Iran continues to build an enriched uranium stockpile, insisting that all sanctions be removed before returning to talks with the United States on the JCPOA. The window of opportunity seems to be closing. Over time, Iran's neighbors, particularly Saudi Arabia, may feel compelled to acquire similar capabilities, foreshadowing the frightening possibility of a Middle East with multiple countries with the expertise and material to build nuclear weapons.
The Chinese have started to build new ICBM silos on a large scale, leading to concerns that China may be considering a change in its nuclear doctrine. China and Russia have both tested anti-satellite weapons recently, increasing concerns about rapid escalation in any conventional conflict with the United States. Efforts by all three countries to field hypersonic missiles are beginning to yield results, intensifying competition. While experts disagree on both the causes and the consequences of these programs, they clearly mark the start of a new arms competition.



Satellite images show clear features of silo construction near Yumen in central China. (Satellite photo source: Maxar Technologies)

The North Koreans continue to test nuclear-capable short- and medium-range missiles, including cruise, ballistic, and glide vehicles, and there is evidence of their restarting plutonium production. Meanwhile, there have been no high-level negotiations between the United States and North Korea. India and Pakistan continue to advance their nuclear, missile, and other military capabilities with no diminution of possible flash points that could lead to nuclear conflict.
As the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol demonstrated, no country is immune from threats to its democracy, and in a state with nuclear-weapons-usable material and nuclear weapons, both can be targets for terrorists and fanatics. Notably, the insurrectionists came close to capturing Vice President Mike Pence and the “nuclear football” that accompanies the vice president as the backup system for nuclear launch commands. More than 10 percent of those charged with crimes during the January 6th insurrection were veterans or active service members. The Pentagon has conducted a major review of extremism in the military and has adopted new definitions of extremist activities in an attempt to reduce this danger in the future. The seriousness of the problem is clear.
Finally, the United States is preparing a Nuclear Posture Review to guide US strategy, policy, and deployments of nuclear weapons, but its overall message appears not yet decided. We hope the document will assert that the United States will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in its deterrence and defense policies, which in turn may positively affect the nuclear weapons postures of other countries, leading, we believe, to a safer world. Where we set the Clock next year will be influenced by what the Nuclear Posture Review ultimately contains. Reports of congressional interference in the process, resulting in the firing of personnel conducting the review, suggests unwelcome politicization that could well affect the outcome and make more rational nuclear weapons policies hard to effect.



The scene outside the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. (Tyler Merbler, CC-BY)

Climate change: Lots of words, relatively little action

This past year’s climate negotiations in Glasgow marked an important milestone in climate multilateralism: a critical first round of the treaty’s cycle of upgrading national efforts. Countries were under pressure to strengthen their emission-reduction pledges significantly relative to their pledges six years ago in Paris. The results, unfortunately, were insufficient. China and India affirmed that they would move away from use of coal, but only gradually; they affirmed for the first time the objective of achieving “net zero,” but only in 2060 and 2070, respectively. There was only partial progress toward defined accounting rules to allow international markets for greenhouse gas emissions and removals to develop.

Developed countries again failed to follow through on treaty commitments to provide necessary financial and technological support. Overall, countries’ projections and plans for fossil fuel production are far from adequate to achieve the global Paris goals to limit the warming of the surface of the planet to “well below two degrees Celsius” (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) relative to the temperature around 1800, at the beginning of the industrial revolution.
Encouragingly, several countries (as well as financial institutions and corporations) have announced a commitment to achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions for the long term—meaning by 2050 or thereabouts. These announcements are significant, in that reaching zero aggregate carbon dioxide emissions globally would halt the buildup of greenhouse gas pollution in the atmosphere, which is absolutely critical to halting yet more warming. Earnest efforts to reach these seemingly distant targets require concerted actions in the immediate term, including a redirection of investment away from the production and use of fossil fuel and toward renewables and energy efficiency, massive upgrading of existing infrastructure, and a shift in land use and agriculture practices. The real test of the significance of these net-zero pledges will be whether they are matched by near- and medium-term emission-reduction actions.



