The Bulletin's Broken Doomsday Clock

But even broken clocks can be right once a day

Last week, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the “Doomsday Clock” at 89 seconds until midnight, the closest it has ever been to midnight since its inception in 1947. This includes a period throughout Cold War crises including the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and the 1983 Able Archer exercises, and closer since it was moved to 2.5 minutes in response to seeing President Donald Trump’s finger on the red button. It seems a little extreme in comparison to those major events. For those young folk who don’t understand the Doomsday Clock, this is a metaphorical image of a countdown to a global nuclear holocaust. The clock’s hands are not moved every year — they have moved only 26 times since the first setting (backwards 8 times and forward 18 times). Initially, Manhattan Project scientist and Bulletin editor Eugene Rabinowitch made the call on where the hands moved until his death in 1973, when a panel of scientists took over the responsibility.

For the majority of its existence, the Doomsday Clock was a way to communicate the threat of a strategic nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union/Russia and United States to the American public. This changed in 2010 when the Bulletin’s group added the threat of climate change and nuclear energy to its assessment. In 2015, they added emerging and/or disruptive technologies such as autonomous lethal drones. In 2022, they added pandemic threats. You can see all of the Bulletin’s statements at this link. But the curious thing about this year is that the Clock moved all of one second closer to midnight since last year. Was this unremarkable shift due to any particular issue, or did they just feel like grabbing some attention to focus on the current state of affairs?

I would argue that the Doomsday Clock has been ineffective over the past decade in alerting the public to the threat of global catastrophe. To no small part, this is due to the dilution of its message from warning about the existential threat of a nuclear exchange to include other global threats that, while not as existential, have challenged the stability of international relations. I get it. The world keeps getting more dangerous, and certainly there are things that national leaders (and the United States in particular) could do to lessen these catastrophic threats. But the message gets lost in the simplistic design of the clock and the public’s failure to believe that they can do anything about these complex technical issues.

I’d like to make two points in this discussion, first to demonstrate the erratic history of the clock and second talk about its 2025 message. The clock was initially set at seven minutes to midnight in 1947 — a purely arbitrary decision based on the U.S. detonation of atomic bombs. In 1949, due to the Soviet Union’s explosion of an atomic bomb, the hands moved to three minutes. In 1953, after the United States and Soviet Union demonstrated their hydrogen bombs, the hands moved to two minutes until midnight. Since then, the hands have moved back and forth.

• In 1960, the hands moved from two minutes to seven minutes due to US-USSR discussions about limiting nuclear tests.

• In 1963, despite having walked through the Cuban Missile Crisis, they set the clock back to twelve minutes before midnight, which caused some criticism of the group’s methodology.

• In 1968, the clock moved back to seven minutes because of the Vietnam Conflict and the possibility of superpower engagement

• In 1972, it moved back to twelve minutes with the successful negotiation of SALT and ABM treaties

• In 1974, India exploded its atomic bomb and the clock moved to nine minutes.

• In 1980, the clock moved to seven minutes due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and failure of SALT II. With President Ronald Reagan’s (initially) hawkish attitude, the hands moved to four minutes in 1981.

• Following the 1983 Able Archer exercise and Reagan’s continued focus on nuclear and conventional superiority, the clock moved to three minutes.

• In 1988, Reagan’s changed role of peacemaker with Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev moved the clock back to six minutes.

• In 1991, the Cold War ends and the Doomsday Clock moved all the way to 17 minutes before midnight, the farthest it has ever been recorded.

I don’t intend on going through the whole timeline of the Clock, just to say that I understand (basically) what the Bulletin was doing throughout the Cold War. They were primarily reacting to the actions of the two nuclear superpowers and trying to encourage the nations’ leaders to take steps to back away from the edge, to discourage nuclear saber-rattling and encourage arms control and nonproliferation activities. Between 1991 and 2010, the needle continued to swing back and forth due to various events - Pakistan and North Korea joining the nuclear club, the Bush administration’s withdrawal from the ADM treaty after 9/11, negotiations for a New START treaty. Not to much surprise, 2018 was a banner year that saw the clock at two minutes before midnight. I lost faith in the system, though, when they started adding climate change and pandemics to the equation.

To be clear, I am a believer in climate change. I think we all see, over the past year in particular, the significant impact of climate change in the form of increasingly powerful weather phenomena, hurricanes and floods in the east, droughts and firestorms in the west. I understand that nuclear energy and disruptive technology, to include cyber operations, have distinct challenges that may significantly impact society and its well-being. I do not, however, put them in the same category as the threat of a global nuclear exchange between superpowers. In particular, I think it’s increasingly difficult to create a legitimate risk assessment balancing multiple variables such as this and then to present them as a singular finding.

