Global catastrophic risk can be viewed from various perspectives – economic, security, technological, scientific, environmental, humanitarian, ethical. Ultimately, it is challenge for governance. How do political leaders think, decide and govern in, and for, a deteriorating risk environment? This month’s briefing explores this question.

Inside Global Shield

Updates on Global Shield’s work and team.

United States

Global Shield US is tracking the latest developments of the Farm Bill – a piece of legislation covering food, agricultural and nutritional policies typically reauthorized every five years, but which has received one-year extensions for the past three years. In March, the House Agriculture Committee sent a bill to the floor, but the prospects of the Farm Bill passing in this session of Congress are slim. We continue to advocate for policies that would increase the US food system’s preparedness and security to catastrophic threats, and will support the adoption of policies under the Administration’s “Farm Security is National Security” agenda in furtherance of these goals.

Australia

Global Shield Australia welcomed the release of the Independent Review into Australia’s Security of Critical Infrastructure (SOCI) Act. This Act is a key legal framework governing Australia’s critical infrastructure sector. The Independent Review made a number of recommendations aligned with Global Shield’s submission, including in relation to considering artificial intelligence (AI) risk and clarifying emergency response powers. Global Shield will also engage as part of Australian Government consultations aimed at enhancing government powers for handling major critical infrastructure incidents.

Under the lens

A closer look at a GCR policy matter.

The policy trade-offs for global catastrophic risk reduction

Global catastrophic risk researchers have conducted the first systematic study of what locations are most resilient to a range of global catastrophic threats. According to the review, no country is resilient against all kinds of global catastrophic risk. As the authors state, “There is truly no place to hide.” Australia and New Zealand were the most resilient across the widest range of scenarios but still remained vulnerable to some scenarios due to their integration in global trade systems.

Four factors were most critical for resilience to GCR: geographic isolation, self-sufficiency of critical goods like food, governance quality, and decentralisation of governance and infrastructure. The authors state that, “Of these, governance quality and decentralisation stand out as both modifiable through policy and largely free of cross-GCR trade-offs.” But they assess that these factors are currently trending in the wrong direction, given that “Democracies are in decline globally…Inequality is rising for the majority of the world’s population…[and] Supply chains are increasingly concentrated and globalised”.

Policy comment: Reducing global catastrophic risk can cause difficult trade-offs for policymakers. Not only does it compete for attention and resources with public priorities like health and education, it struggles against salient threats like terrorism and natural disasters. Further, as the study details, some GCR policies might have countervailing impacts depending on the scenario. For example, centralized governance systems can support crisis response and national mobilization, but can create single points of failure and foster poor local resilience.

Governments must therefore consider a range of policy options for tackling global catastrophic risk based on their costs, benefits and cross-portfolio impacts. They should prioritize policies that will face little trade-offs or create co-benefits across threat domains and policy issues. These interventions include: building state capacity; increasing social cohesion and community-level resilience; decentralizing food and energy supply chains; near-shoring or onshoring domestic production; protecting and decentralizing infrastructure; and increasing public risk communication and awareness. Such policies would help reduce catastrophic risk while providing a range of positive externalities for social and economic goals.

A governance system for the 21st century

The Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor has released its 2026 edition. It notes that the number of warheads available for military use increased in 2025 for the ninth consecutive year, reaching an estimated 9,745 – an increase of 141 warheads from the previous year and a continuation of a trend that started in 2017. A total of 99 countries are now parties or signatories to the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). The total number of states opposed remained at 44.

The World Meteorological Organization has released its State of the Global Climate 2025. It states that “The past three years are the three warmest years in the 176‑year combined land and ocean observational record.” Eight of the ten most negative annual glacier mass balances since 1950 have occurred since 2016, with the ice sheets on Antarctica and Greenland having lost significant mass since satellite records began. Furthermore, ocean heat content reached the highest level in the 66-year observational record, with the rate of ocean warming over the past two decades being more than twice that observed over the period 1960-2005.

The second edition of the International AI Safety Report was released in February. It covers the increasing capability of AI for malicious use – including influence and manipulation campaigns and criminal activity using AI-generated content, cyberattacks, and biological and chemical weapons development – as well as the systemic risk from labor market impacts and human autonomy. It also found that “since the last Report, it has become more common for models to distinguish between test settings and real-world deployment and to find loopholes in evaluations, which could allow dangerous capabilities to go undetected before deployment.”

Policy comment: These reports have little overlap, but they point to one overarching message: global risk is worsening and with no immediate reversal in sight. Reading these reports together indicates that the world seems to have entered a new risk paradigm in the late 2010s and early 2020s. It therefore raises a key question for policymakers: How fit are governance systems for the 21st-century risk environment? The way governments have operated in the past might not be sufficient for the coming decades. Core assumptions of governing might need to be overturned. For example: long planning horizons for infrastructure and defense investments; slow policy-making and regulatory processes; the siloing of expertise and policy areas; implicit legitimacy and trust in democratic processes; fiscal capacity and time to recover from a crisis; a web of international institutions, rules, norms and partners. The modern risk landscape forces governments to re-imagine how they make decisions, allocate budgets, engage citizens, and respond to global shocks.

On the radar

Upcoming events and activities that we are tracking.

Food security

The conflict in the Middle East is disrupting supply of critical agricultural inputs, especially fuel and fertilizer. For example, both production and shipping of urea, the primary fertilizer for staples like wheat and rice, has been cut and prices have escalated just as the Northern Hemisphere spring planting season begins. The second and third-order impacts – yield losses, herd liquidation, feed cost inflation, food shortages, political instability – are likely to take years to manifest.

Defense conferences

Two upcoming conferences – the London Defence Conference at Whitehall and the Stockholm Civil Defence Forum – provide an opportunity for Global Shield NATO to engage with key government and industry stakeholders on NATO Article 3 and the 1.5% Hague Summit commitment.

Non-proliferation

The 2026 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference (RevCon) is taking place at the UN HQ in New York from April 27 to May 22. The Preparatory Committees of 2023, 2024 and 2025 failed to agree on any consensus recommendations. The 2026 RevCon is likely to be highly contested given the geopolitical dynamics, current conflicts, and growing support for TPNW among non-nuclear states.

UR26 call for proposals

The Understanding Risk Global Forum 2026 (UR26), taking place in Abu Dhabi from 19–23 October 2026, is calling for proposals to share insights, innovations, and research on disaster risk resilience. This year’s themes include AI, preparedness, response and future-ready systems, and the disaster-conflict nexus. Submissions close 30 April.

Strategic competition between major powers has dominated the geopolitical landscape over the past decade. But as this month’s briefing highlights, middle powers and regional groups have a major role in reducing global catastrophic risk. From India to Australia to other OECD countries, from ASEAN to the EU to NATO, averting catastrophe will require all countries, regions and coalitions to take action.

Inside Global Shield

Updates on Global Shield’s work and team.

We welcome Jobe Solomon as Director of NATO Policy. Jobe brings a deep expertise in defense policy, transatlantic security, civil-military coordination, and resilience-building across multiple countries. Jobe will lead our advocacy within the Alliance, which will focus on advancing adherence to the existing seven baseline requirements for resilience, including assured continuity of government and critical government services, ability to deal with mass casualties and disruptive health crises, and resilient food and water resources.

International

Global Shield made a submission to the Public Consultation for the draft OECD Recommendation on the Governance of Critical Risks. The current version of this OECD recommendation, which was adopted in 2014, provides guidance to governments of the 38 member states on managing strategically significant risk. It is a benchmark for national risk management.

In our submission, we strongly supported the updated guidance. The guidance outlines useful and practical steps for managing risk, such as around anticipating critical risks, fostering continuity of government and critical infrastructure resilience, coordinating a whole-of-society effort to mitigate risk, and establishing crisis management authorities and processes. If a government were to deliver on only part of the guidance, they would be world-leading – demonstrating the chasm between current effort and world’s best practice. We would encourage all governments, not just those of the OECD, to compare their current policies, programs and activities against the final Recommendation, once released, and implement key recommendations.

United States

The US Congress is making progress on modernizing the Defense Production Act. This Act has recently gained prominence and attention due to the use of its authorities to direct and revitalize the US industrial base, and as the legal cornerstone of efforts during COVID-19 to scale production of personal protective equipment and other countermeasures. Global Shield US has been championing the modernization of the DPA, particularly to enable the greater involvement of private sector expertise in the planning for and response to national security crises, including global catastrophes.

Under the lens

A closer look at a GCR policy matter.

The role of middle powers in AI progress, diffusion and governance

The India AI summit, held on 16–21 February in New Delhi, drew over 20 heads of government, delegations from 118 countries, more than 100 global AI CEOs, and over 250,000 participants. It was the first of the AI summits hosted by a Global South nation. The main outcome was the India AI Impact Summit Declaration, endorsed by 92 countries and international organisations, which affirmed principles around equitable AI diffusion, trusted AI frameworks, scientific collaboration, and workforce reskilling.

A new report by Chatham House states that “Middle powers that fail to secure influence over the development, deployment and governance of artificial intelligence (AI) will likely forfeit control over their economies, societies, political systems and positions in the global economy.”

A new report by the Foundation for American Innovation assesses that middle powers have both the most to lose and gain from AI transformation “because they have significant institutional and industrial capacity but without frontier AI development capability.” The main challenges middle powers will need to contend with are the likely upending of economic and industrial strategies, erosion of states’ ability to govern and balance shift between offense and defense.

In a recent post, argues for AI safety advocates in middle powers to shift focus to national sovereignty and AI strategies, AI deployment, and resilience rather than an attempt to shape AI development in the US and China.

Southeast Asian countries are also leaning into AI policy and governance. For example, Vietnam has become the first country in the region to develop an AI Law, which took effect on 1 March. Indonesia is “positioning itself as a proactive player in both national and regional AI governance”, according to local media. In Malaysia, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Governance Bill is being drafted by the government to address increasingly complex technological threats, including the misuse of deepfake technology.

Policy comment: The development of AI is heavily dictated by the US and China, and their respective technology ecosystems. However, middle powers are not powerless. Or, at least, their actions will determine how much influence they have over AI companies and over AI’s impact on their economies and societies. A middle power strategy for AI should therefore be based on a foundation of domestic sovereignty, stability, and resilience. By developing this approach, middle powers will be able to better navigate the uncertainty of AI progress. And they would be more able to participate in global AI progress and global governance, and more easily form coalitions that temper and navigate US-China competition.

Such a strategy could cover three areas:

• First, middle powers could take a preparedness-first approach to domestic AI governance. This would ensure they are prepared for, and can effectively respond to, potential harms, such AI-enabled crime and terrorism, highly disruptive economic dislocations, breakdown in social cohesion and public trust, and rising risk of international conflict and instability.

• Second, they could focus on developing a specialized component or role in the AI supply chain, such as R&D, talent, compute and critical minerals. This allows the middle power to influence and participate in AI developments, and be at the negotiating table of global governance.

• Third, they could establish mechanisms to engage with and participate in frontier AI development and diffusion. For example, they could maintain domestic technical capacity to evaluate and monitor AI models, and maintain formal channels with frontier AI developers. And they could build a dedicated technology assessment capability to monitor and anticipate AI disruptions. This enables middle powers to shape rather than receive the terms of AI progress.

On the radar

Upcoming events and activities that we are tracking.

Resilience conferences

Global Shield Australia will be participating in two resilience-focused conference in March: the Australian National University National Security College’s annual conference (”Securing our Future: a ready and resilient Australia“) and the Department of Home Affairs’ Critical Infrastructure Conference (”Resilient Connections“).

EU preparedness

We are tracking updates to the delivery of the EU Preparedness Union Strategy, which reaches its one-year mark on 25 March. A “European Security Strategy” is also expected in the coming months. EU citizens are being invited to share their experiences and ideas on preparedness. The EU-NATO cooperation on resilience will be a focus of our Director of NATO Policy.

Global conflicts

New conflicts erupted around the world in the past month. The hostilities in Iran and the wider Middle East region have been the most significant. The October 2025 ceasefire between Pakistan and Afghanistan has broken after recent militant attacks in Islamabad, leading to further cross-border hostilities. The International Crisis Group identified 13 conflicts that deteriorated in February. We are deeply concerned about the impact of global tensions on global catastrophic risk, such as the use and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the risk of escalation, and supply chain disruptions.

The start of every year typically comes with a swath of global risk lists and assessments. From scientists, think tanks, risk specialists, geopolitical consultants, insurance companies – each have their own view. Regardless of the methodology, the message is clear: 2026 is a year of disruption, complexity and uncertainty. Policymakers will need to remain agile and adaptable to the times.

In the spirit of adaptability, we are tweaking our regular briefing. You’ll still be receiving our insights into the latest on global catastrophic risk from around the world. We’ll also be sharing a little more about what Global Shield has been up to, and what we’re tracking in the coming months.

What we’ve been doing

Global Shield has had a busy start to the year. To support our global growth, we have been looking to hire a Director of NATO Policy, US Policy Manager, and Operations Associate. The Operations Associate role is still open! The role will help manage and grow the operational infrastructure of Global Shield’s current and future offices. It is for the natural builder. Someone who wants to help a young organization grow and thrive. Someone who enjoys helping others achieve their best. Someone who has grand ambitions and is ready to roll up their sleeves to achieve those ambitions. If this sounds like you, apply now.

Australia

Australia continues to provide opportunities to advance policies that reduce global catastrophic risk. Global Shield Australia’s recent focus has been supply chain resilience and AI risk in the context of Australia’s foreign and trade policy. Global Shield Australia made a submission to the Southeast Asia Free Trade Agreement Modernisation Review outlining how Australia can use trade agreements to strengthen supply chain resilience and build a trusted AI trade agenda with ASEAN partners. We are also engaging the government on the development of an Australian Government Strategy for International Engagement and Regional Leadership on Artificial Intelligence, as outlined in the National AI Plan released in December 2025.

United States

The US office is hard at work on the reauthorization and modernization of the Defense Production Act (DPA). The DPA was given a one-year extension under the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). We continue our efforts to advocate for a full five-year reauthorization, along with improvements to the act that would improve Congressional oversight and Executive Branch implementation.

Policy

Our Policy function has been diving deeper into how governments can plan for and respond to major AI incidents, or “AI crises”. An AI incident would reach crisis-level when it causes wide-ranging harm across multiple sectors or jurisdictions and severe disruptions to a country’s economy, security, or society. As malicious actors become increasingly able to use AI to conduct attacks, and as AI becomes increasingly embedded in critical infrastructure, such crises become more likely and harmful. We are investigating a range of possible policy responses.

What we’ve been tracking

Keeping an eye on global risk indicators

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board has set the Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds to midnight, the closest the Clock has ever been to midnight in its history. Alexandra Bell, president and CEO of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said: “The Doomsday Clock’s message cannot be clearer. Catastrophic risks are on the rise, cooperation is on the decline, and we are running out of time. Change is both necessary and possible, but the global community must demand swift action from their leaders.”

The World Economic Forum released their Global Risks Report 2026. It is developed based on a survey of the views of 1,300 global leaders and experts across academia, business, government, international organizations and civil society to gauge perceptions of global risk. The report warns that, “global risks continue to spiral in scale, interconnectivity and velocity, 2026 marks an age of competition. As cooperative mechanisms crumble, with governments retreating from multilateral frameworks, stability is under siege”. According to the report, 50 percent of respondents viewed the risk of global catastrophe to be “looming” or “elevated” over a two-year time frame – up from 36 percent in last year’s report. Over a ten-year time frame, that figure sits at 62 percent, up from 57 percent last year. Only one in 10 viewed the global outlook as likely to be calm or stable over both time frames.

Other business-focused annual risk reports were also recently released, including:

• Eurasia Group’s Top Risks for 2026, which highlighted the risk that “some AI companies will adopt extractive business models that threaten social and political stability” and that “water is becoming a loaded weapon in several of the world’s most dangerous rivalries”.

• EY-Parthenon’s 2026 Geostrategic Outlook, which notes that “The world is entering 2026 amid a period of heightened uncertainty. The disruptive forces of transformation are increasingly non-linear, accelerated, volatile and interconnected”. It ranks sovereign AI and cyber conflicts, and water scarcity as two of the Top 10 geopolitical developments in 2026.

• Allianz’s Risk Barometer, which is based on the ratings of 3,338 risk management experts from 97 countries and territories. Cyber was the greatest concern, and artificial intelligence climbed to second, after being tenth in the previous year. Both cyber and AI ranked as top five concerns for companies in almost every sector. The report states that “As AI adoption accelerates and becomes more deeply embedded in core business operations, respondents expect related risks to intensify.”

• The Stimson Center’s Ten Top Risks for 2026, which lists climate decline, a third nuclear era, and AI disruption as three major concerns.

• Control Risks’ Riskmap2026, which notes that “Natural disasters, infrastructure failures and inter-state tensions may not reach headlines, but their implications for people, supply chains, and security are often no less profound. Each straw is a potential breaking point.”

Policy comment: Policymakers must recognize that catastrophic risk is not only a national security challenge, but front and centre for businesses and corporate executives. And the private sector is looking to policymakers for guidance, support and regulations on how to navigate treacherous times. In the meantime, these risk perceptions could impair capital allocation and investment, especially when corporate executives cannot be confident that their business operations, supply chains, and infrastructure will be resilient to complex and systemic risk. Governments should take immediate action to respond to increasing corporate alarm. They could coordinate and communicate with corporate executives to understand their greatest concerns, where they are most vulnerable, and how they might need support. Policymakers should share risk assessments and threat intelligence to inform boards and corporate executives – a practice common with critical infrastructure sectors but one that could be expanded further. They could also help develop market mechanisms that increase preparedness and resilience in the private sector. Guidance for preparedness would also be helpful, such as the recent release of the “In case of crisis or war: Preparedness for businesses” pamphlet circulated by Sweden’s government.

