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Whether using millions of works to train large language models infringes copyrights, regardless of the AI’s output, is also the subject of ongoing litigation. If it does, the practicality of even identifying, collecting, and cataloging all the works ingested by an AI model—much less tracking down and paying rightsholders—presents daunting logistical challenges that, along with the threat of royalties, could pose an existential threat to the emerging technologies.

“I don’t even really understand what he’s trying to do,” intellectual property and technology law professor Eric Goldman of the University of Santa Clara said of Schiff and the bill. “Trying to disclose your sources when building an AI generative index—it’s not possible.”

But things could be worse. In its ‘resource competition’ future, distrust encourages a push for self-sufficiency in high-income countries. States intervene to secure supplies of critical minerals, which leads to shortages, price wars and disruption to supply. Annual demand for graphite, lithium and cobalt is expected to hit 450% of 2018 production levels by 2050, it noted.

Critical metals are essential for renewable energy and other industries, including technological and military end-users. For instance, indium is needed for touchscreens and solar panels, lithium for pharmaceuticals and cobalt for aerospace applications, as well as green hydrogen production. The EU, for one, is increasingly concerned about sourcing such metals.

A seismic shift is under way. Against the backdrop of rising temperatures, collapsing ecosystems, and the threat of species extinction, technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics are now moving to transform the global order. Indeed, for the first time in our history, we have the tools and technologies to guide and shape our evolution. But what will this future look like?

I recently spoke with Roxanne Meadows and Nathanael Dinwiddie of The Venus Project to better understand their thoughts on the future. As they explain, the status quo is no longer working. Climate change, social inequality, and technological innovation are now disrupting a market-driven society. The key to resolving these global challenges, they suggest, is rooted in a Resource Based Economy.

The time has come to develop and advance a new subdiscipline, precision ecotoxicology, if we are to address the biodiversity crisis. Advancing precision ecotoxicology, which includes comparative ecotoxicokinetics and ecotoxicodynamics from the laboratory and the field, is necessary to engage biodiversity loss because species, and even down to individual organisms for threatened and endangered species, represent the key environmental management or protection goal. For other taxa, the population level of biological organization is commonly identified as the protection goal during prospective and retrospective chemical assessments. However, mechanistic understanding from molecular initiation events to adverse outcomes at the individual level is critical to fully understand chemical, physical, and biological threats and to protect biodiversity. For biodiversity hot spots experiencing significant environmental stress, protection goals associated with chemicals and waste management may need to be modified to also protect the individual, if we are to reduce the impacts of pollution on biodiversity. Precision ecotoxicology will inherently leverage advances in mechanistic, computational, and evolutionary ecotoxicology, molecular ecology and systematics, and precision medicine and environmental health science. Precision medicine, which is sometimes called personalized medicine, aims to define genetic differences within and among individuals, in combination with environmental and social factors, leading to diseases, in an effort to tailor interventions accordingly to specific people. In contrast to traditional approaches in medicine, it is advancing diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of diseases for the individual patient. Researchers are similarly advancing precision environmental health science, which similarly aims to understand underlying individual level susceptibilities to environmental exposures that elicit adverse human health outcomes. Precision medicine and environmental health science have leveraged completion of the human genome in 2003, and subsequent advances in pharmaco- and toxicogenomics. Such precision health efforts are important to environmental management of chemicals and waste because the individual level of biological organization represents the key protection goal during human health risk assessment, a practice that is thus analogous to protection goals for threatened and endangered species. Since completion of the human genome, genomes of thousands of other species have been assembled, and many more have been sequenced as costs of sequencing and annotation have precipitously decreased along with increased workforce capacity and throughput in bioinformatics. Such information is already supporting cross species extrapolation approaches (https://www.epa.gov/chemical-research/sequence-alignment-predict-across-species-susceptibility; http://ecodrug.org/), which are increasingly important for assessing and managing chemicals and waste. Precision ecotoxicology promises reciprocal benefits to human health as development of non-animal alternatives, alternative animal models (i.e., zebrafish), adverse outcome pathways, high-throughput chemical screening, and other new approach methodologies are progressing. This progress is necessary, in part, due to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s recent decision to eliminate mammalian studies by 2035 (https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/administrator-wheeler-signs-memo-reduce-animal-testing-awards-425-million-advance). In addition, when coupled with diverse green chemistry and engineering efforts, precision ecotoxicology will support innovation, including sustainable molecular design of less hazardous chemicals and technologies. But as precision ecotoxicology is developed to understand individual and subpopulation susceptibilities within a species, we need to continue to connect mechanistic pursuits to the population level of biological organization. In fact, precision ecotoxicology promises to advance an understanding of the often variable population level responses to chemical, physical, and biological stressors.

