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The 2023 Chicago Council Survey, conducted September 7–18, 2023, finds Americans concerned about the relative economic power of the US and China, with most saying the US has not done enough on trade and economic issues in the US-China relationship.

Key Findings

This paper contributes to the research on the macroeconomic origins of conflict. Based on a sample of 133 low and middle-income countries over a 30-year period, it analyses to what extent changes in a country’s commodity terms-of-trade (ToT) can explain an increase in the incidence and intensity of conflicts through their effect on aggregate income. While the evidence from previous studies on the link between macroeconomic conditions and conflict is rather inconclusive, we find a significant relationship. Our baseline model finds that a negative commodity ToT shock leads to an increase in the number of conflict events and fatalities in our sample. Moreover, the effect plays out over several years albeit with decreasing strength after the second year; and its magnitude is twice as large for Low-Income Countries and Fragile and Conflict-affected States when compared with the sample average. In addition, our results show that macroeconomic shocks are creating more violence in countries with higher inequality and in cases where fiscal policy faces relatively stronger constraints on financing a response to the initial shock to incomes. Our results are robust to a number of plausible variations in model specification. The paper’s results, in conjunction with previous studies that emphasize the economic cost of conflicts, suggest the presence of a fragility trap—a vicious cycle of worsening economic conditions and deteriorating conflicts. Effective policies and well-tailored external financial support could be expected to help countries address the challenge.

The world suffers from a large number of violent conflicts. According to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program Georeferenced Event Dataset (UCDP GED), 1 which identifies conflict events as incidences of the use of armed force by an organized actor against another organized actor, or against civilians that result in at least one direct death, 17,000 conflicts occurred in 2021. These claimed almost 120,000 deaths. And while the incidence of conflicts subsided somewhat after the surge associated with the Arab Spring, their frequency over recent years has remained almost twice as high as that experienced in the outgoing decade of the 20th century (Figure 1).

In the decades to come, advanced bioweapons could threaten human existence. Although the probability of human extinction from bioweapons may be low, the expected value of reducing the risk could still be large, since such risks jeopardize the existence of all future generations. We provide an overview of biotechnological extinction risk, make some rough initial estimates for how severe the risks might be, and compare the cost-effectiveness of reducing these extinction-level risks with existing biosecurity work. We find that reducing human extinction risk can be more cost-effective than reducing smaller-scale risks, even when using conservative estimates. This suggests that the risks are not low enough to ignore and that more ought to be done to prevent the worst-case scenarios. How worthwhile is it spending resources to study and mitigate the chance of human extinction from biological risks? The risks of such a catastrophe are presumably low, so a skeptic might argue that addressing such risks would be a waste of scarce resources. In this article, we investigate this position using a cost-effectiveness approach and ultimately conclude that the expected value of reducing these risks is large, especially since such risks jeopardize the existence of all future human lives. Historically, disease events have been responsible for the greatest death tolls on humanity. The 1918 flu was responsible for more than 50 million deaths,1 while smallpox killed perhaps 10 times that many in the 20th century alone.2 The Black Death was responsible for killing over 25% of the European population,3 while other pandemics, such as the plague of Justinian, are thought to have killed 25 million in the 6th century—constituting over 10% of the world’s population at the time.4 It is an open question whether a future pandemic could result in outright human extinction or the irreversible collapse of civilization. A skeptic would have many good reasons to think that existential risk from disease is unlikely. Such a disease would need to spread worldwide to remote populations, overcome rare genetic resistances, and evade detection, cures, and countermeasures. Even evolution itself may work in humanity’s favor: Virulence and transmission is often a trade-off, and so evolutionary pressures could push against maximally lethal wild-type pathogens.5,6 While these arguments point to a very small risk of human extinction, they do not rule the possibility out entirely. Although rare, there are recorded instances of species going extinct due to disease—primarily in amphibians, but also in 1 mammalian species of rat on Christmas Island.7,8 There are also historical examples of large human populations being almost entirely wiped out by disease, especially when multiple diseases were simultaneously introduced into a population without immunity. The most striking examples of total population collapse include native American tribes exposed to European diseases, such as the Massachusett (86% loss of population), Quiripi-Unquachog (95% loss of population), and the Western Abenaki (which suffered a staggering 98% loss of population).9 In the modern context, no single disease currently exists that combines the worst-case levels of transmissibility, lethality, resistance to countermeasures, and global reach. But many diseases are proof of principle that each worst-case attribute can be realized independently. For example, some diseases exhibit nearly a 100% case fatality ratio in the absence of treatment, such as rabies or septicemic plague. Other diseases have a track record of spreading to virtually every human community worldwide, such as the 1918 flu,10 and seroprevalence studies indicate that other pathogens, such as chickenpox and HSV-1, can successfully reach over 95% of a population.11,12 Under optimal virulence theory, natural evolution would be an unlikely source for pathogens with the highest possible levels of transmissibility, virulence, and global reach. But advances in biotechnology might allow the creation of diseases that combine such traits. Recent controversy has already emerged over a number of scientific experiments that resulted in viruses with enhanced transmissibility, lethality, and/or the ability to overcome therapeutics.13-17 Other experiments demonstrated that mousepox could be modified to have a 100% case fatality rate and render a vaccine ineffective.18 In addition to transmissibility and lethality, studies have shown that other disease traits, such as incubation time, environmental survival, and available vectors, could be modified as well.19-21 Although these experiments had scientific merit and were not conducted with malicious intent, their implications are still worrying. This is especially true given that there is also a long historical track record of state-run bioweapon research applying cutting-edge science and technology to design agents not previously seen in nature. The Soviet bioweapons program developed agents with traits such as enhanced virulence, resistance to therapies, greater environmental resilience, increased difficulty to diagnose or treat, and which caused unexpected disease presentations and outcomes.22 Delivery capabilities have also been subject to the cutting edge of technical development, with Canadian, US, and UK bioweapon efforts playing a critical role in developing the discipline of aerobiology.23,24 While there is no evidence of staterun bioweapons programs directly attempting to develop or deploy bioweapons that would pose an existential risk, the logic of deterrence and mutually assured destruction could create such incentives in more unstable political environments or following a breakdown of the Biological Weapons Convention.25 The possibility of a war between great powers could also increase the pressure to use such weapons—during the World Wars, bioweapons were used across multiple continents, with Germany targeting animals in WWI,26 and Japan using plague to cause an epidemic in China during WWII.27 Non-state actors may also pose a risk, especially those with explicitly omnicidal aims. While rare, there are examples. The Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan sought biological weapons for the express purpose of causing extinction.28 Environmental groups, such as the Gaia Liberation Front, have argued that ‘‘we can ensure Gaia’s survival only through the extinction of the Humans as a species . we now have the specific technology for doing the job . several different [genetically engineered] viruses could be released’’(quoted in ref. 29). Groups such as R.I.S.E. also sought to protect nature by destroying most of humanity with bioweapons.30 Fortunately, to date, non-state actors have lacked the capabilities needed to pose a catastrophic bioweapons threat, but this could change in future decades as biotechnology becomes more accessible and the pool of experienced users grows.31,32 What is the appropriate response to these speculative extinction threats? A balanced biosecurity portfolio might include investments that reduce a mix of proven and speculative risks, but striking this balance is still difficult given the massive uncertainties around the low-probability, high-consequence risks. In this article, we examine the traditional spectrum of biosecurity risks (ie, biocrimes, bioterrorism, and biowarfare) to categorize biothreats by likelihood and impact, expanding the historical analysis to consider even lower-probability, higherconsequence events (catastrophic risks and existential risks). In order to produce reasoned estimates of the likelihood of different categories of biothreats, we bring together relevant data and theory and produce some first-guess estimates of the likelihood of different categories of biothreat, and we use these initial estimates to compare the cost-effectiveness of reducing existential risks with more traditional biosecurity measures.We emphasize that these models are highly uncertain, and their utility lies more in enabling order-of-magnitude comparisons rather than as a precise measure of the true risk. However, even with the most conservative models, we find that reduction of low-probability, high-consequence risks can be more cost-effective, as measured by quality-adjusted life year per dollar, especially when we account for the lives of future generations. This suggests that despite the low probability of such events, society still ought to invest more in preventing the most extreme possible biosecurity catastrophes.

