Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Why we're entering a new nuclear age - and how to reduce the risks (Christian Ruhl on the 80k After Hours Podcast), published by 80000 Hours on March 28, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
We just published an interview: Christian Ruhl on why we're entering a new nuclear age - and how to reduce the risks. You can click through for the audio, a full transcript, and related links. Below are the episode summary and some key excerpts.
Episode summary
We really, really want to make sure that nuclear war never breaks out. But we also know - from all of the examples of the Cold War, all these close calls - that it very well could, as long as there are nuclear weapons in the world. So if it does, we want to have some ways of preventing that from turning into a civilisation-threatening, cataclysmic kind of war.
And those kinds of interventions - war limitation, intrawar escalation management, civil defence - those are kind of the seatbelts and airbags of the nuclear world. So to borrow a phrase from one of my colleagues, right-of-boom is a class of interventions for when "shit hits the fan."
Christian Ruhl
In this episode of 80k After Hours, Luisa Rodriguez and Christian Ruhl discuss underrated best bets to avert civilisational collapse from global catastrophic risks - things like great power war, frontier military technologies, and nuclear winter.
They cover:
How the geopolitical situation has changed in recent years into a "three-body problem" between the US, Russia, and China.
How adding AI-enabled technologies into the mix makes things even more unstable and unpredictable.
Why Christian recommends many philanthropists focus on "right-of-boom" interventions - those that mitigate the damage after a catastrophe - over traditional preventative measures.
Concrete things policymakers should be considering to reduce the devastating effects of unthinkable tragedies.
And on a more personal note, Christian's experience of having a stutter.
Who this episode is for:
People interested in the most cost-effective ways to prevent nuclear war, such as:
Deescalating after accidental nuclear use.
Civil defence and war termination.
Mitigating nuclear winter.
Who this episode isn't for:
People interested in the least cost-effective ways to prevent nuclear war, such as:
Coating every nuclear weapon on Earth in solid gold so they're no longer functional.
Creating a TV show called The Real Housewives of Nuclear Winter about the personal and professional lives of women in Beverly Hills after a nuclear holocaust.
A multibillion dollar programme to invent a laser beam that could write permanent messages on the Moon, and using it just once to spell out #nonukesnovember.
Producer: Keiran Harris
Audio Engineering Lead: Ben Cordell
Technical editing: Ben Cordell and Milo McGuire
Content editing: Katy Moore, Luisa Rodriguez, and Keiran Harris
Transcriptions: Katy Moore
"Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue, original 1924 version" by Jason Weinberger is licensed under creative commons
Highlights
The three-body problem
Christian Ruhl: For much of the Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union were the two nuclear superpowers. Other states eventually did acquire nuclear weapons, but in terms of arsenals, those two just towered over all of them. We're talking orders of magnitude bigger. And that had been the case for a long time, this kind of bipolar order.
After the Cold War, people in many cases kind of stopped paying attention to this altogether. And what's happened in the last couple of years is that China seems poised to expand its own arsenal. So in 2020, their number of warheads, best estimate, is in the low 200s - 220 or so. Last year, that was up to 400 something. And now we're talking 500, and the projections suggest it could be as high as 1,000 by 2030 and 1,500 by 2035 - so really this massive increase.
Lu...

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