RC: Just as genomics transformed oncology care over the last several decades and offered the ability to treat with precision, the behavioral measurements we are now able to capture with Al tools will help catalyze precision medicine in drug development and tailor interventions with unprecedented specificity. For example, novel patient assessments such as video- and audio-based digital biomarkers can identify the subtleties of a patient's wellbeing and response to treatment in ways that in-person assessments alone cannot. Particularly for conditions with symptoms that need to be or can be assessed with audio and visual cues by tracking metrics such as a patient's facial expressions, eye twitches, speech, or movement, digital biomarkers help detect specific behaviors associated with certain diseases and treatments with more precision than ever before. By assessing these objective insights over time, physicians can understand how medications are impacting a person's quality of life, such as their ability to tie their shoe or write their name and make informed decisions about the future of their care plan. OSP: Please talk about the use of Al to track patients and predict their behavior. RC: In addition to digital biomarkers, Al-powered predictive analytics can also help drive precision medicine by predicting patient behavior before trials even begin. Using a placebo lead-in period, Al can help predict if a patient will likely adhere to their treatment plan, or if they tend to have trouble staying on track. Knowing this in advance can help sites effectively focus on patients who may need more support once they are enrolled in the trial, tailoring their interventions and personalizing resources accordingly to keep them engaged. Predicting a patient's future behavior based on past behavior allows sites to be more proactive and personal in their engagement tactics.

What AI Could Do For Us Equipped with superintelligence and all the technology superintelligence would know how to build, Artificial superintelligence would be capable of solving every problem in humanity. Global warming? Artificial superintelligence could first stop CO2 emissions by creating a much better way to generate energy without using fossil fuels. Then it could build some innovative way to begin to remove extra CO2 from the atmosphere. Cancer and other major or minor diseases? No problem for ASI—the health and medicine industry would be revolutionized beyond imagination. There would be a huge advancement in the Nanotech industry that could transform a bunch of garbage into a huge vat of fresh meat and distribute all this food across the world using advanced transportation. Artificial superintelligence could even figure out the complicated macro issues and our debates over how economies should work and how world trade is best managed, even our haziest doubts in philosophy or ethics—would all be very easy to ASI. ASI could grant us to conquer our mortality Learning and reading about AI will make you reevaluate everything you thought you were sure, among other things – your notion of death. Evolution had no good sense to boost our lifespans any longer than they are now. The possibilities for new human experiences are boundless. Nanobots will be in charge of providing perfect nutrition to the cells of the body, intelligently advising anything unhealthy to go through the body without affecting anything. The expectation that AI will perform its task with determined and unstoppable efficiency has got some of the amazing contemporary thinkers like Stephan Hawking, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk very busy. AI is a machine and a superintelligent one. There is a buzz of developing AI through a humanist approach, depending on human values and human rights and projecting human values on a non-human entity. This is because most people think about only humans with intelligence and expect an intelligent machine to be human. This expectation may lead to the belief that AI could either be friendly & moral or evil & immoral. A few aspects, such as moral /immoral, apply only to human behaviour, and non-human, non-biological entities are amoral by default. While humans breathe and live by a moral code, AI’s code will drive it to do with relentless efficiency what it is programmed to do by its maker. Any prediction that once superintelligent, a system would be over it with their original objective and onto more alluring or meaningful things is anthropomorphizing. AI does not have to change from ‘friendly’ to ‘unfriendly.’ It just has to be doing its work while getting more expert and efficient at the task. A virtual assistant algorithm like Siri performs tasks like listening to your voice, learn your preferences, and make life easier for you to get a good experience out of a smartphone device.