The Impact Spectrum of Various Biothreats Here, we use historical data to analyze the probability and severity of biothreats. We place biothreats in 6 loose categories: incidents, events, disasters, crises, global catastrophic risk, and existential risk. Together they form an overlapping spectrum of increasing impact and decreasing likelihood (Figure 1).* The historical use of bioweapons provides useful examples of some categories of biothreats. Biocrimes and bioterrorism provide examples of incidents.{Biological warfare provides examples *While noting that the use of bioweapons can have a wide range of other impacts, including sociopolitical and economic, here we consider their impact purely in terms of fatalities. { There is considerable uncertainty involved with the dataset on the historical use of biological weapons, including considerable variation in key terms and assumptions, likely knowledge gaps, and motivations for both claiming natural events as unnatural, and vice versa. The numbers used here are intended as indicative and are used to place boundaries on the likelihood and impact of different types of biothreat. As noted elsewhere in this article, the conclusions drawn are considered by orders of magnitude, which helps to address these uncertainties. RISKS AND COST-EFFECTIVENESS OF BIOSECURITY 374 Health Security of events and disasters. These historical examples provide indicative data on likelihood andimpact thatwe can thenfeedinto a cost-effectiveness analysis. We should note that these data are both sparse and sometimes controversial. Where possible, we usemultiple datasets to corroborate our numbers, but ultimately the ‘‘true rate’’ of bioweapon attacks is highly uncertain. Biocrimes and Bioterrorism Historically, risks of biocrime{ and bioterrorismx have been limited. A 2015 Risk and Benefit Analysis for Gain of Function Research detailed 24 biocrimes between 1990 and 2015 (0.96 per year) and an additional 42 bioterrorism incidents between 1972 and 2014 (1 per year).36 This is consistent with other estimates of biocrimes and bioterrorism frequency, which range from 0.35 to 3.5 per year (see supplementary material, part 1, at http://online.liebertpub. com/doi/suppl/10.1089/hs.2017.0028). Most attacks typically result in no more than a handful of casualties (and many of these events include hoaxes, threats, and attacks that had no casualties at all). For example, the anthrax letter attacks in the United States in 2001, perhaps the most high-profile case in recent years, resulted in only 17 infections with 5 fatalities.37 The 2015 Risk and Benefit Analysis for Gain of Function Research detailed only a single death from the recorded biocrimes.** Only 1 of the bioterrorism incidents in the report had associated deaths (the 2001 anthrax letter attacks).36 Based on this data, for the purposes of this article, we assume that we could expect 1 incident per year resulting in up to tens of deaths. Biological Warfare Academic overviews of biological warfare{{ detail 7 programs prior to 1945.38 A further 9 programs are recorded between 1945 and 1994.39 For most of the last century, at least 1 program was active in any given year (Table 1). The actual use of bioweapons by states is less common: Over the 85 years covered by these histories (1915 to 2000), 18 cases of use (or possible use) were recorded, including outbreaks connected to biological warfare (see supplementary material, part 2, at http://online.liebertpub.com/ doi/suppl/10.1089/hs.2017.0028). Extrapolating this out (dividing 18 by 85), we would have about a 20% chance per year of biowarfare. It is worth noting the limitations of these data. Most of these events occurred before the introduction of the Biological Weapons Convention and were conducted by countries that no longer have biological weapons programs. Since many of these incidents occurred during infrequent great power wars, we revise our best guess to around 10% chance per year of biowarfare. We use 2 sets of data to estimate the magnitude of such events. The first dataset was Japanese biological warfare in China,40 where records indicate a series of attacks on towns resulted in a mean of 330 casualties per event and 1 case in which an attack resulted in a regional outbreak causing an estimated 30,000 deaths (see supplementary material, part 3, at http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/suppl/10.1089/hs.2017. 0028). The second data set came from disease events that were Figure 1. A spectrum of differing impacts and likelihoods from biothreats. Below each category of risk is the number of human fatalities. We loosely define global catastrophic risk as being 100 million fatalities, and existential risk as being the total extinction of humanity. Alternative definitions can be found in previous reports,33 as well as within this journal issue.34 { Biocrimes can be considered to be ‘‘the use of a biological agent to kill or make ill a single individual or small group of individuals, motivated by revenge or the desire for monetary gain by extortion, rather than by political, ideological, religious or other beliefs.’’35 x Bioterrorism can be considered to be ‘‘the deliberate release of viruses, bacteria or other agents used to cause illness or death in people, but also in animals or plants. It is aimed at creating casualties, terror, societal disruption, or economic loss, inspired by ideological, religious or political beliefs.’’35 **A number of other biocrimes involved deliberately infecting another individual with HIV, the results of which were not evident and have not been included in this analysis. {{Biological warfare can be considered to be the ‘‘ability to use biological agents in warfare.’’35 MILLETT AND SNYDER-BEATTIE Volume 15, Number 4, 2017 375 alleged to have an unnatural origin.41 In one case study, a point source release of anthrax resulted in at least 66 deaths. In a second case study, a regional epidemic of the same disease resulted in more than 17,000 human cases. While these events were not confirmed as having been caused by biological warfare, contemporary or subsequent analysis has suggested that such an origin was at least feasible. Combined, these figures provide an estimated impact of between 66 to 330 and 17,000 to 30,000. For the purposes of this analysis, we are assuming the lower boundary figures from biological warfare are indicative of events, with a likelihood of 10% per year and an impact ranging between tens and thousands of fatalities. The upper boundary figures from biological warfare are indicative of disasters, with a likelihood of 1% per year and an impact range of thousands to tens of thousands of fatalities.