Nuclear war has once again entered everyday conversations and weighs heavily on the public’s mind like never before. This is not just due to the box office success of Oppenheimer; ever since Russia invaded Ukraine, the country’s authorities have made nuclear threats. Furthermore, Russia has suspended its participation in a nuclear arms control treaty with the United States. North Korea has been conducting missile tests. The United States, which is modernizing its nuclear weapons, shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon as China increases its atomic arsenal.
“In the present day, the threat of nuclear weapons being used is as high as it has ever been in the nuclear era,” said Joan Rohlfing, President and COO of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an influential non-profit organization in Washington, D.C.
In this environment, a conventional crisis runs the significant risk of turning nuclear. All it takes is for a world leader to decide to launch a nuclear attack. And we need to better understand this decision-making process.
Historically, studies on nuclear decision-making have stemmed from economic theory, where analysts, irrationally, assumed that a “rational actor” is the one making decisions.
“We all know that humans make mistakes,” explained Rohlfing. “We don’t always have the best judgment. We behave differently in moments of stress. And there are many examples of human errors throughout history. Why do we think it will be different with nuclear energy?”
But the growing scientific knowledge of the human brain has not necessarily translated into adjustments to nuclear launch protocols.
Now, there is an initiative to change this situation. For example, Rohlfing’s organization is working on a project to apply the insights from cognitive science and neuroscience to nuclear strategy and protocols, in order to prevent leaders from plunging into atomic apocalypse.
However, finding truly innovative ideas backed by science to prevent an accidental or unnecessary nuclear attack is challenging. It is also difficult to present the work with the necessary nuances.
Experts also have to convince political leaders to implement research-based ideas into real-world nuclear practice.
“The boundaries of that discourse are extraordinarily well-protected,” asserted Anne Harrington, a nuclear energy specialist at Cardiff University in Wales, referring to the internal pressures that officials have faced when questioning the nuclear status quo. “So, to anyone who thinks they’re going to make changes solely from the outside… I would say I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
The world’s nuclear powers have different protocols for making the grave decision of using nuclear weapons. In the United States, barring an unlikely shift in the balance of power among branches of government, the decision lies in the hands of one person.
“Only the President can order the use of the most devastating weapons in the U.S. military arsenal,” explained Reja Younis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., who is also a Ph.D. candidate in International Relations at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
According to Younis, in a nuclear crisis, the President would likely meet with the Secretary of Defense, top military commanders, and other advisors. Together, they would assess intelligence data and discuss strategy, and the advisors would present the President with possible courses of action.
“These could range from ‘do nothing and see what happens’ to ‘launch a large-scale nuclear attack’,” stated Alex Wellerstein, a professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey and the director of a research project called “The President and the Bomb”.
However, ultimately, only the President makes the decision and can disregard the guidance of their advisors. A President could simply press the symbolic button.
“These are the President’s weapons,” assured Rohlfing.
Prior to his electoral victory in 2016, experts and political opponents began expressing concerns about granting Donald Trump the power to order a nuclear attack. This debate continued in Congress throughout his presidential term. By the time he left office, then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had directly urged the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to limit Trump’s ability to launch nuclear weapons.
It was in this environment that Deborah Rosenblum, Executive Vice President of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, invited Moran Cerf, a neuroscientist and current professor at Columbia Business School, to give a lecture at the organization in 2018. The lecture was titled “Your Brain in the Face of Catastrophic Risk” (Rosenblum now works in Joe Biden’s administration as the Under Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs, an office that advises the President on nuclear issues).
Dressed in a black t-shirt and jeans, Cerf spoke to a room full of experts and researchers about what brain science had to say about existentially problematic issues like nuclear war. This visit preceded a collaboration between Cerf and a non-profit organization called PopTech, whose conference is moderated by Cerf.
With a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the groups are working to provide science-based suggestions to the government to improve nuclear launch protocols. Changing those policies is not impossible, but it would require a specific political scenario.
“It would require some kind of consensus that not only comes from external groups but also from policymakers and military officials,” stated Harrington, adding, “To be honest, you would probably also need the right President.”
The project includes a more public facet: Cerf has interviewed influential security experts such as Leon Panetta, former Secretary of Defense and Director of the CIA, and Michael Rogers, former Director of the National Security Agency. Excerpts from these interviews will be included in a documentary series titled “Mutually Assured Destruction.”
With this project, Cerf and his colleagues have a channel to share their findings and proposals with prominent past and present government officials. And he is optimistic about the difference these findings could make.
“I always think things will get better,” he says. “I always think, with a nice smile, you can get even the toughest opposition to listen to you.”
Cerf has the rapid cadence of a TED Talk speaker. He was born in France and grew up in Israel, studied Physics in college, did a Master’s degree in Philosophy, and then began working in a lab studying consciousness at Caltech, where he earned a Ph.D. in Neuroscience.
He also completed mandatory military service in Israel, worked as an ethical hacker, was a consultant for film and television, and won the Moth GrandSlam storytelling competition.
Cerf’s main critique of the system for initiating nuclear war is that, despite advancements in understanding the fickle nature of the brain, the status quo assumes largely rational actors. In reality, the fate of millions of people rests on individual psychology.
One of Cerf’s suggestions is to scan the brains of Presidents and understand the neural peculiarities of presidential decision-making. Perhaps one commander-in-chief functions better in the morning, while another is at their best in the afternoon. Maybe one performs better when hungry, while another performs better when not.
Other ideas for improving protocols that Cerf has discussed can be traced back to existing research on decision-making or nuclear issues.
Cerf states that an important factor is the order of speaking during the big meeting. If, for example, the President starts with an opinion, it is less likely that others—necessarily lower in the chain of command—will contradict it.
The idea that the hierarchical order of interventions influences the outcome of a debate is not new. “It’s a classic experiment conducted in the 1950s,” says David Weiss, Professor Emeritus at California State University, Los Angeles, referring to studies conducted by psychologist Solomon Asch.
Cerf has also proposed reducing the time pressure of a nuclear decision. The perception of a strict countdown to respond to a nuclear attack originated before the United States developed a more robust nuclear arsenal than…
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