A PLANET-busting comet could crash into the Earth and wipe out humanity with less than six months' warning, a scientist has warned. Astrobiology researcher Prof Lewis Dartnell says the intergalactic balls of ice and dust could be more dangerous to humanity than asteroids. Speaking with the Daily Star, the respected author said comets are harder to spot than asteroids because they “come out of nowhere” from the outer reaches of space. The University of Westminster professor added: “And because comets are falling in towards the sun from much further out, they come in much faster and that could potentially give us much, much less warning if one were to be on a collision course with the Earth. “Potentially we could have as little as six months’ notice of a comet that is on its first orbit into the inner solar system on an Earth-crossing trajectory.” Scientists currently only know about 20,000 potentially dangerous comets despite there being up to one BILLION of them in our solar system. Typically, comets are made of frozen gas, rock and dust and release gas as they fly close to the sun – letting off gases and debris that give them a "tail". The nucleus of a comet, dubbed “dirty snowballs”, can range from six to sixty miles wide. Prof Dartnell's warning comes after a Nasa doomsday simulation earlier this month showed a city the size of New York would be wiped out if a space rock smashed into the Earth. The test showed whether an international team of scientists and engineers could save the planet from a huge 1,000ft-wide asteroid. The Nasa exercise has become a regular event among the world’s community of "planetary defense" experts who meet in Washington. Two years ago a simulation just about saved Tokyo after the previous one wiped out Dhaka in 2015 and another in 2013 flattened the French Riviera in 2013. The nightmarish scenario gave 200 astronomers, engineers and emergency response specialists a warning period of eight years. But they failed to deflect ALL of the killer asteroids — roughly measuring 330 to 1,000 feet in diameter. Initially they were working with a rough calculation that gave a one percent chance of slamming into Earth on April 29, 2027. Each day during the conference new information emerged. The teams then made decisions and awaited further updates from the organizers of the simulation game. But ss fictional months ticked by, the probability of the giant space rock striking Earth rose to 10 percent before rocketing to 100 percent. It was decided among the major space powers of the United States, Europe, Japan, Russia and China to build six “kinetic impactors” which would be fired at the asteroid to knock it off course. Three of them managed to hit and deflect it — but a fragment broke off. Washington considered sending a nuclear bomb to deflect the 200ft rock but this failed to happen because of political squabbles. With two months before impact, it was confirmed New York would be destroyed. The asteroid would enter the atmosphere at 43,000 mph before exploding 9.3 miles above Central Park in Manhattan. The energy of the downward blast would be 1,000 times that of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War 2. Everything would destroyed within a 9-mile “unsurvivable” radius, scientists said. Windows as far as 28 miles away from the epicentre would shatter, with structural damage extend as far as 42 miles. NASA is currently keeping a concerned eye on Bennu. The gigantic '”apocalypse asteroid” could release 80,000 times more energy than the Hiroshima atomic bomb if it smashed with Earth — potentially ending life by sending dust into the atmosphere which may block out the sun. Fears are also growing over an asteroid named after the Egyptian god of chaos could obliterate our planet in our lifetimes – and it's forced a gathering of some of the world's brightest scientists. The runaway space rock Apophis is the size of seven London buses and will come worryingly close to our planet several times over the next century. The earliest is 2029, so there's time to building your shelter.

The world is likely to pass a dangerous temperature threshold within the next 10 years, pushing the planet past the point of catastrophic warming — unless nations drastically transform their economies and immediately transition away from fossil fuels, according to one of the most definitive reports ever published about climate change. The report released Monday by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found that the world is likely to surpass its  — limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures — by the early 2030s.

Beyond that threshold, scientists have found, climate disasters will become so extreme that people will not be able to adapt. Basic components of the Earth system will be fundamentally, irrevocably altered. Heat waves, famines and infectious diseases could claim millions of additional lives by century’s end.