{{ Global Catastrophic and Existential Risk Unlike standard biothreats, there is no historical record on which to draw when considering global catastrophic or existential risks. Alternative approaches are required to estimate the likelihood of such an event. Given the high degree of uncertainty, we adopt 3 different approaches to approximate the risk of extinction from bioweapons: utilizing surveys of experts, previous major risk assessments, and simple toy models. These should be taken as initial guesses or rough order-of-magnitude approximations, and not a reliable or precise measure. Model 1: Survey of 2008 Global Catastrophic Risk Conference An informal survey at the 2008 Oxford Global Catastrophic Risk Conference asked participants to estimate the chance that disasters of different types would occur before 2100. Participants had a median risk estimate of 0.05% that a natural pandemic would lead to human extinction by 2100, and a median risk estimate of 2% that an ‘‘engineered’’ pandemic would lead to extinction by 2100.42 The advantage of the survey is that it directly measures the quantity that we are interested in: probability of extinction from bioweapons. The disadvantage is that the estimates were likely highly subjective and unreliable, especially as the survey did not account for response bias, and the respondents were not calibrated beforehand. We therefore also turn to other models that, while indirect, provide more objective measures of risk.xx Table 1. The duration of state-run offensive biological weapons programs detailed in key historical reviews up to 1945 and from 1945 to 2000.5,6 State Duration (Review up to 1945) Duration (Review from 1945-2000) Canada 1925-1945 1945-1969 France 1921-1926 and 1935-1940 1947-1972 Germany 1915-1918 — Hungary — 1938-1944 Iraq — 1974-1990 Japan 1931-1945 — Poland — 1945-1960? South Africa — 1981-1994 Soviet Union 1920-1945 1945-1992 United Kingdom 1925-1945 1945-1957 United States 1942-1945 1945-1969 {{Whilst there are no documented examples, it is possible that if an attack similar to the one that caused the plague epidemic in China were to be carried out in a modern mega-city, even relatively low infectivity and case fatality rates could result in disasters or even crises. For example, the population of Dhaka, Bangladesh, is approaching 20 million. A disaster would require around 0.5% of its population to die, and a crisis would equate to 5% of the city’s population. xxA more rigorous survey examined the probability of a bioweapons attack in a 10-year timeframe with more than 100 illnesses43 and found that opinions varied widely between 1% and 100%, with a mean of 57.5%. While this survey had a superior methodology to the one we cite in model 1, it did not focus on attacks that could result in global catastrophic risk. RISKS AND COST-EFFECTIVENESS OF BIOSECURITY 376 Health Security Model 2: Potentially Pandemic Pathogens Recent controversial experiments on H5N1 influenza prompted discussions as to the risks of deliberately creating potentially pandemic pathogens. These agents are those that are highly transmissible, capable of uncontrollable spread in human populations, highly virulent, and also possibly able to overcome medical countermeasures.44 Previous work in a comprehensive report done by Gryphon Scientific, Risk and Benefit Analysis of Gain of Function Research,36 has laid out very detailed risk assessments of potentially pandemic pathogen research, suggesting that the annual probability of a global pandemic resulting from an accident with this type of research in the United States is 0.002% to 0.1%. The report also concluded that risks of deliberate misuse were about as serious as the risks of an accidental outbreak, suggesting a 2-fold increase in risk. Assuming that 25% of relevant research is done in the United States as opposed to elsewhere in the world, this gives us a further 4-fold increase in risk. In total, this 8-fold increase in risk gives us a 0.016% to 0.8% chance of a pandemic in the future each year (see supplementary material, part 4, at http://online.liebertpub .com/doi/suppl/10.1089/hs.2017.0028). The analysis in Risk and Benefit Analysis of Gain of Function Research suggested that lab outbreaks from wildtype influenza viruses could result in between 4 million and 80 million deaths,36 but others have suggested that if some of the modified pathogens were to escape from a laboratory, they could cause up to 1 billion fatalities.45 For the purposes of this model, we assume that for any global pandemic arising from this kind of research, each has only a 1 in 10,000*** chance of causing an existential risk. This figure is somewhat arbitrary but serves as an excessively conservative guess that would include worst-case situations in which scientists intentionally cause harm, where civilization permanently collapses following a particularly bad outbreak, or other worst-case scenarios that would result in existential risk. Multiplying the probability of an outbreak with the probability of an existential risk gives us an annual risk probability between 1.6 · 10–8 and 8 · 10–7. {{{ Model 3: Naive Power Law Extrapolation Previous literature has found that casualty numbers from terrorism and warfare follow a power law distribution, including terrorism from WMDs.46 Power laws have the property of being scale invariant, meaning that the ratio in likelihood between events that cause the deaths of 10 people and 10,000 people will be the same as that between 10,000 people and 10,000,000 people.{{{ This property results in a distribution with an exceptionally heavy tail, so that the vast majority of events will have very low casualty rates, with a couple of extreme outliers. Past studies have estimated this ratio for terrorism using biological and chemical weapons to be about 0.5 for 1 order of magnitude,47 meaning that an attack that kills 10x people is about 3 times less likely (100.5) than an attack that kills 10x–1 people (a concrete example is that attacks with more than 1,000 casualties, such as the Aum Shinrikyo attacks, will be about 30 times less probable than an attack that kills a single individual). Extrapolating the power law out, we find that the probability that an attack kills more than 5 billion will be (5 billion)–0.5 or 0.000014. Assuming 1 attack per year (extrapolated on the current rate of bioattacks) and assuming that only 10% of such attacks that kill more than 5 billion eventually lead to extinction (due to the breakdown of society, or other knock-on effects), we get an annual existential risk of 0.0000014 (or 1.4 · 10–6). We can also use similar reasoning for warfare, where we have more reliable data (97 wars between 1820 and 1997, although the data are less specific to biological warfare). The parameter for warfare is 0.41,47 suggesting that wars that result in more than 5 billion casualties will comprise (5 billion)–0.41 = 0.0001 of all wars. Our estimate assumes that wars will occur with the same frequency as in 1820 to 1997, with 1 new war arising roughly every 2 years. It also assumes that in these extreme outlier scenarios, nuclear or contagious biological weapons would be the cause of such high casualty numbers, and that bioweapons specifically would be responsible for these enormous casualties about 10% of the time (historically bioweapons were deployed in WWI, WWII, and developed but not deployed in the Cold War— constituting a bioweapons threat in every great power war since 1900). Assuming that 10% of biowarfare escalations resulting in more than 5 billion deaths eventually lead to extinction, we get an annual existential risk from biowarfare of 0.0000005 (or 5 · 10–7).