What we’re tracking next

Below are some events and activities over the following month worth keeping an eye on.

Nuclear

The nuclear arms control treaty, New START, expired on 4 February, the first time in 40 years that the US and Russia have been without a nuclear arms control treaty. We’ll be following the policy statements and news reporting on how major powers are seeing this new era of nuclear diplomacy.

Risk governance

The OECD is inviting comments on the draft revised Recommendation on the Governance of Critical Risks. The document helps set a standard for OECD member states to fulfil in their national risk governance and management.

Artificial intelligence

India is hosting the AI Impact Summit 2026 on February 16-20, following on from the AI Action Summit 2025 in France and the Korea AI Summit 2024. AI risk and safety is playing a less prominent roles in these summits compared to earlier iterations.

Space

We’re excited by Artemis II, the NASA mission to orbit the Moon, which was scheduled for mid-February but delayed until at least early March. The mission will test the Orion spacecraft and life support systems with crew aboard before attempting a moon landing on Artemis III, which would occur no earlier than 2028.

As the year comes to a close, it is time to take stock. Is global risk increasing or decreasing? Is our preparedness building or declining? Is governance strengthening or weakening? Are governments collaborating or splitting? Are people getting more hopeful or more gloomy? Are our problems getting harder or easier?

If you sit on the side of the spectrum that leans more despairing or cynical or worried, and you’re looking out to the next year with concern, know that there are many, many people, working every day to create a world that is safe, secure, healthy and flourishing.

They are building the governance structures we need, even when progress feels slow. They are forging collaborations across borders, sectors and parties, even when relationships are strained. They are developing the tools, the systems and the knowledge that might make the difference when it matters most. They are leading with guts and heart when the world needs more of both. And, often, they are doing so without fanfare.

Perhaps you’re one of them. Perhaps you’re trying to figure out how to be.

So for those fighting in the ring, take your well-earned rest. Reflect on the year that’s gone, strategize for the year ahead, and then get back out there.

If you’re outside the ring, we need all the help we can get. The stakes are too high to keep quiet, sit it out or throw in the towel.

See you in the new year!

Resolving the governance gap

Global Challenges Foundation has released their Global Catastrophic Risks 2026 report. It provides individual sections on the example threats of climate change, ecological collapse, weapons of mass destruction, military AI, and near-Earth asteroids. Each threat is paired with a section on the governance challenges. The report is a useful stock-take on global catastrophic risk, both individually and collectively, as at the end of 2025.

A core theme throughout the report is interconnectivity: “Global risks are becoming increasingly interconnected, accelerating and reinforcing one another across environmental, technological and security domains. As this report shows, outdated governance, rising geopolitical tensions, and fragmented institutions leave humanity exposed. Addressing escalating systemic threats requires renewed legitimacy, stronger cooperation and a more adaptive, anticipatory global governance architecture capable of managing shared risks.”

The report identifies a number of shifts that need to occur to manage global catastrophic risk. For example, it states that governance needs to shift from fragmentation to connection and adaptability: “States, institutions and funders must work together to build bridges between systems so we can manage global risks as the interconnected challenges they are.”

Policy comment: Humanity faces a widening governance gap. Like a leaky house with poor foundations, governance systems are not built for 21st century risk. They are struggling to manage long-standing threats we’ve yet to solve – like nuclear risk and climate change. New dual-use technological threats, like AI and synthetic biology, are emerging faster than institutions can adapt. And existing governance has little ability to manage the intersection of threats, like the cyber-AI-nuclear nexus in global security, or the climate-energy-food-water nexus facing our economic and environmental systems. Governance architecture, at both global and national levels, remains fragmented. It is designed for an era when challenges could be addressed separately, when institutions had time to evolve in response to emerging threats, and when problems respected the boundaries of issue areas and ministerial portfolios. Calling the governance gap a “catastrophic threat” in and of itself is probably a step too far – but it needs to be treated with the same level of urgency and imagination. For example, at the national level, governments should modernize laws they hav relied upon for traditional national security threats to be more all-hazards in focus. At the international level, governments should build on commitments made in bilateral and multilateral fora to establish shared resilience across borders, as true global catastrophic threats will not respect them.

Institutionalizing global risk reduction

The 30th gathering of the Conference of the Parties under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – or COP30 for short – met in Belém, in the north of Brazil, over 10-21 November. A Heads of State Summit was held earlier in the month. COP30 concluded with mixed results, characterized by minimal progress on key mitigation issues like fossil fuels, but was considered a step forward on adaptation finance and social equity. Before the event, the Brazilian leadership sought to frame COP30 as the “Implementation” COP or the COP of “truth”. Brazil’s President wrote an op-ed on how Brazil is seeking to lead on preventing and addressing climate change.

As the key multilateral forum for climate change action, the annual COP meetings provide an opportunity for organizations to release their latest research into climate change. The Lancet released the 2025 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change. The report, produced by 128 experts from more than 70 academic institutions and UN agencies, noted that “the higher temperatures and the increasing size of vulnerable populations have led to a 63% increase in heat-related deaths since the 1990s”. Another group of climate scientists released their “2025 state of the climate report.” Key highlights of the year include 22 of 34 planetary vital signs sitting at record levels and that “warming may be accelerating, probably driven by reduced aerosol cooling, strong cloud feedbacks, and a darkening planet.” The Global Tippings Point Report 2025 notes that global warming, which will soon exceed 1.5°C, “puts humanity in the danger zone where multiple climate tipping points pose catastrophic risks to billions of people.” Already warm-water coral reefs and polar ice sheets are approaching tipping points, each of which could impact hundreds of millions.

Policy comment: COP30 – ten years since the Paris Agreement – mostly did not meet the expectations of civil society and countries that want to see continued meaningful progress towards climate goals. However, annual summits like these are irreplaceable. They create opportunities for countries to lead on the global stage, for policymakers to make new commitments, for domestic constituencies to pressure their governments, for civil society to access power, and for researchers to publish their work. No other catastrophic threat receives such a strong and regular forcing function. Non-proliferation treaty review conferences happen every five years, with limited non-state participation and minimal public visibility. Pandemic preparedness, under the auspices of the World Health Organization, was boosted by the recent “Pandemic Treaty” but has mostly lost multilateral and national momentum. The Convention on Biological Diversity has its own Conference of the Parties meetings focused on biodiversity loss, ecosystem protection, and genetic resources, but occur biennially and with very little political and media attention. The climate COPs have normalized the premise that climate change requires a collective global response. In a time of fragmenting multilateralism, COPs are – despite the gloomy climate outlook – a ray of hope. Civil society representatives and advocates for other catastrophic threats should look to them as an example for how to institutionalize sustained global coordination. The world might be very different from the 1990s, when COPs began. But a key lesson is that once they become routine, the infrastructure becomes self-reinforcing, especially when civil society mobilizes.

Our view – unsurprisingly – is that the world is becoming increasingly risky. The risk from climate change, pandemics, weapons of mass destruction, emerging technologies and mother nature is not reducing. Mostly because the political, societal, economic, technological and environmental drivers underpinning them are not being ameliorated. And countries are not taking enough action to get ready.

So let’s take a different angle, and conduct a simple thought experiment: if we manage to avoid a catastrophe, how did we do so? Perhaps, we are simply lucky. The risk keeps growing because we don’t address it, but we never quite tip over the precipice. Perhaps, we are plucky. We summon the smarts and courage to reduce the risk to a manageable level. Or, perhaps we come so close to a truly catastrophic event that we are forced to get our act together. Luck it, pluck it or duck it. Where do you land?

Building resilience among NATO Allies

On 25 June 2025, NATO Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in The Hague issued a declaration reaffirming their collective commitment to NATO and establishing a new 5 percent of GDP for defense spending commitment. As part of this commitment, the declaration states that “Allies will account for up to 1.5% of GDP annually to inter alia protect our critical infrastructure, defend our networks, ensure our civil preparedness and resilience, unleash innovation, and strengthen our defence industrial base.” Colloquially, this has become known as the 3.5+1.5 agreement, where the traditional military spending previously targeted at 2 percent has increased to 3.5 percent of GDP, and a new related category of spending to fulfil other NATO commitments on resilience now has an official 1.5 percent GDP target.

However, according to non-resident fellows of the Atlantic Council: “The problem is simple: No one knows exactly what counts toward that 1.5%, and the first progress check slated in the summit declaration is set for 2029. The declaration text provided no definitions, no annex of eligible categories, no oversight mechanism, and no reporting standards.”

Global Shield is seeking a Director of NATO Policy to help turn this pledge into reality. This role will seek to ensure this commitment delivers, such that NATO Allies ultimately make wise investments that improve their resilience to the wide array of 21st-century security threats. Ultimately, the efforts of the 32 NATO Allies to deliver on the 1.5 percent commitment will help prepare everyone, not just NATO, for global catastrophic risk, including by supporting civilian health systems, critical infrastructure, food and water resources, civil communication and transportation systems, and continuity of government (as stipulated in the seven baseline requirements for resilience). We’re looking for someone with deep NATO policy experience, strategic insight, and a passion for strengthening collective resilience. Read the full job description here, and if you are interested or would like to recommend someone for the position, please reach out.

Briefing Australian policymakers on AI risk

Over the past month, Global Shield Australia briefed Members of Parliament, Senators, policy officials, and industry partners on the need to urgently address the risk posed by the misuse of artificial intelligence (AI).

On 5 November, with partners Good Ancestors and CivAI, we demonstrated how public AI models can create deepfakes, supercharge phishing emails, and guide users through the steps necessary to make a bioweapon. Beyond illustrating the dangers of misused AI, Global Shield highlighted steps Australia can take immediately to reduce the risk of bad actors misusing AI. These include establishing monitoring and reporting of AI incidents to enable tracking and response to AI-related harms across the entire economy; and establishing specific security standards and obligations to prevent the misuse of advanced and high-risk AI models and applications by rogue actors.

Global Shield Australia also gave evidence to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, as part of their inquiry into the 2025 elections. At the hearing, Director of Global Shield Australia, Devon Whittle, provided the committee important insights into the potential impact of AI models on disinformation and misinformation during electoral processes. He stated that “The immediate threats — deepfakes, disinformation, and automated influence campaigns — are now familiar. But the deeper concern is how AI systems might subtly shape political views, often without users even realising this is occurring.”

Devon also presented at the Safeguarding Australia Summit on the threat posed by AI on cyber capabilities and critical infrastructure. He noted that: “There are a limited number of foundation AI models that are widely used to power a variety of tools and applications. As a result, failures at the model level can rapidly cascade across sectors.”

Navigating the political economy of AI investment

There have been major developments in artificial intelligence over the last month. Other newsletters, such as from The Centre for Security and Emerging Technology, Transformer News and Concordia, are better positioned to provide news and insights on AI progress.

But one topic has dominated AI and financial headlines recently: whether AI investment is a bubble. Some figures demonstrate the large quantities of funding going towards AI companies and the infrastructure required to support them. Venture capital firms have put $161 billion into AI startups this year, according to the Financial Times. Ten of them, including OpenAI and Anthropic, now have a collective valuation of $1 trillion. According to Reuters, about 46 percent of global venture funding for the third quarter of 2025 went towards funding AI companies. Meanwhile, the AI data-centers to be built in 2025 will suffer $40 billion of annual depreciation, doubling the $15-20 billion of revenue they are estimated to generate. Consulting firm, Bain, estimates that, by 2030, AI companies will need $US2 trillion in combined annual revenue to fund the computing power needed to meet projected demand, but their revenue is likely to be around $1.2 trillion.

Policy comment: Global Shield has no position on if there is an “AI bubble”. Regardless of whether it is a bubble, the large capital investment in AI and AI-related infrastructure could have implications for global catastrophic risk. Such large economic investment drives a large demand for return, creating additional competitive pressures between AI companies, and reducing incentives to install safety measures that might be perceived to slow innovation. Meanwhile, policymakers will anticipate, correctly or not, that such capital investments in AI will yield major economic and productivity benefits, potentially shaping the economic policy of their countries. AI companies will also have more funding to put towards lobbying governments around the world. This nexus between AI, finance and politics demonstrates that GCR reduction is not simply a function of technical capabilities or safety measures. As with climate change and nuclear weapons, the political economy of AI is becoming a key driver of the nature of any underlying global catastrophic risk from AI development, whether or not AI itself presents the technical risk that most AI scientists argue it does.

“Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.”

Attributed to physicist and Nobel laureate, Niels Bohr, as well as to baseball Hall of Fame player and manager, Yogi Berra (though first stated by Danish politician and a founder of Denmark’s social democracy, Karl Kristian Steincke), it captures the humility required when confronting uncertainty. Whether in politics, physics or baseball, prediction is bound to fail. The world is too complex and too unpredictable.

But deeply considering the future is not a futile exercise. Whatever answer one arrives at, the power lies in the path one took in getting there. The act of looking ahead disciplines the mind, illuminates blind spots, and tests our most core assumptions. It is a quiet rehearsal for the world that might be, and an invitation to build the world we want.

Building futures into policymaking

The European Commission (EC) has released its 2025 Strategic Foresight Report, the fifth in the series that started in 2020. The focus of the report was to set out a vision for a resilient EU 2040. It identified eight areas of action, including: harnessing the power of technology and research (including by shaping guardrails for high-impact technologies), strengthening long-term economic resilience, and strengthening democracy as a common good.

NATO’s Second Foresight Conference was held over 7-9 October, co-hosted by NATO Allied Command Transformation and the NATO Defence College. The event gathered senior officials, scholars and strategists to explore the challenges and opportunities shaping NATO’s long-term future. Day 2 focused on a “whole-of-society” approach to resilience, including societal readiness and investment in civil defense. Attendees participated in “Crisis Room 49”, an immersive exhibition that reimagines crisis response for future scenarios.

The Government of Finland has produced a 171-page “Report on the Future”. There were four scenarios covered in the report: “A world of cooperation”, “A world of tech giants”, “A confrontational world”, “A crumbling world”. The latter scenario described a chaotic and conflict-ridden world due to a major economic decline, trade wars, unfettered authoritarianism and irreversible global warming. The report also highlighted various wildcard scenarios, including “another is a new Ice Age in Europe, triggered by climate change and the collapse of the Gulf Stream ocean current.”

Policy comment: Futures and foresighting exercises can be an important mechanism to sensitize policymakers to risk and uncertainty. As decisionmakers’ apertures increasingly narrow, these efforts help broaden their lens to a wide array of possible future scenarios. The future could, of course, include a global catastrophe. The ability of futures work to shape policymaking is derived heavily from its integration with policymaking processes. For example, the futures question being explored should be guided by a senior policymaker or a relevant policy question. The topics addressed in the EC’s Strategic Foresight Reports are guided by the EU Parliament, and the Commission has a mandate to integrate foresight tools into policymaking. The Government of Finland report is delivered to its Parliament by the Prime Minister’s Office, which also coordinates the ministries’ joint foresight activities.

Ideally, a futures analysis process is conducted ahead of a major policy decision. It helps inform an understanding of the future on the policy (i.e., how the future will change the uses and utility of a policy), and the future of the policy (i.e., how the policy itself needs to evolve for the future). Including senior policymakers in the process is another way to better integrate futures and policymaking. Often, the value of the exercise is not the final report, but the process itself to get there. Getting senior ministers or officials in a room to speculate about the future will face resistance. But if the foresight exercise is conducted ahead of a highly consequential policy direction – such as a national security strategy or defense strategy – it will strengthen the policy decisions made as well as the commitment to the implementation of the policy.

Engineering an approach to geoengineering

The topic of geoengineering continues to heat up.

A Carnegie Endowment report looks at “Assessing Risks in the Era of Planetary Security”. The authors proposed a novel and holistic framework for geoengineering, which “poses three forms of global catastrophic risk”. First, a termination shock, whereby global temperatures increase rapidly if a deployed solution is stopped suddenly. Second, systemic destabilization, whereby geoengineering causes cascading failures in other societal and ecological systems. Third, the prospect of geoengineering solutions could delay meaningful emissions reductions and other climate change mitigations, leading to ‘overshoot’ of the 1.5 degree Celsius target.

In a new piece, The Council on Strategic Risks assesses that, “From a technical perspective, it is currently unlikely that a country could or would choose to weaponize solar geoengineering”. Rather, geoengineering fits within the broader security landscape due to its impact on geopolitics, on conflict or escalation miscalculations, or on destabilizing disinformation.

‘An article in Nature argues that the total cost of solar radiation management needs to account for non-technical costs or risk. For example, the authors consider geopolitical and political obstacles for agreeing or implementing a geoengineering solution. A delayed or mishandled effort could lead to the termination or overshoot described above.

The EC 2025 Strategic Foresight Report from above also comments on this topic: “Currently, there is no international framework to govern [geoengineering] research, testing or deployment. Still, several nations have the required capabilities and might test them, for example via stratospheric aerosol injection. Others, like the UK, are investing substantially in SRM [solar radiation management] research, thereby gaining knowledge and expertise as a basis for future evidence-based trade-offs and a role in international decision-making.”