Several epidemics, such as the Black Death and the Spanish flu, have threatened human life throughout history; however, it is unclear if humans will remain safe from the sudden and fast spread of epidemic diseases. Moreover, the transmission characteristics of epidemics remain undiscovered. In this study, we present the results of an epidemic simulation experiment revealing the relationship between epidemic parameters and pandemic risk. To analyze the time-dependent risk and impact of epidemics, we considered two parameters for infectious diseases: the recovery time from infection and the transmission rate of the disease. Based on the epidemic simulation, we identified two important aspects of human safety with regard to the threat of a pandemic. First, humans should be safe if the fatality rate is below 100%. Second, even when the fatality rate is 100%, humans would be safe if the average degree of human social networks is below a threshold value. Nevertheless, certain diseases can potentially infect all nodes in the human social networks, and these diseases cause a pandemic when the average degree is larger than the threshold value. These results indicated that certain infectious diseases lead to human extinction and can be prevented by minimizing human contact. 1. Introduction The emergence of a pandemic is one of the various scenarios frequently discussed as a human extinction event, and it is listed as one of the global catastrophic risks in studies regarding the future [1,2,3]. In particular, several pandemics, such as the Black Death [4,5], Spanish flu [6], and those caused by smallpox [7], severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) [8], and Ebola [9], have affected a large population throughout history. The risk of pandemics increases with an increase in population mobility between cities, nations, and continents, thereby threatening humankind [10,11,12]. It is essential to analyze the epidemic spread in society to minimize the damage from epidemic disasters; however, extinctive epidemic spreading experiments have limitations in real-world situations, as they predict stochastic effects on the spread without considering the structure of human society. Network-based approaches have been proposed to overcome these limitations and perform epidemic spreading simulations by considering the network structure of numerous real-world connections [13,14,15]. These methods use various models of epidemic spreading, such as the susceptible–infectious–susceptible (SIS) [16,17,18], susceptible–infectious–recovered (SIR) [19,20,21], and Watts threshold models [22]. While these methods are mathematically convenient, they are epidemiologically unrealistic for various infections because they require exponentially distributed incubation and infectious periods [23,24,25]. Moreover, previous epidemic studies did not perform quantitative assessment of the pandemic risk depending on the network connectivity in individuals and fatality rate of various diseases [26]. In the present study, we applied an SIR epidemic model to a scale-free network with Monte Carlo simulation to identify the quantitative relationship between infectious diseases and human existence. Our fundamental hypothesis states that when the epidemic spreads to all nodes of the network and the fatality rate is 100%, it can increase the pandemic risk. To address this, we initially constructed a scale-free network to simulate a society. Moreover, for the epidemic spreading simulation, an SIR model was applied to the network to describe the immune state of an individual after infection. From the simulation study, we found that the mean degree of a scale-free network was an essential factor in determining whether epidemics threaten humans. This approach provides important insights into epidemic spreading analysis by investigating the relationship between epidemic and scale-free network parameters. Furthermore, it highlights the necessity of determining information flow during an epidemic. 2. Materials and Methods We designed an epidemic simulation process to identify the relationship between pandemic risk and network parameters. This study was performed in four steps (Figure 1): (i) generating a scale-free network model to reflect real-world conditions; (ii) applying an SIR model to the scale-free network for epidemic spreading simulations; (iii) adapting the Monte Carlo method to reflect the stochastic process in the node status of the SIR model; and (iv) iteratively performing simulation for every parameter set and analyzing the results. We have provided the source code and sample results of epidemic simulation in Supplementary Materials.

This definition of “national security” is broader than just the defense industry or military-related efforts; it also could encompass the very ability of a nation to ensure economic well-being, public health, and protection of a nation's key infrastructure. Supply chain disruptions cause general economic disruption and key commodity shortages, which then in turn can, in fact, drive aggressive national behavior and international instability. And ironically, this reactive aggressive national behavior can happen even if the health of a national economy itself depends upon continued international economic interdependence. Indeed, this very interdependence can create vulnerabilities. So a systematic effort, cutting across agencies and public and private sectors, could be one way to ensure these vulnerabilities are understood and mitigated. Supply Chain Disruption and Conflict Dispersed supply chains develop because actors find it's economically advantageous to seek the least-expensive and most-productive sources of supply. These dispersed chains develop for good reasons, but they create complicated interdependencies whose risks and vulnerabilities are sometimes not even understood, let alone mitigated. While the reasons for creating these chains lie largely with private interest, the effects of disruption—which can come from sources ranging from malign human action to natural disaster—are rarely localized. When shortages occur in one industry, the disruptions in one area nearly always spill into adjacent companies and sectors. Whole economies feel the impact, not isolated actors. The impact on vulnerable populations may be particularly dire. Supply chain disruptions do not just create higher prices and shortages among high-end consumer products, such as cars. They also affect more-basic commodities such as generic drugs or energy, increasing the cost of living and the provision of basic needs. This kind of disruption can create instability more generally, promoting conditions for conflict between and within nations. For the most part, nations try to maintain access to markets and resources by peaceful means such as stockpiling, direct investment in partner nations, and use of other financial incentives. However, there is no guarantee that such competition will remain peaceful. As affluent nations and individuals can find ways to mitigate shortages, they may create blocs of “haves” and “have nots,” where some actors have enough but others cannot meet basic needs. “Haves” may find ways to more directly change distribution, most likely at the expense of other “have nots.” Or “have” nations may try to forcefully safeguard what they have gained and work to exclude competitors. In all these cases, the actors are facing shortages, occasioned by interdependence, and seeking security for themselves in ways that actually promote wider international systemic instability. Escalation of Conflict In some cases, supply chain disruptions can have an even more-direct impact than general disruption, causing shortages of commodities the nation must have to ensure national security. This kind of disruption can go beyond matters of justice, equity, and general prosperity to threatening a nation's very ability to defend itself and look after its citizens. Some examples are pharmaceuticals and personal protective equipment, energy, food, raw materials used in manufacturing, and semiconductors used in multiple different systems including military applications. Such shortages can make the need for a national government to act more dire and immediate and thus raise the risk of conflict. In some cases, particular types of raw materials only exist in certain places, so shifting to more-secure sources isn't even possible.