Ray Kurzweil says “We have an existential threat now in the form of the possibility of a bioengineered malevolent biological virus. With all the talk of bioterrorism, the possibility of a bioengineered bioterrorism agent gets little and inadequate attention. The tools and knowledge to create a bioengineered pathogen are more widespread than the tools and knowledge to create an atomic weapon, yet it could be far more destructive. I’m on the Army Science Advisory Group (a board of five people who advise the Army on science and technology), and the Army is the institution responsible for the nation’s bioterrorism protection. Without revealing anything confidential, I can say that there is acute awareness of these dangers, but there is neither the funding nor national priority to address them in an adequate way.”

Ebola is the common term for a group of viruses belonging to genus Ebolavirus, family Filoviridae, which cause Ebola hemorrhagic fever. The disease can be deadly and encompasses a range of symptoms, usually including vomiting, diarrhea, general body pain, internal and external bleeding, and fever. Mortality rates are generally high, ranging from 50% to 90%, with the cause of death usually due to shock or multiple organ failure. Today more than a quarter of all deaths worldwide — 15 million each year — are due to infectious diseases. These include 4 million from respiratory infections, 3 million from HIV/AIDS, and 2 million from waterborne diseases such as cholera. This is a continuing and intolerable holocaust that, while sparing no class, strikes hardest at the weak, the impoverished, and the young.