Policy comment: Geoengineering is a useful representation of the problem of dealing with global catastrophic threats in siloes. As these pieces of research exemplify, geoengineering links to other global threats and challenges. It is a technical solution to, and potential exacerbator of, climate change. Like AI and bioengineering, it is an increasingly powerful technology with poor national and international governance. It links to the factors that make societies vulnerable to catastrophic risk as a whole, such as food and water system insecurity and mis- and dis-information. And like other catastrophic threats, the future of geoengineering risk is driven by a combination of scientific advancements, geopolitical tensions, rogue actors and multilateral breakdown. This complex policy challenge points to the need for governments to consider these issues holistically.

Given its complexity, exploring geoengineering governance should start small. A single country must take the lead on mapping the technical, societal, security, environmental and geopolitical challenges. Canada might be particularly well-placed. It hosts the NATO Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence (CCASCOE). And Canada has a strategic interest in protecting the Arctic from climate change as well as geoengineering. According to the North American and Arctic Defence and Security Network, “As the subject matter leader, Canada could also act as a neutral middle-power, and take a leadership role on the international stage, including leading negotiations on limits to research and deployment.”

Recognizing the nexus of AI and existing threats

“The potential risks of AI involvement in the design of pathogen-based bioweapons are increasing, although experts differed in their estimations of how quickly”, according to a new RAND report based on inputs from both AI and biotechnology experts. The experts assess that a catastrophic scenario – where AI could go rogue and autonomously design radically novel and dangerous pathogens – remain implausible, at least through 2027. There was consensus around the potential policy options, including monitoring of technological capabilities, reinforcing traditional biosecurity safeguards, fostering a culture of responsible AI use in biological research, and implementing regulatory and institutional safeguards.

A team at Microsoft “worked with four commercial DNA synthesis companies to stress test and develop patches for screening methods to greatly improve their ability to identify sequences that should be restricted”, the results of which they have published in Science. The team used AI to redesign toxins in a way that let them slip past biosecurity screening software. Microsoft says it alerted the US government and software makers, who have already patched their systems.

Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly, President Trump stated that “despite that worldwide catastrophe [the COVID-19 pandemic], many countries are continuing extremely risky research into bio-weapons and man-made pathogens…To prevent potential disasters, I’m announcing today that my administration will lead an international effort to enforce biological weapons convention.” He suggested the development of an AI verification system, noting that “[AI] it could be one of the great things ever, but it also can be dangerous.”

Policy comment: As policymakers and advocates seek to manage AI risk, it is important to delineate between three general types of AI risk. First, AI exposes societies’ existing vulnerabilities, like mass economic dislocation or challenging information landscape. Second, advanced AI itself might pose an entirely new threat, as in a loss of control or “rogue AI” scenario. Third, AI enhances the capabilities of end-users to do harm across a very wide range of existing threat vectors. It is this third category that is receiving an increasing focus among AI safety advocates and national security practitioners because the consequences could be catastrophic.

Just about any harmful behaviour or action that previously relied on human intention and intelligence can be amplified with AI. Everyday harms, like online fraud and harassment, could be turbocharged. At the most catastrophic end, AI could be used in the development and deployment of biological, chemical, autonomous, cyber and nuclear weapons. The challenge for policymakers is how to address these three categories of AI risk in a holistic and comprehensive way while maximizing AI’s potential. All three categories are worthy of attention and policy efforts. But managing the nexus of AI and existing threats is potentially the most pressing.

Existing government assets and capabilities – like law enforcement, R&D, emergency response, security, defense, and intelligence – are already focused on the threat landscape. They must assess their ability to manage AI-exacerbated threats, especially as AI policy and regulations are still forming and maturing. Policymakers could direct their intelligence or technology assessment agencies to conduct a “net assessment” of AI risk. Like a “National Intelligence Estimate” process led by the US Office of National Intelligence, it would inform policy development to manage the three types of AI risk holistically.

Welcoming two new Global Shield members

Marvin Meintjies has joined as Brand and Communications Director. Helping to energize a range of stakeholders around our mission to shape policy and avert catastrophe, Marvin heads up public affairs, communications, and brand marketing for Global Shield.

With decades of international media experience as a journalist and editorial executive, Marvin has built his career by getting to the heart of the story. His wide-ranging experience includes leading commercial media titles, managing investigative units, and making impactful interventions as a foreign correspondent writing on international affairs. His deeply reported and researched humanitarian journalism for the United Nations helped to drive action in crisis response. He now leverages his expertise in communications, media, and stakeholder relations in the corporate affairs arena. Marvin is a passionate advocate for building a future in which humanity thrives.

We also welcome Maria Laura Starling. Laura leads Global Shield’s international growth by identifying promising countries for expansion, engaging with key partners and stakeholders, and ensuring the necessary legal, policy and operational foundations to establish new country offices.

Laura has built her career at the intersection of public policy and innovation in Brazil. She began as a Specialist in Public Policies and Government Management in Minas Gerais, Brazil’s second-largest state. From 2020 to 2021, she played a central role in the COVID-19 Emergency Situation Room at the State Secretary of Health, helping to coordinate the state’s pandemic response. She later became Director of Open Innovation and Technological Entrepreneurship for the Government of Minas Gerais, where she oversaw HubMG GOV, the largest open innovation program for public administration in Latin America. Laura also co-founded Instituto Aleias, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing the number of women in leadership positions in the Brazilian public sector.

The critical insight from 2002 book, Ubiquity: Why Catastrophes Happen by Mark Buchanan, is that many catastrophes – whether natural or human-made – share a deep structural similarity. Complex systems can exist in a precarious balance in which small shifts could trigger dramatic outcomes. Decades, or even centuries, of seeming quiet can be disrupted in moments.

Take earthquakes. Deep beneath the Earth’s surface, tectonic plates grind against each other in slow, imperceptible motion. Over time, and in silence, this friction builds, inch by inch, as stress accumulates along fault lines. For years, nothing appears to happen. Then one day, without any obvious warning, the balance tips. A tiny crack propagates, a small slip cascades, and the accumulated tension unleashes its full force in a devastating seismic shock.

Under our feet, the metaphorical tectonic plates of the global order are grinding against each other. Emerging technologies. Geopolitical contest. Military capabilities. Economic reordering. Environmental pressures. Resource supply. Our systems look stable, or at least manageable, on the surface. But they are loaded with hidden fragility.

Before the plates dislocate on a catastrophic scale, we need to step up with urgency, courage, wisdom, and, ultimately, hope.

Creating urgency around nuclear risk

The UN’s Independent Scientific Panel on the Effects of Nuclear War – established under Resolution A/RES/79/238 – met for its inaugural meeting on 4-5 September. The panel brings together leading international experts to evaluate the catastrophic health and environmental consequences of a nuclear conflict. At this first meeting, experts presented on risk to infrastructure, long-term radiation effects, global public health, and global supply chains, among other topics.

Meanwhile, a number of articles point to the precarious global nuclear situation.

An article in the Japan Times neatly summarizes the negative trends in nuclear dialogue and disarmament, including increasingly adversarial nuclear dyads (such as US-China, US-Russia and India-Pakistan), buildup and modernization of nuclear capabilities, and failing institutions. According to the author, an expert in Pacific security issues, “the world is in a grim place when measured by nuclear metrics.”

A global anti-nuclear activist writes in The Diplomat about the role Kazakhstan has played on the nuclear disarmament. She offers concrete steps to reduce nuclear risk, including removing hair-trigger alert for the 2,100 nuclear weapons that can be launched within seconds, reaffirming the moratorium on nuclear testing, and preventing new frontiers of nuclear contest, like space and AI.

The New Yorker looks at why the public and policymakers do not take nuclear weapons as seriously as during the Cold War. The article focuses on the psychological aspects of nuclear war, given that so much authority is vested in the hands of national leaders, that deterrence relies on a perceived rationality of the opponent, and that the dynamics of personal relationships (between political leaders, or between crews operating nuclear-capable assets) are critical in moments of crisis.

A defense analyst notes that “while China, Russia and North Korea have been “Arms Racing” since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has been a side-line observer, and the current long delayed U.S. strategic force modernization program is replacing systems ageing out on a one-for-one basis.” A recent Foreign Affairs piece states that the US faces “a Category 5 hurricane of nuclear threats.”

Policy comment: Baseline nuclear risk is as high as it has ever been outside of temporary nuclear crises, like the Cuban Missile Crisis. And the risk will almost certainly grow over the next ten years. The core drivers of nuclear risk are all moving in the wrong direction: expansion and modernization of nuclear arsenals, intensifying geopolitical competition, potentially destabilizing emerging technologies, and growing global instability. And these factors outweigh those that keep the risk in check – multilateral institutions, taboos and norms, and pressure from non-nuclear states and civil society. Yet, despite this reality, the public, and most policymakers around the world, are not sufficiently aware of the level of risk, now or in the near future. Non-proliferation efforts are not receiving adequate attention or urgency, and will only become less effective over time. As the Japan Times article states, “We’ve reached the point where some experts believe that we need a genuine crisis to alert officials and publics to the problem and create a sense of urgency.”

Building multiple layers of defense for AI risk

Many governments are leaning heavily into pro-innovation stances in 2025. This shift is mostly shaped by a global race to remain competitive (and less of a ‘price-taker’ in AI), as well as precarious economic conditions around the world putting more onus on maximizing the opportunities. For example, since the start of the year, South Korea and Japan both legislated an AI Law, and steered it away from safety, and are focusing on making substantial investments in AI infrastructure and innovation. Germany is already pushing back against the regulation-forward implementation of EU AI Act. Australia, which was seriously contemplating a comprehensive AI Act late last year, has become much more circumspect, and is more likely to pursue an innovation-forward agenda without significant regulatory oversight.

Despite these trends, there are pockets of effort to retain AI safety on the agenda. Managing to navigate geopolitical uncertainty and multilateral blockers, the UN recently established the UN Independent International Scientific Panel on AI and the Global Dialogue on AI Governance. China’s government has been treating AI safety as a national security and public safety issue. Singapore, looking to play a greater convening role in global and regional AI governance, hosted the Singapore Conference on AI (SCAI): International Scientific Exchange on AI Safety, which resulted in the “Singapore Consensus on Global AI Safety Research Priorities”. And Brazil is currently debating a new AI Legal Framework Bill, which includes a commitment to safety and trust, such as a Competent Authority designated for oversight.

Policy comment: The growing emphasis on AI adoption as a driver of economic growth will probably slow or reduce the political feasibility of strict AI safety policies and frameworks. As a result, efforts to regulate AI comprehensively or through a single act might not be the most effective approach for advocacy. Instead, a range of more targeted policy efforts could create a “Swiss cheese model” of AI risk management - whereby multiple layers of defense can help protect from AI risk without the necessary political will for a more robust framework. For example, reducing AI risk from different angles can include: upgrading existing legislation (such as competition and privacy laws, consumer safety regulations, and transparency measures), focusing on the ability for state and non-state actors ability to create weapons of mass destruction, improving government use and procurement of AI, and enhancing crisis planning and last resort powers in case of emergency. Even in countries where legislation is either set or firming up, advocates can play an important role in shaping the implementation and future upgrades to the legislation. However, these advocacy efforts remain relatively limited, focused on the US and some European and Western countries.

Maximizing existential opportunity and hope

In a new report on existential risk, the Club of Rome is proposing a new paradigm: planetary peace. It notes that “Our existing international governance and security frameworks were not designed to address the modern and escalating risks we now face. Furthermore, in many ways those inherently siloed frameworks have caused or aggravated the very risks they are meant to manage. They are profoundly limited in their capacity to effectively prevent or reduce the existential threats facing humanity today.” It goes on to say that “Recognising existential risks not only alerts us to the many threats and challenges facing humanity but also unveils “existential opportunities” that could fundamentally change the trajectory of our collective future.”

A new book on existential hope has been released by Dr. SJ Beard, an existential risk researcher from the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. For Dr. Beard, “achieving existential security and sustainability for our species requires systemic solutions that are adaptable and long-lasting.” Existential hope is characterized by “courage (to acknowledge these problems), curiosity (to understand them) and compassion (to work on solving them together).”

Policy comment: These concepts – planetary peace, existential hope – might seem far-fetched, or even off-putting, to policymakers. However, this reaction points to the exact problem these thinkers are trying to solve; if the very phrasing strikes many as fanciful, then humanity has clearly reached a state of global risk where a fundamental rethink of our approach to security might be necessary, regardless of how you describe and brand it. In financial investment circles, the saying goes: “Protect the downside and the upside will take care of itself.” But that adage does not work for global risk. Reducing existential risk is necessary, but ultimately incomplete, work. It goes hand-in-hand with building a future for all countries, cultures and peoples to thrive. From a policymakers’ perspective, it might require different arms of government, different styles of communication, and different parts of the national consciousness. Where risk management leads a policymaker to certain ways of governing – security, defense, emergency management, environmental protection – opportunity and hope maximization leads them in other directions – culture, arts, economics, education, civics. The nations that will both survive and thrive in the 21st century will be led by policymakers who can marry these two priorities.

“Be alert but not alarmed.”

It’s what Australians were told in 2002 to warn them about the threat of terrorism. There was a large-scale media blitz, led by the prime minister. A dedicated hotline was set up – its number helpfully displayed on fridge magnets. And every household received a booklet detailing what to do in the event of an attack.

But the phrase transcends that context; it is now more relevant than ever. A simple slogan for a complex time. A pithy reminder of the dangers we face, from the local to the global, from the mildly inconvenient to the utterly catastrophic. A call for a shared commitment to safety and security.

More than that, it must be a trigger for action, not just for the everyday citizen, but all the way up to the highest office. For with alertness comes duty. To move past passive vigilance – towards preparedness, planning, and resilience, before the alarm bells toll.

Some, it seems, are ahead of others.

Crafting a national resilience strategy

The UK Government has published its “Resilience Action Plan”. It notes that “we cannot perfectly predict how risks will unfold, and across all risks we need some common systems and tools to respond. For this reason, the UK government also works to improve the general resilience of the nation to all risks - the ‘all hazards’ approach.”

It includes dozens of important commitments and actions, including developing a Risk Vulnerability Tool for highly vulnerable people and groups, establishing a “red team” capability to assess the next National Capabilities Assessment, building a comprehensive resilience measurement, developing a new Cyber Resilience Index, conducting an annual public survey of risk perception and preparedness, investing in critical infrastructure resilience, improving public communication about the national risk register and national preparedness, and conducting a review of the Civil Contingencies Act.

It reaffirms the actions it has taken for catastrophic risk, including stronger governance in the Cabinet office, clear thresholds and triggers for responding to catastrophic emergencies, and mapping key cascading impacts of catastrophic risk.

In conjunction with the resilience plan, the UK Government has released its first analysis of chronic risk. In contrast to the acute threats and hazards typically covered by the national risk register, this chronic risk analysis covers the long-term challenges that threaten the country and exacerbate the likelihood or consequences of acute risk. The types of risk covered in this report include those with catastrophic potential, including climate change, biodiversity loss, animal disease, artificial intelligence, and bioengineering.

Policy comment: The UK’s national resilience plan is an example many other countries can follow. In contrast to national security strategies, strategic defense documentation, and disaster risk or resilience frameworks, a national resilience strategy takes an all-hazards approach for the full range of risks and threats facing the nation. It could then integrate global catastrophic risk to ensure that uncertain, long-term, chronic or highly unlikely threats and hazards are captured. There are three main challenges to navigate for a national resilience strategy. First off, it needs to be in a broader context of national risk assessment and national preparedness. For example, the US is currently developing a national resilience strategy as part of a March 2025 Executive Order that directs a full-scale review across a range of federal policies for critical infrastructure, food system resilience, national continuity, preparedness, and response. The second challenge is a clear policy owner. For example, Denmark recently combined a range of resilience, civil defense, preparedness, and emergency management functions from across government under a single agency (“Ministeriet for Samfundssikkerhed og Beredskab” or “Ministry of Civil Security and Emergency Management”). Third, the strategy must consider how resilience would be affected, and probably overwhelmed, by global catastrophic risk. Testing the strategy under such extreme circumstances would ensure policymakers understand the point at which resilience could fail.

Building preparedness and readiness for AI risk

A new research report looks at the situations where advanced AI systems act in unintended, dangerous ways beyond human control, and explores measures to strengthen emergency management and preparedness strategies. It notes that “Future critical failures from advanced AI models could trigger widespread disruptions across essential services and infrastructure networks, potentially amplifying existing vulnerabilities in other domains. Developing comprehensive emergency response protocols could help mitigate these significant risks.”

Policy comment: AI could create new categories of risk (e.g., autonomous decision-making), exacerbate existing threats (e.g., biological hazards, cyberattacks, misinformation), or intensify vulnerabilities to other hazards (e.g., critical infrastructure, democratic resilience, water and energy insecurity). Ideally, governments take necessary preventative action to reduce AI risk. As with the automobile, societies will better make use of the technology once there are adequate technological safeguards (e.g., seatbelts, better brakes) and policy regulations (e.g., road standards, driving tests, traffic laws). However, in the current geopolitical and domestic political contexts, where safety is perceived to slow AI progress (a false dichotomy in our view), preventing AI-related harms in the first place is increasingly difficult. Proactively building preparedness and readiness is a potential failsafe to AI safety policy and technical efforts not preventing harms from occurring at the outset. Governments and societies that are preparing for AI risk, and disruption in general, will be less vulnerable to creeping AI risk as well as AI-driven incidents and crises. Preparedness would also reduce the costs and harms associated with AI-related failures. Three general areas that policymakers can focus are: monitoring and adapting to the potentially disruptive social, economic and security effects of AI; building situational awareness and threat detection for AI-related crises and incidents; and establishing plans and protocols for responding to AI-related crises and incidents.

