February Newsletter: Military AI – The View From DC

Dear friends,

This past month, GCRI has participated in two exclusive, invitation-only events in Washington, DC, discussing military and international security applications of artificial intelligence. First, GCRI Director of Research Tony Barrett attended a workshop hosted by the AI group at the think tank Center for a New American Security. Then I gave a talk on AI at a workshop on strategic stability hosted by the Federation of American Scientists.

These two events show that the DC international security community is quite interested in AI and its …

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Seth Baum at The Story Collider October 18

If you are in New York, you can hear GCRI Executive Director Seth Baum speak in Brooklyn on October 18 at the Story Collider, an event for personal stories about science. The event has a pre-Halloween theme of fear. Baum will talk about his experience of the heated debate he sparked last year about winter-safe deterrence.

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Winter-Safe Deterrence as a Practical Contribution to Reducing Nuclear Winter Risk: A Reply

View the paper “Winter-Safe Deterrence as a Practical Contribution to Reducing Nuclear Winter Risk: A Reply”

In a recent issue of this journal, I published an article proposing the concept of winter-safe deterrence. The article defined winter-safe deterrence as “military force capable of meeting the deterrence goals of today’s nuclear weapon states without risking catastrophic nuclear winter”. The article and a summary version published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have since stimulated extensive discussion in social media, the Bulletin, and now a symposium in this journal. The discussion has been productive for refining certain …

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Winter-Safe Deterrence: The Risk of Nuclear Winter and Its Challenge to Deterrence

View the paper “Winter-Safe Deterrence: The Risk of Nuclear Winter and Its Challenge to Deterrence”

Eight countries have large nuclear arsenals: China, France, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. North Korea might have a small nuclear arsenal. These countries have nuclear weapons for several reasons. Perhaps the biggest reason is deterrence. Nuclear deterrence means threatening other countries with nuclear weapons in order to persuade them not to attack. When nuclear deterrence works, it can help avoid nuclear war. However, nuclear deterrence …

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