Harmonization Across Nations Can Improve Biotechnology Innovation

Harmonization of patent laws advances goals of incentivizing and enabling innovation, especially in the areas of potentially lifesaving, life-altering technologies. For instance, in August 2011, then-Director Kappos outlined the importance of patent law harmonization:

Lead Discussions on IP Protections for Emerging Technologies

Emerging technologies remain at the forefront of most domestic and international policy discussions, and IP policy is no exception. As technology continues to develop and change, best practices for IP protection must evolve and adapt to further enable continued innovation. If U.S. policymakers intend to build a framework supporting American innovation leadership, they should lead all relevant international policy discussions, including on IP.126

Arguments for weakening IP rights have been gaining traction in the United States to enable a redistribution agenda. But spurring U.S. competitiveness, supporting American jobs, and advancing innovation will require the federal government to step up its game in defense of a more robust global IP regime.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

The second thing to note about this vision of friendly fortresses is that it has been tried—and it failed spectacularly. All attempts to divide the world into clear-cut nations have so far resulted in war and genocide. When the heirs of Garibaldi, Mazzini and Mickiewicz managed to overthrow the multi-ethnic Habsburg Empire, it proved impossible to find a clear line dividing Italians from Slovenes or Poles from Ukrainians. This had set the stage for the second world war. The key problem with the network of fortresses is that each national fortress wants a bit more land, security and prosperity for itself at the expense of the neighbors, and without the help of universal values and global organisations, rival fortresses cannot agree on any common rules. Walled fortresses are seldom friendly. But if you happen to live inside a particularly strong fortress, such as America or Russia, why should you care? Some nationalists indeed adopt a more extreme isolationist position. They don’t believe in either a global empire or in a global network of fortresses. Instead, they deny the necessity of any global order whatsoever. “Our fortress should just raise the drawbridges,” they say, “and the rest of the world can go to hell. We should refuse entry to foreign people, foreign ideas and foreign goods, and as long as our walls are stout and the guards are loyal, who cares what happens to the foreigners?” Such extreme isolationism, however, is completely divorced from economic realities. Without a global trade network, all existing national economies will collapse—including that of North Korea. Many countries will not be able even to feed themselves without imports, and prices of almost all products will skyrocket. The made-in-China shirt I am wearing cost me about $5. If it had been produced by Israeli workers from Israeli-grown cotton using Israeli-made machines powered by non-existing Israeli oil, it may well have cost ten times as much. Nationalist leaders from Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin may therefore heap abuse on the global trade network, but none thinks seriously of taking their country completely out of that network. And we cannot have a global trade network without some global order that sets the rules of the game. Even more importantly, whether people like it or not, humankind today faces three common problems that make a mockery of all national borders, and that can only be solved through global cooperation. These are nuclear war, climate change and technological disruption. You cannot build a wall against nuclear winter or against global warming, and no nation can regulate artificial intelligence (AI) or bioengineering single-handedly. It won’t be enough if only the European Union forbids producing killer robots or only America bans genetically-engineering human babies. Due to the immense potential of such disruptive technologies, if even one country decides to pursue these high-risk high-gain paths, other countries will be forced to follow its dangerous lead for fear of being left behind. An AI arms race or a biotechnological arms race almost guarantees the worst outcome. Whoever wins the arms race, the loser will likely be humanity itself. For in an arms race, all regulations will collapse. Consider, for example, conducting genetic-engineering experiments on human babies. Every country will say: “We don’t want to conduct such experiments—we are the good guys. But how do we know our rivals are not doing it? We cannot afford to remain behind. So we must do it before them.” Similarly, consider developing autonomous-weapon systems, that can decide for themselves whether to shoot and kill people. Again, every country will say: “This is a very dangerous technology, and it should be regulated carefully. But we don’t trust our rivals to regulate it, so we must develop it first”. The only thing that can prevent such destructive arms races is greater trust between countries. This is not an impossible mission. If today the Germans promise the French: “Trust us, we aren’t developing killer robots in a secret laboratory under the Bavarian Alps,” the French are likely to believe the Germans, despite the terrible history of these two countries. We need to build such trust globally. We need to reach a point when Americans and Chinese can trust one another like the French and Germans. Similarly, we need to create a global safety-net to protect humans against the economic shocks that AI is likely to cause. Automation will create immense new wealth in high-tech hubs such as Silicon Valley, while the worst effects will be felt in developing countries whose economies depend on cheap manual labor. There will be more jobs to software engineers in California, but fewer jobs to Mexican factory workers and truck drivers. We now have a global economy, but politics is still very national. Unless we find solutions on a global level to the disruptions caused by AI, entire countries might collapse, and the resulting chaos, violence and waves of immigration will destabilise the entire world. This is the proper perspective to look at recent developments such as Brexit. In itself, Brexit isn’t necessarily a bad idea. But is this what Britain and the EU should be dealing with right now? How does Brexit help prevent nuclear war? How does Brexit help prevent climate change? How does Brexit help regulate artificial intelligence and bioengineering? Instead of helping, Brexit makes it harder to solve all of these problems. Every minute that Britain and the EU spend on Brexit is one less minute they spend on preventing climate change and on regulating AI. In order to survive and flourish in the 21st century, humankind needs effective global cooperation, and so far the only viable blueprint for such cooperation is offered by liberalism. Nevertheless, governments all over the world are undermining the foundations of the liberal order, and the world is turning into a network of fortresses. The first to feel the impact are the weakest members of humanity, who find themselves without any fortress willing to protect them: refugees, illegal migrants, persecuted minorities. But if the walls keep rising, eventually the whole of humankind will feel the squeeze.

