The Global Pressure Gauge: The Doomsday Clock Revisited
Abstract: The Doomsday Clock analogy is antiquated and should be replaced by The Global Pressure Gauge. Instead of nuclear war being the countdown to Earth’s destruction, multiple destabilizing inputs to the strategic environment are the real threat. These combined events are more likely to increase pressure within the system, leading to a rupture in global stability and, potentially, global war. Military professionals must understand these multiple threats to deter conflict.
Today, the Doomsday Clock seems like a relic of a bygone era. Even Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Vladimir Putin’s atomic saber rattling did not raise the level of societal angst over a nuclear holocaust at Cold War levels. The security landscape has changed, and the primary existential threat to humanity is no longer the brinksmanship of two great powers threatening mutually assured destruction. Instead, an aggregation of threats from emerging or improving technologies—many accessible to various actors at low costs of entry—adds strain to the international system. Like gas filling a sealed container, the cumulative pressure from these threats could cause a rupture, tearing apart mankind’s globalized society. The metaphor of a Global Pressure Gauge is a more accurate representation of the current risk to civilization than the Doomsday Clock. Military planners should consider nuclear, cyber, biological, artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, and others as destabilizing inputs to the strategic environment. While each could independently cause a catastrophic event, they are more likely to combine to increase pressure within the system, leading to a rupture in global stability and a potential global war.
Consider the recent headlines riddled with recurring Chinese military exercises near Taiwan, continued Russian aggression in Ukraine, a civil war in South Sudan, the Israel-Hamas War, a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, and 703 million people lacking access to clean water. These issues are not necessarily nuclear in nature but continue to increase tension in a system already under intense pressure. Each added challenge creates tension in volatile diplomacy, competing narratives, military aggression and posturing exercises, and economic instability. Imagine then the addition of disruptions such as cyber-attacks, famines, natural disasters, displaced civilians, and bioterrorism across war-torn regions that create pressure the system cannot contain. It will not likely be one independent threat that leads to systems’ collapse and global conflict, but the aggregation of multiple security dilemmas over time. This is why the Doomsday Clock is no longer relevant and should be reevaluated as a multi-variable system in constant fluctuation.
Beyond the Clock
While today’s concept of the Doomsday Clock has expanded beyond nuclear to maintain relevancy, its origins were firmly rooted in the Cold War. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, whose founders worked on the Manhattan Project, created the Doomsday Clock in 1947 and continues to keep its time. Gravely concerned over the strategic environment that threatened world annihilation, this symbolic timepiece was meant to convey urgency and mobilize civic engagement so that nuclear war and its horrendous aftermath could be averted. Often thought of as an ominous countdown to Armageddon, the clock represented an approximation of how close mankind was to atomic disaster.
In modern times, the Doomsday Clock has drifted from its original conception. The amount of time left before midnight indicates “the world’s vulnerability to global catastrophe” caused by man-made technologies. The Doomsday Clock is now too simplistic to represent the world’s vulnerabilities to global catastrophe and must be reimagined to reflect the complex, multifaceted nature of today’s security threats. Several different paths could take mankind down the road of destruction. To fully understand the “doomsday” that the world faces, one must consider the aggregate of all threats instead of a singular danger. Like a giant pressure tank inside a power plant, it must be carefully monitored and regulated to avert an explosive catastrophe. Once the aggregate of the Global Pressure Gauge is too great, the world loses.
The Nuclear Tension
The threat of nuclear attack remains a clear and present danger amidst a veiled background since the Cold War, but the proliferation of such weapons has changed the balance of atomic power. As states like Iran and North Korea continue developing their programs, the possibility of nuclear attacks grows. Limited nuclear exchanges like those possible between Pakistan and India, or Iran and Israel, would cause massive devastation, and the effects of such a conflict would have global ramifications, but such struggles would not necessarily bring about the atomic apocalypse that a U.S.-Soviet Union unlimited exchange would have guaranteed. And while the possibility of exchanges between countries with large nuclear arsenals like Russia, China, and the United States still exists, such an outcome seems more remote today, given the other tools major powers have at their disposal. A potentially more feasible scenario is “small-yield” nuclear weapons of 0.3 kilotons and below, causing devastating physical effects and fallout. If the use of atomic weapons was the only civilizational threat, then the Doomsday Clock may still be appropriate; however, there are more dangers that could lead to global over-pressurization.
The Cyber Stress
Cyber-attacks are another possible destabilizing force with the potential to cause extensive chaos and suffering. Cyber-vulnerabilities are extremely prevalent, with 94% of businesses of 100 or more employees experiencing such malicious activity in 2022. While the risks posed by such attacks are numerous, widespread threats to critical infrastructure are particularly troublesome. Infrastructure like the electric grid, transportation networks, and banking and finance systems has all become increasingly complex, intertwined, and vulnerable. Simply watch the opener to Zero Day on Netflix to observe how even a limited attack on a nation’s transportation grid has the potential to destroy the status quo. The interdependence of critical infrastructure sectors creates the risk of cascading effects from attacks on one sector rolling into others. In the nightmarish scenario that essential services like electricity are shut down for millions of people over an extended period, the death toll could be catastrophic, especially in the winter. What makes cyber threats even more terrifying is that they are not limited to a small group of countries, as the low cost of entry makes cyber weapons available to all actors, from the state to the individual.