In addition to semiconductor production, China has invested substantially in artificial intelligence and its telecommunications infrastructure. This combination of data from the country’s global roll out of 5G and unprecedented processing capability will provide the Chinese government with unrivaled power to influence governments and control societies. [5] These capabilities also make it easier for Chinese agents to access proprietary and confidential information, posing a threat to supply chains as American businesses engage in commerce globally. The current FBI Director, Christopher Wray, has sounded the alarm on this issue, describing the scale of Chinese intellectual property theft as “the largest transfers of wealth in human history.”[6] Chinese development of artificial intelligence capabilities with 5G will exacerbate supply chain vulnerabilities, enabling greater technology theft and exposing data on materiel used in the production of U.S. and NATO weapons systems. This infiltration into supply chains that support military requirements is not theoretical. In 2018, the Department of Defense published a report “Assessing and Strengthening the Manufacturing and Industrial Base and Supply Chain Resiliency of the United States,” which found that the majority of counterfeit electronics came from China and create vulnerabilities in American defense systems.[7] In 2019, the U.S. Justice Department uncovered and prosecuted cases involving Chinese-made cameras and surveillance equipment found on American military installations.[8] The presence of these electronics shows how military supply chains may be compromised. Even with fifth generation aircraft, autonomous naval vessels, or next generation squad weapons, Chinese exploitation of supply chain vulnerabilities may jeopardize U.S. Military capabilities by diminishing the readiness and potential production of these weapons systems.

Likewise, if China acquired an enhanced ability through new technology to invade and occupy Taiwan or contested islands in the East or South China Seas, Beijing’s leaders might also find this opportunity tempting. If new technology enhances either power’s anti-access, area-denial network, then its leaders may be more confident in their ability to achieve a fait accompli attack against a neighbor and then block a US-led liberation.

These are precisely the types of shifts in the balance of power that can lead to war. As mentioned previously, the predominant scholarly theory on the causes of war—the bargaining model—maintains that imperfect information on the balance of power and the balance of resolve and credible commitment problems result in international conflict.52 New technology can exacerbate these causal mechanisms by increasing uncertainty about, or causing rapid shifts in, the balance of power. Indeed as noted above, new military technology and the development of new operational concepts have shifted the balance of power and resulted in military conflict throughout history.

The United States and China are engaged in a high-stakes battle to build and master the technologies of the future. The winner will achieve unprecedented national security, as well as sizable economic and trade benefits. The loser will be at a decided disadvantage for decades to come. But if Washington lawmakers enact a series of anti-innovation bills, they will not only undercut the competitiveness of the U.S.’s domestic tech industry, but they will inadvertently assist China’s quest to surpass the U.S. as the global tech leader.

Now a new  by the Lexington Institute, in partnership with the American Edge Project, documents the consequences of falling behind China, saying it “could be profound and have far-reaching security, economic, and political implications…If China wins the race for the technologies of the future, it will erode long-standing U.S. military advantages, weaken the U.S. economy, undermine American freedoms, and be an assault on Western democratic values across the globe.”

Th ese are, of course, no less than the enabling technologies for a global surveillance state—though nobody is admitting as much. While it is logical that a complex society of ten billion people requires more laws, regulations and enforcement that a nineteenth century world of half a billion humans, the advent of quantum surveillance will over-ride and eliminate most aspects of individual freedom. Without strict safeguards, transparency and public oversight, it could potentially render everyone, in effect, state property. On present trends, this will probably be accomplished with the co-operation of the private sector, via internet companies and banks, and with the gullible consent of voters reassured by government claims that spying on everyone is ‘essential to national security’. With many transnational corporations now larger, wealthier and more powerful than individual countries or governments, one of the chief and most intrusive objectives of universal surveillance will be marketing—to precisely target every individual with an avalanche of products and services to anticipate their every whim, before they even know they have it. And fi nally, political parties and religious bodies may exploit the technology not only to spy on their opponents but to ensure the loyalty of supporters, who may then be coerced by threats to expose aspects of the private lives. This is the dawn of the nanocracy, the rule of the Dwarf Lords (see Pamlin et al. 2015 ).

