Forum Topics

It is now 85 seconds to midnight 2026: Doomsday Clock Statement

"A year ago, we warned that the world was perilously close to global disaster and that any delay in reversing course increased the probability of catastrophe. Rather than heed this warning, Russia, China, the United States, and other major countries have instead become increasingly aggressive, adversarial, and nationalistic. Hard-won global understandings are collapsing, accelerating a winner-takes-all great power competition and undermining the international cooperation critical to reducing the risks of nuclear war, climate change, the misuse of biotechnology, the potential threat of artificial intelligence, and other apocalyptic dangers. Far too many leaders have grown complacent and indifferent, in many cases adopting rhetoric and policies that accelerate rather than mitigate these existential risks. Because of this failure of leadership, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board today sets the Doomsday Clock at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to catastrophe.Last year started with a glimmer of hope in regard to nuclear risks, as incoming US President Donald Trump made efforts to halt the Russia-Ukraine war and even suggested that major powers pursue “denuclearization.” Over the course of 2025, however, negative trends—old and new—intensified, with three regional conflicts involving nuclear powers all threatening to escalate. The Russia–Ukraine war has featured novel and potentially destabilizing military tactics and Russian allusions to nuclear weapons use. Conflict between India and Pakistan erupted in May, leading to cross-border drone and missile attacks amid nuclear brinkmanship. In June, Israel and the United States launched aerial attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities suspected of supporting the country’s nuclear weapons ambitions. It remains unclear whether the attacks constrained those efforts—or if they instead persuaded the country to pursue nuclear weapons covertly.Meanwhile, competition among major powers has become a full-blown arms race, as evidenced by increasing numbers of nuclear warheads and platforms in China, and the modernization of nuclear delivery systems in the United States, Russia, and China. The United States plans to deploy a new, multilayered missile defense system, Golden Dome, that will include space-based interceptors, increasing the probability of conflict in space and likely fueling a new space-based arms race. As these worrying trends continued, countries with nuclear weapons failed to talk about strategic stability or arms control, much less nuclear disarmament, and questions about US extended deterrence commitments to traditional allies in Europe and Asia led some countries without nuclear weapons to consider acquiring them. As we publish this statement, the last major agreement limiting the numbers of strategic nuclear weapons deployed by the United States and Russia, New START, is set to expire, ending nearly 60 years of efforts to constrain nuclear competition between the world’s two largest nuclear countries. In addition, the US administration may be considering the resumption of explosive nuclear testing, further accelerating a renewed nuclear arms race.An array of adverse trends also dominated the climate change outlook in the past year. The level of atmospheric carbon dioxide—the greenhouse gas most responsible for human-caused climate change—reached a new high, rising to 150 percent of preindustrial levels. Global average temperature in 2024 was the warmest in the 175-year record, and temperatures in 2025 were similar. With the addition of freshwater from melting glaciers and thermal expansion, global average sea level reached a record high. Energized by warm temperatures, the hydrologic cycle became more erratic, with deluges and droughts hopscotching around the globe. Large swaths of Peru, the Amazon, southern Africa, and northwest Africa experienced droughts. For the third time in the last four years Europe experienced more than 60,000 heat-related deaths. Floods in the Congo River Basin displaced 350,000 people, and record rainfall in southeast Brazil displaced over half a million."https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/2026-statement/