The Biological Strain
Disease poses another possibly existential risk to mankind. As COVID-19 illustrated, a pandemic can cause massive global disruption, even with an average death rate of 61.3 per 100,000 persons, which is relatively tame compared to the case-fatality ratio of bubonic plague, estimated at 30-60%. While nature has introduced devastating diseases into society, the current environment is made more dangerous because of mankind’s enhanced genetic manipulation capabilities. Introduced in 2012, Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) is a ground-breaking technology that enables gene editing at the highest precision and usability at the lowest cost. Compounding the risk is the expanding number of high-containment biological laboratories worldwide, indicating a growth in high-risk biological research. Increased ease of genetic manipulation, plus an expansion of high-risk experimentation, raises the risk of a pandemic caused by a virus that has been created to inflict maximum damage. Like cyber technologies, states do not have a monopoly on biological technologies, and nefarious activity or an accidental lab leak could yield a major catastrophe.
The Technology Force
Artificial Intelligence is both a direct threat and an enabler to other disruptive technologies. While seemingly far-fetched at present, AI could pose an existential danger to humanity (think The Matrix and Terminator); however, its ability to enhance other existing capabilities is significant. On the battlefield, AI enhances autonomous systems, improving lethality and destructive capabilities. Teamed with CRISPR, machine learning can create medical breakthroughs that could help millions, but it can also facilitate the creation of deadly pathogens and chemical agents. AI can also enable hackers seeking to attack critical infrastructure by rapidly mapping systems and identifying vulnerabilities that can be targeted. The ways in which AI can boost other technologies that could create devastation and make a multi-vector global systems collapse more tangible than the subjugation of humanity by killer robots.
The Pressure Builds
This limited discussion about only four major dangers demonstrates that atomic weapons are not necessarily the greatest existential threat to humanity. Instead, the cumulative pressures of multiple forces could lead to the collapse of mankind’s global society. The various threats that the human species face will most likely stay below critical mass as independent variables, but the Global Pressure Gauge depicts the aggregate stress on the system that could lead to catastrophic collapse. This potential is made more likely by the interdependence that each system has on the others. This has enabled threat systems to act in concert with one another, leading to an intertwined network where increased pressure in one area will lead to stress on others. Enhanced by the digitization and integration of the world’s economies and infrastructure, every formerly isolated danger is now magnified within the lens of its adjacent threats.
The interconnectedness and interdependence of the world have reached a historic high point in the 21st century, and thus far, the system has been resilient enough to survive. Even in the face of increasing stressors with global impacts such as the 1998 Asian Financial Crisis, 9/11, the 2000 Dot-Com Crash, and the 2008 Great Recession, the system has always bounced back. However, increasing pressures, nefarious actors, nation-state aggression, and biohazards all have the combined power to rewrite the system as we know it, which is not as resilient as one would hope. Surprises such as a global pandemic can cause massive, worldwide disruptions in isolation, but an aggregation of devastating events could weaken the system. In this book, The End of the World Is Just the Beginning, Author Peter Ziehan equates this to de-civilization, which he defines as “a cascade of reinforcing breakdowns that do not simply damage, but destroy, the bedrock of what makes the modern world function.” Such a breakdown will create extreme chaos, and mankind will have to go through a painful process to establish a new equilibrium.
The social upheaval would be devastating as supply chains break down and economic connections are severed. The Sudanese Civil War is a microcosm of what could happen. Imagine this occurring on mainland Europe or in North America with famine, disease, drought, countless displaced persons, and confusion, all resulting in unimaginable death. Nefarious actors use cyber-attacks to cause chaos, resulting in massive social upheaval. Private citizens who were living affluent lives yesterday are now in competition with neighbors for food, water, and heat. A system breakdown would globalize these conditions, spreading far beyond the birth of the crisis and impacting countless regions. This is the future against which the Global Pressure Gauge warns.
The Global Pressure Gauge
Today’s struggle to keep the pressure from multiple vectors at a minimum is far more complicated than holding back the nuclear second hand of the Cold War Doomsday Clock. Instead of focusing on one existential threat and two superpowers, a countless array of actors with access to a variety of technologies must be monitored, persuaded, sanctioned, or even destroyed to keep threats in check. As pressure from one vector is reduced, the increase from another may prevent a net reduction in risk. Diplomacy and negotiation skills must be at an all-time high to solve the toughest challenges of our history.
Just as the ticking of a clock is far more predictable than the stability of a variable input system, the defense against a nuclear doomsday was less complicated than mankind’s current efforts to maintain worldwide stability. A black swan event has never caused species-wide disaster, but with the world so interconnected, the combination of current threats could easily rise to the point that ruptures the interconnected system. “Doomsday” will not likely come about through a singular catastrophe from one particular threat vector, but from an aggregation of mounting threats in the system that pushes the Global Pressure Gauge to its limits.
Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.
