The doomsday clock: assessing risk by facile metaphor
Since 1947, highly credentialed scientists have published annual risk assessments in their flagship publication, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Founded in 1945, at the end of World War II, it issues its pronouncements through the organization’s Science and Security Board (SSB), in consultation with its Board of Sponsors. Initially focused solely upon the risk of nuclear war, in recent years it has branched out into the risks of various forms of biological and computer-generated catastrophe.
The founders’ conceptual device, introduced in 1947, was the Doomsday Clock (DC). Martyl Langsdorf, an artist married
to Manhattan Project physicist Alexander Langsdorf Jr., first set its hands at seven minutes to midnight because graphically, “it looked good to my eye.” The latest edition of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, published January 27, 2026, restates how the clock works: It uses “the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of a nuclear explosion (countdown to zero) to convey threats to humanity and the planet.”
The timeline shows that during its 80-year history, the clock has been updated 28 times: 20 times forward and eight times backward. The furthest the clock has been set is 17 minutes to midnight in 1991, at the end of the Cold War and the signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) by the United States and the Soviet Union. The 2026 update moved the clock to 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been. The pseudo-precision of measuring in seconds likely scares the public more than it informs.
Regarding nuclear risk, the new DC cites: (a) increasingly adversarial relations among the three largest nuclear powers, U.S., Russia and China; (b) the Russia-Ukraine War, in which Russia alluded to possible use of nuclear weapons; (c) the 2025 confrontation between India and Pakistan, which entailed “nuclear brinkmanship”; and the June 2025 12-Day War pitting the U.S. and Israel against Iran, during which the publication’s Science and Security Board (SSB) states:
… [the U.S. and Israel] launched aerial attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities suspected of supporting the country’s nuclear weapons ambitions. It remains unclear whether the attacks constrained these efforts — or if they instead persuaded the country to pursue nuclear weapons covertly.
Factors that further moved the DC were the belief that the Big Three are in “a full-blown arms race, in which all three powers are pursuing modernization of their nuclear arsenals.” America’s plan to deploy a space-based “Golden Dome” will, in the opinion of the SSB, ignite a space-based arms race and increase risk of conflict. Another concern is that such a race will undermine extended deterrence — i.e., the U.S nuclear umbrella that is aimed at, among other things, inducing our allies to refrain from producing (or otherwise obtaining) nuclear weapons. Finally, the expiration of the 2010 New START treaty between the U.S. and Russia, combined with the U.S.’s consideration of resuming nuclear testing, further raised overall nuclear risk.
Looking at the historical record of DC releases, several points emerge:
The signing of arms accords always moves the needle further away from midnight
Modernization and upgrading of nuclear arsenals always raise risk, as adversaries would counter with similar moves;
Any warnings given in the event of hostile nuclear use are provocations that always lead to reciprocal escalation;
Diplomacy is always the only way to reduce nuclear risk.
However, history is not so kind to such interpretations. Ukraine’s 1994 decision to send its nuclear arsenal — at 5,000 warheads, then the world’s third largest — to Russia removed a potentially formidable deterrent to Russia taking military action against Ukraine. The 1994 Budapest Memorandum, signed by the U.S., U.K. and Russia, guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Yet when Russia re-annexed Crimea in 2014 and invaded Ukraine in 2022, neither the U.S. nor the U.K. responded forcefully. (To be fair, Russia has paid a steep price for invading Ukraine. Two formerly neutral countries, Sweden and Finland, have joined NATO.) Nor did Moscow’s nuclear threats prevent Ukraine from launching deep strikes into Russia, targeting infrastructure and even military bases. One drone strike disabled an estimated 25 percent of Russia’s strategic bomber force, a move that during the Cold War, even if done without using nuclear weapons, would surely have led Moscow to escalate, quite possibly, by going nuclear.
Nor did unilateral disarmament work well with Libya. In 2004, when longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi unilaterally surrendered its nuclear program, the country was left defenseless when the U.S. under former President Obama stood by as the country was invaded and torn asunder.
Most incredible is the quotation above from the 2026 DC, regarding the regime in Tehran, which states that Iran “may have been persuaded to pursue nuclear weapons covertly.” That is, of course, precisely what Iran has done since 2002, when its incipient program was first exposed by an Iranian opposition group. Since then, Iran has repeatedly been caught scrubbing sites before nuclear inspectors arrive, has denied inspectors access to certain nuclear sites, and has enriched uranium to 60 percent purity — three times the 20 percent needed for medical research and 17 times the level required to operate a commercial nuclear power reactor. In early 2026, Iranian negotiators privately admitted to their American counterparts, without apparent shame, that Iran controlled enough 60 percent-enriched uranium to produce 11 nuclear bombs after further enrichment to 90 percent.
The DC, as noted above, treats signing any nuclear accord as progress, without waiting to see whether the parties abide by it. History shows rogue powers never do; the former Soviet Union consistently violated all arms accords it signed before Mikhail Gorbachev’s ascent in 1985. When such violations became public, arms control advocates either denied their significance or claimed the violations were not proven.
North Korea clandestinely developed its nuclear arsenal, despite having signed the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), from which it exited in 2002, when it announced that it had detonated a nuclear device, and violating the agreed framework nonproliferation accord it signed with the U.S. in 1994.
Pakistan clandestinely purloined necessary technical data for its program, which it started after India’s 1974 nuclear test. Iran had signed the NPT on the first day (July 1, 1968) it was put out for signature, as did the U.S. But after the 1980-88 war with Iraq, it turned the Shah of Iran’s commercial program into a quest for military nuclear capability.
The U.K. and France openly pursued military nuclear programs as well. (Israel, for its part, officially is not a member of the nuclear club, but everyone knows that they have an arsenal.)
The DC treats offensive and defensive missiles as equally threatening. It ignores the potential deterrent value of highly effective defenses, which could make it virtually impossible for a first strike to destroy enough targets to prevent a devastating retaliation.
A final historical note: After the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings forced a rapid end to the Pacific War, the U.S. offered in 1948 to surrender its nuclear monopoly, per the Baruch Plan, by turning its arsenal over to international control. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin rejected the plan.
Bottom line: Because diplomacy has limited value, deterring or defeating hostile nuclear powers is essential. A Doomsday Clock that reflects these harsh realities would be far more useful than it is today.
