EA - New 80k problem profile: Nuclear weapons by Benjamin Hilton

The Nonlinear Library

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: New 80k problem profile: Nuclear weapons, published by Benjamin Hilton on July 21, 2024 on The Effective Altruism Forum.
Note: this post is a (minorly) edited version of a new 80,000 Hours problem profile.
As the searingly bright white light of the first nuclear blast faded away, the world entered a new age.
Since July 16, 1945, humanity has had access to technology capable of destroying civilisation.
Amidst rising tensions and the return of war to Europe, we're potentially seeing the start of a new nuclear arms race.
Meanwhile, the community of brilliant minds who worked throughout the Cold War to prevent nuclear catastrophe has all but disappeared.
And that's a problem.
It's a problem because the threat of nuclear destruction is still with us. But that also means that by addressing that threat, we could make humanity more likely to endure.
Summary
It's very plausible that there will be a nuclear war this century. If that does happen, there's a reasonable chance that war would cause some kind of nuclear winter, potentially killing billions, and possibly causing an existential catastrophe.
Nuclear security is already a major topic of interest for governments, but has little attention from philanthropists and NGOs, so we think there are likely some neglected opportunities to reduce the risk.
Most opportunities to influence the risk from nuclear weapons seem to be through working in government, researching key questions, working in communications to advocate for changes, or attempting to build the field (for example, by earning to give).
Our overall view
Recommended. Working on this issue seems to be among the best ways of improving the long-term future we know of, but all else equal, we think it's less pressing than our highest priority areas.
Scale
We believe work to reduce the probability of nuclear war has the potential for a large positive impact, as nuclear war would have devastating effects, both directly and through secondary effects such as nuclear winter. We think the chance of a nuclear war in the next 100 years is something like 20-50%. Estimates of the existential risk from nuclear war within the next 100 years range from 0.005-1%. We think the existential risk from nuclear war is around 0.01%.
Neglectedness
Current spending is around $1 billion per year (quality-adjusted). However, philanthropic spending is only around $30 million per year, and so we'd guess there are high-impact neglected opportunities to reduce the risk.
Solvability
Making progress on nuclear security seems somewhat tractable, and there are a variety of intermediate goals we might aim to achieve which could help. However, there's a real risk of causing harm.
How likely is a nuclear war?
From 1945 until 1991, much of the world lived in full knowledge that a constant threat of nuclear war loomed. Schoolkids did regular drills to prepare for nuclear attack; hundreds of thousands of fallout shelters were built across Europe and North America.
After the end of the Cold War, fear of nuclear war gradually fell out of the public consciousness. But while the landscape of the threat has changed, the risk remains surprisingly - and scarily - high.
Surveys of experts and superforecasters are one way we can try to put a number on the chances of some kind of nuclear war.
Here's a table of every estimate we could find since 2000:
Definition
Annualised probability
Probability by 2100
Source
Nuclear weapon kills > 1,000 people
0.54%
33.34%
Existential Persuasion Tournament (2022), superforecasters
Nuclear weapon kills > 1,000 people
0.61%
37.09%
Existential Persuasion Tournament (2022), domain experts
Nuclear attack
2.21%
81.50%
Lugar expert survey (2005)
Nuclear war
1.00%
53.18%
Applied Physics Laboratory (2021), Chapter 4
Nuclear detonation by a state actor causing at least 1 fatality
0.40%
26.11%
Goo...