Wagging the tail risk

Two pieces in The Economist cover climate tipping points, irreversible changes in regional or global ecosystems that could greatly disrupt the global climate. The collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), covered in one piece, could lead to relatively sudden changes in climate, particularly in the northern hemisphere, including vast areas of food production. The head of the UK-based Strategic Climate Risks Initiative told The Economist in the other piece that “no government is considering scenarios like ice-sheet collapse with the seriousness afforded to other high-impact risks” and that “most governments have not really been thinking about them at all.”

Two recent papers look at the impact of climate change on Antarctica, and the broader global implications. A recent Nature article assesses that “A marked slowdown in Antarctic Overturning Circulation is expected to intensify this century and may be faster than the anticipated Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation slowdown. The tipping point for unstoppable ice loss from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could be exceeded even under best-case CO2 emission reduction pathways, potentially initiating global tipping cascades.” A May research letter found that meltwater from Antarctica is speeding up the Antarctic Slope Current (the westward current flowing around the continent), which could accelerate meltwater loss.

Climate tipping points form only one “planetary boundary” – the safe operating space for critical Earth systems, like freshwater, land, and the biosphere. Another one of the nine planetary boundaries has crossed into the danger zone: “novel entities” such as pesticides, radioactive materials, and microplastics. A new investigation by Deep Science Ventures explores toxicity from chemicals and contaminants, and its impact on health and the environment. The report states that “toxicity appears to be a threat to the thriving of humans and nature of a similar order as climate change.”

Policy comment: The tail risk of climate change and environmental damage is high. Six of nine planetary boundaries have been crossed. Meanwhile, three of the nine climate tipping points are at their threshold, and two more will be more likely to tip at 2-4 degrees of warming. It is not clear exactly where Earth’s systems stand in relation to these thresholds. But the impacts could be non-linear and catastrophic – which goes against the common thinking that tail impacts are linear (a bit more emissions = a bit more risk) or manageable (adaptation and mitigation will be enough). If policy only plans for the most likely or median scenario, it systematically underestimates catastrophic risk. More research and investigation are required to reduce uncertainty and improve visibility of dangerous levels. Governments need to stress-test their national resilience against various scenarios of these critical Earth systems breaking down.

Hiring an Australia policy associate

Attention Aussies – Global Shield's newly established Australia office is growing!

We are seeking a dynamic and driven Associate or Senior Associate to help shape Australia's policy responses to the biggest threats of our time. Policy success in Australia on global catastrophic risk sets a standard many other countries can follow. Your work for Global Shield Australia will be world-leading.

The successful applicant will report to our Australia Director and work at the intersection of policy, advocacy and communications. Their work will include shaping and driving our Australia office’s strategy and engaging with senior policymakers, politicians, and the media to drive policy outcomes that reduce global catastrophic risk. This role provides significant potential for impact and professional growth.

If you have experience in a parliamentary office, government relations, journalism or media engagement, policy advocacy, or policy development, we strongly encourage you to apply.

Risk can often be quite abstract. Instead, consider scenarios. In the UN Global Risk Report, covered in the first section, four scenarios are presented, with the “breakdown” scenario painting an eery, if familiar, vignette: “In an increasingly fragmented world, the multilateral system is under severe strain and unable to take joint action to prevent or prepare for global risk”. A new RAND report on AI geopolitics, covered in the second section, imagines eight scenarios, showing the wide array of futures, each plausible and challenging in their own right. Or take our new primer on the Defense Production Act and global catastrophic risk, covered in the third section, outlining two potential scenarios where mobilizing private industry would be critical to catastrophic crisis response.

Scenarios are not predictions. They are stories. They are a bridge between imagination and reality. They help us envision the unexplored territory in a dark forest, stretching us beyond what feels comfortable or obvious. But they ground those visions in tangible and realistic narratives. Scenarios, when done right, let us explore uncertainty in concrete terms. They let us turn abstract risk into actionable insights. They raise difficult questions about our readiness. Ultimately, scenarios of the future are a stress-test of the present.

Finding interconnections across the risk landscape

The UN Secretary General has released the inaugural UN Global Risk Report. Stemming from the UN’s Our Common Agenda, it is the first effort by the UN to consider threats and hazards of all kinds. The purpose of the report was to inform multilateral system’s work in managing global risk. In the study, 28 threats and hazards were assessed on likelihood, severity, imminence and interconnectedness by over 1,100 survey participants. According to the report, the multilateral system is most unable to deal with the global rise of mis- and dis-information. Further serious vulnerabilities fell into three primary clusters: environment (natural resources shortages, natural hazard risks, biodiversity decline, and large-scale pollution); technology (cybersecurity breakdown, tech-driven power concentration, and Al and frontier tech); and societal (mass movement of people, biorisks, and pandemics).

The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) has recently released its biennial Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR). The theme of this report was the growing cost of disasters and the opportunities for investing in disaster risk reduction. It found that, between 2001 and 2020, the direct costs of disasters averaged $180-200bn annually, an increase from $70-80bn a year between 1970 and 2000. Disaster costs now exceed over $2.3 trillion annually when cascading and ecosystem costs are taken into account. Meanwhile, around two percent of development aid is directed towards disaster risk reduction.

The UN University also published the 2025 Interconnected Disaster Risks report. It outlines five key changes to achieve a desirable future: realigning with nature, rethinking waste and resource use, reconsidering our responsibilities towards other people and communities, reimagining the future and their opportunities, and redefining value.

The Global Governance Forum published its 2025/2026 Global Catastrophic Risk Index in April, an update of the inaugural index in 2022. It provides an assessment of global vulnerabilities and resilience across 163 countries. The most at-risk countries are assessed to be Yemen, Afghanistan, Haiti, South Sudan, and Sudan; the least-at-risk countries are Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, and Iceland. The report states that “that risks cannot be considered distinct and must be understood as interconnected, interdependent, and compounding.”

Policy comment: The common theme emerging from these global risk reports is interconnectedness. The various challenges we face are interconnected; crises bleed over borders; the boundaries between human and technology are almost indistinguishable. And as the UN report makes clear, the management of 21st-century risk will “require holistic and systemic responses,” especially because efforts to solve one problem might make another worse. This means that global risk must be dealt with at a more fundamental and comprehensive level. Traditional risk management practices, like risk assessment, preparedness and resilience, and crisis response, can form the foundation of this management. However, it might not be enough in reducing risk overall. It might require new forms of governance, changes to economic models, transformative approaches to food and energy production, and community-building at the local level. As the UN University report states, “instead of treating problems as separate, isolated events, we can take interconnectivity as the starting point and build our systems from there.”

Tempering AI race dynamics

The White House has released its AI Action Plan. The plan, and the reporting around it, have highlighted the race dynamics, mostly with China; indeed, the action plan is titled “Winning the Race”. Despite the heavy focus on promoting a domestic AI industry and leading globally on AI, one of the plan’s three pillars is risk and safety: “we must prevent our advanced technologies from being misused or stolen by malicious actors as well as monitor for emerging and unforeseen risks from AI.”

Earlier in July, RAND published a report on the potential impacts of the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI) on geopolitics and the world order. It paints eight different scenarios based on the degree of decentralization of AI development and the degree that AGI empowers the US on an absolute and relative basis. It notes that “U.S.-China technological competition features prominently across the scenarios. The dynamic between these powers—whether characterized by cooperation, competition, or conflict—shapes the trajectory of AGI development and deployment.”

An article on the AI race between the US and China by a Biden-era National Security Council official states that: “Policymakers around the world are ill prepared to manage these combined strategic and technological developments. Many struggle to stay up to date with AI developments, let alone plan for the geopolitical ramifications of new breakthroughs. But they must prepare now to mitigate these risks. The coming years will be far more dangerous than many of the technology’s investors and policymakers realise.”

Policy comment: Framing AI development as a race can undermine efforts to manage the risk that both governments recognize to be in their mutual interest to reduce. A race mentality can further speed up risky development of the technology by disincentiving safety measures that are perceived to slow innovation of capabilities, and can reduce transparency and trust between companies and the countries. Under race conditions, the possibility of severe public and economic backlash to the job displacement effects of advanced AI might be more damaging to long-term strategic aims of the racing powers involved. Despite this framing, particularly by the media and by AI companies, there is more agreement between countries on AI risk than meets the eye. In July, for example, Canada hosted the third directors-level meeting of the International Network of AI Safety Institutes, including a joint testing exercise across nine countries. Governments should work individually and together to understand, prepare for and manage the transition to transformative AI, even under perceived race conditions.

Reauthorizing and modernizing the Defense Production Act

Global Shield organized a letter alongside a diverse set of other organizations urging Congress to reauthorize and modernize the Defense Production Act (DPA) of 1950, which expires on 30 September 2025. The organizations represent a diverse set of civil society groups and US domestic industries that are essential to the US’ national and economic security, including in the critical minerals and pharmaceutical manufacturing industries. The signatories urge Congress to 1) Reauthorize the DPA for a minimum of six years this calendar year, thereby avoiding the inefficiencies and uncertainty of short-term clean reauthorizations; 2) Consider bipartisan modernization to better align the DPA with 21st-century threats and supply chain realities, such as the FORCE Act (H.R. 3561) and the CLEAR Act (H.R. 3542); and 3) Support robust annual appropriations for the DPA Fund, which enables targeted, strategic support to domestic industries critical for national defense.

Policy comment: Over the past 70 years, the DPA’s authorities have become the foundation of US preparedness for and response to national emergencies arising from all threats, with a wide range of uses. Throughout the Cold War, the DPA enabled domestic industries to out-compete the Soviet Union in the provision of military equipment. The DPA’s definition of “national defense” explicitly encompasses domestic emergency response due to amendments to the Act. So, when major natural disasters have occurred, the DPA has helped communities get priority access to the critical materials they need to support response and recovery operations. Should a global catastrophe occur, the government would also need support from private industry, and the DPA will be central to that effort.

See a primer on how the DPA is a critical instrument for global catastrophic risk, including two illustrative examples for how the DPA could be used for a major volcanic eruption or an AI-enabled cyberattack on energy grids.

A country’s power – its ability to shape the world around it in line with its interests – is so often measured in military might, economic heft and cultural clout. But if that power fuels the rise of global catastrophic risk, what is it really worth? And if a smaller country can avert that risk, should it not be considered powerful in its own right? This edition is about the leadership role that small and middle-sized countries can play. They often hold more power than they know. While geopolitical giants grapple with gridlock and rivalry, global catastrophic risk grows. The so-called minnows, however, can become pioneers of prevention and architects of resilience. Whether preparing for climate tipping points, pressing for a world without nuclear weapons, or navigating emerging risk, these countries remind us that influence isn’t always about size. True power is measured by what gets accomplished.

Simplifying complex risk

The OECD has released a report on national risk governance systems and institutional capacity to address novel and complex threats. Based on the case studies of Ireland, Israel, South Korea, and the US, as well as the OECD’s emerging critical risk framework, the report makes several recommendations for governments, including: dedicated institutional roles for systematic risk identification; regular updates and iterative processes to respond to dynamic risk environments; cross-departmental and transboundary engagement for managing emerging risk; and advanced technologies and methodologies for enhanced risk identification and assessment.

Policy comment: The report provides a solid blueprint for government agencies to take more proactive measures to manage emerging risk. The key – and often missing – ingredient is political ownership. Unless heads of government and agencies buy into risk governance, the bureaucratic efforts to assess and manage risk will be lacklustre. In some cases, the lack of direction and ownership from senior levels is deliberate; formally and publicly assessing risk creates a public expectation that nationally significant risk is being addressed by the government, who fear they will suffer politically if they fail. On the other hand, clear ownership creates a positively reinforcing cycle. The UK’s Head of Resilience or Israel’s National Emergency Management Authority (two examples highlighted in the report) showcase how a specific individual or agency has been tasked with driving risk assessment and management. Or take Chief Risk Officers (CROs) in financial institutions. Replicating something like these CROs can build risk practice and culture across the government enterprise. They can help manage gaps and overlaps between agencies. And they provide a single point of coordination that their heads of state can turn to in a world of emerging and increasingly catastrophic risk.

Tipping away from catastrophe

The Global Tipping Point Conference convened over 30 June to 3 July. The first Global Tipping Point report in 2023 identified 26 tipping points in Earth’s climate and environmental systems, such as the runaway melting of Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, the dying off of warm-water coral reefs, the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), and the thawing of permafrost regions.

Climate researcher and conference host, Timothy Lenton, states that tipping point risk has been underestimated: “When we did our first assessment in 2008, we thought Greenland was close to a big tipping point. We haven’t changed that judgment, but we thought West Antarctica would need at least 3C of warming [above pre-industrial levels]. Unfortunately, everything that’s been observed since suggests we were way too optimistic. As a rule, the more we learn, the closer we think the tipping points are – and meanwhile we’ve been warming the planet up.”

The Global Tipping Points Report 2025 is being developed ahead of COP30 in Brazil. Contributions to the report can be made via tippingpoints@exeter.ac.uk.

Policy comment: Climate tipping points represent a unique need of global catastrophic risk – the need for both prevention at the global level and preparedness at the national level. To slow the rate of warming to under 2 degrees celsius, which might be critical for many of the tipping points, major powers, like the US, China and the EU, need to collaborate. However, countries, particularly smaller ones, cannot wait. For example, the collapse of the AMOC could reduce food, water and energy security for billions of people in Africa, Europe and Asia due to drastic changes in regional rainfall and temperatures. Half the area for growing staple crops worldwide could be lost. The potential for tipping points are an opportunity for governments to stress-test their supply of food, water and energy. Efforts to improve national preparedness and resilience would help protect against tipping points as well as other global catastrophic threats. Countries could look to invest in crops more tolerant to naturally occurring hazards, develop national food reserves, strengthen supply chain resilience, and support local food production to reduce dependence on vulnerable imports. Similar, for water security, countries could look to build water storage and recycling systems and strengthen mechanisms for water allocation and rationing in emergencies. To the extent that countries are conducting national risk assessments, tipping points of all types might need special attention due to their growing likelihood and escalatory cascades once they tip.

Reversing the growing nuclear risk

Just as the world marked the 80th Remembrance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two recent conflagrations – the India–Pakistan conflict in May and the recent conflict between Israel, Iran and the US – has brought nuclear risk back to global attention. Iran’s powerful Guardian Council has approved the parliament’s bill to suspend cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It would align Iran somewhat with India, Pakistan and Israel, who are not parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Meanwhile, the UK’s new defence review sees it adding about $20bn to its nuclear forces, including the deployment of air-launched tactical nuclear weapons through the purchase of 12 F-35A jets from the US.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has published a report, as directed by Congress, that re-examines the potential environmental, social and economic effects of a nuclear war. The recommendations mostly focused on further research that the US government could conduct, including suggesting that the “Departments of Health and Human Services, Defense, Energy, and Agriculture should collaborate in the development and implementation of an enterprise-wide approach to assess the potential societal and economic impacts of a nuclear detonation on food, water, and health.” While the study did not include modeling, a group of researchers are investigating food and fertilizer trade disruptions on global food security in the context of nuclear winter.

The Washington Post is examining the “next nuclear age” in a series, highlighting the increased risk and complexities of the global nuclear landscape compared to the Cold War. The series, a collaboration with the Federation of American Scientists, explores how nuclear weapons proliferation and modernization efforts pose new challenges for international security. One piece looks at the overall global nuclear landscape. Another looks at the US president’s sole authority for launching nuclear weapons. A third looks at the reasons some countries are contemplating starting their own nuclear weapons programs. A fourth goes into the ways a nuclear war could start, especially by accident.

Policy comment: Nuclear risk continues to grow. Nuclear-armed states are investing more in their nuclear weapons programs, just as multilateral and bilateral treaties are being degraded. On the current trajectory, it seems unlikely that the nine nuclear-armed states can or will work together to reduce risk, and recent trends might give other states greater incentive to pursue their own programs. As a result, middle powers, smaller countries, and civil society organizations must apply renewed pressure. In multilateral forums, they might have a better shot at championing these efforts because it is less likely to be viewed through a geopolitical lens between major powers. During the Cold War, for example, landmark weapons treaties – such as the Arms Trade Treaty, the Ottawa Treaty banning anti-personnel landmines, and the convention banning cluster munitions – were pushed successfully by middle powers and advocacy groups in the face of veto-holding Security Council members who produced and used such weapons. UN resolution A/C.1/79/L.41 (“Steps to building a common roadmap towards a world without nuclear weapons”) approved by the General Assembly in December 2024 presents the foundations of just an effort. Advocacy could focus on key sponsors of the resolution, especially Japan, as the driving force behind it, and other drafters with strong ties to nuclear-weapon states, such as Australia, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden.

Also see:

• A new book, “Six Minutes to Winter: Nuclear War and How to Avoid It” by Mark Lynas.