Like all advanced technologies—and despite all the self-serving hype by the scientists working on it—there is no guarantee such omnipotence will be used wisely, benignly, ethically or well, be regulated, publicly supervised or even its details widely known. Indeed, the odds are it will fi rst be employed by political, economic and religious elites to spy on and control those they deem a threat to their power, beliefs, wealth or freedom of action—or else an opportunity to spot customers, recruits or agents of infl uence. Edward Snowden, who witnessed the birth of the secretive age of universal espionage and blew the whistle on it, told Australia’s ABC in May 2015 that the power to search both our content and metadata is “incredibly empowering for governments, incredibly disempowering for civil society”. It could lead to what he termed a ‘turnkey tyranny’ in which governments claim to follow due process but secretly ratchet-up their level of intrusion into private lives without disclosing it. “Th ey are collecting information about everyone, in every place, regardless of whether they have done anything wrong,” he warned (Snowden 2015).

Over the past year, artificial intelligence has burst into the public consciousness, rapidly ascending from an obscure tech term to an integral part of our daily lives. It’s an exciting and fascinating rise that offers a glimpse of what is to come.

In the coming years, a new wave of cutting-edge technologies — such as quantum computing, machine learning, biotechnology and advanced robotics — will fundamentally reshape the way we live, work and connect. However, the extent to which these technologies enrich or undermine our future depends on the values and motivations of those who craft them.

7. Fascist Nationalism. There is another possible future that the Foreign Affairs scenarios do not contemplate, and it’s a dark world in which Trump, Putin, Xi, Erdogan, and others construct regimes that are authoritarian and nationalist. Fascism is possible in the United States and elsewhere if big business can be seduced by promises of riches in return for the institutional keys to democracy. Perhaps Foreign Affairs editors are right to leave this dark world out, for it would be very dark: nationalist wars with risks of escalation into global nuclear conflict, further digital militarization (even Terminator-style scenarios of smart military robots), and unchecked climate disasters. The global challenges are quite large – and the six pieces do an outstanding job of presenting them. One must remain optimistic and engaged, hopeful that we can overcome the serious dangers of tribalism, nationalism, and new fascism. These "isms” of our time stand in the way of solving some of our biggest global problems, such as the risks of thermonuclear war and global climate catastrophe.

Beijing uses its globe-spanning media organs to tout the accomplishments of illiberal rule while highlighting democratic governments’ flaws and hypocrisies. China works with fellow authoritarian regimes, such as Vladimir Putin’s in Russia, to push autocrat-friendly norms of internet management in international institutions and standards-setting bodies. Beijing also helps other illiberal regimes near or in Central Asia to hound and repress exiles and dissidents. Not least, China is waging a campaign of political and military coercion to destabilize Taiwan, a flourishing nation whose very existence disproves the CCP’s claims that Chinese culture is incompatible with democracy. The fundamental problem that Taiwan poses for China, write Andrew Nathan and Andrew Scobell, “comes from Taiwan’s simply being what it is—a modern Chinese society that is economically prosperous and politically democratic.”

It might be tempting to dismiss China’s democracy-prevention efforts as “world politics as usual.” After all, autocrats have been colluding to hold liberalism at bay ever since the monarchs of Austria, Prussia, and Russia banded together to fight Revolutionary France more than two centuries ago. But China’s ideological assault is especially threatening, for three reasons.

