shifts, changing threat perceptions, and the importance of training military personnel to recognise AI-driven biases. Hosted by the ELN’s Deputy Executive Director, Bekki Field.
Commentary
Beyond the Rome Declaration: Adapting nuclear risk reduction for the AI era
AI is transforming the nuclear risk landscape faster than governance can adapt. ELN Policy Fellow Nikita Gryazin argues that the recently signed Rome Declaration should mark the beginning, not the end, of efforts to strengthen nuclear risk reduction. Doing so would help preserve meaningful human control, extend decision time, and update crisis management for the AI era.
Commentary
Want to prevent nuclear war caused by AI? Count the private sector out
Drawing on parallels with the Manhattan Project, the ELN’s Oliver Meier argues that AI companies cannot be relied upon to govern the risks their technology creates. Examining Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah’s response to Pope Leo’s encyclical, he contends that meaningful safeguards will require governments and international institutions to impose robust regulation.
Podcast
The Women Leaders podcast: Risk and reality
Assessing risk is a vast and growing field, made ever more complex and expansive by the introduction of technology, especially AI. Tinatin Japaridze, YGLN member and Director of Geopolitics at Anadyr Horizon joins ELN Senior Associate Fellow Ilana Bet-El to analyse how the ever-changing nature of global affairs intersects with emerging technologies to transform our conceptions of risk.
Commentary
AI enables strategic stupidity. That should terrify Europe
AI-enabled warfare is giving the United States unprecedented tactical reach while eroding strategic restraint, writes Erasmus University Rotterdam Professor Michal Onderco. From the Caracas raid to strikes in Iran, reduced risks enable operations with minimal casualties. That ease lowers the bar for war, leaving allies exposed to miscalculation and dependence on a partner willing to act without planning the aftermath.
Report
Towards a better understanding of human bias in nuclear decision-making and its interaction with emerging and disruptive technologies
This report by Ganna Pogrebna and ELN Senior Policy Fellow Rishi Paul presents findings from an ELN workshop that examined the ‘human’ and ‘machine’ components of bias and their points of interaction. The report highlights how human judgment and AI systems can interact in ways that reinforce, rather than reduce, risk.