I’m not saying it’s impossible to have complex risk assessments to come to a judgment about the world’s future challenges. I just don’t see the calculations here. There are no clear metrics as to what moves the hands forward or backward for a particular time frame (minutes or seconds). I see a subjective assessment by a group of well-meaning scientists who are trying to push world leaders to act upon multiple topics. But in creating this study and using the Doomsday Clock to portray their results, they’re not getting the general public’s interest on what it all means. You read the statement now on these multiple future catastrophes in the making, and you want to say, well, what’s the point? We’re all going to die sometime. What are we supposed to do about it? A Republican-led Congress certainly doesn’t care about mitigating nuclear threats, climate disasters, or cyber crime.¹

I like talking about nuclear weapon issues, so I’m going to limit my remarks to the Bulletin’s current view on nuclear weapons issues. So good news — there were no significant changes in nuclear threats over the past two years. Bad news — there were no significant changes in nuclear threats over the past two years.

Longstanding concerns about nuclear weapons—involving the modernization and expansion of arsenals in all nuclear weapons countries, the build-up of new capabilities, the risks of inadvertent or deliberate nuclear use, the loss of arms control agreements, and the possibility of nuclear proliferation to new countries—continued or were amplified in 2024. The outgoing Biden administration showed little willingness or capacity to pursue new efforts in these areas, and it remains to be seen whether the Trump administration will seize the initiative. At this time, it is difficult to anticipate when and how these negative trends may be slowed and, ultimately, reversed.

In short, Russia is still threatening the possibility of nuclear weapons use in its conflict with Ukraine, China’s nuclear capabilities continue to grow, Iran continues to be coy about its nuclear program even as Israel continues its aggressive actions, and North Korea has no interests in turning its nuclear weapons program around. So really, nothing new has happened in this general topic, either positive or negative. The Bulletin is particularly harsh about the United States’ role in all of this.

The United States can no longer be counted on as a voice of caution or nuclear moderation. Long a driver in the effort to prevent nuclear weapons use, reduce nuclear risks, and pursue nuclear arsenal reductions, the United States has embarked on the world’s most expensive nuclear modernization, and the 2024 election results suggest the United States will pursue a faster, more expansive nuclear investment program. It is possible that the United States will expand its nuclear efforts to include more nuclear options, rely more on nuclear brinkmanship to advance its security and deterrence goals, and shun proven efforts to reduce nuclear dangers. The United States is now a full partner in a worldwide nuclear arms race.

This statement seems a little overly rhetorical on the Bulletin’s part, but hey, I get it, they are in fact nonproliferation advocates. But let’s not pretend that this is a coldly analytical assessment. It’s difficult for the United States to promote arms control and nonproliferation activities when none of the other nuclear powers are interested in participating. The environment for collegial discussions on strategic stability is just not there. As for the U.S. nuclear modernization program, I do not agree with the Bulletin’s exaggerated statements. Modernizing the ICBM missiles and their launch control centers, the strategic bomber fleet, the ballistic missile submarines, and the nuclear command and control system is just way, way overdue. Now we can perhaps agree that the program management of these multiple projects has been not as tight as it should be. I think both the DoD and NNSA have not been up to par on keeping to initial cost projections and schedule, but hey, that pretty much describes the entire DoD acquisition program. I don’t agree on significantly increasing the U.S. nuclear stockpile to counter the combined Russia-China nuclear threat, but calling out the United States as being in a “worldwide nuclear arms race” is extremely simplistic.

I don’t agree with the Bulletin’s review on biological threats either, but that would take another post to discuss my rationale. Yes, emerging and re-emerging biological diseases are an issue, yes, high-containment laboratories are an issue, but they are manageable issues if the political will and resources are there. I think it’s still premature to talk about the convergence of AI and biological research and the jury is still out on the possibilities of synthetic biology. But topics for another day, and the Bulletin ought to create a different clock face for global biological threats.

The Bulletin’s Doomsday Clock had its time during the Cold War and a clear purpose when it focused on nuclear arms threat. For the two decades following the end of the Cold War, it still remained a good focus for depicting nuclear weapon issues and proliferation concerns. The current Doomsday Clock, however, with its subjective views on international politics and added threats of climate change, nuclear power, disruptive/cyber threats, and pandemics, no longer plays the vital role that it once had. The Clock needs to be focused on one existential threat, and the Bulletin’s group needs to include political advisors who can bring a more grounded and coherent analysis of where the nuclear-weapon states are moving.

1. We could debate on the meaning of “mitigating nuclear threats” as to whether the Republicans would view increasing the US nuclear stockpile as an effective measure. I’d argue though that the meaning of “mitigating” is reducing damage to the infrastructure (NOT damage limitation, which is a Herman Kahn term), e.g., civil defense and arms control.