There is a looming nuclear crisis, and chances are you’ve never heard of it. It is not just about the war in Ukraine, Putin’s and his lackeys’ loose talk around using nuclear weapons, or Russia’s proclaimed “suspension” of the New START arms control treaty. It is not just about the apparent ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party to quadruple its nuclear arsenal to 1,500 warheads and to pursue unusual nuclear delivery systems. And it is not just about the rapid advances in artificial intelligence and their myriad applications in the militaries of nuclear-armed states. This nuclear crisis is about money.
This year, the MacArthur Foundation, the single biggest philanthropic funder of nuclear risk reduction, is making its final grant distributions before fully withdrawing from the field. Academics, activists, and think tank analysts already relied on a meager $47 million a year. One analysis estimated that MacArthur accounted for about $15 million of that on average between 2014 and 2020, suggesting that total funding may shrink to around $32 million now (the exact numbers are highly uncertain, given reporting lags and database issues). For comparison, the budget of Christopher Nolan’s new Oppenheimer movie is over $100 million. In other words, filmmakers spent three times more money on a single movie about nuclear war than philanthropists are spending on preventing nuclear war.
A field that was already deeply neglected compared to other global risks is now faltering, but with this crisis also comes an opportunity. Even modest amounts of money — by the standards of philanthropists, who spend billions, not millions, pushing their preferred policies every year — can reshape the field for the better, rebalancing lopsided philanthropic portfolios, rigorously prioritizing the most extreme risks, and creating a pipeline for a new generation of experts on nuclear war. To protect us all from the ever-present threat of nuclear war, we need a new…
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