In the 140 years since the signing of the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property in 1883, international tools and instruments have been developed that aim toward common standards in a process that continues to this day, as the recent launch of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) attests. Other examples include the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) and the TRIPS Agreement, together with various regional registration systems, including the European Patent Convention (EPC) and African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO).

Through these achievements and many more, the global patent system has supported innovation and driven enormous social and economic advances. And while the rigor of national procedures varies, the patent procedural ecosystem as a whole is clearly still fit for its dual purpose of safeguarding the interests of inventors and disseminating knowledge.

Engage in Trade Agreements and Include IP Provisions in Them

Not only has the Biden administration paused new trade agreements, but it has also neglected IP provisions in less-formal trade negotiations. This practice needs to reverse course. The United States and its allies can present a united front against the CCP’s IP theft by harmonizing their IP laws that state-sponsored espionage hides in countries where laws do not deter such theft; unified IP provisions in trade agreements leave thieves with few options. If U.S. policymakers intend for America to retain its global innovation leadership, they should provide innovators and investors with protection mechanisms and market security by including robust IP in trade agreements.

Humanity faces a number of formidable challenges this century. Threats to our collective survival stem from asteroids and comets, supervolcanoes, global pandemics, climate change, biodiversity loss, nuclear weapons, biotechnology, synthetic biology, nanotechnology, and artificial superintelligence. With such threats in mind, an informal survey conducted by the Future of Humanity Institute placed the probability of human extinction this century at 19%. To put this in perspective, it means that the average American is more than a thousand times more likely to die in a human extinction event than a plane crash.* So, given limited resources, which risks should we prioritize? Many intellectual leaders, including Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and Bill Gates, have suggested that artificial superintelligence constitutes one of the most significant risks to humanity. And this may be correct in the long-term. But I would argue that two other risks, namely climate change and biodiveristy loss, should take priority right now over every other known threat. Why? Because these ongoing catastrophes in slow-motion will frame our existential predicament on Earth not just for the rest of this century, but for literally thousands of years to come. As such, they have the capacity to raise or lower the probability of other risks scenarios unfolding. Multiplying Threats Ask yourself the following: are wars more or less likely in a world marked by extreme weather events, megadroughts, food supply disruptions, and sea-level rise? Are terrorist attacks more or less likely in a world beset by the collapse of global ecosystems, agricultural failures, economic uncertainty, and political instability? Both government officials and scientists agree that the answer is “more likely.” For example, the current Director of the CIA, John Brennan, recently identified “the impact of climate change” as one of the “deeper causes of this rising instability” in countries like Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and Ukraine. Similarly, the former Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, has described climate change as a “threat multiplier” with “the potential to exacerbate many of the challenges we are dealing with today — from infectious disease to terrorism.” The Department of Defense has also affirmed a connection. In a 2015 report, it states, “Global climate change will aggravate problems such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions that threaten stability in a number of countries.” Scientific studies have further shown a connection between the environmental crisis and violent conflicts. For example, a 2015 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences argues that climate change was a causal factor behind the record-breaking 2007-2010 drought in Syria. This drought led to a mass migration of farmers into urban centers, which fueled the 2011 Syrian civil war. Some observers, including myself, have suggested that this struggle could be the beginning of World War III, given the complex tangle of international involvement and overlapping interests. The study’s conclusion is also significant because the Syrian civil war was the Petri dish in which the Islamic State consolidated its forces, later emerging as the largest and most powerful terrorist organization in human history. A Perfect Storm The point is that climate change and biodiversity loss could very easily push societies to the brink of collapse. This will exacerbate existing geopolitical tensions and introduce entirely new power struggles between state and nonstate actors. At the same time, advanced technologies will very likely become increasingly powerful and accessible. As I’ve written elsewhere, the malicious agents of the future will have bulldozers rather than shovels to dig mass graves for their enemies. The result is a perfect storm of more conflicts in the world along with unprecedentedly dangerous weapons. If the conversation were to end here, we’d have ample reason for placing climate change and biodiversity loss at the top of our priority lists. But there are other reasons they ought to be considered urgent threats. I would argue that they could make humanity more vulnerable to a catastrophe involving superintelligence and even asteroids. The basic reasoning is the same for both cases. Consider superintelligence first. Programming a superintelligence whose values align with ours is a formidable task even in stable circumstances. As Nick Bostrom argues in his 2014 book, we should recognize the “default outcome” of superintelligence to be “doom.” Now imagine trying to solve these problems amidst a rising tide of interstate wars, civil unrest, terrorist attacks, and other tragedies? The societal stress caused by climate change and biodiversity loss will almost certainly compromise important conditions for creating friendly AI, such as sufficient funding, academic programs to train new scientists, conferences on AI, peer-reviewed journal publications, and communication/collaboration between experts of different fields, such as computer science and ethics. It could even make an “AI arms race” more likely, thereby raising the probability of a malevolent superintelligence being created either on purpose or by mistake. Similarly, imagine that astronomers discover a behemoth asteroid barreling toward Earth. Will designing, building, and launching a spacecraft to divert the assassin past our planet be easier or more difficult in a world preoccupied with other survival issues? In a relatively peaceful world, one could imagine an asteroid actually bringing humanity together by directing our attention toward a common threat. But if the “conflict multipliers” of climate change and biodiversity loss have already catapulted civilization into chaos and turmoil, I strongly suspect that humanity will become more, rather than less, susceptible to dangers of this sort. Context Risks We can describe the dual threats of climate change and biodiversity loss as “context risks.” Neither is likely to directly cause the extinction of our species. But both will define the context in which civilization confronts all the other threats before us. In this way, they could indirectly contribute to the overall danger of annihilation — and this worrisome effect could be significant. For example, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the effects of climate change will be “severe,” “pervasive,” and “irreversible.” Or, as a 2016 study published in Nature and authored by over twenty scientists puts it, the consequences of climate change “will extend longer than the entire history of human civilization thus far.” Furthermore, a recent article in Science Advances confirms that humanity has already escorted the biosphere into the sixth mass extinction event in life’s 3.8 billion year history on Earth. Yet another study suggests that we could be approaching a sudden, irreversible, catastrophic collapse of the global ecosystem. If this were to occur, it could result in “widespread social unrest, economic instability and loss of human life.” Given the potential for environmental degradation to elevate the likelihood of nuclear wars, nuclear terrorism, engineered pandemics, a superintelligence takeover, and perhaps even an impact winter, it ought to take precedence over all other risk concerns — at least in the near-term. Let’s make sure we get our priorities straight.

