The threats the UK faces today are more nuanced and diverse than in the Cold War era, ranging from state-sponsored cyber-attacks to sophisticated disinformation campaigns. ELN Policy Fellow Nikita Gryazin argues that these challenges require a shift in focus from traditional nuclear deterrence to modern defensive and offensive cyber capabilities.
The United Kingdom’s latest nuclear doctrine suggests that severe cyber-attacks on their national or critical infrastructure could provoke a nuclear response. Despite this, cyber-attacks against the UK have surged over the past decade. Eva-Nour Repussard, YGLN member and Policy Fellow at BASIC, writes that instead of deterrence by punishment, the UK should seek to increase its resilience to cyber-attacks and focus on a strategy of deterrence by denial regarding cyber threats.
As countries continue incorporating AI into conventional military systems, they should prepare themselves for the risk that adversaries are likely already working to exploit weaknesses in AI models by threatening datasets at the core of AI. To address this, Alice Saltini writes that states should develop metrics to assess how cyber vulnerabilities could impact AI integration.
In the absence of globally acknowledged governance frameworks for AI in the military domain, two new initiatives came into existence in 2023 – the Responsible Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain (REAIM) and the US-initiated Political Declaration. Mahmoud Javadi and Michal Onderco analyse both, writing that REAIM provides a much-needed space for a democratic, depoliticised, and decentralised approach to global military AI governance.
In our latest commentary from the ELN’s New European Voices on Existential Risk (NEVER) network, Shane Ward and Eva Siegmann, explore how the emergence of non-nuclear strategic threats (NNST) has undermined the normative taboo surrounding the use of nuclear weapons, and why new methods extending beyond deterrence are needed to ensure international stability.
NEVER members gathered for a roundtable discussion of AI and its role in aggravating existential risks.