Doomsday Clock advanced to 100 seconds to midnight, a new historic peak
Time check: Examining the Doomsday Clock’s move to 100 seconds to midnight

          
          
All of those good vibes have been erased over the last 10 years. And now, the Security Board has added a new reason for concern: cyberwarfare and other "disruptive" technologies.
"Humanity continues to face two simultaneous existential dangers—nuclear war and climate change—that are compounded by a threat multiplier, cyber-enabled information warfare, that undercuts society's ability to respond," the Science and Security Board members wrote in a joint statement. "The international security situation is dire, not just because these threats exist but because world leaders have allowed the international political infrastructure for managing them to erode."
Objectively measuring things like "international political infrastructure" is difficult. And not much has really changed since 2019, when the board decided to not move the Doomsday Clock's hands. At that time, the board referred to the state of world security as a "new abnormal" and warned of the use of "cyber-enabled information warfare by countries, leaders, and subnational groups of many stripes." The board also voiced concern about the impact of technologies such as artificial intelligence.
But the one thing that is measurable is the degree of inaction on climate change. As the US withdraws from the Paris climate agreement, the world as a whole has done little to meet the deadlines agreed to, with efforts to meet the numbers needed to keep average global temperature from increasing more than 2° Celsius falling well short. The most recent UN Climate Summit ended without any solid plans to move forward.
Fear, uncertainty, and doubt

    
              
                
              
                A still from WarGames, as the WOPR's artificial intelligence locks down the countdown to global nuclear annihilation.
                                  
                    Credit:
                                          MGM/UA Entertainment via the Hulton Archive 
                                      
                              
            
                  
          
    
    
      A still from WarGames, as the WOPR's artificial intelligence locks down the countdown to global nuclear annihilation.

              
          Credit:

          
          MGM/UA Entertainment via the Hulton Archive 

                  
          
  
        
            

This year, the board stacked a few more "disruptive" technologies on the scales, with genetic engineering, synthetic biology, the mass collection of health and genomic data and their potential use in developing biological weapons among them. Concerns over AI-based weaponry and the incorporation of artificial intelligence into nuclear command and control systems—something harkening back to the 1982 film WarGames—were also cited. Russia field-tested an AI-based field command and control system last year, but there's no particular evidence that any state or non-state actor is doing any of these things. Still, the board members are spooked by the possibility.

          
                  