Voicing our concerns about our policy differences is essential as we continue to struggle with China on a wide range of bilateral and international issues. But we also must try to keep the larger strategic picture in the forefront and try to land the elusive "big one" — a more cooperative U.S.-China relationship to deal with the great strategic challenges of the 21st century. While China and the United States will always be reluctant partners at best, leaders of both countries have acknowledged that we are in the same boat when it comes to critical 21st century challenges. We are compelled to pull together to maintain a growing and stable global economy, mitigate climate change and adapt to its effects, ensure energy security and transition to a global, low-carbon economy, move to more sustainable economic models as resource scarcities loom as billions of people seek to join the global middle class — and combat terrorism, proliferation, piracy, international crime, pandemics, failing states and a host of other non-traditional threats. This summer’s unprecedented heat and forest fires in Russia and the massive, destructive floods in Pakistan may be the most recent warning signs that global warming is already altering our planet's climate, causing extreme weather and other first-order effects that will have cascading impacts on virtually all countries. The implications for the global economy, societies and governments and the security of nations and peoples are potentially destabilizing and even catastrophic. The United States and China — the two largest economic powers — will not be immune from the impact of climate change. Nor, as the biggest energy consumers and producers of greenhouse gases, will they escape blame from the rest of the world if they fail to act and to cooperate. In the United States, there is growing anxiety about the pace of shifting power and a range of Chinese behaviors that are perceived as Beijing seeking to challenge a wide range of U.S. interests. The Chinese leadership, for its part, and especially elements of the People's Liberation Army, is flush with a sense of their country's rapidly rising power, which has been turbo-boosted in the last two years by its superior performance in the global financial crisis. Beijing seems to be emphasizing narrow national interests and making a new push to gain recognition for an expanding list of "core interests" which now apparently includes China's territorial claims in the South China Sea. The Chinese seem reluctant to place a priority on their "core interests" in ensuring their prosperity and security by cooperating with other nations, especially the United States, on long-term global challenges and threats. We should ask what the prospects are for human civilization in this century as well as for American and Chinese interests if the United States and China do not cooperate on global challenges — and even more ominously, if they have a highly competitive and antagonistic relationship, much less engage in actual military conflict. We may not have much time to fish in the depleting stream of potential cooperation. The United States and China need to change course soon. The two giants now seem caught in an eddy of deepening suspicion of each other's intentions — despite the stated conviction of the leaders of both countries that they need to work together.

Slowing the pace of climate change and getting “tough” on China, especially over its human-rights abuses and unfair trade practices, are among the top priorities President Biden has announced for his new administration. Evidently, he believes that he can tame a rising China with harsh pressure tactics, while still gaining its cooperation in areas of concern to Washington. As he wrote in Foreign Affairs during the presidential election campaign, “The most effective way to meet that challenge is to build a united front of U.S. allies and partners to confront China’s abusive behaviors and human rights violations, even as we seek to cooperate with Beijing on issues where our interests converge, such as climate change.”[1] If, however, our Biden truly believes that he can build an international coalition to gang up on China and secure Beijing’s cooperation on climate change, he is seriously deluded. Indeed, though he could succeed in provoking a new cold war, he won’t prevent the planet from heating up unbearably in the process.

