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SUNDAY SCIENCE: IT’S 89 SECONDS UNTIL DOOMSDAY AND HER FIRST DAY ON
THE JOB  
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Katrina Miller
February 3, 2025
New York Times
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_ Alexandra Bell is bringing more than a decade of experience in
nuclear policy to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the
organization that sets the Doomsday Clock. _

Alexandra Bell, the new president and chief executive of the Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists. “There are no quick fixes here,” she
said., Oliver Contreras for The New York Times

 

At the end of January, the keepers of the Doomsday Clock announced
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the world was 89 seconds to midnight, a metaphor for our proximity to
extinction. That’s one second closer than we were for the past two
years, and the nearest the clock has ever inched to global destruction
by way of human-made risks, including nuclear weapons, climate change
and new technologies like artificial intelligence.

The iconic clock is set by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an
organization founded by American physicists at the dawn of the nuclear
age, months after the United States detonated atomic bombs in Japan.
On Monday, the Bulletin named
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Bell, a nuclear affairs expert, as its new president and chief
executive. She replaces Rachel Bronson, who served in the role for a
decade.

Ms. Bell worked on arms control and nonproliferation issues in the
U.S. State Department starting in the Obama administration, where she
was involved in securing ratification of New START
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treaty with Russia. She returned to the department as a deputy
assistant secretary in 2021, promoting dialogue on nuclear issues with
nations around the world. During the last two years of the Biden
administration, she led the U.S. delegation of the P5 Process,
currently the only forum where the United States, China and Russia
discuss nuclear risk reduction.

In an interview last week, Ms. Bell discussed the ever-evolving
threats of the day and the role she wants the Bulletin to play in
preventing worldwide disaster. “It’s important to listen to the
echoes of history,” she said, to be “informed by the past, but not
shackled to it.”

The following conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

HOW DOES AN 80-YEAR-OLD ORGANIZATION LIKE THE BULLETIN STAY RELEVANT
IN AN EVER-CHANGING WORLD?

When I entered the field, the Doomsday Clock was at five minutes to
midnight. I remember being struck by the symbolism. The clock being at
its closest point to midnight now is really a warning that we are
running out of time. The fact that it ticked one second closer is an
indication that every second counts.

We are living through an overload of crisis with a compounding nature
of threats. The key is to understand those threats and make sure that
we’re transitioning to solutions. It will take work and patience and
persistence, and a broad demand from the public, to address these
concerns.

Hopefully, the Doomsday Clock pulls people in to help them understand
the urgency of the moment. There’s no single, neat solution. But
there are things we can do to pull ourselves away from the edge.

Juan Manuel Santos, former president of Colombia, left, and Robert
Socolow, emeritus professor at Princeton University, unveiling the
Doomsday Clock at 89 seconds to midnight at the U.S. Institute of
Peace in Washington on Tuesday.Credit...Oliver Contreras for The New
York Times

HOW DOES THIS ERA OF NUCLEAR RISK DIFFER FROM THE PAST?

Nuclear threats are on vivid display for the first time, really, since
we pulled ourselves away from the edge of catastrophe in the Cuban
Missile Crisis of 1962. The United States and Russia are not in a
sustained dialogue about how to stabilize nuclear risk. China has
embarked on an unprecedented expansion of their nuclear forces
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Iran has the potential to create nuclear weapons
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and North Korea continues to flout international law, threaten its
neighbors and grow its nuclear arsenal.

We also have structures that we’ve spent the last 50 years building
now crumbling under us. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which has
held back the tide of nuclear chaos, is under duress. The next steps
that we were supposed to take in reducing nuclear threat, like the
Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, haven’t come to pass yet.

I’m sure people living through the height of the Cold War would not
have thought it was uncomplicated. But looking back, that was a
bipolar conflict — it was the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Now, it’s
more complex.

There are no quick fixes here. This time, it won’t just be the
nuclear experts alone who come up with solutions. We have to be
talking with experts in A.I., quantum, biotechnology and climate
change. These risk areas are overlapping and require coordination we
haven’t quite mastered yet. But that cross-pollination of expertise
will be key to how we manage these threats.

THE LOOMING THREAT FOR MOST PEOPLE THESE DAYS SEEMS TO BE CLIMATE
CHANGE, RATHER THAN NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

You’re right, younger generations don’t think about nuclear threat
as much. We did a good job of reducing that threat, but it never went
away. In some ways, it’s become worse. It’s more complex, more
diffuse, and there’s not as much attention on it.

The nuclear issue is a matter of minutes. Intercontinental ballistic
missiles in the United States or Russia can reach anywhere in the
world in about 33 minutes. If we get the nuclear problem wrong,
nothing else matters.

Climate change is a longer-term problem. And the potential conflicts
that could arise from it, like mass migration, can increase tension.
More nuclear-armed states with climate-related conflicts means the
likelihood of nuclear war increases. These threats are tied together.
All the more reason to be thinking about both at the same time.

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS SO FAR ON THE DIRECTION OF THE NEW PRESIDENTIAL
ADMINISTRATION?

I was pleased to see President Trump’s comments in Davos
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reducing nuclear threats. That was encouraging. But he is
also withdrawing from the Paris Agreement
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That is a step in the wrong direction.

Hopefully, the administration will see that there are economic and
security benefits to the U.S. pursuing a move to greener technology.

I hope there is an acknowledgment that climate change isn’t a matter
of belief. This is happening. You can choose not to believe in it, but
I guarantee that your insurance company believes in it. When that
starts financially impacting people across the country, they will be
looking to their leaders to do something about it.

IN WHAT WAYS DO YOU HOPE TO SHAPE THE WORK OF THE BULLETIN IN THE
YEARS AHEAD?

The Bulletin is trying to facilitate a public reckoning with
human-made existential risk. It’s been an increasingly exclusive
conversation, and I don’t want it to be that. I want people anywhere
to understand why this is so important, and why they have a part in
it.

I am from Tuxedo, N.C. — a place with no stoplights. My folks’
house got 40 inches of rain in two days from Hurricane Helene. The
havoc caused by a changing climate has now happened in a place like my
hometown. How do we connect those people into the conversation about
preventing this? It’s our job to make sure they are a part of it
just as much as people in the Beltway are.

It can be easy to look at these challenges and go to a dark place. The
harder thing is to let those challenges drive you. My mother is from
Finland, and we always talk about this Finnish ethos of “sisu” —
unstoppable grit in the face of extreme adversity. We need more sisu
in this field. We’ve inherited a mess, and we have to work together
to clean it up.

KATRINA MILLER [[link removed]] is a
science reporter for The Times based in Chicago. She earned a Ph.D. in
physics from the University of Chicago.

_Subscribe to the NEW YORK TIMES
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__

NEW JOURNAL CO-FOUNDED BY NIH NOMINEE RAISES EYEBROWS, MISINFORMATION
FEARS
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By Catherine Offord
Science
The Journal of the Academy of Public Health claims to open up
scientific communication. But its unusual editorial policies have some
scientists concerned
February 7,  Feb 2025

* Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
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* nuclear threat
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* Climate Change
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