When it comes to national resilience and preparedness, there’s a term that gets easily thrown around but is wildly complex: ‘whole-of-society’. The reality of 21st-century risk, and modern civilization, is that responding to a national crisis is not contained to the cabinet room and to emergency responders. Whether it be hospitals, manufacturers, retailers, banks, farms or local communities, all will have a role to play. And it requires policymakers to reimagine how to mobilize the country for a catastrophe – how to engage and direct the private sector, how to communicate with the public, how to adapt infrastructure, how to produce critical supplies, how to train workforces, how to commit scarce budgets. A whole-of-society approach does more than widen the circle of responsibility; it rewires the crisis playbook.

Enabling the private sector during catastrophe

On 22 May, Global Shield Executive Director, Jared Brown, testified at a hearing on the Defense Production Act (DPA) in the US Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. Originally enacted in 1950, the DPA grants the US government a range of authorities to shape how the private sector provides materials, services, and expertise to the government for national security purposes. The DPA is most known for its Title I authorities, which require companies to accept contracts for goods and services necessary for the national defense, and its Title III authorities, which create financial incentives and subsidies for critical domestic industries to produce more goods and materials than would otherwise be provided. Under Title VII, several authorities exist that enable the government to plan alongside the private sector to address anticipated or existing problems for national security, and to employ private sector experts in the government during a crisis. Jared urged Congress to reauthorize and modernize the DPA, particularly Title VII authorities, for 21st-century, global catastrophic threats.

Policy comment: If a global catastrophe occurs, all governments, including the US, would need support from their domestic private industries to respond effectively. So the DPA is a core instrument for the US’s preparedness for and response to global catastrophic risk. Medical supplies, energy systems, transportation, communications, food production, and logistics, among other critical infrastructure and goods, are mostly owned or operated by private firms. Domestic manufacturing might need to be retooled or expanded quickly to meet demand in a crisis. And technical and operational expertise needed for innovation, production and distribution – which heavily reside in the private sector – would need repurposing for government response. For example, Title I Authorities could be used to issue prioritized orders from the private sector for critical emergency goods, such as food and energy inputs. Under Title III authorities, funds could be allocated or loaned to companies or communities to produce infrastructure or equipment that has been damaged or destroyed. Other countries should consider adopting similar authorities to enable their private sectors to prepare for and respond to catastrophe, or reimagine the use of other existing authorities for similar policy objectives.

Building public consciousness for national crises

A report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) notes that “The Australian Government isn’t doing enough to prepare Australian citizens for the more volatile and uncertain strategic environment that we face. There’s no regular public discourse about the national risks to Australia, there’s no planning or capability development for mitigating such risks, and there’s no regular program for educating, training or exercising Australia’s communities to deal with them.”

The report also notes that “The Republic of Finland is an excellent exemplar of what a nation can do to build and maintain national resilience and national preparedness against all hazards, including the risk of conflict and war”, including its Comprehensive National Security model. Independent journalist, Johnny Harris, demonstrated this concept recently when he embedded with Finland’s defense forces as it performed a large-scale military exercise on the border with Russia.

Australia’s National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) held a multi-day crisis scenario with 350 participants that explored the impact of complex crises, including fuel supply shortages, the transmission of bird flu to animals and humans, natural hazards, power outages, supply chain disruptions, and social unrest.

Policy comment: Finland and Australia provide useful counterpoints on effective national resilience. Finland’s century-long fight for national sovereignty, especially given its shared border with the former USSR and now Russia, has helped entrench a public consciousness on preparedness. This includes government-led initiatives, like a national risk assessment, public education, crisis communications, sheltering infrastructure, strategic reserves, and compulsory military service. Meanwhile, Australia’s geographical distance and historical comfort have bred institutional and public complacency. The changing geopolitical landscape and recent shocks, like the 2019-20 Bushfire season, COVID-19 and large-scale flooding, have provided a warning. And NEMA’s exercise, as well as its intended development of an Australian Government Catastrophic Crisis Plan (AUSCATPLAN), are important steps in the right direction. But they are unlikely to be effective when they do not sit within a larger whole-of-society approach to resilience. Countries like Australia, which do not necessarily have the traumatic historical context in which to build a preparedness mindset, must rely on other forms of public engagement, like direct communications, education, arts and culture, and media, to build those national-scale ‘neural pathways’.

Global Shield’s new Australian office intends to engage with the Australian Government on building catastrophic risk into policymaking processes, including the development of the AUSCATPLAN. If you are interested in our activities, be sure to reach out to our Director of Global Shield Australia, Devon Whittle.

Also see:

• An op-ed in the Washington Post by Global Shield board member, Christian Ruhl, and his colleague, Hannah Yang, on civil defense that better considers biological risk

Managing single threats with multi-pronged approaches

On 11 May, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) suspended the import of live cattle, horses and bison through ports of entry along the border with Mexico in order to curb the spread of New World screwworm. Screwworm is a flesh-burrowing larva that can be fatal to livestock and wildlife, such as cattle and deer. While no screwworm cases have been detected within the US to date, the movement of the infestation up through Mexico, as close as 700 miles from the border, has raised alarms for US policymakers and cattle-ranchers.

On 27 May, the USDA announced an additional $21m to renovate a facility in Mexico that produces and releases sterile male flies – a technique used to halt infestation because the female screwworm only mate once. US senators have introduced the “STOP Screwworms Act” to require USDA to begin construction on a similar facility on US soil.

No cases closer to the border have been reported since the suspension, and the USDA chief veterinarian has said that imports are likely to resume by the end of the year. However, concerns remain that the US is unprepared for its first widespread infestation since successfully eradicating the screwworm in 1966 due to the inability to produce enough sterile flies, lack of licensing for certain drugs that treat screwworm, and reduced cowboy workforce.

Policy comment: This resurgence of screwworm, which started in Panama in 2022, is the perfect case study of complex and cascading global risk. Until 2022, a collaborative effort between the US and Panama using the sterile insect technique had effectively created a barrier at the Darién Gap, a dense rainforest and jungle along the border with Colombia. However, numerous factors led to this barrier being breached: the COVID-19 pandemic causing supply-chain issues at the sterile fly factory and disrupting regular cattle inspections; more people crossing the difficult Darién Gap; illegal cattle trade; and changes in climate making screwworm survival and reproduction more favorable. As with any complex problem, a single solution is unlikely to be effective. Multi-pronged approaches, especially dealing with the root causes and risk drivers, are needed. Managing the risk from any global catastrophic threat requires breaking the problem down into its components – whether geopolitical, environmental, technological, economic or otherwise. For each component, a range of policy approaches might be needed, often those outside the domain of the original problem.

Anticipating and governing uncertainty

A number of unrelated publications look at a variety of new, emerging or unexpected threats.

A new preprint study looks at the movement of the Aspergillus species of fungus due to climate change. The fungal species causes severe infections in humans, livestock and plants. While parts of the US, Canada, Europe and northern Asia would become more suitable habitats for the fungi, parts of South America, Africa and Australia would become too hot. Another researcher in the field told CNN that “fungal pathogens are becoming increasingly common and resistant to treatment, and we are only beginning to understand how climate change is contributing.” Fungal infections kill about 2.5 million people a year, but the relative lack of research and data means the trajectory is highly unclear.

An article in Wired looks at the potential chaos caused by “Q-day”, what cybersecurity analysts call the moment when a quantum computer could crack most worldwide encryption. With every individual’s, company’s and government’s data vulnerable, Q-day could upend personal privacy, market dynamics and national security. In the Quantum Threat Timeline Report 2024, based on a survey of 32 experts, such a quantum computer was plausible in the next 10 years, and more likely than not in 15 years. According to the Wired article, “Long before quantum technology is good enough to break encryption, it will be commercially and scientifically useful enough to tilt the global balance.” The timing and impact of quantum technology remains highly uncertain.

Existential risk researcher, Thomas Moynihan, has written about the unintentional building of a “world brain”. He told RNZ that, given “we are creating a far more complex planetary system and are far more coordinated globally…something like a loss of autonomy will necessarily have to happen on the human individual.” It remains unclear what a world connected by AI means for how humans engage with each other and the world around them.

Policy comment: The defining feature of 21st-century risk is not just scale, but uncertainty. Rapidly changing technological, environmental and biological drivers – as well as increasing global interconnectedness – will make national and global crises more unexpected, and potentially more frequent. Previously inconceivable threats, like Q-day, might emerge without warning. And familiar threats of the past, like fungal infections, might take dangerous turns. Traditional risk models – anchored on probabilities and historical patterns – are no longer enough. Policymakers must navigate, and ideally embrace, uncertainty. The implication: governments must invest in system-wide resilience, flexible response capabilities, social cohesion, and individual and community-level preparedness. It also calls for a fundamental rethink of long-term projects, such as conventional defense capabilities and infrastructure. Large-scale projects that take decades to deliver could be rendered moot by climate change and artificial intelligence. Worse, they divert budgets and attention from being prepared. Investments in an era of uncertainty must be designed for adaptability, modularity and scalability – ensuring they can be repurposed or expanded in response to creeping risk and sudden crises.

Global Shield is, as you might be sick of us repeating, focused on “all-hazards” policy. We want governments to take actions that hit multiple risk vectors at the same time. Policies that build awareness, understanding, preparedness, resilience and response to the full spectrum of global catastrophic risk is a powerful approach. Especially because efforts in one domain are often transferable to others. Lessons from dealing with specific threats can apply to all hazards.

Climate change presents a particularly ripe area for learning. Hard-earned successes, uphill challenges and standout insights from the climate change arena are relevant for many other threats. This latest briefing pulls only from climate change news and research; it’s been a busy few weeks in that regard. But with an all-hazards lens, we can scope out what it says about global catastrophic risk as a whole – like zooming out into a panoramic view of the landscape.

Influencing through stories, not statistics

Around 5,000 Australians were asked what would change their mind on climate change. Four typical responses emerged: evidence and information, trusted sources, action being undertaken, and nothing. The most common response was a desire for better evidence and information. Participants said they wanted clear explanations rather than jargon, and science that didn’t feel politicised or agenda-driven. But sceptics were the most resistant to updating their beliefs in response to scientific evidence. Many respondents said their views could shift if they saw meaningful action, particularly from governments and large corporations.

Despite worsening climate change and global carbon dioxide emissions still growing, progress is being made to reduce the increasing risk. The worst-case scenario outlined by UN climate scientists – around 4-5°Celsius of warming – is looking less likely. Clean energy solutions, such as wind and solar energy, battery technology and carbon removal, are increasing in effectiveness and uptake.

Policy comment: Story-telling and narratives are likely to be more effective tools for communicating about global catastrophic risk and for driving policy action. Policymakers or citizens that are skeptical are more likely to be persuaded by personal stories of the harms posed by crises and global events. Evidence and information – although needed to initially justify policy change – might prove ineffective in changing positions. Stories around the solutions also provide hope and optimism, while allowing policymakers and people to recognize the broader societal and economic benefits. A collection of narratives for how global catastrophic risk harms individuals and communities, and potential case studies on successful action could be powerful advocacy tools.

Understanding the full economic impacts of GCR

The previous estimates of the economic damage from climate change is likely to have been massively underestimated, according to new research. Most prior research estimated that extreme warming of 4°Celsius would negatively impact the global economy by an average of around 11 percent by 2100. New modelling – which takes into consideration second order effects, such as on human health, disease transmission, migration and labor productivity – brings this estimate to 40 per cent.

Major banks, such as Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan, are acknowledging that the goal of keeping warming below 2°Celsius above preindustrial level is likely to fail, according to Scientific American. Morgan Stanley analysts are expecting a 3° increase, due in part to “recent setbacks to global decarbonization efforts”.

Just under 5 percent of Australian homes and businesses are already at high risk today due to climate-induced hazards, according to analysis conducted by Climate Valuation and The Climate Council. Another 10 percent at moderate risk. By 2100, the number of high-risk properties are expected to increase to almost 9 percent.

Policy comment: Banks, government and citizens are likely to be underestimating the economic cost of climate change, and global catastrophic risk more broadly. The assessment of economic impacts, while useful, struggle to factor in cascading impacts, tail risk and potential tipping points. For example, catastrophic crises could make parts of the world uninhabitable, leading to mass migration. Or climate change and other threats could increase the risk of deadly diseases, which have their own economic and societal impacts. Governments should be continuously studying and assessing the holistic economic impacts of GCR. These impacts could include job losses, GDP contraction, market volatility, and the second and third-order impacts on the healthcare, energy and agriculture sectors. A dedicated team within the Treasury could be established to conduct this work. Such a team could also then perform cost-benefit analyses to assess the viability of various risk reduction efforts and make recommendations to policymakers.

Empowering action from above

US states are taking increasing action on climate change. Collaboration between states is also on the rise, with the US Climate Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of 24 governors, aiming to accelerate climate action, reduce emissions and track progress towards global targets. America is All In is another coalition, this time between thousands of policy, civil society and business leaders. Coalition members continue to make progress, including at state and city level. Over 130 mayors and local leaders representing around 25 million people sent a letter to Congress calling on them to preserve the 13 federally-funded clean energy tax credits.

Around half of corporate executives would move operations and shift supply chains within five years to better access renewables-based power systems, according to a survey of roughly 1,500 business leaders of medium and large companies across 15 countries. Over a ten-year time frame, that figure jumped to almost 90 percent. Almost all American executives said that they wanted the US government to expand renewable electricity in the grid.

A recent research article looks at the inadequacy of adaptation to climate change, and pushes for cities and urban areas to be more transformative in their climate resilience. The author proposes solutions such as holistic risk assessments, addressing economic and social conditions of disasters, and whole-of-society responses.

Policy comment: Global catastrophic risk reduction cannot be left only to the federal government. All levels of government, and all actors across society, particularly business, have important roles to play. In some federated systems, like the US, Brazil and Australia, states and territories are central to emergency response and recovery. However, countries where the federal government does not lead will struggle the most on global catastrophic risk. Beyond shaping the policy and regulatory environment, federal governments can help fund state, local and community efforts at preparedness and resilience. Governments can foster a marketplace for technologies and capabilities that might be crucial to risk reduction efforts, like renewable energy, alternative foods and resilient infrastructure. Actors across society look to the federal government to pave the way for long-term efforts. Of course, national leaders can make agreements between each other and shape each others’ perspectives and actions. And heads of government have the bully pulpit; they can shift domestic mindsets. Advocates for global catastrophic risk reduction should consider each of these pathways for the federal level to empower other levels of governance.

Last chance to apply for new opportunity with Global Shield

Applications close on 18 May for a new role: the Global Growth and Development Manager. This role will lead our organization’s growth into new countries. As an organization that seeks to reduce global catastrophic risk, we believe that all countries can make a difference. And we believe that Global Shield can make a difference in those countries. The role is to identify promising countries for expansion, build relationships with partners in those countries, and establish a presence that can effectively execute on our mission. Please share with your networks, or consider applying yourself.

Job Description

Sometimes, we need to take a step back. Look at, nay, stare down existential and catastrophic risk with a bit more distance. Like David sizing up his giant opponent before slinging his shot.

Fortunately, two upcoming books might help. In Existential Hope, Dr SJ Beard flips the concept of avoiding existential threats to focusing on building a world that maximizes meaning and flourishing. In Goliath’s Curse, Dr Luke Kemp takes a macrohistory lens on societal collapse to look at how global, swift and irreversible civilizational collapse could occur in the future.

But what policymaker has time to read these days? And even if they do, how much impact could it have? Well, it wouldn’t be the first time that the book-length treatment of a serious topic ultimately, and unexpectedly, changed the course of history.

After reading John Barry’s 2004 book on the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, The Great Influenza, George W. Bush directed the development of a National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza. [“Look, this happens every 100 years,” he told his homeland security adviser, “We need a national strategy.”] How prescient that looks now.

Shortly before the Cuban Missile Crisis, John F. Kennedy read The Guns of August on the outbreak of World War I and the dangers of miscalculation. [“I am not going to follow a course which will allow anyone to write a comparable book about this time,” he reportedly told confidants, just two days before Nikita Khrushchev agreed to remove Soviet missiles from Cuba.] How fortuitous that must have seemed.

Or take the impact of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, on the abolitionist movement and the American Civil War. When President Lincoln met with Stowe, he supposedly told her, “So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.” How daunting that would have felt.

Navigating polycrisis

The Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment (ASRA) interviewed Lorenzo Benini, Sustainability Transitions Expert at the European Environment Agency, on governing systemic risk. He states that “the biggest governance challenge in dealing with the “triple planetary crisis” [climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution] is that our current institutions and decision-making processes are poorly equipped to handle systemic risks, which are inherently uncertain and complex.”

The European Commission has published a toolkit for policymaking institutions to run a workshop on polycrisis awareness, understanding and action. In one activity, participants can identify potential policy responses and solutions, consider the agency of policymakers to address core drivers, and develop novel ideas for impactful solutions and partnerships.

Policy comment: Traditional policy establishments, which organize policy areas and their budgets by discrete government agencies, struggle to cope with systemic risk. Bureaucratic resistance, political dynamics, information-sharing challenges, and knowledge gaps across government mean that complex policy problems, like global catastrophic risk, will be difficult to address proactively. Integrated policymaking is an early step. Such approaches view and tackle multiple problem sets together, such as environment and health, or climate and security, or disasters, access to resources and societal resilience. Resourced effectively, these help break down institutional siloes and provide a more holistic treatment of risk. However, even these approaches are beyond the ability of many governments. An even more preliminary step to treating system risk is early warnings and strategic foresight. Before a crisis occurs or escalates, warning senior policymakers quickly can help steer an integrated and cross-cutting policy effort. By systematically monitoring the triggers and indicators of potential crises, policymakers can be better equipped to take preventive measures, mobilize a coordinated response, and alleviate the harmful consequences.