President Biden is certainly aware of the dangers of global warming. In that same Foreign Affairs article, he labeled it nothing short of an “existential threat,” one that imperils the survival of human civilization. Acknowledging the importance of relying on scientific expertise (unlike our previous president, who repeatedly invented his own version of scientific reality), Biden affirmed the conclusion of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that warming must be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels or the planet will experience calamitous, irreversible consequences. He then pledged to “rejoin the Paris climate agreement on day one of a Biden administration” (which he indeed did on his first day in office) and to “make massive, urgent investments at home that put the United States on track to have a clean energy economy with net-zero [greenhouse gas] emissions by 2050” – the target set by the IPCC.

Three Dimensions of Cooperation China-U.S. cooperation is multi-dimensional. It covers three areas: global challenges; bilateral trade, economic, cultural and educational cooperation; and military exchanges and security cooperation. The common challenges facing mankind have never been so daunting as they are today -- climate change, nuclear weapons proliferation, terrorism, pandemics, natural disasters, drug trafficking, just to name a few. No country, no matter how powerful it is, is able to meet these challenges alone. Common challenges bring people together. Mankind is bound to unite for its survival. When China and the U.S., the world's two largest economies, cooperate, it makes a difference. In November 2014, President Xi Jinping and President Obama made a joint pledge on reducing pollution and carbon gas emissions. As a result, the upcoming United Nations conference on climate change to be held in Paris from Nov. 30th to Dec. 11th this year, looks much more promising. Nuclear weapons proliferation also poses a serious threat to international peace and security. Of all the global challenges it is the most complicated. The North Korean nuclear issue is the other major concern along with Iran. The Six-Party Talks on this issue have so far stalled for six years and at present show no sign of resuming any time soon. Even so, the fact that China and the U.S. have agreed to pursue the goal of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula has kept the issue from getting out of control. The year 1950 witnessed violent confrontation between China and U.S. in the Korean theater, but 2015 is a long way from 1950. China-U.S. cooperation has been a significant factor in keeping the lid on this conflict. Such cooperation, whether on Iran, North Korea or climate change, is an important building block for the new model of the major countries relationship. The way to conceive of this relationship is as a big house. It has to be built gradually, block by block. The more building blocks laid, the faster that house will be built. As President Xi Jinping has put it: "A sound China-U.S. cooperation can become a ballast stone of world stability and a booster of world peace. "

Patent and trademark infringement was a key part of the “phase one” trade agreement between the U.S. and China earlier this month, but business leaders and policymakers say the intellectual property will remain a sticking point between the two countries as they compete to develop next-generation technologies.

Of the 3.3 million patent applications filed worldwide in 2018, China accounted for roughly half, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization. Computer technology and electrical machinery were the most popular categories of patent applications from China as the country aims to be a world leader in areas like 5G wireless networks and artificial intelligence.

The United States: IP Is in the Crosshairs at a Critical Time

In contrast to China’s gradual strengthening of IP protections, the United States has seen the robustness of its IP system steadily erode.

The patent system in the United States has been impacted by changes introduced in the last dozen or so years, which are seen by some as having weakened the standing of the U.S. system compared with patent systems in other major economies.

The difficulty with comparison is: what do you compare? Absolute patent application or grant numbers? Growth in patent filings? Strength in litigated patents? Commercially meaningful outcomes? What is the meaningful data? These can differ from sector to sector, and certainly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Always it is important to understand what the data drawn upon actually reflects. Nevertheless, in this article we have a go.

The World Intellectual Property Indicators 2023 report, recently released by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), sheds light on the global patent landscape, highlighting significant trends and developments. Despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the report reveals that global patent application filings have been rising for three consecutive years, to a record of nearly 3.5 million in 2022. Leading this surge are major economies such as China and the United States, which have shown remarkable resilience in their research and development efforts despite the uncertain economic environment.

Particularly, China emerges as a dominant force in patent filings with around 1.58 million applications filed globally. The United States maintains its strong presence in patent filings with 505,539 applications, closely followed by Japan with 405,361 applications, Republic of Korea with 272,315 applications, and Germany with 155,896 applications. Notably, the largest yearly increase of 31.6% in patent filings was in India with 55,718 filed applications. These statistics underscore the increasingly global nature of innovation and intellectual property development.

Internationally, China and the United States are granted the highest numbers of Artificial Intelligence patents, with China’s AI patents primarily granted in machine learning.

Approximately 190,000 Artificial Intelligence patents were granted worldwide between 2000 and 2022. In 2022, about 40,000 AI patents were granted to inventors with addresses from China; the comparable figure for the United States was about 9,000.

China, the United States, the European Union, and Japan lead the number of patent applications filed in their home jurisdictions in 2022; however, the U.S. saw a dip in applications from 2021 to 2022.

These and similar trends are in the Invention, Knowledge Transfer, and Innovation report that the National Science Board published today. The report is part of the 2024 congressionally mandated Science and Engineering Indicators analysis of the state of the U.S. science and engineering enterprise, prepared by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics under the National Science Board’s guidance.