The integration of neural networks into NC3 poses a multitude of risks to global security. Alice Saltini writes that to pave the way for a moratorium, NPT State Parties should use the PrepCom to focus discussions on understanding the risks associated with integrating deep learning models into nuclear decision-making.
The NPT has been described as a cornerstone upon which the rest of the global non-proliferation architecture has been developed, but it also marks the site where illustrious dreams lay buried. Ahead of the PrepCom in Vienna starting next week, YGLN member Olamide Samuel explores what a ‘cornerstone’ means and writes that we have a unique opportunity to protect the NPT as the cornerstone of the global nuclear non-proliferation regime.
Michael Biontino explores how the NPT can be strengthened in advance of its next review cycle. He outlines how, even in these increasingly polarised times, measures such as streamlining procedures and mechanisms, creating adequate institutional support and creating the appropriate governing structures, can all help to improve the effectiveness, efficiency, transparency, accountability, coordination, and continuity of the review process of the Treaty.
The Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) has made a key contribution to global security, but it has been neither ambitious nor effective in communicating this to an audience that is increasingly important to its success – non-nuclear suppliers in the Global South. Ahead of the NSG Plenary in Buenos Aires starting on 10 July, Louis Reitmann suggests ways for Participating Governments to enhance the Group’s transparency and outreach to third countries.
This week, representatives of the states parties to the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe will convene in Vienna to discuss the withdrawal of Russia from the treaty. Pál Dunay writes that the remaining CFE states parties are facing a dilemma: if the state that the arms control regime wants to engage is leaving the regime, what is the meaning of the arms control agreement for those actors that stay?
Hamidreza Azizi examines reactions in Iran to the Wagner groups rebellion. He writes that the wide range of responses to the mutiny, from government statements and state media to independent analysts, illustrates a broader trend of polarisation in Iranian foreign policy that has been increasingly visible in recent years in a multitude of areas, from nuclear negotiations to geopolitical alliances.
As the security situation in Kosovo deteriorates significantly, the ELN’s Senior Associate Fellow Nick Williams writes that although this latest violence is local in origin, it has deeper roots and much wider implications.
The Russia-Ukraine war has brought an abrupt end to a certain nuclear complacency that has characterised European politics since the Cold War, writes Andrew Futter. The immediate challenge facing governments across the Euro-Atlantic space appears to be maintaining a credible nuclear and conventional deterrence capability and pursuing risk reduction and confidence-building measures.
The ELN’s Director, Sir Adam Thomson, spoke at this year’s Effective Altruism conference on the nature of the catastrophic and existential risks we face, including nuclear risks. He discusses how they are meaningfully different from those of 60 years ago, and how we should reassess how we tackle the single greatest driver of them, great power competition.