Governing geoengineering

An Israel-based, US-incorporated startup called Stardust is developing proprietary technology that would help block sun rays from reaching Earth as a way to reduce the climate impact of greenhouse gas emissions. According to a report in Undark, the company has been secretive about its work. Stardust’s former climate governance consultant posted his report about the company on Linkedin, calling for it to increase its transparency, engagement and communication with the public and external stakeholders.

An article in Science looks at the need for geoengineering projects to be more transparent with the public. Many researchers are skeptical about public engagement and consultation, fearing blowback from potentially misinformed individuals. One researcher stated that “some scientists believe engagement isn’t necessary because they feel the importance of the research should override public concerns.”

A recent study on solar geoengineering estimates that “the mortality benefits of reducing temperatures outweigh risks from air pollution and from ozone loss by 13 times for our central estimates, with a 61% probability the benefits exceed the risks.” It goes on to note that “Uncertainty remains significant”.

Policy comment: The gap in global and national geoengineering governance means that corporations and scientists are taking action without policy guardrails or public input. As it stands, the unintended side effects of geoengineering are very unclear and its consequences remain ungoverned. No country has a geoengineering policy. The only relevant international treaty, the Environmental Modification Convention, is old, weak and limited to hostile weather warfare. And there is very little government-led research into the topic – a new US$75m effort by the UK’s innovation agency is the largest publicly acknowledged initiative. Significantly more research is needed into the ethical, environmental, legal, humanitarian, economic, geopolitical, and security aspects of geoengineering. Poor governance and risk awareness around geoengineering is also emblematic of other types of technology risk, like from AI and synthetic biology. Governments could implement a systematic and transparent process to evaluate and categorize existing or emerging technologies based on their potential to pose GCR. A formal technology risk assessment process would determine the potential for misuse or unintended consequences, or how the technology exacerbates other threats or system vulnerabilities.

Setting a path for nuclear risk reduction

The International Group of Eminent Persons for a World Without Nuclear Weapons (IGEP) met for the sixth and final time over March 30-31. Sponsored by the Government of Japan, the IGEP is a track-2 style multilateral dialogue composed of nuclear experts and former senior diplomats from both nuclear-weapon states and non-nuclear-weapon states. It was established to discuss a path towards a world without nuclear weapons. The group has developed a set of urgent actions for countries to consider across nuclear conflict prevention, non-proliferation and the 2026 Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference.

Policy comment: The actions outlined by IGEP present a comprehensive and reasonable path for nuclear risk reduction. It calls for sustained strategic dialogues, crisis prevention, human oversight on nuclear command and control, restraint around cyber attacks on nuclear facilities, and counter-proliferation. However, global catastrophic risk – while the underlying motivator for reducing nuclear risk – does not feature explicitly in these types of dialogues or government action plans. The equation on GCR from nuclear weapons is different from, and more complex than, Cold War-era risk calculus. Tripolar strategic dynamics, the impact of AI and cyber, the rising capabilities of so-called ‘rogue’ states, and relationships of nuclear states with allies and partners, is complicating and exacerbating 21st century nuclear risk. The main example of GCR considerations entering these multilateral efforts is, as the IGEP plan refers, a recent UN General Assembly resolution that establishes an independent Scientific Panel on the Effects of Nuclear War, which will be able to officially consider and communicate nuclear winter scenarios. Member States should contribute productively to this study. The final report is due in 2027.

A new opportunity with Global Shield

The Global Shield team is growing again! The Global Growth and Development Manager will lead our organization’s growth into new countries. As an organization that seeks to reduce global catastrophic risk, we believe that all countries can make a difference. And we believe that Global Shield can make a difference in those countries. The role is to identify promising countries for expansion, build relationships with partners in those countries, and establish a presence that can effectively execute on our mission. Please share with your networks, or consider applying yourself.

Job Description

Why now?

Global catastrophic risk is seemingly rising faster than ever. Tipping points might be fast approaching. Not just climate disruptions, but also ecological collapse, severe bacterial and fungal infectious diseases, an intelligence explosion, poisoned information ecology, political polarization, economic fragility, tensions between nuclear-armed states, and breakdown of global institutions. Is it coincidence, is it perception, or is it connected?

We have a view. For once, we’ll leave it for you to ponder.

Sharing policy lessons

A new report introduces the concept of “Mutual Assured AI Malfunction (MAIM)”, which the authors believe is needed to deter any state’s aggressive bid for unilateral AI dominance. This strategy would consist of deterrence, non-proliferation and competitiveness, similar to the concept of mutual assured destruction (MAD) to deter nuclear conflict.

Two technology policy researchers claim that “A large-scale AI disaster could undermine public trust, stall innovation, and leave the United States trailing global competitors…If Washington fails to anticipate and mitigate major AI risks, the United States risks falling behind in the fallout from what could become AI’s Chernobyl moment.”

Policy comment: Putting aside specific AI policy for the moment – where there is no shortage of views on how to proceed – these recent analyses on AI risk demonstrate the value of viewing global catastrophic risk holistically. When seeing the various threats as not separate but related, policymakers can consider interconnections, similarities and shared characteristics. In the case of AI policy, lessons can be drawn by comparing it to other risk areas, particularly nuclear policy. AI as a technology is unprecedented. But the potential policy frameworks are not. As with nuclear weapons, policymakers will need to navigate the interplay between regulation and innovation, strategic stability between great powers, security from extremists and terrorists, monitoring and verification measures, institutional frameworks and international agreements, trade rules around critical parts and inputs, and planning for worst-case scenarios. This calls for policymakers to bring together the experts and advocates across various risk areas – including climate change, pandemics, space weather, food security – to develop and implement policies for catastrophic AI risk, and global catastrophic risk at large.

Recognizing linkages

Climate change’s impact on bird migratory patterns and nesting habits contributes to a complicated bird flu picture. As global average temperatures rise and extreme weather events change animal migration and movement, “animals are crossing paths in entirely new configurations, making it easier for them to swap diseases.” This causes both an increased risk of zoonotic disease transmission and a potential reduction of food supply due to severe contamination.

A new study looks at the impact of extreme weather events on viruses spreading from urban wastewater. Prolonged or intense rainstorms can result in rainwater overloading urban sewer systems, resulting in raw untreated sewage unreleased into rivers, lakes and coastal waters. The authors recommend developing targeted risk management strategies in the context of climate change and related natural disasters.

Greenhouse gases could result in fewer satellites that can sustainably operate in orbit, according to MIT researchers. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases can cause the upper atmosphere to shrink. This contraction reduces the density of the thermosphere, where the International Space Station and most satellites orbit, and the “decreasing density reduces drag on debris objects and extends their lifetime in orbit, posing a persistent collision hazard to other satellites and risking the cascading generation of more debris.”

Policy comment: Climate change is not simply an environmental challenge. It is an infrastructure challenge, a food security challenge, a health challenge, an inflation challenge – even a space issue. By extension, climate policy requires more than reducing greenhouse gas emissions and developing green energy solutions. This is emblematic of other global catastrophic threats: AI does not only require AI policy; pandemics does not only require biosecurity; nuclear policy is not only for defense. Global catastrophic risk – and even mild versions of it – will impact every part of every government. Each agency must evaluate how global catastrophic risk will impact its mandate, its priorities, its ability to execute its mission, its workforce and its budget. A central coordinating office or task force – sitting in a national security council equivalent – could support these agencies in conducting this evaluation and providing a complete picture to senior leadership. Given the wider recognition of climate change as a global problem with catastrophic potential, this exercise could be piloted on catastrophic climate change.

Also see:

• An overview of the impact of climate change on fungal infections by Wellcome, a charitable foundation investing over £50 million in fungal research.

Prioritizing preparedness

A post by the Centre for Long-Term Resilience (CLTR) in the UK highlights the need for urgent policy attention to be directed to AI incident preparedness, which they define as “thinking ahead about how AI could threaten national security or safety if prevention methods are insufficient or lacking, and how societies can effectively respond to these crises.” They identify a number of areas of focus: incident awareness, policy readiness, operational response, and resilience and societal hardening.

A new report by Forethought, “Preparing for the Intelligence Explosion”, looks at preparedness for artificial general intelligence, given its potential contribution to societal-scale challenges, including new weapons of mass destruction and AI-enabled autocracies. The report recommends improving decision-making for AI across society and governments. For the authors, “This strategy seems especially promising, because it addresses many grand challenges all at once, and even addresses “unknown unknown” challenges, which are particularly hard to tackle otherwise.”

Policy comment: The scale and speed of AI’s progress without sufficient safeguards is requiring a greater focus on preparedness. Researchers and policy advocates are recognizing that policies aimed at preventing an AI-enabled catastrophe should not be the only priority. As the CLTR post identifies, a number of policy areas must be considered. For example, governments must ensure they have the legislation that would allows them to respond effectively to crises if prevention fails, and update their incident response plans to address novel challenges posed by AI. More broadly, society must be made resilient. From a policy perspective, that could include protection of critical infrastructure, emergency management, and public warning and communication functions. An AI catastrophe – or any type for that matter – would severely test social cohesion, government response capacity, and ability to recover and rebuild.

Also see:

• The third version of the General-Purpose AI Code of Practice released by the European Commission. It includes a new version of the safety and security section and continues to identify four core safety risks arising from general-purpose AI systems.

Welcoming our new US director

Please welcome Robert Levinson as Global Shield’s US Director. Rob will be leading Global Shield’s policy advocacy with the US government on all-hazards global catastrophic risk.

Prior to Global Shield, Rob was on Capitol Hill as the National Security Advisor to Senators Feinstein and Butler of California. Before that Rob worked in the defense industry and spent 10 years at Bloomberg Government as the Senior Defense Analyst. He also worked as a lobbyist and had a 20-year career in the U.S. Air Force as an intelligence officer, commander, and politico-military affairs officer.

He is a graduate of the Air Force Academy and has a master's degree from the University of California, San Diego in Latin American Studies and a master's degree in Global Risk from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, Italy.

Connect with him on LinkedIn and go to our website if you’d like reach out directly.

Benjamin Franklin’s contributions are innumerable. Across science, politics, diplomacy and writing. His mark is still felt. So you’d be forgiven for overlooking an early achievement: successfully advocating for fire safety.

Early 18th century Philadelphia, with its narrow streets, densely packed wooden buildings and open fireplaces, was at constant risk of fire. A relatively young Franklin decided to raise the issue. In his letter, “On Protection of Towns from Fire”, penned in his own The Pennsylvania Gazette, he made a number of admirably specific policy recommendations, like banning shallow hearths, increasing chimney cleaning frequency, requiring licenses for chimney sweepers and fining the sweeper if a chimney fire occurred soon after cleaning.

It is here, in this letter, we first encounter a now well-worn phrase in the fields of medicine, disaster and risk: “an Ounce of Prevention is worth a Pound of Cure”.

Almost three centuries on, Franklin’s advice is still ignored. We even have the statistics that prove him out: the UN’s disaster risk agency found that every dollar invested in risk reduction and prevention could save up to 15 dollars in post-disaster recovery. But response and recovery often becomes the overriding political priority and budgetary focus. Prevention is, so often, neglected.

Let’s hope, at least on global catastrophic risk, we can avoid the outcome Franklin mapped out: “when your Stairs being in Flames, you may be forced, (as I once was) to leap out of your Windows, and hazard your Necks to avoid being over-roasted.”

Acting national, hoping global

On 10-11 February, France’s President Macron hosted the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Summit. The “Statement on Inclusive and Sustainable Artificial Intelligence for People and the Planet” was signed by 60 participating countries, as well as the European Union and the African Union. The UK and US, however, did not sign.

The US has started the process of withdrawing from the World Health Organization (WHO), including ceasing involvement in negotiations on the WHO convention on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.

The Munich Security Report 2025 was released ahead of the Munich Security Conference, a major annual international security conference held on 14-16 February. The report focuses on the shifting power dynamics at global and national levels. It notes that: “On the one hand, power is shifting toward a larger number of actors who have the ability to influence key global issues. On the other hand, the world is experiencing increasing polarization both between and within many states, which is hampering joint approaches to global crises and threats.”

Policy comment: The decline in multilateralism is a long-standing trend, one which is only being exacerbated by recent geopolitical and political shifts. So national governments must take greater responsibility for global catastrophic risk reduction. They might not be able to rely on global institutions to prevent or manage crises. And in times of global crisis, international cooperation would be even harder. Policymakers must build readiness and improve self-reliance, such as strengthening critical infrastructure, emergency response systems and national stockpiles of essential resources. The parts of government that focus on international and future threats – like foreign policy agencies and intelligence communities – must be even more alert to global risk that might quickly and unexpectedly threaten national security and human welfare. Governments must allocate budgets to disaster risk reduction, such as contingency funds and adaptive fiscal policies. And proactive public engagement and communication is key. Effective crisis response depends on public trust and engagement. For countries without robust civil defense, there is little time to waste.

Estimating with precision

A recently discovered asteroid, named 2024 YR4, has a 2.3 percent chance of hitting Earth in 2032. Estimated to be around 40-90 metres in length, it could cause damage as far as 50 km from the impact site, which would devastate a large city. Mumbai and Kolkata in India, Lagos in Nigeria and Bogotá in Colombia are the largest that could be hit if it strikes Earth. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will observe the asteroid in March 2025 to better assess the asteroid’s size, and it will pass near Earth again in 2028, when its trajectory will be able to be better determined.

Policy comment: The discovery of 2024 YR4 generated a high degree of public interest over the past six weeks, despite its relatively low likelihood and long time frame. This interest is probably due to a public fascination with space, especially space objects. However, there might be another factor: specificity. Asteroid trackers can provide a date of impact, the trajectory, the potential impact zones, the impact size and, years in advance, a percentage chance down to the decimal figure. Detection of near-Earth objects receives significant international effort, with the US and European space agencies, as well as private observatories, tracking over 30,000 objects. It provides decision-makers with a high degree of confidence when assessing options to reduce the risk. No other global catastrophic threat receives this level of cooperative, international scientific effort, let alone level of precision. Of course, the tail risk of other catastrophic threats cannot be assessed with the same certainty – but governments rarely, if ever, try. For example, the public do not receive comparable statistical representations for nuclear winter, climate tipping points or severe pandemics. There are various tools to assess risk and make decisions under deep uncertainty, such as extreme value theory, simulation modelling, judgment aggregation (like forecasting competitions), precautionary strategies and scenario planning. Governments should use these tools more frequently and systemically to inform themselves and the public.

Also see:

• The results from a recent forecasting competition on the probability of a nuclear incident causing up to 10 million deaths by 2045. The median forecast from a sample of the US public was 10 per cent, while the median estimated 5 per cent and the median superforecaster was 1 per cent.

• A new project by UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) devoting 81 million pounds to develop an early warning system for climate tipping points.

Following the public’s lead

A new opinion poll asked the UK public about a range of global catastrophic threats. About a third of respondents ranked AI as one of the issues to have the largest impact on the world, behind climate change and risk of war (about 50 percent each). It found that “Substantial majorities of respondents state that the government should be spending significant resources to prepare for catastrophic climate change (69%), global pandemic (68%), nuclear war (63%), and uncontrolled AI (57%).” Three-quarters of respondents said they would hold the national government responsible for responding to extreme risk.

Previous studies have also shown concern around global catastrophic risk and the lack of policy effort. A 2024 survey found that, within the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters, majorities supported strong climate action, ranging from 66 percent of people in the United States and Russia, to 73 percent in China, 77 percent in India and 85 percent in Brazil. A 2019 poll found that sixty one percent of adults across 26 countries opposed the use of lethal autonomous weapons systems. A 2007 survey across nuclear weapons states showed overwhelming support for the elimination of nuclear weapons or a reduction of arsenals, a result reflected more recently in the US as well.

Policy comment: Although governments are the arbiters of national security, the public’s expectation far exceeds the policy response on global catastrophic risk. The public, rather than dismissing it, is often quite concerned when asked about it. Governments need to follow their citizens' lead. They could do their own polling across a range of global threats, to understand public sentiment and perceived level of prioritization. They could establish citizen councils or groups to provide regular and detailed feedback on government action on large-scale and complex threats. They could bring a public polling component to internal national risk assessment processes. The public can also be a powerful and useful tool for developing policy; for example, the Citizens Convention for Climate was an citizen assembly announced by President Macron in 2019, leading to a set of 149 proposals. Such efforts require the government to trust these delegates and deliver on the public mandate they represent.

Supporting local response

The Munich Security Report 2025 found that, among G7 countries, the risk of “A future pandemic” ranked as the sixth highest concern in 2021, but dropped to 26th (out of 33) in 2024.

The thirteenth meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body to draft and negotiate the WHO convention – nicknamed the Pandemic Treaty – is being held over 17–21 February. A key concern by health experts has been the focus on preparedness or response over prevention. Completion by the target of May 2025 remains highly uncertain.

Africa is dealing with a number of outbreaks. The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and other parts of Africa has led to over 2500 cases, with a 67 percent fatality rate. The Sudan virus, one of the four types of Ebola virus, was recently detected in Uganda, with one confirmed death. South Sudan became the latest country in the continent’s mpox outbreak. Ebola has been ruled out in outbreak scare in Manhattan.

