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| Nuclear War Could End the World, but What if It’s All in Our Heads? | Nuclear War Could End the World, but What if It’s All in Our Heads? |
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| Nuclear war has returned to the realm of dinner table conversation, weighing on the minds of the public more than it has in a generation. | Nuclear war has returned to the realm of dinner table conversation, weighing on the minds of the public more than it has in a generation. |
| It’s not just “Oppenheimer’s” big haul at the box office: Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the country’s officials have made nuclear threats. Russia has also suspended its participation in a nuclear arms control treaty with the United States. North Korea has launched demonstrative missiles. The United States, which is modernizing its nuclear weapons, shot down a surveillance balloon from China, which is building up its atomic arsenal. | It’s not just “Oppenheimer’s” big haul at the box office: Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the country’s officials have made nuclear threats. Russia has also suspended its participation in a nuclear arms control treaty with the United States. North Korea has launched demonstrative missiles. The United States, which is modernizing its nuclear weapons, shot down a surveillance balloon from China, which is building up its atomic arsenal. |
| “The threat of nuclear use today, I believe, is as high as it has ever been in the nuclear age,” said Joan Rohlfing, president and chief operating officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an influential nonprofit group in Washington, D.C. | “The threat of nuclear use today, I believe, is as high as it has ever been in the nuclear age,” said Joan Rohlfing, president and chief operating officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an influential nonprofit group in Washington, D.C. |
| In this environment, a conventional crisis runs a significant risk of turning nuclear. It only requires a world leader to decide to launch a nuclear attack. And that decision making process must be better understood. | |
| Historically, scholarship on nuclear decision making grew out of economic theory, where analysts have often irrationally assumed that a “rational actor” is making decisions. |