Rachel: Absolutely, we really see our role in this as connecting the engaged and interested public with the science and policy experts – serving as a conduit, translator or engagement vehicle.
The conversation that the clock generates is unique and powerful, and we take our responsibilities of that extremely seriously.Īlex: That level of citizen engagement and openness is what initially led the Bulletin to be founded, would you say that’s your main aim, to communicate this information to the public? What’s important to me is that we always connect it with the daily work of the board who set the time and the work of the organisation. The enormous power of it and the responsibility of presenting it is very compelling. I’ve worked at a number of different think tanks and idea generators and policy-related organisations, but I’ve never seen anything like the power of the Doomsday Clock to stop the global news cycle and generate a conversation around something really complicated and pivotal. I certainly knew of it when I got here, but I didn’t fully appreciate its power. Then the Doomsday Clock enters into that because – as I said before – it’s one of the most powerful graphics on the planet. In this moment, the subjects the Bulletin focuses on were vital, so I wanted to be a part of that. These issues are so important, especially for someone so interested in global security and the future of war and peace. So thinking about the role of the United States and its relationship with Russia, and the two nations controlling more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons. I took the job around February, 2015 and then in March that year The Economist was delivered to my door and the cover was, “A New Nuclear Age” – this notion that the architecture that has kept us safe for at least 50 years is collapsing, and we’re pulling out of arms control agreements because we don’t feel like they’re doing their job but we aren’t replacing them with anything better. Climate was having a serious effect in these countries too, and we know that it contributed to the Syrian crisis. Then pulling my head up and seeing that globally there were such changing realities on the nuclear landscape. So questions of nuclear weapons were really important to me and fast-changing in the areas I was looking at. Both from what I was seeing in the Middle East and what I understood as the need for policies and better engagement around key issues, for example, with the Iran deal, what Iran’s programme was doing, and how other countries were responding. But what interested me to make the jump to the Bulletin was not so much the Doomsday Clock, which is of course incredibly important and one of the most powerful images around the globe, but it was the issues the Bulletin works on day in, day out: nuclear risk, climate change and disruptive technologies. I’ve always known the Bulletin and I read it in graduate school like many people. Rachel Bronson: My background is American national security and global affairs, I’ve worked in different American think tanks and my area of expertise is the Middle East. As our global political climate continues to boil with intense unpredictability, Rachel Bronson, president and CEO of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, has set a dramatic new countdown with a critical chime.Īlex James Taylor: What first drew you to working with the Bulletin and particularly the Doomsday Clock? Since that original publication (set at seven minutes to midnight), the Clock has moved forwards and backwards as a wake-up call to humanity, responding to the likelihood of nuclear and climate threats. Originally conceived as a warning illustration for the cover of the first Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists – a publication detailing updates and warnings in nuclear weaponry created by a group of scientists who had been involved with the Manhattan Project – the clock has remained an enduring symbol of global man-made catastrophe. Moving forward twenty seconds from its previous setting in 2019, this unprecedented change calls for immediate action, symbolising two simultaneous existential dangers – nuclear war and climate change. The Doomsday Clock currently stands at 100 seconds to midnight (read: annihilation), expressing that humanity is the closest to self-destruction since the clock’s creation in 1947.
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