On 31 January, the US Department of Agriculture confirmed that it had detected a new variant of highly pathogenic avian influenza in dairy cattle – an indication that bird-to-dairy transmission might not be as rare as initially believed. In January, a 65-year old man was the first (and only so far) person in the US to die of this avian influenza outbreak, with 68 confirmed cases in total.

The Trump administration has reportedly appointed Gerald Parker to head the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy. Parker is a well-respected biosecurity expert, most recently in the roles of associate dean for Texas A&M’s Global One Health program and Director of the Biosecurity and Pandemic Policy Center, as well as chair of National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB).

Policy comment: Disasters start and end locally. Whether a pandemic, a natural disaster or a conflict, the first people on the scene are locals: emergency services, community organizations, and ordinary citizens. The challenge with pandemics, much like global catastrophic threats of any nature, is that local can very quickly become global. So speed of response is crucial. The longer it takes to detect, assess and respond to emerging threats, the greater the human and economic toll. Part of speed is agility and coordination across multiple levels of governance – local, national, regional and international. Higher levels, particularly the federal level, must empower local authorities with resources, guidance and coordination mechanisms for when a crisis happens. Governments must develop early-warning systems, prepare well-tested plans, and ensure timely decision-making. Funding constraints, political hesitancy and bureaucratic inertia delay critical actions. The outbreaks in Africa provide two counterpoints. On one hand, the Uganda Virus Research Institute began trials on a vaccine within days of its Ebola outbreak; on the other, the US’s recent decision around global health security could put at risk its pledge of a million mpox vaccine doses. In global catastrophic risk reduction, the weakest link determines the strength of the entire system.

Also see:

• A highly informative weekly update on global pandemic news by the Pandemic Action network.

Short-termism. An oft-cited foe when discussing how to influence policymakers on global catastrophic risk. Economic challenges. Electoral processes. Media cycles. Having policymakers zoom out and think about ‘the long term’ seems, to most people, to be a massive hurdle for change.

It’s a false dichotomy. Indeed, falling into this trap could perpetuate the sense from policymakers that global catastrophic risk is unlikely or futuristic. Global catastrophic risk is with us now. Two nuclear-armed states are in major regional conflicts – let alone the massive build-ups of nuclear weapons. The impact of climate change is already being felt. While COVID-19 is still with us, the US is facing an escalating bird flu crisis, and a concerning outbreak of the Marburg virus is being managed in Tanzania. AI has already approached human levels on a range of artistic and intellectual tasks, a feat that some experts previously thought would be decades away.

Nowadays, policymakers are often dealing with crisis upon crisis – geopolitical, economic, environmental, societal, political. The more pertinent challenge is how to focus policymakers’ attention on prevention and preparedness when they are perpetually in response and recovery mode. As we enter a new era of global catastrophic risk, it’s worth taking a fresh look at what it takes to convince policymakers.

Turning risk reports into action

The World Economic Forum has released its annual “Global Risks Report” based on inputs from over 900 global leaders across academia, business, government, international organizations and civil society. It found that 88 percent believed that the next two years would see at least a moderate risk of global catastrophe (up from 84 percent) and 92 percent when assessed over ten years (up from 91 percent). The three most likely global crises for 2025 were state-based armed conflict, extreme weather events and geoeconomic confrontation.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved the Doomsday Clock from 90 seconds to 89 seconds to midnight. According to its statement, “Because the world is already perilously close to the precipice, a move of even a single second should be taken as an indication of extreme danger and an unmistakable warning that every second of delay in reversing course increases the probability of global disaster.”

Eurasia Group and Foreign Policy also released their own risk assessments for 2025, each with a list of ten. While most were geopolitical, those of relevance to global catastrophic risk included Eurasia Group identifying the possibility of a climate tipping point, Foreign Policy noting a potential breakdown in US-China relations, and both worried about the lack of AI governance.

Policy comment: These types of public assessments are generally useful for policymakers to sense-check the views of global and geopolitical risk experts against their own. However, they are very high-level, differ in methodologies and scopes, and target many audiences. They might not be instructive for immediate and precise policy change. So policymakers, from the head of government down to a policy officer, would need to translate the assessments’ findings for their own jurisdiction. To start with, these reports and publications might have identified a specific risk area, risk factor, trend or scenario that is not on the policymaker’s radar. Selecting one of these items, conducting a high-level review of its impact on their jurisdiction, and assessing the ways and the extent to which the nation is vulnerable would help identify policy and capability gaps. More broadly, governments need to conduct an internal analysis of global risk. National risk assessments are one method used by some, but very few, governments. Strategic intelligence and defence agencies also develop assessments of global issues, though these efforts are often not conducted consistently, publicly presented and whole-of-government exercises.

Also see:

• An article by our Policy Director from last year on the purpose and limitations of the Doomsday Clock.

Reforming emergency response

The US has issued an Executive Order aimed at reforming the Federal Emergency Management Authority (FEMA), the leading, though not exclusive, disaster response and assistance agency in the US. The EO forms a council of agency heads and external experts to advise the President on improving FEMA’s ability to respond to disasters and support States in their disaster response. The Council is required to hold its first public meeting within three months and submit its report to the President by six months later.

Policy comment: The need to reform FEMA and the emergency management system has been a long-standing, bipartisan issue in the US. This reform could pave the way for improving how FEMA manages global catastrophic risk, while also empowering non-federal governments to better manage more localized disasters. In particular, the EO requires the sourcing of external analysis, debate and commentary on FEMA’s role and operations. Ultimately, modern hazards are far greater than when FEMA first began in 1979, and global catastrophic risk is a largely neglected catastrophic tail of the risk portfolio – despite all catastrophic response plans citing that FEMA would be on the frontlines of a global catastrophe. The council’s engagement with external experts is key. It will open the door to flagging the need for FEMA to prioritize global catastrophic risk. This EO is emblematic of the Trump Administration’s potential impact on global catastrophic risk reduction. President Trump is delivering on his broad campaign promise to reimagine how government functions for the national interest. Government reviews and reforms like these, even if not directly motivated by global catastrophic risk, create openings that typically occur only after a major catastrophe.

Seeking a deeper view on AI progress

A breakthrough in AI models by a Chinese company is testing assumptions around the gap between Western and Chinese AI companies. DeepSeek’s new model, r1, has outperformed leading models like OpenAI’s o1 and Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 in benchmarks while apparently using far fewer resources. DeepSeek also released the technical weights of their model, a practice of debate worldwide. Further, DeepSeek is garnering considerable praise for its engineering of this model, using techniques that may soon be replicated by other companies for more capability advancement. This release potentially demonstrates that Chinese companies can narrow the gap, or even supersede, their Western counterparts despite their limited access to high-end semiconductors and lesser computing power. Other AI experts have pushed back on this narrative, noting that export controls and computing power are still major constraints for the future of DeepSeek, whose success so far can be heavily explained by the easier task of replicating existing models.

In a 28 January interview with The Economist, Anthropic CEO’s Dario Amodei states that “2026-27 is the critical window [when] the models start getting better than humans at everything including AI design, including using AI to make better AI, including using AI to make all kinds of intelligence and defense technologies.” He goes on to state that, for the US to stay ahead of China, it must retain export controls, ensure energy provision to domestic AI companies, and continue testing and evaluation of models to prevent misuse.

Policy comment: Massive uncertainties remain in the future of AI progress. Experts differ considerably on both the technical and geopolitical implications of the DeepSeek release. It reinforces that no one should feel confident in any prediction about the societal, economic and national security implications of AI. Simply put, policymakers need to be ready for tremendous uncertainty, while attempting to reduce that uncertainty. Rapid technological advancement will create a fog of confusion ripe for policy error and geopolitical misunderstanding. Under these circumstances, strategic surprises are likely. Such surprises often proceed forceful policy reactions that can be as unpredictable and uncertain as the events themselves. Two classic examples – Sputnik and 9/11 – had long tails in their national policy responses and global ripple effects. Whatever surprise comes from AI, policymakers must become better prepared through several policy tools: technology assessments that consider faster than expected AI progress; emergency response plans updated for AI risk; diplomatic channels established for crisis; and non-proliferation safeguards established and tested.

Also see:

• Deepseek’s performance playing Chess, which left much to be desired.

When it comes to worst-case scenarios, four big threats tend to dominate the discussion: nuclear war, climate change, pandemics and artificial intelligence. Once in a while, someone in the back raises their hand to call out threats from above, like asteroids. Other times, volcanologists like to remind us of the threats that arise from deep in the Earth’s crust. And don’t forget about ‘the big one’ – the risk of a massive earthquake and tsunami in the US Pacific Northwest.

Take a recent Economist article, which plays with ten scenarios for 2025 that sound implausible to most people. Of the ten, five had global catastrophic risk written all over them: a new global pandemic, a nuke in space, a shifting of ocean currents in the North Atlantic, a major volcanic eruption, and a solar storm. (If you’re less enamoured with science, the New York Post’s analysis of Nostradamus’s predictions for 2025 won’t provide much comfort either.) It is difficult to not be guided by what we’ve seen before or know exists today.

But a good risk manager is kept up at night not by what they know about, but what they don’t. Military analysts call them strategic surprises. Statisticians call them tail events. Nassim Taleb called them black swans. Donald Rumsfeld called them unknown unknowns. Whichever term takes your fancy, the reality is the same: we are wading into a misty future with blindfolds on. The only way we’ll make it through is a bit of luck, a lot of pluck and plenty of imagination of what could be around the corner.

Reflecting on the mirror organism

A diverse group of scientists have conducted an assessment of the technical feasibility of creating mirror bacteria along with the potential risk it creates (see also accompanying Science paper). Where organisms on Earth are based on “right-handed” DNA and RNA to carry genetic information and “left-handed” proteins as the building blocks of the cells, mirror organisms flip this system. It is a function of evolution, so mirror organisms could not evolve from existing life. But it could become technically feasible in about a decade given scientific advancements.

The concern is how mirror organisms could interact with life on Earth. Mirror viruses are not an issue because they could not fit our biochemistry – the human body would not recognize them. However, this new study shows that mirror bacteria might be able to evade defensive mechanisms. It would be, in effect, an invasive species.

According to the report, it “appears plausible, even likely, that sufficiently robust mirror bacteria could spread through the environment unchecked by natural biological controls and act as dangerous opportunistic pathogens in an unprecedentedly wide range of other multicellular organisms, including humans.”

Policy comment: Given that the benefits or opportunities from mirror bacteria are very limited, the risk-reward equation is heavily tilted towards preventing mirror bacteria altogether. Governments should develop a clear policy position, including restrictions on research and development, international engagement and governance, systems for monitoring and oversight, and updating of biosecurity policies and processes. The scientists are unequivocal; they believe that no mirror bacteria and other mirror organisms be created and that research with the goal of creating mirror bacteria not be permitted. Policymakers should consider directing their scientific research organizations to conduct their own risk assessment and analysis of future trends of mirror organisms.

Avoiding a toxic lifestyle

Evidence continues to accumulate that chemical toxicity is harming human, animal, insect and environmental health to potentially catastrophic long-term effect. Meanwhile, countries failed to finalize negotiations on a global plastic treaty, and major hurdles remain. The OECD has found that only a comprehensive and stringent approach in all countries could effectively end plastic leakage by 2040.

A new scientific article reviews the various impacts of microplastic particles on humans from before birth to accumulation throughout life and even to re-entry into different ecosystems after death. Harms from microplastic particles include early human development, male and female fertility, cardiovascular health and cancer.

A number of just-released studies look at the impact of plastic and chemical pollution in the food supply chain. A recent Nature study found 3601 food contact chemicals – those arising from storing, packaging, processing or serving food – were found in human samples. This equates to 25% of the 14,402 known food contact chemicals, many of which presented hazards of concern and some that have never been tested for toxicity. Another study finds that the effect of nano and micro-plastics on pollination and biocontrol services might further exacerbate food insecurity caused by climate change and environmental harm. A review of the impact of chemical pesticides finds the accumulation of chemicals amplifies the potential for adverse health outcomes, including acute poisoning, cancer and neurological disorders. A fourth article reviews the state of the research on the impact of pesticide on pollinators.

Policy comment: Toxicity rarely appears in discussions around global catastrophic risk. This is probably due to toxicity not presenting a singular catastrophic event; it is more of a boring apocalypse. However, toxicity’s direct and indirect harm could lead to or exacerbate catastrophic risk due its impact on human health, fertility rates, pollinator and insect numbers, food and water quantity and quality, climate change, and broader ecological damage. Given the state of global and regional approaches, countries might need to take their own measures. Policymakers will need to deal with data limitations, intellectual property protections, access to corporate research and information, and the lack of legal or institutional frameworks to mandate testing or enforce restrictions. A starting point for policymakers: safety evaluations of high-use chemicals, a precautionary principle for new chemicals, phasing out of plastics and harmful substances, and investments into alternatives.

Also see:

• The numbers around chemical production. There are around 350,000 chemicals registered, though around 40,000-60,000 are currently on the global market. About 6,000 chemicals account for more than 99 percent of the total volume, and global chemical production is expected to double by 2030 compared to 2017 levels. Fewer than 30 per cent of all chemicals have undergone significant safety evaluation. Thousands of new chemicals are registered every year.

Protecting the coop

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) – an independent agency of the US Congress that examines government efficiency and effectiveness – will review federal Continuity of Operations (COOP) in the context of global catastrophic risk. COOP is the planning, programs and policies to ensure that critical functions and services continue to operate during a catastrophic national emergency. See the letter that initiated this review from Mark Green, Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, and Dina Titus, Ranking Member of Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

Policy comment: COOP is important for a range of catastrophic scenarios, and is one of the government’s last lines of defense for the unexpected or uncertain. In the US, COOP was designed during the Cold War for the threat of nuclear conflict. So it will need upgrading for 21st century threats. Still, the US is already a world-leader in its COOP arrangements, and this review will position the US even better for global catastrophic risk. Countries around the world must follow the US’s lead by reviewing their own COOP arrangements, including maintaining essential functions, ensuring leadership and decision-making, surging and deploying personnel, developing and maintaining facilities and supplies, ensuring governmental and national communications, and testing and training of the COOP program.

Also see:

• The newly released 2050 Strategic Foresight report by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Hiring for Global Shield – this time in Australia

Another new exciting opportunity has opened up at Global Shield! Just as we close the round of applications for a US director, we are hiring for a director of our Australia office. Reporting to the Executive Director, this person will be responsible for advancing our mission with Australian policy, engaging with governmental agencies, fostering relationships with strategic partners, and building Global Shield’s credibility and reach. See more information and the application link here.

There are various ways to describe the process of looking back after an event to draw out insights. In a military context, you might refer to it as an after-action review. In a policy context, perhaps you can refer to it as a policy review or lessons-learnt exercise. In a corporate context, it might be called a retrospective or an audit. In a medical context, you would call it an autopsy. Unfortunately, we will have no such luxury for a global catastrophe. It will be too late to look back. What we do have now, however, are warning shots. A global pandemic, military conflicts, major natural hazards, sudden supply disruptions. They create both an opportunity to learn and a window for change. The harm caused by these events will have been in vain if it does not shape our future. Mortui vivos docent. But only if we listen.

Preparing a continent

On 30 October, an important report on European Union (EU) preparedness to shocks and crises was presented to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The report was developed by Sauli Niinistö, who was President of Finland from 2012 to 2024. It noted that the Commission “do[es] not have comprehensive capacity to bring all necessary EU resources together in a coordinated manner across institutional and operational silos to prepare for – and if needed, act – in response to major cross-sectoral and cross-border shocks and crises.” The report states that “The EU needs to adopt a robust all-hazards, whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to its civilian and military preparedness and readiness.”

Policy comment: We strongly endorse this report. There is little we can add, so here we pull out some of its key recommendations:

• Develop a comprehensive EU Risk Assessment.

• Use the upcoming Preparedness Union Strategy to put the EU on track for comprehensive preparedness.

• Explore the feasibility of an EU Preparedness Law to set joint standards and long-term targets, aligning EU and national efforts wherever possible.

• Articulate a coherent vision for the EU’s role in preparing for and responding to external armed aggression.

• Develop a central operational crisis ‘hub’ within the Commission to facilitate cross-sectoral coordination and situational awareness.

• Develop tools and frameworks to make EU strategic foresight more actionable and solution oriented.

• Further develop a comprehensive exercise culture to make sure coordination and information sharing frameworks and relevant instruments work in practice.

• Set up regular cross-sectoral EU training courses on security, defence, and crisis management.

• Jointly invest in citizens’ risk education, incorporating different dimensions, such as cybersecurity, disaster risks, and disinformation.

• Improve crisis and emergency communication to reach citizens under all conditions.

• Prepare in advance to minimise the disruption of protracted crises on social cohesion and the socio-economic fabric of our societies.

• Develop a comprehensive EU Stockpiling Strategy to incentivise coordinated public and private reserves of critical inputs, and ensure their availability under all circumstances.

Although not focused on global catastrophic risk, many of the report’s recommendations are relevant to improving all-hazards preparedness, which therefore improves preparedness for more extreme consequences. Governments around the world should study this report and adapt its recommendations to their own contexts.

Also see:

• Finland’s guide to citizens on Preparing for Incidents and Crises, Sweden’s “In case of crisis or war” brochure and Norway’s advice on emergency preparedness, all released in the past month.

