Harvard's Matthew Bunn on the factors driving the risk of nuclear war — and how we shift them toward greater safety, for ourselves and for future generations.
Some of the most consequential decisions our civilization makes — decisions that will shape the lives of countless future generations — concern nuclear weapons and the risk of nuclear war. Harvard's Matthew Bunn will join Long Now Boston to take the long view on one of humanity's defining challenges.
A nuclear war is unlikely to come "out of a clear blue sky." It is far more likely to arise from a crisis or conflict between nuclear-armed states that escalates step by step. Bunn offers a structured way of thinking about reducing the risk at each of those steps: lowering the chance of conflict among nuclear-armed states in the first place; keeping any conflict that does occur from crossing the nuclear threshold; and ensuring that, if nuclear weapons are ever used, the exchange does not escalate to hundreds or thousands of weapons.
Drawing on decades of work on nuclear security and arms control, Bunn will explore the key factors driving the risk of nuclear war today and the practical levers — technical, diplomatic, and political — that can shift those factors toward greater safety over the coming decades.
Matthew Bunn
Matthew Bunn is the James R. Schlesinger Professor of the Practice of Energy, National Security, and Foreign Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, and Co-Principal Investigator of the Belfer Center's Project on Managing the Atom. His research focuses on nuclear theft and terrorism, nuclear proliferation and measures to control it, and the future of nuclear energy.
