The 2026 “Doomsday Clock Statement” released on Jan. 27 by the Einstein- and Oppenheimer-founded Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists declares that in 2026 we have moved 5 seconds closer to doom.
The editors say that they had been initially optimistic about President Donald Trump’s “efforts to halt the Russia-Ukraine war” and suggestion of “denuclearization,” but “in June, Israel and the United States launched aerial attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities suspected of supporting the country’s nuclear weapons ambitions,” a conflict broke out between India and Pakistan, the Ukraine-Russia war hasn’t ended, and “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.” They also bring up the Golden Dome as a project that will increase the “probability of conflict in space” and fuel a “new space-based arms race.”