The risks from anthropogenic hazards appear at present larger than those from natural ones. Although great progress has been made in reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world, humanity is still threatened by the possibility of a global thermonuclear war and a resulting nuclear winter. We may face even greater risks from emerging technologies. Advances in synthetic biology might make it possible to engineer pathogens capable of extinction-level pandemics. The knowledge, equipment, and materials needed to engineer pathogens are more accessible than those needed to build nuclear weapons. And unlike other weapons, pathogens are self-replicating, allowing a small arsenal to become exponentially destructive. Pathogens have been implicated in the extinctions of many wild species. Although most pandemics “fade out” by reducing the density of susceptible populations, pathogens with wide host ranges in multiple species can reach even isolated individuals. The intentional or unintentional release of engineered pathogens with high transmissibility, latency, and lethality might be capable of causing human extinction. While such an event seems unlikely today, the likelihood may increase as biotechnologies continue to improve at a rate rivaling Moore’s Law. Farther out in time are technologies that remain theoretical but might be developed this century. Molecular nanotechnology could allow the creation of self-replicating machines capable of destroying the ecosystem. And advances in neuroscience and computation might enable improvements in cognition that accelerate the invention of new weapons. A survey at the Oxford conference found that concerns about human extinction were dominated by fears that new technologies would be misused. These emerging threats are especially challenging as they could become dangerous more quickly than past technologies, outpacing society’s ability to control them. As H.G. Wells noted, “Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.” Such remote risks may seem academic in a world plagued by immediate problems, such as global poverty, HIV, and climate change. But as intimidating as these problems are, they do not threaten human existence. In discussing the risk of nuclear winter, Carl Sagan emphasized the astronomical toll of human extinction: A nuclear war imperils all of our descendants, for as long as there will be humans. Even if the population remains static, with an average lifetime of the order of 100 years, over a typical time period for the biological evolution of a successful species (roughly ten million years), we are talking about some 500 trillion people yet to come. By this criterion, the stakes are one million times greater for extinction than for the more modest nuclear wars that kill “only” hundreds of millions of people. There are many other possible measures of the potential loss—including culture and science, the evolutionary history of the planet, and the significance of the lives of all of our ancestors who contributed to the future of their descendants. Extinction is the undoing of the human enterprise. There is a discontinuity between risks that threaten 10 percent or even 99 percent of humanity and those that threaten 100 percent. For disasters killing less than all humanity, there is a good chance that the species could recover. If we value future human generations, then reducing extinction risks should dominate our considerations. Fortunately, most measures to reduce these risks also improve global security against a range of lesser catastrophes, and thus deserve support regardless of how much one worries about extinction.

Recently, analysts have argued that emerging technologies with military applications may undermine nuclear stability (see here, here, and here), but the logic of these arguments is debatable and overlooks a more straightforward reason why new technology might cause nuclear conflict: by upending the existing balance of power among nuclear-armed states. This latter concern is more probable and dangerous and demands an immediate policy response. For more than 70 years, the world has avoided major power conflict, and many attribute this era of peace to nuclear weapons. In situations of mutually assured destruction (MAD), neither side has an incentive to start a conflict because doing so will only result in its own annihilation. The key to this model of deterrence is the maintenance of secure second-strike capabilities—the ability to absorb an enemy nuclear attack and respond with a devastating counterattack. Recently analysts have begun to worry, however, that new strategic military technologies may make it possible for a state to conduct a successful first strike on an enemy. For example, Chinese colleagues have complained to me in Track II dialogues that the United States may decide to launch a sophisticated cyberattack against Chinese nuclear command and control, essentially turning off China’s nuclear forces. Then, Washington will follow up with a massive strike with conventional cruise and hypersonic missiles to destroy China’s nuclear weapons. Finally, if any Chinese forces happen to survive, the United States can simply mop up China’s ragged retaliatory strike with advanced missile defenses. China will be disarmed and US nuclear weapons will still be sitting on the shelf, untouched. If the United States, or any other state acquires such a first-strike capability, then the logic of MAD would be undermined. Washington may be tempted to launch a nuclear first strike. Or China may choose instead to use its nuclear weapons early in a conflict before they can be wiped out—the so-called “use ‘em or lose ‘em” problem. According to this logic, therefore, the appropriate policy response would be to ban outright or control any new weapon systems that might threaten second-strike capabilities. This way of thinking about new technology and stability, however, is open to question. Would any US president truly decide to launch a massive, bolt-out-of-the-blue nuclear attack because he or she thought s/he could get away with it? And why does it make sense for the country in the inferior position, in this case China, to intentionally start a nuclear war that it will almost certainly lose? More important, this conceptualization of how new technology affects stability is too narrow, focused exclusively on how new military technologies might be used against nuclear forces directly. Rather, we should think more broadly about how new technology might affect global politics, and, for this, it is helpful to turn to scholarly international relations theory. The dominant theory of the causes of war in the academy is the “bargaining model of war.” This theory identifies rapid shifts in the balance of power as a primary cause of conflict. International politics often presents states with conflicts that they can settle through peaceful bargaining, but when bargaining breaks down, war results. Shifts in the balance of power are problematic because they undermine effective bargaining. After all, why agree to a deal today if your bargaining position will be stronger tomorrow? And, a clear understanding of the military balance of power can contribute to peace. (Why start a war you are likely to lose?) But shifts in the balance of power muddy understandings of which states have the advantage. You may see where this is going. New technologies threaten to create potentially destabilizing shifts in the balance of power. For decades, stability in Europe and Asia has been supported by US military power. In recent years, however, the balance of power in Asia has begun to shift, as China has increased its military capabilities. Already, Beijing has become more assertive in the region, claiming contested territory in the South China Sea. And the results of Russia’s military modernization have been on full display in its ongoing intervention in Ukraine. Moreover, China may have the lead over the United States in emerging technologies that could be decisive for the future of military acquisitions and warfare, including 3D printing, hypersonic missiles, quantum computing, 5G wireless connectivity, and artificial intelligence (AI). And Russian President Vladimir Putin is building new unmanned vehicles while ominously declaring, “Whoever leads in AI will rule the world.” If China or Russia are able to incorporate new technologies into their militaries before the United States, then this could lead to the kind of rapid shift in the balance of power that often causes war. If Beijing believes emerging technologies provide it with a newfound, local military advantage over the United States, for example, it may be more willing than previously to initiate conflict over Taiwan. And if Putin thinks new tech has strengthened his hand, he may be more tempted to launch a Ukraine-style invasion of a NATO member. Either scenario could bring these nuclear powers into direct conflict with the United States, and once nuclear armed states are at war, there is an inherent risk of nuclear conflict through limited nuclear war strategies, nuclear brinkmanship, or simple accident or inadvertent escalation. This framing of the problem leads to a different set of policy implications. The concern is not simply technologies that threaten to undermine nuclear second-strike capabilities directly, but, rather, any technologies that can result in a meaningful shift in the broader balance of power. And the solution is not to preserve second-strike capabilities, but to preserve prevailing power balances more broadly.