David Ainsworth ● 2h3 Comments ● 1h

Israel - our ally

Extract from Spectator online - "Will no one acknowledge how Mossad helps Britain?"Jake Wallis Simons21 November 2025, 11:24am'Let’s imagine that an international jihadi network, with cells in London and Europe, had just been busted, with dramatic arrests in Britain, Germany and Austria. Let’s imagine that the group had been planning a string of atrocities, with a weapons cache discovered in Vienna.Let’s imagine that security services had unearthed ‘tens of thousands of Euros in cash, numerous data storage devices and mobile phones, gas pistols, firearms, ammunition, knives, and related literature’. You’d have expected such a story to make the news, right?Wrong. On Monday, the Israeli prime minister’s office announced that this precise scenario had unfolded, with Mossad handing intelligence to MI5 and European agencies that enabled them to bring the jihadis to justice and foil their murderous ambitions. The name of the gang? Here’s a clue: it coordinated with leaders in Qatar and Turkey. You guessed it.In a statement that would chill the heart of any Briton or European were they to have heard it reported, Benjamin Netanyahu’s office warned: ‘Since the October 7 massacre, the Hamas terrorist organisation has been working with renewed vigour to build infrastructure and recruit terrorist cells in Europe and other arenas, similar to the Iranian regime and its proxies.’When people talk of Iranian ‘proxies’, they are referring to groups such as Hezbollah, the Houthis and less well-known terrorist gangs in Syria and Iraq. Over the decades, Tehran built these up into a ‘ring of fire’ around Israel, which was only dismantled after the Mossad pager operation last year, followed by Israel’s airborne humiliation of the Iranian regime during those fateful 12 days in June.That is what the Israelis are saying that we are starting to face here. A network of proxies. A nascent ring of fire, preparations for a 7 October of our own, awaiting activation.'Why does our MSM not report this ?Why don't we wake up and smell the coffee (Turkish ?) and be forearmed as well as forewarned.

John Hawkes ● 66d26 Comments ● 3h

Chagos ~ Another U-turn On The Way?

Pressure grows on Starmer to ditch 'terrible' plan to hand Chagos Islands to Mauritius as Labour MPs say it should be an axed.Pressure mounted on Sir Keir Starmer to ditch his ‘terrible’ plan of surrendering the Chagos Islands amid mounting opposition from his own LabourMPs.The Prime Minister faced calls to heed the concerns of Donald Trump and scrap the plan entirely – not just pause it.Senior Labour backbench MP Dan Carden said: ‘This is not about obeying Trump - it's about using common sense and doing the right thing for the country.’The plea came after the surprise news on Friday that Sir Keir was pulling the next stage of legislation needed to ratify the controversial territory – which includes a giant joint UK/US military base – to Mauritius.The Bill was due to be discussed in the House of Lords on Monday but the draft law was withdrawn just days after the US president came out strongly against the handover.It also came after Tory peers demanded to know if the agreement complied with international law, with the Tories warned it would break a UN treaty between the UK and US in 1966 which stated: 'The territory shall remain under UK sovereignty.'But the Government insist that the deal – which critics say could eventually cost the UK £35 billion in payments to Mauritius, more than 10 times the Government’s estimate - will still go ahead.A Government spokesman said: ‘The Government remains fully committed to the deal to secure the joint UK-US base on Diego Garcia, which is vital for our national security.’This is irresponsible and reckless behaviour by peers, whose roles is to check legislation, not interfere with our national security priorities.’https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15494287/Pressure-Starmer-plan-Chagos-Islands-Mauritius-Labour-

Sue Hammond ● 2d5 Comments ● 2d

Cuts to ODA budget

As a Borgen Project Ambassador and Putney constituent, I am writing to express my concern and repulsion at Labour’s announcement to slash the ODA’s foreign aid budget nearly in half (from 0.5% of gross national income to 0.3%). The latest round of cuts threatens to strip an estimated £150 million from programmes fighting tuberculosis, AIDS, and malaria—diseases that continue to kill millions and disproportionately affect the world’s poorest communities. These abhorrent cuts follow the dark path set out by Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, who’s governments slashed the ODA and USAID budgets, also resulting in massive global deaths from disease and hunger. I think it’s important to clear up a few common misconceptions around foreign aid spending. Surveys show that Britons routinely overestimate how much we spend on foreign aid, with many believing it accounts for 10% of national spending when, even at 0.7% (now 0.3%), it was less than a penny in the pound. In addition, there’s often a notion that foreign aid is a leftwing or progressive concept, in truth, both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher strengthened development efforts, recognizing that stability abroad furthers security and prosperity at home. Wandsworth is proudly “the Brighter Borough” and “the Borough of Culture,” these slogans reflect our shared values of compassion, openness, and outward-looking values. Standing up for foreign aid means standing up for who we are. I’d like to commend my local MP, Fleur Anderson, for upholding these values through her work opposing these cuts and championing effective, life-saving development assistance. I encourage her to continue and urge her colleges to join in her courageous efforts.The Borgen Project works to ensure communities like ours speak up for smart, humane foreign policy. Wandsworth should continue to lead that effort.Oliver Lefferts

Oliver Lefferts ● 4d5 Comments ● 2d