The threat of nuclear war is as great as it has ever been in the atomic age, the nonprofit Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said Thursday in its latest Doomsday Clock statement.
The Doomsday Clock is a metaphor the group created in 1947, in which midnight represents total annihilation of human beings and their civilization from a massive nuclear war. The group set the clock at two minutes to midnight Thursday: a position it has not occupied since 1953, after the United States and the Soviet Union first tested hydrogen bombs.
The clock has never been further than 17 minutes from midnight: a mark it hit in 1991 as the Cold War wound down. It was set at two-and-a-half minutes to midnight for 2017. Since 2007, the clock has considered potential civilization-altering threats besides nuclear war, such as the potential effects of global climate change.
The generally dove-ish Bulletin made the announcement the same month that a draft version of President Donald Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review leaked to the press. The draft called, among other things, for creating two new nuclear warheads for submarine-launched missiles.
“Major nuclear actors are on the cusp of a new arms race, one that will be very expensive and will increase the likelihood of accidents and misperception,” Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of the Bulletin, wrote in a statement. “Across the globe, nuclear weapons are poised to become more rather than less usable because of nations’ investments in their nuclear arsenals.”
Alluding to the back-and-forth between Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, the Bulletin said “[h]yperbolic rhetoric and provocative actions by both sides have increased the possibility of nuclear war by accident or miscalculation.”
Though the Bulletin does not claim otherwise, the clock is not an empirical measurement of threat or a mathematical assessment of probabilities. Likewise, the group does not adjust the clock in real time to reflect the latest threats or de-escalations. For example, during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 — when the U.S. had ballistic missiles deployed in Turkey and Italy and the Soviet Union had ballistic missiles in Cuba — the clock was set at seven minutes to midnight.
So, on Thursday, nuclear savants had different reactions to the Bulletin’s news.
William Perry, former secretary of defense during the Bill Clinton administration and a leading voice for nuclear disarmament, treated the announcement with somber seriousness.
I am saddened but not surprised that this year, the #DoomsdayClock has been moved to 2 minutes to midnight, the closest it has ever been set towards global midnight and the first time it has been at that time since 1953 #turnbackthedoomsdayclock
— William J. Perry (@SecDef19) January 25, 2018
On the other side of the spectrum, a former Air Force missileer and current Republican Senate staffer said Thursday that after the Bulletin’s announcement, his “eyes broke, they rolled so hard.”
The clock is an “outdated PR stunt,” John Noonan, senior counselor for military and defense affairs for Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), wrote on Twitter.
The #Doomsday clock is a silly, outdated PR stunt from people who have little to no military experience and are in no position to judge likelihood of conflict.
But hey… it is very, very good for web traffic. Nuclear war is great for clicks.
— John Noonan (@noonanjo) January 25, 2018