The system must also be adapted to deal with new issues that were not envisioned when the existing order was designed. Foremost among these issues is emerging and disruptive technology, including AI, additive manufacturing (or 3D printing), quantum computing, genetic engineering, robotics, directed energy, the Internet of things (IOT), 5G, space, cyber, and many others. Like other disruptive technologies before them, these innovations promise great benefits, but also carry serious downside risks. For example, AI is already resulting in massive efficiencies and cost savings in the private sector. Routine tasks and other more complicated jobs, such as radiology, are already being automated. In the future, autonomous weapons systems may go to war against each other as human soldiers remain out of harm’s way. Yet, AI is also transforming economies and societies, and generating new security challenges. Automation will lead to widespread unemployment. The final realization of driverless cars, for example, will put out of work millions of taxi, Uber, and long-haul truck drivers. Populist movements in the West have been driven by those disaffected by globalization and technology, and mass unemployment caused by automation will further grow those ranks and provide new fuel to grievance politics. Moreover, some fear that autonomous weapons systems will become “killer robots” that select and engage targets without human input, and could eventually turn on their creators, resulting in human extinction. The other technologies on this lisgt similarly balance great potential upside with great downside risk. 3D printing, for example, can be used to “make anything anywhere,” reducing costs for a wide range of manufactured goods and encouraging a return of local manufacturing industries.61 At the same time, advanced 3D printers can also be used by revisionist and rogue states to print component parts for advanced weapons systems or even WMD programs, spurring arms races and weapons proliferation.62 Genetic engineering can wipe out entire classes of disease through improved medicine, or wipe out entire classes of people through genetically engineered superbugs. Directed-energy missile defenses may defend against incoming missile attacks, while also undermining global strategic stability. Perhaps the greatest risk to global strategic stability from new technology, however, comes from the risk that revisionist autocracies may win the new tech arms race. Throughout history, states that have dominated the commanding heights of technological progress have also dominated international relations. The United States has been the world’s innovation leader from Edison’s light bulb to nuclear weapons and the Internet. Accordingly, stability has been maintained in Europe and Asia for decades because the United States and its democratic allies possessed a favorable economic and military balance of power in those key regions. Many believe, however, that China may now have the lead in the new technologies of the twenty-first century, including AI, quantum, 5G, hypersonic missiles, and others. If China succeeds in mastering the technologies of the future before the democratic core, then this could lead to a drastic and rapid shift in the balance of power, upsetting global strategic stability, and the call for a democratic- led, rules-based system outlined in these pages.63