Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

12/10/2026

“Drones are now a critical tool in federal wildfire response, providing real-time infrared imagery to map fire perimeters, detect hotspots, and monitor dangerous or inaccessible terrain, which helps firefighters make safer, faster tactical decisions,” said Meredith Hollowell, a Forest Service press officer, in a statement to Inside Climate News.

During aerial ignition operations in which fire managers intentionally burn vegetation to expand control lines or remove fuels before the main fire reaches them, unmanned aircraft can reduce the exposure of pilots or firefighters to some high-risk conditions, Hollowell said.

The technology has become established enough that federal agencies now have specific positions for drone pilots, managers, module leaders, and data specialists, as well as procedures for ordering drone resources for wildfire incidents.

Read more from Mosabber Hossain: https://buff.ly/aoeoSAy

11/10/2026

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10/10/2026

The re-election of Donald Trump as US president has precipitated a broader dissonance in Australian policy, writes Jack Kennedy.

"As other US allies are gradually trying to decrease their reliance on an increasingly erratic Washington, most Aussie politicians are unwilling to even discuss the issue. The government in Canberra is in fact pursuing deeper military ties than ever, with Washington having access to more than half of Australia’s military bases, to the point that many in the country are expressing concerns about the extent of the US influence. Few Australians want to end the alliance, but the proportion who believe the United States can be relied upon to aid the country if attacked has fallen by almost half in just three years."

Read more: https://buff.ly/SoOZyHZ

09/10/2026

The internet severed speech from the relationships that made it trustworthy; AI severs it from the speaker.

Fluent, personalized, institutionally usable speech can now be produced at mass scale with no chain of responsibility anchored in a person who answers for it, hollowing out the assumption that underwrites public trust: that behind every word stands a person or institution that can be held to it.

The solution is not better machines alone but institutions that anchor every word to an accountable human being, writes Deb Roy.

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Deb Roy is professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT, where he directs the MIT Center for Constructive Communication and leads research on human-AI systems that foster dialogue, listening, and deliberation.

This Bulletin magazine article is available to all readers.

The internet severed speech from the relationships that made it trustworthy; AI severs it from the speaker. Fluent, personalized, institutionally usable speech can now be produced at mass scale with no chain of responsibility anchored in a person who answers for it, hollowing out the assumption that...

08/10/2026

After reports that a worker at an “anti-plague” research lab in Russia died of pneumonia last week, many news outlets have turned to journalist Annie Jacobsen for context on the developing story.

The reason is easy to see.

Jacobsen recently published a timely bestseller about a catastrophic plague beginning with an accident at a secretive disease research lab in…Siberia.

“You must be worried you’ve written a true story,” Ciaran Jenkins of Britain’s Channel 4 asked Jacobsen on Monday.

But while The New York Times billed Jacobsen’s Biological War: A Scenario as nonfiction, its hypothetical set-up is skewed and, at times, factually inaccurate.

Continue reading this public-access, opinion article: https://buff.ly/kT6zKRG

07/10/2026

In a recent social media post, Anthropic’s “alignment science lead,” Evan Hubinger, created a stir by writing “we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade," reports Sarah Kreps.

The assertion was astonishing not only because the probability is so high but also because of the implications of that assessment.

What leads someone in charge of making the AI safer to assign such a high probability?

And at what point does acknowledging catastrophic risk of such magnitude become incompatible with continuing to develop and deploy the technology?

He could argue that his purpose for the post is to drive the figure down.

But a fundamental question remains: How did Hubinger arrive at the figure?

Given the enormous uncertainty around the development of this technology, what would justify assigning a 10 percent risk, rather than say 30, or even 1 percent?

Continue reading this public-access story: https://buff.ly/UFBDgSr

06/10/2026

In the summer of 2023, as Russia threatened nuclear strikes against Ukraine, researchers conducted the most comprehensive academic survey of global attitudes toward nuclear weapons ever undertaken.

Across 24 countries on six continents, they asked more than 27,000 people what they thought of the bomb.

The results challenge decades of assumptions about nuclear politics.

Contrary to conventional wisdom that views possessing and abolishing nuclear weapons as irreconcilable, the data reveals something far more complex.

Read the public analysis by Lauren Sukin, Luis Rodriguez, and Stephen Herzog: https://buff.ly/IWOzl7j

05/10/2026

The world has gone from rotary phones to smartphones in the blink of an eye, and now many are buying apps and gadgets to “brick” their phones and stay offline. What are the net gains and losses from this still-young technology–especially as the risks of connectivity grow?

There are countless positives to the internet, including fighting threats that the Bulletin covers. Online scientific collaborations have helped fight disease; social platforms have become a tool for climate organizing; and open-source intelligence tools have helped oversight groups monitor nuclear stockpiles.

At the same time, the disfunctions of the web seem to be at the heart of a broken politics that fails to respond to systemic threats, creates new geopolitical tension, and instills new existential dread as information warfare expands, the rise of AI, and environmental degradation.

Even though the internet has made some aspects of life better, do we need to log off to fix climate change? To protect our grid and our information? To maintain the very nature of society?

Join the Bulletin for a deep analysis of what the internet has brought, what it has wrought, and whether the costs have begun to outweigh the benefits.

Register: https://buff.ly/EwUyQnP

04/10/2026

Existential risks are on the rise. Can our leaders meet the moment?

At the Bulletin's annual gathering, Conversations Before Midnight, on November 12th in downtown Chicago, we'll take a deep dive into that question with former Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and Chicago Public Media CEO Melissa Bell.

Tickets start at $75 for the Reception and Keynote Discussion. At a time when science is under attack, your support helps keep the Bulletin's 80-year legacy of fact-based journalism alive.

Learn more here: https://buff.ly/B5dhADW

03/10/2026

While there are countless positives to the internet, its dysfunctions seem central to many of the greatest threats facing humanity today.

Is it time to log off?

Join the Bulletin for a virtual panel discussing what the net has brought and wrought on October 14 at 12:30 p.m. - 1:15 p.m. CT.

Speakers include:

Nathan Ensmenger, associate professor of Informatics in the Luddy School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University.

Herbert Lin, senior research scholar and research fellow at Stanford University and a member of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Sharon Weinberger, editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

On October 14, join the Bulletin for a deep analysis of what the internet has brought, what it has wrought, and if the costs have begun to outweigh the benefits.