Nuclear war is back in the conversation, weighing more on people’s minds than it has in a generation.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Moscow officials have issued nuclear threats. Russia also suspended its participation in a nuclear arms control treaty with the United States.. North Korea has launched demonstration missiles.
The United States, which is modernizing its nuclear weapons, shot down a surveillance balloon from Chinawhich is increasing its atomic arsenal.
“The threat of nuclear use today, I think, is higher than it ever was in the nuclear age,” said Joan Rohlfing, president of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit group in Washington.
In this environment, a conventional crisis runs a significant risk of going nuclear. All it takes is for a world leader to decide to launch an attack. And that decision-making process needs to be better understood.
Historically, studies on nuclear decision making emerged from economic theory, in which analysts have often irrationally assumed that a “rational actor” is making decisions.
“We all know that humans make mistakes,” Rohlfing said. “We don’t always have good judgment. We behave differently under stress. Why do we think it will be different with nuclear energy?”.
But growing scientific understanding of the brain has not translated into adjustments to nuclear launch protocols.
Now there is a push to change that. For example, the organization led by Rohlfing is working on a project to apply insights from cognitive science and neuroscience to nuclear strategy and protocols—so that leaders don’t stumble and fall into atomic Armageddon.
But from the saying to the fact of finding truly innovative and scientifically supported ideas to prevent an accidental or unnecessary nuclear attack there is a long way. Experts must also persuade policymakers to apply research-based knowledge to real-world nuclear practice.
The world’s nuclear powers have different protocols for making the decision to use nuclear weapons. In the United States, the decision falls to one person: the President.
Before his 2016 election victory, experts and political opponents began raising concerns about giving Donald J. Trump the power to order a nuclear strike. When he left office in 2021, Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to limit Trump’s ability to launch nuclear weapons.
In 2018, Deborah G. Rosenblum, executive vice president of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, invited Moran Cerf, a neuroscientist who is currently a professor at the Columbia Business School in New York, to give a conference titled “Your Brain Under the Influence of Catastrophic Risk.” Cerf shared with experts and researchers what brain science had to say about such troubling topics as nuclear war. The visit preceded a collaboration between Cerf and an organization called PopTech.
The groups are working to provide the US government with science-based suggestions to improve nuclear launch protocols. Changing those policies is not impossible, but it would require the right political scenario.
Cerf has also been interviewing influential security experts such as Leon E. Panetta, former US Secretary of Defense and director of the CIA, and Michael S. Rogers, former director of the National Security Agency. These interviews will be part of a documentary series, “Mutually Assured Destruction.”
With this project, Cerf and his colleagues could have a conduit to share their findings and proposals with prominent government officials.
Cerf said his main criticism of the system for starting a nuclear war is that, despite advances in our understanding of the brain, the status quo assumes largely rational actors. In reality, he stated, the fate of millions of people depends on individual psychology.
One of his suggestions is to scan the brains of presidents and gain an understanding of the neurological details of their decision-making. Perhaps one leader works better in the morning, another in the afternoon; one is better hungry, the other more satiated.
Cerf said an important factor is the order of speech during a decision-making meeting. If the President starts with an opinion, others are less likely to contradict it.
Cerf has also proposed reducing the time pressure that comes with a nuclear decision. The perception of a countdown to respond to an attack originated before the United States developed a more robust nuclear arsenal that could survive a first strike. Ideally, he said, if the United States received information indicating a launch, The President could evaluate it and make a decision outside the direct focus of immediacy.
However, Cerf’s main recommendation reflects the proposals of others: require another person (or persons) to approve a nuclear attack. Alex Wellerstein, a professor at Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey and director of a research project titled “The President and the Bomb,” said such a person needs the explicit power to say no. (He did not contribute to Cerf’s research.)
The project research that Cerf has produced does not directly address nuclear weapons. One of his studies has to do with climate change. He found that when people were asked to bet money on climate outcomes, they bet that global warming was happening and were more concerned about its impact and more supportive of action, even if they started out skeptical.
He believes the results could be applied to nuclear scenarios because gambling could be used to get people to care about nuclear risk and support policy changes. The findings could also be used to evaluate the thinking and prediction of aides who advise the President.
Some experts do not agree with extrapolations of this kind. “Going from there to giving advice about the fate of the world — I don’t think so,” said Baruch Fischhoff, a psychologist who studies decision-making at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania.
Paul Slovic, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon and president of the organization Decision Research, has researched the factors that tend to make people, including Presidents, more likely to favor a nuclear launch. In one experiment, he found that the more punitive domestic policies a person supported — like the death penalty — the more likely he was to approve the use of the bomb.
Perhaps the current fear is that individual psychology governs a choice that can alter the world. It is worth working to understand how brains might function in a nuclear crisis and how they might function better. Changing policies is complicated, but not impossible.
“The current system we have didn’t fall out of the sky fully formed,” Wellerstein said.
By: SARAH SCOLES
BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/science/nuclear-war-brain-neuroscience.html, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-09-14 20:30:07
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