Global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions, 1990-2021. Despite declining in 2020, global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions remained at 31.5 gigatonnes, which contributed to carbon dioxide reaching its highest ever average annual concentration in the atmosphere of 412.5 parts per million in 2020—around 50 percent higher than when the Industrial Revolution began. In 2021, emissions increased to nearly match their 2019 peak. (Chart courtesy of IEA Global Energy Review 2021)

Last year, we noted optimistically the election of a US president who “acknowledges climate change as a profound threat and supports international cooperation and science-based policy,” and we’ve seen a dramatic change in tone from the previous presidential administration.  Recognizing that “[t]he effects we are seeing of climate change are the crisis of our generation,” Biden has indeed attempted to move forward quickly, reentering the United States in the Paris Agreement and announcing the United States’ updated Paris emission pledge of a 50 percent reduction by 2030. He has also signaled an attentiveness to the connection between climate action and environmental justice, in both the domestic and international contexts. He has committed to making climate investments in disadvantaged communities within the United States, and at the UN General Assembly meeting he pledged to double climate financing to developing countries.
However, progress achievable through the US political process is highly constrained and fragile, as any subsequent president may try to swing the pendulum backward. The major infrastructure package passed in 2021 is less of a “climate bill” than the Biden administration initially proposed, and the fate of the climate goals of the “Build Back Better” bill hangs in the balance of a starkly divided Congress. It thus is not yet clear how much progress the United States will make in the coming year toward its announced emissions reduction pledge and finance promise.
For over four decades the threat of climate change to “future generations” has been ruefully noted. As warming has continued to drive up temperatures—from an unprecedented extreme high temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the Siberian Arctic to the record-breaking 2021 “heat dome” over western Canada and the United States—today’s young people are increasingly seeing themselves as the future victims. They are witnessing human and ecosystem tragedies caused, for example, by droughts in eastern Africa and the United States, floods in China and Europe, and wildfires raging around the world, harbingers of yet more dire consequences as climate change accelerates in their lifetimes.

The experience of a deepening crisis has animated protests and other civil society expressions of alarm this year. These have occurred at major political events (such as the G7 Summit), by youth climate movements (such as the student-led Fridays for Future protests around the world), at September’s Climate Week in New York, at COP26 in Glasgow, and at individual sites of proposed new fossil fuel infrastructure (such as Line 3 in the United States, the Trans Mountain Pipeline in Canada, and the EACOP pipeline in Uganda and Tanzania). These actions focus public attention on climate change and raise its political salience, but whether they will transform policies, investments, and behaviors remains among the most important questions facing global society.



Greta Thunberg's "school strike for climate," begun outside the Swedish parliament in August 2018, launched a worldwide movement of young climate activists. (Anders Hellberg via Wikimedia Commons)

The burgeoning biological threat to civilization

For years, the United States and many other countries underinvested in defense against natural, accidental, and intentional biological threats. They also underestimated the impacts that a biological threat could have on the entire world. COVID-19 revealed vulnerabilities in every country and the world’s collective ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from infectious disease outbreaks.
The COVID-19 pandemic rightly has absorbed the world’s attention, given its demonstrated ability to sicken and kill millions, weaken national economies and global supply chains, and destabilize governments and societies. And yet, what the world has experienced during this pandemic is nowhere close to a worst-case scenario.
To deal with the crisis at hand, the world is focusing almost all its efforts on COVID-19, to the exclusion of other biological threats. The scope of potential biological threats is expansive. Preventing and mitigating future biological events will require a wider lens for viewing biological threats. For example, slow vaccination rates have allowed virus mutations, perpetuating the threat from COVID-19. Similarly, failing to address antibiotic resistance could trigger a worldwide pandemic involving antimicrobial-resistant organisms within a decade. Research into novel diseases has proliferated high-containment laboratories around the world. Some of those labs inadvertently release pathogens into the environment. Some regimes to monitor and regulate these laboratories are perceived by their researchers to be excessively burdensome and restrictive. At the same time, the Biological Weapons and Toxin Convention still struggles to find effective ways to enforce its prohibitions on the development and production of biological agents and weapons.
This year, the US Department of State declared that Russia and North Korea possess active biological weapons programs and expressed concern about dual-use biological research programs in China and Iran. Terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda and ISIS and some criminal organizations continue to profess their determination to build, acquire, and use biological weapons to achieve their goals. The globally inadequate response to COVID-19 only serves to underscore that an attack using a weapon containing biological agents designed to resist existing medical countermeasures could provide attackers with some of the tactical, operational, strategic, and economic advantages they seek. The US Department of Defense is now concerned enough about that prospect to undertake a biological posture review.



Chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear defense specialists with the US Marine Corps practice responding to weapons of mass destruction scenarios. (US Marine Corps via Wikimedia Commons)

The world now lives in an age of biological innovation. Many countries and corporations are making enormous investments in biological science, biotechnology, and combinational science and technology (in which biology combines with other fields), recognizing that they have immense opportunities to establish and grow bio-economies. Innovative biological research and development efforts simultaneously increase and decrease biological risk. The field is moving quickly.
CRISPR-Cas9, the revolutionary genetic engineering tool that scientists in the United States and Sweden discovered in 2012, is cheap and ubiquitous today, spurring investments in genetic testing and adult stem cell technologies. Countries and non-state actors are exploring ways to create super-soldiers, personalize medicine, increase human performance, improve human gene therapy, and synthesize biology. Innovations such as synthetic biology have created new areas of discovery, outpacing current public health, safety, and security measures.
The world is failing to recognize the multifaceted nature of the biological threat. Advances in biological science and technology can harm us as well as help us. Leaders must recognize that COVID-19 is not the last biological threat we will have to face in our lifetimes—or, perhaps, even this year.

Disruptive technology in the age of disinformation

The new US administration has done much to reestablish the role of scientists in informing public policy, and even more to minimize deliberate confusion and chaos emanating from the White House. Thoughtful deliberation—merely a promise in January 2021—appears to be realized more often today. On the other hand, disinformation fomented outside the executive branch—including from some members of Congress and many state leaders—appears to have taken root in alarming and dangerous ways.
Large fractions of Congress and the public continue to deny that Joe Biden legitimately won the presidential election, and their views on these matters appear to be hardening rather than moderating. Similar trends regarding COVID-related disinformation are apparent around the world, crippling the ability of public health authorities and medical science to achieve higher vaccination rates.  Mask-wearing and social distancing are similarly discouraged by disinformation. While we know more now about the role of social media campaigns in taking advantage of vulnerabilities in human psychology and cognition to spread disinformation and societal disunity, the behavior of social media companies has changed hardly at all. Political attacks on institutions that provide societal continuity and store hard-won knowledge about how best to deal with problems continue apace.



An anti-vaccine-mandate rally in Austria. (Ivan Radic / Flickr, CC-BY)

In cyber conflict, cyberattackers have grown more audacious. The SolarWinds hack, an attack on Microsoft Exchange that affected millions around the world, and a ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline (resolved only with the payment of $4.4 million to get the system up and running again) all demonstrate the far-reaching ramifications of cyber-vulnerabilities.
The good news in cyber includes a Biden executive order and other federal government initiatives on cybersecurity that seem to have significant force and momentum behind them and have gone farther than previous orders and initiatives. The expert cybersecurity team the new administration has assembled has the ear of the president. In addition, against all odds, both the UN Open-Ended Working Group and the Group of Government Experts have reached some rough consensus on cyber norms of behavior. (The first group involves representatives from most of the world’s nations; the latter includes the biggest players in cyber.) It remains to be seen whether these norms actually affect the behavior of national actors in cyberspace, but it is better to have these norms in place (or in the process of being formed and agreed to) than not to have them at all.

Russia is employing neo-conservative tactics of pre-emptive warfare.

The neo-conservative response?

Calls for war with Russia.

https://technofog.substack.com/p/americans-for-war

Video from இ

#chernobylarmed #disarmedchernobyl
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