Building global food supply security

President Silva of Brazil has officially launched the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty as part of its G20 Presidency. There are 148 founding members, including 82 countries, the African Union, the EU and 24 international organizations. The Alliance will hold regular Summits Against Hunger and Poverty and establish a High-Level Champions Council to oversee its work. Its supervising body, The Global Alliance Support Mechanism will be hosted by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

A new pre-print study has assessed that “the global food trade system is resilient to minor disruptions but vulnerable to major ones”. According to the study, scenarios that abruptly block sunlight – such as asteroids, volcanoes or nuclear war, which pollute the upper atmosphere with light-reflecting contaminants – could severely disrupt trade, causing most countries to lose between 50 and 100 per cent of their food imports. A major loss of critical infrastructure that is important for the food supply chain – such as an extreme pandemic that stopped work or a global attack on communications or electricity – could result in most countries losing up to half of their food imports.

Policy comment: Major agricultural producers must develop policy mechanisms to manage global and national catastrophic threats to their food supply. As the study suggests, it is the massive reduction in global food trade that would lead to severe hunger around the world in a catastrophic scenario, which could have far-ranging geopolitical effects beyond the immense human suffering. A range of policy options are available, including researching, developing and piloting alternative and resilient foods, planning for massive build-up and roll-out of food production in a catastrophic scenario, and collaborating internationally with other nations on shared resources and plans. The US’s National Security Memorandum on food system resilience and a recent bipartisan parliamentary inquiry into Australia’s food security demonstrate greater focus among major agricultural producers. But implementation remains a critical issue. And these countries need to champion global food system security within the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty.

Also see:

• A recent study that summarizes the potential interventions for global catastrophic food shocks, including resilient food research and development, critical infrastructure resilience for GCR, and national and international policy.

Reviewing and learning from crisis

New Zealand has completed Phase One of its Royal Commission into Covid-19 pandemic response. It recommended that “a central agency function should be established to coordinate all-of-government preparation and response planning for pandemics and other national risks, supported by strengthened scenario planning, modelling capability, and external expertise.” This function would include managing the national risk assessment. The Commission also recommended an oversight mechanism, such as a Cabinet Committee, to proactively review national preparedness for all hazards. Phase Two has begun immediately with new commissioners and a new Terms of Reference focusing on the vaccine rollout and the effect the Covid-19 response had on other sectors of society, like education and the economy.

The Australian Government has released the report from its Independent Review into Australia’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. It provided nine recommendations for action over the next 18 months, and a further seven medium-term actions prior to the next national health emergency. It did not recommend major changes to Australia’s planning, preparedness and response for national emergencies or crises. The only all-hazard recommendation – “Develop a whole-of-government plan to improve domestic and international supply chain resilience” – did not come with any explanation or detail.

Policy comment: Every crisis creates an opportunity to review the legislation, policy, processes and institutions that would underpin catastrophic risk reduction. However, these reviews must be timely, holistic and independent to best inform policymakers. The two recent reviews, along with those of Singapore and the UK, demonstrate the various levels of effectiveness. The UK and New Zealand’s processes are independent reviews led within the legislative branch, and the first of multiple components. The Australian review, on the other hand, was led out of the Prime Minister’s department with a scope that did not cover the whole-of-nation pandemic response, while being insufficiently focused on prevention or preparedness. As a result, the recommendations were unambitious and lacked guidance for much-needed systemic and all-hazards policy. Any review must consider risk governance, assessment, prevention and preparedness to inform management of national risk beyond the specific type of crisis. It is also important to evaluate cross-cutting impacts of the crisis with other policy areas, such as foreign policy, national security, critical infrastructure, the economy, healthcare, technology and society.

Hiring for Global Shield

A new exciting opportunity has opened up at Global Shield! We are hiring for a director of our US office. Reporting to the Executive Director, this person will be responsible for advancing our mission with US policy, engaging with governmental agencies, fostering relationships with strategic partners, and building Global Shield’s credibility and reach.

The job is to convince US policymakers to take definitive action to prevent and prepare for the many ways a global catastrophe might upend our collective future. We are looking for an experienced advocate and leader who is deeply knowledgeable about policy processes and passionate about reducing global catastrophic risk. We want individuals who resonate with our organizational values and possess the audacity to tackle global challenges.

If you are such a person, or know such a person, we look forward to seeing an application. See more information and the application link here.

On 30 October, the RAND Corporation released an assessment of existential and global catastrophic risk. It is an extensive and lengthy treatment of six catastrophic threats: nuclear war, climate change, pandemics, artificial intelligence, asteroid or comet impacts, and supervolcanoes. This report is particularly important because it was commissioned by the US Department of Homeland Security as input into their own assessment as required by the Global Catastrophic Risk Management Act.

In this special, slightly extended, edition of the Global Shield Briefing, we will draw out some of the important conclusions identified in the report. While Global Shield’s views of global catastrophic risk does deviate from the report in some places, as any analysis of uncertain national security risk might, this report is a useful contribution to the field and contains important implications for policymakers. 

Dealing with the increasing risk of global catastrophe

The report assesses that “Overall, global catastrophic risk has been increasing in recent years and appears likely to increase in the coming decade.” The risk of naturally occurring pandemics is increasing due to human behavior, but the risk of a deliberate pandemic continues to increase as the technologies of modern biology become more powerful, affordable, and accessible. For climate change, the consequences – like extreme weather events, sea-level rise and ecosystem degradation – will continue to escalate in future decades but different places will feel them over different time-horizons. The risk of nuclear war is increasing due to heightening geopolitical tensions and the growing size in nuclear arsenals. And AI risk will continue to grow in the next decade as AI becomes more capable and more widely used.

Policy comment: Policymakers must recognize that global catastrophic risk is not an extremely unlikely or long-term phenomenon. At the individual threat level, global catastrophic risk is increasing, primarily due to geopolitical, governance, environmental, technological and societal challenges and trends. And the risk is greater than domain-specific analysis would indicate because some threats intersect in novel or unpredictable ways and humanity could face multiple hazards simultaneously or in quick succession. The next decade is critical for global catastrophic risk reduction as a whole. Policymakers must address it with the following policy principles: (1) urgency: immediate policy prioritization, development and delivery; (2) all-hazards: governing and managing the risk as a whole, not in governance or domain siloes; (3) whole-of-government: all arms of government to own, act and coordinate on policy efforts; (4) integrated: global catastrophic risk integrated and considered within existing government strategies, frameworks, policies and processes.

Estimating natural risk

In RAND’s analysis, total global catastrophic risk is largely due to human activities, which are driving both the threats as well as potential responses to them. RAND assesses that supervolcanic eruptions and asteroids or comet impacts are highly unlikely. An extremely large volcanic eruption on the scale that would be considered a supervolcano would statistically occur approximately every 15,000 years. For asteroids, impactors that would cause country-sized devastation would occur around every 100,000 years. Global devastation – brought by asteroids of about 3,000 meters in diameter – would occur roughly every 10 million years. The likelihood of a comet impact is less than 1 percent of that for asteroids.

Policy comment: The report potentially underestimates the risk of catastrophe from natural sources. Quantifying the risk is difficult due to remaining knowledge and research gaps, systemic complexity and human-driven factors. RAND assessed the scale of risk from supervolcanoes and near-Earth objects mostly as driven by the size of the hazards. However, even small or moderate-sized volcanic eruptions or asteroid impactors could cause catastrophic consequences if they are located near critical systems and infrastructure, such as nuclear facilities or submarine cables. For example, volcanologists have pointed out seven global “pinch points” where low-magnitude volcanic activity clusters around important global systems. Another major factor in the risk is early warning. Both volcanic eruptions and asteroid impacts can happen with very little notice. Warning systems and planning could be critical for avoiding major disruption to infrastructure and governance, as well as for enabling broader global readiness. Furthermore, both types of hazards provide a similar pathway to global catastrophe, which is a major loss of food supply due to long-term atmospheric aerosols. Therefore, food system resilience could massively reduce risk from all sources of global catastrophic risk.

Directing technological drivers

The report highlights a number of factors and trends that are determining the current state and future development of global catastrophic risk. These factors influence many or all of the six threats and hazards assessed in the report, as well as others not considered in the report. They include advances in technology; lacking, immature and uncoordinated global governance; individual and societal development needed for stability and resilience; and intersection among the threats and hazards. 

On technological advancement specifically, the report notes that the technological change sits at the root of many of the global catastrophic threats, and also can provide solutions to them. How technology is developed, deployed and governed could greatly shape the direction of global catastrophic risk as a whole.

Policy comment: Policymakers should ensure that technology policy is guided by considerations of global catastrophic risk. Governments could implement a systematic process to evaluate and categorize existing or emerging technologies based on their potential to pose catastrophic risk – similar to the process outlined in another RAND series. They would then need to continually refresh the risk assessments, re-evaluate impacts on critical infrastructure and national security, and engage in foresight and forecasting exercises to test assumptions and existing policies. This effort would help inform more specific policy measures to reduce technology-driven risk. For example, technology governance could include requirements around safety and security, transparency and verification for technological applications, and accountability measures like liability and insurance schemes. Ultimately, proper risk analysis will help governments avoid the pitfalls of the Collingridge Dilemma, whereby societies realize the full extent of a technology’s risk and harms only after the technology is pervasively adopted and difficult to manage. Governments should also look to incentivize technological development that would have a disproportionately positive impact on global catastrophic risk. Important areas of focus could be renewable energy, carbon capture and storage, climate modeling, monitoring and management of natural disasters, alternative and resilient foods, ecosystem remediation and restoration, vaccine development platforms, resilient infrastructure, and advanced verification and monitoring tools for weapons of mass destruction.

Facing and tackling uncertainty

The report brings significant attention to the challenge of uncertainty in risk assessment. Due to inherent lack of data and information on highly unlikely and in some respects, unprecedented events, it is difficult to know what threats might arise, how they manifest, and whether humans would survive or recover. One main recommendation from the report is for the US government to “develop a coordinated and expanded federally funded research agenda to reduce the uncertainty about global catastrophic and existential risks and to improve the capabilities for managing such risks”.

Policy comment: Uncertainty complicates policymaking. It makes risk assessment difficult because the likelihood, impact and potential scenarios cannot be easily quantified or determined. It also makes policy prioritization difficult because it might not be clear which threats or hazards require attention or which policies would be most effective. However, a high degree of uncertainty must not negate the need for policy action on global catastrophic risk. The threat of terrorism or a major kinetic war between nation-states, for example, face significant uncertainty, but there remains political and public consensus of the need for better risk management. Uncertainty simply calls for a more nuanced approach. First, reducing uncertainty must be a priority. Techniques that improve monitoring, detection, foresight, horizon-scanning, warning and scenario development would help improve clarity about potential futures. Second, policy efforts must treat global catastrophic risk as a whole. As the report states, “managing these risks will require a portfolio approach with multiple actions operating in synergy” – or as we call it, an all-hazards approach. Third, and relatedly, a key focus area must be planning, preparedness and resilience. While the threat vector might be uncertain, the same set of critical systems will need protection, such as infrastructure, food, water, energy, governance and healthcare. Shoring up these systems for traditional risk is a first step, but they must also be ready for catastrophic disruptions.

Enhancing response and recovery for AI risk

The report provides a useful articulation of AI risk. It states that “Ultimately, the risks that AI poses can be understood primarily as an amplification of existing risks both acute (e.g., nuclear war, pandemics, climate change) and slower-moving (e.g., disruption of social, governance, economic, and critical infrastructure systems; disempowerment of human decision-making).” It analogizes AI risk to “pouring gas on a fire”. The report notes that the likelihood and timing of catastrophic risk from AI remains highly unpredictable due to the inherent uncertainty of AI progress, intersection with other catastrophic threats, and the type and impact of yet-undecided governance choices.

We broadly agree with the report’s assessment of AI risk, and believe it legitimizes the concerns of advocates for greater safety in AI development and deployment. Our main disagreement is the report’s assessment that response and recovery is “not applicable, given the uncertainty about potential pathways and outcomes.”

Policy comment: AI risk must not only be managed by regulating the development and deployment of safe, secure, and trustworthy AI systems. It must also be managed through policies that would improve preparedness, response and recovery should a crisis occur. Even if the pathways to catastrophe remain hazy, a range of policies could enhance the public and private sector’s ability to respond and recover from various forms of AI incident. Indeed, if AI creates risk by “pouring gas on a fire”, then better firefighting capability is one way of managing the risk. For example, an accountable legislative framework would define how and when AI developers, deployers and end-users could be criminally and civilly liable for harms caused by AI systems. It would incentivize action to respond quickly to an AI crisis, and provide recourse to those harmed for their recovery. The potential for catastrophic AI risk also needs to be built into existing national crisis response plans. These revised plans would need to outline the protocols for addressing catastrophic AI incidents, including rapid “recall” or shutdown of AI models, mobilization of government resources and capabilities, coordination between government agencies, and collaboration with society and the private sector. 

p.s. Be sure to also check out a recent assessment from Global Shield’s Director of Policy, Rumtin Sepasspour, of the impact of a second Trump administration on AI policy, which was included among other contributions to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

A Trojan princess, blessed with the gift of prophecy, has her true warnings unheeded, to the downfall of her city. A shepherd boy, restless with boredom, has his false warnings heeded, to the downfall of his herd. Cassandra and The Boy Who Cried Wolf – different fables which, together, provide the same lesson. Warning is not only about the message and the messenger. It is about the listener. If the listener is not ready, able or willing, the warning goes unheard. Perhaps they deem it unrealistic. Perhaps they are not in a position to listen. Perhaps they have lost trust in the messenger. Perhaps they are simply complacent. Whichever the case, the messenger must listen as actively as they speak.

Bolstering civil defense

The government of Sweden has reissued its civil emergency advice booklet, “If Crisis or War Comes”. The 32-page document (not yet available in English) provides advice on home preparedness, warning and alert systems, digital security, and duties for contributing to civil defense. A hard copy will be distributed to 5 million households in late November 2024. 

On 6 September, Lithuania hosted nine European countries – Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Sweden and Ukraine – for the Regional Civil Protection Forum to discuss measures, experiences and lessons for civil protection and resilience. It was a follow-up to the 8th European Civil Protection Forum held in June.

On 26 September, Taiwan’s president chaired the first meeting of the Whole-of-Society Defense Resilience Committee. The 23-person committee includes eight ministers, religious representatives, private sector leaders, technology and critical infrastructure experts, and civil defense advocates. 

Policy comment: Several countries around the world take a robust ‘civil defense’ approach to whole-of-society preparedness and resilience. Civil defense looks to all actors – federal and state governments, local municipalities and councils, companies, civil society and individuals – to be aware and ready for their responsibilities to themselves, their community and the nation. Few countries are well-practiced at civil defense; they’re typically those that have previously faced serious threats to national survival. Some of these countries are now taking additional efforts to bolster civil defense for the more complex risk environment. They are upgrading their civil defense approaches and strategies, increasing funding, expanding shelter networks, upgrading warning systems and better coordinating across society. Governance of civil defense is critical. For example, Lithuania has placed 65 officers responsible for civil protection in municipalities and ministries, while Sweden has a Minister for Civil Defense and Taiwan has established its top-level committee. Countries in Europe are also improving their coordination with other partners. In particular, NATO members, like newly appointed Sweden, have a commitment under Article 3 to civil preparedness.

Recognizing the impacts of climate change on other threats

A group of international climate and environmental scientists have issued a dire warning. Many of the signs of planetary health – such as surface temperatures, ice and glacier mass, tree cover loss and ocean heat – are at record levels. The scientists state that “We find ourselves amid an abrupt climate upheaval, a dire situation never before encountered in the annals of human existence.”

Preliminary findings show that, in 2023, the world’s land absorbed a significantly lower amount of carbon than normal. The primary reasons were the major drought in the Amazon, extreme fire emissions in Canada and the transition from La Niña towards a moderate El Niño. Land sinks – primarily forests, plants and soils – absorb about a quarter of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Even if potentially temporary, such as rapid collapse in land sinks were not included in climate modelling.

Policy comment: Planetary boundaries and climate tipping points are flashing red. Those who are concerned about global catastrophic risk from other sources, such as nuclear weapons, pandemics and artificial intelligence, cannot avoid the potential uncertainty and risk from climate change over the next 5-10 years. Climate change is a risk factor for other threats, such as feeding geopolitical tensions between nuclear powers and creating disease vectors with pandemic potential. It also exacerbates vulnerabilities in economic and social systems that will make it difficult to deal with catastrophic threats. As a recent example, Hurricane Helene in the US impacted the North Carolina facility of drug manufacturer Baxter International, leading to nation-wide shortages of intravenous fluid products that are critical for treatment of many medical conditions. Climate change and associated severe weather disasters could even have unexpected impacts on technological development. For example, the same hurricane forced the closure of two plants in North Carolina that mine some of the highest quality quartz in the world, used for silicon chops and other electronics. Furthermore, if climate change-driven crises continue, they will consume time-poor policymakers and reduce focus on emerging threats like AI and engineered pandemics.

Also see:

• Three global environmental conferences will take place over the next few months: COP16 for biological diversity in Colombia in October, COP29 for climate change in Azerbaijan in November, and COP16 for desertification in Saudi Arabia in December. While separate, the conferences aim to address the intersection of climate change, biodiversity loss, desertification, land degradation, and pollution. Meanwhile, the fifth and potentially final negotiation session of the Global Plastics Treaty will be held in South Korea in late November.