While arguments rage over whether large language models will acquire consciousness and moral agency \u2013 and the power to delete humanity \u2013 existential AI threats remain<\/a>, as of now, open to mitigation. In sharp contrast, extraordinary complacency surrounds the most pressing, avoidable and proven human-made threat to life on Earth. It is as if the world has been seized by collective deafness and by a blind refusal to see what\u2019s staring it in the face. This is no scoffing matter. The accelerating, global proliferation of advanced nuclear weapons<\/a> is bringing real-time \u201cend times\u201d closer to home by the day. The question increasingly is not \u201cif\u201d but \u201cwhen\u201d limited or full-scale nuclear warfare will erupt. Eighty-one years after Hiroshima, how much longer can our luck hold<\/a>?<\/p>\n Alarm bells are ringing, if only people would listen. Desperate Vladimir Putin recently threatened to deploy Russia\u2019s entire nuclear arsenal<\/a>, comprising about 4,400 warheads, against Nato countries if they activated a supposed plan to invade the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad. He offered no evidence for his claim, and it\u2019s true that the frequent Kremlin nuclear sabre-rattling since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine went pear-shaped has diminished Moscow\u2019s credibility. Yet that in itself is destabilising. To work, nuclear deterrence relies on an adversary believing the threat is real. Disbelief invites miscalculation. At the same time, Putin\u2019s inability to halt Ukraine\u2019s conventional drone and missile attacks<\/a> deep inside Russia may be edging him closer to pressing the nuclear button, possibly in the form of low-yield tactical or \u201cbattlefield\u201d nukes.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s bottom-line justification for the illegal US-Israel war on Iran is his wilfully mendacious claim that Tehran was weeks away from obtaining the bomb. He claims to be protecting the world from nuclear war. Yet his reckless threat, issued at the UN, to \u201cannihilate the Islamic Republic<\/a>\u201d implies a possible US nuclear attack. Trump\u2019s hypocrisy is stunning. The US is upgrading its nuclear arsenal<\/a> of 3,700 warheads and may resume nuclear tests. It unreservedly supports Israel\u2019s hidden nuclear weapons programme. And Trump is pursuing a lucrative deal<\/a> with Saudi Arabia, another bitter foe of Iran, to provide civilian nuclear technology that he knows could be repurposed to make weapons. That has prompted regional countries such as Turkey and Egypt to consider going nuclear.<\/p>\n Similarly perilous trends are evident across Asia. North Korea\u2019s great panjandrum, Kim Jong-un, has succeeded in gaining de facto international acceptance of his country\u2019s status as a nuclear weapons state<\/a>. South Korea said in August that Pyongyang now possesses up to 120 warheads \u2013 which Kim brandishes to intimidate neighbours. All but discarded are the twin principles that underpinned the west\u2019s postwar Korea policy: reunification and denuclearisation. Heedless of first-term humiliations, Trump is again seeking a summit with Kim, whom he bizarrely terms a friend<\/a>. \u201cAs long as I\u2019m around, he [Kim] is going to be fine,\u201d he boasted. Japan and South Korea don\u2019t share his confidence. Both debate acquiring nuclear weapons in self-defence. Meanwhile, China\u2019s president, Xi Jinping, having again bamboozled a fawning Trump at their Washington summit, is reportedly building nukes like there\u2019s no tomorrow<\/a> \u2013 which, at this rate, there may not be.<\/p>\n Addressing the UN general assembly, secretary-general Ant\u00f3nio Guterres warned the world has reached \u201cthe most dangerous nuclear moment<\/a>\u201d since 1989. Global military spending reached nearly $3tn<\/a> last year, while AI is increasing uncertainty over nuclear command-and-control, the UN was told. Annual spending on nukes is up by 20%. In a new paper published by the non-partisan Arms Control Association<\/a> (ACA), Daryl Kimball, the head of the ACA in Washington, bemoaned the absence of high-level disarmament talks between the main nuclear powers and the lapsing of strategic arms limitation treaties. \u201cThe nuclear sword of Damocles still hangs over all of us. The threat has become more complex, and in the absence of new arms-control breakthroughs, we are headed for an unprecedented three-way buildup of Chinese, Russian, and US nuclear forces,\u201d Kimball warned.<\/p>\n The fragmentation of the rules-based international order provides aggravating context. Trump-era blasphemies \u2013 that might makes right, that international law and the non-proliferation treaty\u2019s binding obligation to disarm can be ignored, and that the UN charter and human rights norms don\u2019t apply to authoritarian \u201cstrongman\u201d leaders \u2013 all grease the slide into nuclear anarchy. Unresolved forever wars in Palestine, Iran, Ukraine, Myanmar, Yemen and Sudan are base components of a third world war. Potentially earth-shattering, too, is the fast-developing contest for control of space<\/a>, notably the race to build nuclear-powered lunar bases. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, under which more than 130 countries agreed the moon is no one\u2019s property, is now routinely flouted by both governments and billionaires such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. The weaponising of space by the US and others advances rapidly<\/a>. Russia, for example, is reportedly developing an orbiting nuclear-armed anti-satellite weapon.<\/p>\n If the human race really is determined to bring the heavens crashing down in a mad dash for eschatological self-destruction, this is the surest, quickest way to go about it. More surprising than the irresponsible behaviour of politicians is the deafening public silence, the absence of large-scale protest in much of the world, the complacency, bordering on indifference, that accompanies this global march to oblivion. If and when a final reckoning comes, individuals who stayed silent will be complicit in their own undoing. Hiroshima is not a shrine. It\u2019s the future.<\/p>\n
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